The early breakfast gave a renewal of my friendship with good Frau Kranich and a glimpse of the bride, with her sweet, patient, dewy face shadowed like a honey-drop in the gauzy calyx of her artisanne cap; for she was in the simplest of morning dresses—­something gray, with a clean white apron.  The quaint, old-fashioned house where we met was decorated with exquisite trifles, the memorials of the mistress’s old fashionable taste, but scattered over the tables also were lecture programmes, hospital reports and photographs of eminent philosophers.  As I took up for a plaything a gold pen-case, well used, which rested on a magnificent old fan, the Kranich said, with just a reminiscence of her former vivacity, “You find me much changed, Mr. Flemming.  I used to be the grasshopper in the fable—­now I am the ant.”

“I bless any change, ma’am,” said I, “which increases your kindness toward this charming girl.”

“Dear Mr. Flemming,” said pretty Francine, “how nice and shabby you look!  You will do admirably to stand by a poor girl—­so poor that she has hardly a bridesmaid.  I hope you are as indigent as you were at Carlsruhe.”  Upon this I felt very fatherly, and clasped her waist from behind as I kissed her forehead.

The lawyer, a professionally bland old man, with a porous bald head like an emu’s egg, said as he was introduced, “Ah, I have heard of you before, monsieur.  You are the man of the two chickens.”

Joliet was so enchanted with this rare joke, laughing and clapping all his nearer neighbors on the back, that I could not but accept it 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.