* * * * * *

There was a large gathering at the wedding.  The Marquis and Marchioness of Monthyon appeared at the sacristy.  Brisbille, by good luck, stayed away.  Good sectarian that he was, he only acknowledged civil marriages.  I was a little shamefaced to see march past, taking their share of the fine and tranquil smile distributed by Marie, some women who had formerly been my mistresses—­Madame Lacaille, nervous, subtle, mystical; big Victorine and her good-natured rotundity, who had welcomed me any time and anywhere; and Madeleine Chaine; and slender Antonia above all, with the Italian woman’s ardent and theatrical face, ebony-framed, and wearing a hat of Parisian splendor.  For Antonia is very elegant since she married Veron.  I could not help wincing when I saw that lanky woman, who had clung to me in venturesome rooms, now assiduous around us in her ceremonious attire.  But how far off and obliterated all that was!

CHAPTER V

DAY BY DAY

We rearranged the house.  We did not alter the general arrangement, nor the places of the heavy furniture—­that would have been too great a change.  But we cast out all the dusty old stuff, the fossilized and worthless knick-knacks that Mame had accumulated.  The photographs on the walls, which were dying of jaundice and debility, and which no longer stood for anybody, because of the greatness of time, we cleared out of their imitation tortoiseshell and buried in the depths of drawers.

I bought some furniture, and as we sniffed the odor of varnish which hung about for a long time in the lower room, we said, “This is the real thing.”  And, indeed, our home was pretty much like the middle-class establishments of our quarter and everywhere.  Is it not the only really proud moment here on earth, when we can say, “I, too!”

Years went by.  There was nothing remarkable in our life.  When I came home in the evening, Marie, who often had not been out and had kept on her dressing-gown and plaits, used to say, “There’s been nothing to speak of to-day.”

The aeroplanes were appearing at that time.  We talked about them, and saw photographs of them in the papers.  One Sunday we saw one from our window.  We had heard the chopped-up noise of its engine expanding over the sky; and down below, the townsfolk on their doorsteps, raised their heads towards the ceiling of their streets.  Rattling space was marked with a dot.  We kept our eyes on it and saw the great flat and noisy insect grow bigger and bigger, silhouetting the black of its angles and partitioned lines against the airy wadding of the clouds.  When its headlong flight had passed, when it had dwindled in our eyes and ears amid the new world of sounds, which it drew in its train, Marie sighed dreamily.

“I would like,” she said, “to go up in an aeroplane, into the wind—­into the sky!”