graciously. For this exceptional day, at least, I must bear my eternal
nickname. Was not the maid now present whose dower had been hatched
by those well-omened fowls? and was not the dower now coming to
use? Hohenfels paired off with the notary, and discussed with that
parchment person the music of Mozart, and, what would have been absurd
and incredible in any Anglo-Saxon country, the scribe understood it!

Our party had to wait but ten minutes for the groom and his men.
Fortnoye, in a grand blue suit, with a wondrous dazzle of frilling
on his broad chest, looked a noble husband, but was preoccupied and
silent. His chorus supported him--Grandstone, Somerard, my engineer
and the others--in dignified black clothes, official boutonnieres
and ceremonial cravats: they greeted Frau Kranich with awe, and
bowed before the polished head of the lawyer with the parallelism of
ninepins. My little group of fellow-travelers was almost complete.
The young duelist, of course, was not expected or wanted. The Scotch
doctor, Somerard told me, had been obliged to fly to London, where a
mammoth meeting of the homoeopathic faith was in progress.

The great feature of the breakfast came on when every crumb of
breakfast had been eaten. Charles and the maid cleared away the table,
and the notary stood up to read the marriage contract. The reading,
ordinarily a dull affair, was in this instance vivified by curious
incidents. In the first place, Frau Kranich. amending the injustice
her over-credulity had caused, gave her _protegee_ a wedding-present
of twenty thousand francs, accompanying the gift with some singularly
tart remarks about her nephew: this sum was increased by the groom to
sixty thousand. The second incident was when Joliet, amid the almost
incredulous surprise of the whole table, raised the gift, by the
addition of ten thousand, to seventy thousand francs: the money was
the product of his former house and garden--that house of shreds and
patches which had cost him ten francs. When it came to affixing the
signatures, the notary appealed to Joliet for his name. He could
not sign it, being gouty and half forgetful of pen-practice, but he
responded to the question as bold as a lion: "John Thomas Joliet,
baron de Rouviere," throwing to the lawyer a fine bunch of papers
bearing witness to the validity of the title; after which he added, no
less proudly, "wine-merchant, wholesale and retail, at the sign of the
Golden Chickens, Noisy."