The extensive farm buildings seemed to be waiting there at the end of that archway of apple trees, and a sort of vapor came out of open door and windows and an almost overpowering odor of eatables was exhaled from the vast building, from all its openings and from its very walls.  The string of guests extended through the yard; but when the foremost of them reached the house, they broke the chain and dispersed, while those behind were still coming in at the open gate.  The ditches were now lined with urchins and curious poor people, and the firing did not cease, but came from every side at once, and a cloud of smoke, and that odor which has the same intoxicating effect as absinthe, blended with the atmosphere.  The women were shaking their dresses outside the door, to get rid of the dust, were undoing their cap-strings and pulling their shawls over their arms, and then they went into the house to lay them aside altogether for the time.  The table was laid in the great kitchen that would hold a hundred persons; they sat down to dinner at two o’clock; and at eight o’clock they were still eating, and the men, in their shirt-sleeves, with their waistcoats unbuttoned and with red faces, were swallowing down the food and drink as if they had been whirlpools.  The cider sparkled merrily, clear and golden in the large glasses, by the side of the dark, blood-colored wine, and between every dish they made a “hole,” the Normandy hole, with a glass of brandy which inflamed the body and put foolish notions into the head.  Low jokes were exchanged across the table until the whole arsenal of peasant wit was exhausted.  For the last hundred years the same broad stories had served for similar occasions, and, although every one knew them, they still hit the mark and made both rows of guests roar with laughter.

At one end of the table four young fellows, who were neighbors, were preparing some practical jokes for the newly married couple, and they seemed to have got hold of a good one by the way they whispered and laughed, and suddenly one of them, profiting by a moment of silence, exclaimed:  “The poachers will have a good time to-night, with this moon!  I say, Jean, you will not be looking at the moon, will you?” The bridegroom turned to him quickly and replied:  “Only let them come, that’s all!” But the other young fellow began to laugh, and said:  “I do not think you will pay much attention to them!”

The whole table was convulsed with laughter, so that the glasses shook, but the bridegroom became furious at the thought that anybody would profit by his wedding to come and poach on his land, and repeated:  “I only say-just let them come!”

Then there was a flood of talk with a double meaning which made the bride blush somewhat, although she was trembling with expectation; and when they had emptied the kegs of brandy they all went to bed.  The young couple went into their own room, which was on the ground floor, as most rooms in farmhouses are.  As it was very warm, they opened the window and closed the shutters.  A small lamp in bad taste, a present from the bride’s father, was burning on the chest of drawers, and the bed stood ready to receive the young people.