ng at which
it was voted that the association would not in future assist any
misfortunes about to happen, but solely those that had happened.

In spite of all these various events which kept the town in the
choicest gossip, the banns were published in the churches and at the
mayor's office. Athanase prepared the deeds. As a matter of propriety
and public decency, the bride retired to Prebaudet, where du
Bousquier, bearing sumptuous and horrible bouquets, betook himself
every morning, returning home for dinner.

At last, on a dull and rainy morning in June, the marriage of
Mademoiselle Cormon and the Sieur du Bousquier took place at noon in
the parish church of Alencon, in sight of the whole town. The bridal
pair went from their own house to the mayor's office, and from the
mayor's office to the church in an open caleche, a magnificent vehicle
for Alencon, which du Bousquier had sent for secretly to Paris. The
loss of the old carriole was a species of calamity in the eyes of the
community. The harness-maker of the Porte de Seez bemoaned it, for he
lost the fifty francs a year which it cost in repairs. Alencon saw
with alarm the possibility of luxury being thus introduced into the
town. Every one feared a rise in the price of rents and provisions,
and a coming invasion of Parisian furniture. Some persons were
sufficiently pricked by curiosity to give ten sous to Jacquelin to
allow them a close inspection of the vehicle which threatened to upset
the whole economy of the region. A pair of horses, bought in
Normandie, were also most alarming.

"If we bought our own horses," said the Ronceret circle, "we couldn't
sell them to those who come to buy."

Stupid as it was, this reasoning seemed sound; for surely such a
course would prevent the region from grasping the money of foreigners.
In the eyes of the provinces wealth consisted less in the rapid
turning over of money than in sterile accumulation. It may be
mentioned here that Penelope succumbed to a pleurisy which she
acquired about six weeks before the marriage; nothing could save her.

Madame Granson, Mariette, Madame du Coudrai, Madame du Ronceret, and
through them the whole town, remarked that Madame du Bousquier entered
the church /with her left foot/,--an omen all the more dreadful because
the term Left was beginning to acquire a political meaning. The priest
whose duty it was to read the opening formula opened his book by
chance at the De Profundis. Thus the mar