It was cold in the thatched houses adorned with white caps; and the round apples in the trees of the enclosures seemed to be flowering, powdered as they had been in the pleasant month of their blossoming.

This day, the big northern clouds, the gray clouds laden with glittering rain had disappeared, and the blue sky showed itself above the white earth on which the rising sun cast silvery reflections.

Cesaire looked straight before him through the window, thinking of nothing happy.

The door opened, two women entered, peasant women in their Sunday clothes, the aunt and the cousin of the bridegroom, then three men, his cousins, then a woman who was a neighbor.  They sat down on chairs, and they remained motionless and silent, the women on one side of the kitchen, the men on the other suddenly seized with timidity, with that embarrassed sadness which takes possession of people assembled for a ceremony.  One of the cousins soon asked: 

“It is not the hour—­is it?”

Cesaire replied: 

“I am much afraid it is.”

“Come on!  Let us start,” said another.

Those rose up.  Then Cesaire, whom a feeling of uneasiness had taken possession of, climbed up the ladder of the loft to see whether his father was ready.  The old man, always as a rule an early riser, had not yet made his appearance.  His son found him on his bed of straw, wrapped up in his blanket, with his eyes open, and a malicious look in them.

He bawled out into his ear:  “Come, daddy, get up.  ’Tis the time for the wedding.”

The deaf man murmured in a doleful tone: 

“I can’t, I have a sort of cold over me that freezes my back.  I can’t stir.”

The young man, dumbfounded, stared at him, guessing that this was a dodge.

“Come, daddy, we must force you to go.”

“Look here!  I’ll help you.”

And he stooped towards the old man, pulled off his blanket, caught him by the arm and lifted him up.  But the old Amable began to whine: 

“Ooh!  Ooh!  Ooh!  What suffering!  Ooh!  I can’t.  My back is stiffened up.  ’Tis the wind that must have rushed in through this cursed roof.”

“Well, you’ll have no dinner, as I’m having a spread at Polyte’s inn.  This will teach you what comes of acting mulishly.”

And he hurried down the ladder, then set out for his destination, accompanied by his relatives and guests.

The men had turned up their trousers so as not to soil the ends of them in the snow.  The women held up their petticoats and showed their lean ankles, their gray woolen stockings, and their bony shanks resembling broomsticks.  And they all moved forward balancing themselves on their legs, one behind the other without uttering a word in a very gingerly fashion through caution lest they might miss their way owing to flat, uniform uninterrupted sweep of snow that obliterated the track.

As they approached some of the farm houses, they saw one or two persons waiting to join them, and the procession went on without stopping, and wound its way forward, following the invisible outlines of the road, so that it resembled a living chaplet with black beads undulating through the white country side.