aurice was
riding in a small cart with Germain's three children and the fiddlers.
They opened the march to the sound of the instruments. Petit-Pierre was
so handsome that the old grandmother was immensely proud. But the
impulsive child did not stay long beside her. He took advantage of a
halt they were obliged to make, when they had gone half the distance, in
order to pass a difficult ford, to slip down and ask his father to take
him up on Grise in front of him.

"No, no!" said Germain, "that will make people say unkind things about
us! you mustn't do it."

"I care very little what the people of Saint-Chartier say," said little
Marie. "Take him, Germain, I beg you; I shall be prouder of him than of
my wedding-dress."

Germain yielded the point, and the handsome trio dashed forward at
Grise's proudest gallop.

And, in fact, the people of Saint-Chartier, although very satirical and
a little inclined to be disagreeable in their intercourse with the
neighboring parishes which had been combined with theirs, did not think
of laughing when they saw such a handsome bridegroom and lovely bride,
and a child that a king's wife would have envied. Petit-Pierre had a
full coat of blue-bottle colored cloth, and a cunning little red
waistcoat so short that it hardly came below his chin. The village
tailor had made the sleeves so tight that he could not put his little
arms together. And how proud he was! He had a round hat with a black and
gold buckle and a peacock's feather protruding jauntily from a tuft of
Guinea-hen's feathers. A bunch of flowers larger than his head covered
his shoulder, and ribbons floated down to his feet. The hemp-beater, who
was also the village barber and wig-maker, had cut his hair in a circle,
covering his head with a bowl and cutting off all that protruded, an
infallible method of guiding the scissors accurately. Thus accoutred, he
was less picturesque, surely, than with his long hair flying in the wind
and his lamb's fleece _a la_ Saint John the Baptist; but he had no such
idea, and everybody admired him, saying that he looked like a little
man. His beauty triumphed over everything, and, in sooth, over what
would not the incomparable beauty of childhood triumph?

His little sister Solange had, for the first time in her life, a real
cap instead of the little child's cap of Indian muslin that little girls
wear up to the age of two or three years. And such a cap! higher and
broader than the poor little