n ignorant of
buttermilk-pudding. He went away overwhelmed, but came back some
days afterwards and made another speech. He had laid his plans before
Medallion, who approved of them. He prefaced the speech by placing the
blank marriage certificate on the table. Then he said that his first
wife was such a cook, that when she died he paid for an extra Mass and
twelve very fine candles. He called upon Parpon to endorse his words,
and Parpon nodded to all he said, but, catching Julie's eye, went off
into gurgles of laughter, which he pretended were tears, by smothering
his face in his capote. "Ma'm'selle," said the miller, "I have thought.
Some men go to the Avocat or the Cure with great things; but I have
been a pilgrimage, I have sat on the grand jury. There, Ma'm'selle!"
His chest swelled, he blew out his cheeks, he pulled Parpon's ear as
Napoleon pulled Murat's. "Ma'm'selle, allons! Babette, the sister of my
first wife-ah! she is a great cook also--well, she was pouring into my
plate the soup--there is nothing like pea-soup with a fine lump of pork,
and thick molasses for the buckwheat cakes. Ma'm'selle, allons! Just
then I thought. It is very good; you shall see; you shall learn how to
cook. Babette will teach you. Babette said many things. I got mad and
spilt the soup. Ma'm'selle--eh, holy, what a turn has your waist!"

At length he made it clear to her what his plans were, and to each and
all she consented; but when he had gone she sat and laughed till she
cried, and for the hundredth time took out the brown paper and studied
the list of Farette's worldly possessions.

The wedding-day came. Julie performed her last real act of renunciation
when, in spite of the protests of her friends, she wore the grey
watered-poplin, made modern by her own hands. The wedding-day was the
anniversary of Farette's first marriage, and the Cure faltered in the
exhortation when he saw that Farette was dressed in complete mourning,
even to the crape hat-streamers, as he said, out of respect for the
memory of his first wife, and as a kind of tribute to his second. At the
wedding-breakfast, where Medallion and Parpon were in high glee, Farette
announced that he would take the honeymoon himself, and leave his wife
to learn cooking from old Babette.

So he went away alone cheerfully, with hymeneal rice falling in showers
on his mourning garments; and his new wife was as cheerful as he, and
threw rice also.

She learned how to cook, and in