oo true for us, and since Rabelais and Montaigne, the
advance of the language has lost for us many of its old riches. Thus
it is with every advance, and we must make the best of it. Yet it is
a pleasure still to hear those picturesque idioms used in the old
districts in the center of France; all the more because it is the
genuine expression of the laughing, quiet, and delightfully talkative
character of the people who make use of it. Touraine has preserved
a certain precious number of patriarchal phrases. But Touraine was
civilized greatly during the Renaissance, and since its decline she
is filled with fine houses and highroads, with foreigners and traffic.
Berry remained as she was, and I think that after Brittany and a few
provinces in the far south of France, it is the best preserved district
to be found at the present day. Some of the costumes are so strange and
so curious that I hope to amuse you a few minutes more, kind reader,
if you will allow me to describe to you in detail a country
wedding--Germain's, for example--at which I had the pleasure of
assisting several years ago.

For, alas! everything passes. During my life alone, more change has
taken place in the ideas and in the customs of my village than had
been seen in the centuries before the Revolution. Already half the
ceremonies, Celtic, Pagan, or of the Middle Ages, that in my childhood I
have seen in their full vigor, have disappeared. In a year or two more,
perhaps, the railroads will lay their level tracks across our deep
valleys, and will carry away, with the swiftness of lightning, all our
old traditions and our wonderful legends.

It was in winter about the carnival season, the time of year when, in
our country, it is fitting and proper to have weddings. In summer the
time can hardly be spared, and the work of the farm cannot suffer three
days' delay, not to speak of the additional days impaired to a greater
or to a less degree by the moral and physical drunkenness which
follows a gala-day. I was seated beneath the great mantelpiece of the
old-fashioned kitchen fireplace when shots of pistols, barking of dogs,
and the piercing notes of the bagpipe told me that the bridal pair were
approaching. Very soon Father and Mother Maurice, Germain, and little
Marie, followed by Jacques and his wife, the closer relatives, and the
godfathers and godmothers of the bride and groom, all made their entry
into the yard.

Little Marie had not yet received her we