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The landscape resembles parts of Bretagne and of Normandy; but these provinces have no such huts. To see a human habitation, you have to rise high above the fences and hedges and then look down upon the ground.
At a place where two roads meet, the cracking of a whip is heard; hogs, sheep, and small oxen are driven aside to make way for a kind of procession, consisting of grave and solemn men and women, who almost all wear a look of consternation.
It is a wedding.
Two young people have just had their union blessed by the priests under the sacred oak. The bride is dressed in black, and wears a wreath of dark leaves on her head; she walks in the midst of her friends, bent double, as if weighed down by overwhelming thoughts. A matron, who walks on her left, holds before her eyes a white cloth; it is a shroud, the shroud in which she will be buried one of these days. On her right, a Druid intones a chant, in which he enumerates, in solemn rhythm, all the troubles and all the anxieties which await her in wedded life.
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“From this day, young wife, thou alone wilt have to bear all the burden of your united household.