hes 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 marriage was accompanied by circumstances
so fateful, so alarming, so annihilating that no one dared to augur well
of it. Matters, in fact, went from bad to worse. There was no wedding
party; the married pair departed immediately for Prebaudet. Parisian
customs, sa