this moment not to be at Epernay to see the destroyer of your peace
married: you had rather assist at the making of a wife than at the
making of a widow."

I was just sending Fortnoye to the gloomiest shades of Acheron when a
strong hand entered the carriage-door, helped me handsomely down the
steps, and then began warmly to shake my own. Fortnoye!--Fortnoye
in flesh and blood was before me. While my mouth was yet filled with
maledictions he began to pour out a storm of thanks with all his own
particular warmth, expressing the most effusive gratitude for the
trouble I had taken in forsaking my route to be his wife's bridesmaid.
That is what he called it. "She has but one other," said Fortnoye.
At the same time I began to recognize other faces not unknown to me,
crudely illuminated by the raw colors of the railway-lights. They
all had black wedding-suits and enormous buttonhole nosegays of
orange-flowers. I picked them out, with a particular recognition for
each: 'twas the civil engineer of Noisy; the short gentleman named
Somerard; James Athanasius Grandstone, with his saintly aureole upon
him in the shape of a Yankee wide-awake; the nameless mutes, or rather
chorus, of the champagne-crypt; in short, my nest of serpents in
all its integrity. Still entangled with my slumbers, I hesitated
to respond to the friendly hands that were everywhere thrust
centripetally toward me.

I looked blackly at Hohenfels. He was chuckling.

At Heidelberg, making the acquaintance of M. Fortnoye
contemporaneously with my departure, he had become more enthralled
than he ever confessed to this radiant traveler--whom he called a
packman, but regarded as a Mercury--and his pretty scheme of matrimony
in motion. Even now, if I can believe my eyes, he goes up to the
"vintner" and "peddler" of his objurgations, and meekly whispers into
his ear with the air of a conspirator reporting a plot to his chief.
Having engaged to produce me at the wedding of Fortnoye, and finding
me unexpectedly recusant, he had adopted a little stratagem for
bringing me to the scene while thinking to escape from it.

"Thou too, Brutus!" I said, and gave it up. It only remained for me
to return all round, after five minutes of petrified stupidity,
the hand-grasps that had been offered from every quarter of the
compass-box.

Next morning, at an early hour, I was interrupted by a knock, just
as Charles had buttoned my gaiters and the young man from the
perruquier's (w