At the hour appointed for setting out, after they had eaten their soup au lait seasoned with a strong dose of pepper to give them an appetite, for the wedding-banquet bade fair to be abundant, they assembled in the farm-yard.  Our parish church being suppressed, they were obliged to go half a league away to receive the nuptial benediction.  It was a lovely, cool day; but, as the roads were very bad, every man had provided himself with a horse, and took en croupe a female companion, young or old.  Germain was mounted upon Grise, who, being well groomed, newly shod, and decked out in ribbons, pranced and capered and breathed fire through her nostrils.  He went to the cabin for his fiancee, accompanied by his brother-in-law Jacques, who was mounted on old Grise and took Mere Guillette en croupe, while Germain returned triumphantly to the farm-yard with his dear little wife.

Then the merry cavalcade set forth, escorted by children on foot, who fired pistols as they ran and made the horses jump.  Mere Maurice 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?