ttack of intoxication
sends him headlong to the ground once more: and with that his wife's
lamentations recommence, her discouragement, her pretended misconduct,
the husband's jealousy, the intervention of the bystanders, and the
reconciliation. There is in all this an ingenuous, even commonplace,
lesson, which savors strongly of its origin in the Middle Ages, but
which always makes an impression, if not upon the bride and groom,--who
are too much in love and too sensible to-day to need it,--at all
events, upon the children and young girls and boys. The _paien_ so
terrifies and disgusts the girls, by running after them and pretending
to want to kiss them, that they fly from him with an emotion in which
there is nothing artificial. His besmeared face and his great
stick--perfectly harmless, by the way--makes the youngsters shriek with
fear. It is the comedy of manners in its most elementary but most
impressive state.

When this farce is well under way, they prepare to go in search of the
cabbage. They bring a hand-barrow, on which the _paien_ is placed, armed
with a spade, a rope, and a great basket. Four strong men carry him on
their shoulders. His wife follows him on foot, the _ancients_ come in a
group behind, with grave and pensive mien; then the wedding-party falls
in two by two, keeping time to the music. The pistol-shots begin again,
the dogs howl louder than ever at sight of the unclean _paien_, thus
borne in triumph. The children salute him derisively with wooden clogs
tied at the ends of strings.

But why this ovation to such a revolting personage? They are marching to
the conquest of the sacred cabbage, the emblem of matrimonial fecundity,
and this besotted drunkard is the only man who can put his hand upon
the symbolical plant. Therein, doubtless, is a mystery anterior to
Christianity, a mystery that reminds one of the festival of the
Saturnalia or some ancient Bacchanalian revel. Perhaps this _paien_, who
is at the same time the gardener _par excellence_, is nothing less than
Priapus in person, the god of gardens and debauchery,--a divinity
probably chaste and serious in his origin, however, like the mystery of
reproduction, but insensibly degraded by licentiousness of manners and
disordered ideas.

However that may be, the triumphal procession arrives at the bride's
house and marches into her garden. There they select the finest cabbage,
which is not quickly done, for the ancients hold a council and disc