At Ille supper was waiting us, and what a supper! If I had been disgusted at the coarse merriment of the morning, I was still more so at the equivocations and pleasantries of which the bridegroom and, above all, the bride were the objects. The bridegroom, who had disappeared for an instant before sitting down to table, was pale and icily serious. Every other minute he took a draught of old Collioure wine, almost as strong as brandy. I was beside him, and I felt obliged to warn him:
“Take care! They say that wine....”
I told him some nonsense or other to put myself on a level with the other guests.
He nudged me with his knee and, in an undertone, said to me:
“When we rise from table ..., let me have a word with you.”
His grave tone surprised me. I looked more attentively at him, and I noticed the strange alteration in his features.
“Do you feel unwell?” I asked him.
“No.”
And he fell to drinking again.
Meanwhile, amid shouts and clapping of hands, a child of eleven, who had slipped under the table, showed the company a pretty white and pink ribbon which he had just unfastened from the bride’s ankle. That was called her garter. It was at once cut in pieces and distributed to the young people, who decorated their buttonholes with it, after an old custom, which is still maintained in some patriarchal families. This caused the bride to blush to the whites of her eyes.... But her distress was at a height when M. de Peyrehorade, having called for silence, sang her certain Catalan verses, impromptu, he said. Here is the sense of them, if I understood it aright: