This day the big clouds to the north, the big great snow clouds, 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, quite 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 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: 

“Is it not the hour?”

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 gleam in them.

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

The deaf man murmured-in a doleful tone: 

“I can’t get up.  I have a sort of chill 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; you must make an effort.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Look here!  I’ll help you.”

And he stooped toward the old man, pulled off his blanket, caught him by the arm and lifted him up.  But old Amable began to whine, “Ooh! ooh! ooh!  What suffering!  Ooh!  I can’t.  My back is stiffened up.  The cold wind must have rushed in through this cursed roof.”

“Well, you’ll get 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 and started out, accompanied by his relatives and guests.

The men had turned up the bottoms of their trousers so as not to get them wet in the snow.  The women held up their petticoats and showed their lean ankles with gray woollen stockings and their bony shanks resembling broomsticks.  And they all moved forward with a swinging gait, one behind the other, without uttering a word, moving cautiously, for fear of losing the road which was-hidden beneath the flat, uniform, uninterrupted stretch of snow.

As they approached the farmhouses 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 of black beads undulating through the white countryside.