leading tradesmen of Paris, who had assembled to do him honor.  And the grand crash from the organ at the close, made more solemn by the fact that the church door was thrown wide open, so that the whole street took part in the family ceremony—­the music passing through the vestibule at the same time with the procession—­the exclamations of the crowd, and a burnisher in an ample lute-string apron remarking in a loud voice, “The groom isn’t handsome, but the bride’s as pretty as a picture.”  That is the kind of thing that makes you proud when you happen to be the bridegroom.

And then the breakfast at the factory, in a workroom adorned with hangings and flowers; the drive in the Bois—­a concession to the wishes of his mother-in-law, Madame Chebe, who, being the petty Parisian bourgeoise that she was, would not have deemed her daughter legally married without a drive around the lake and a visit to the Cascade.  Then the return for dinner, as the lamps were being lighted along the boulevard, where people turned to look after the wedding-party, a typical well-to-do bourgeois wedding-party, as it drove up to the grand entrance at Vefour’s with all the style the livery horses could command.

Risler had reached that point in his dream.

And now the worthy man, dazed with fatigue and well-being, glanced vaguely about that huge table of twenty-four covers, curved in the shape of a horseshoe at the ends, and surrounded by smiling, familiar faces, wherein he seemed to see his happiness reflected in every eye.  The dinner was drawing near its close.  The wave of private conversation flowed around the table.  Faces were turned toward one another, black sleeves stole behind waists adorned with bunches of asclepias, a childish face laughed over a fruit ice, and the dessert at the level of the guests’ lips encompassed the cloth with animation, bright colors, and light.

Ah, yes!  Risler was very happy.

Except his brother Frantz, everybody he loved was there.  First of all, sitting opposite him, was Sidonie—­yesterday little Sidonie, to-day his wife.  For the ceremony of dinner she had laid aside her veil; she had emerged from her cloud.  Now, above the smooth, white silk gown, appeared a pretty face of a less lustrous and softer white, and the crown of hair-beneath that other crown so carefully bestowed—­would have told you of a tendency to rebel against life, of little feathers fluttering for an opportunity to fly away.  But husbands do not see such things as those.

Next to Sidonie and Frantz, the person whom Risler loved best in the world was Madame Georges Fromont, whom he called “Madame Chorche,” the wife of his partner and the daughter of the late Fromont, his former employer and his god.  He had placed her beside him, and in his manner of speaking to her one could read affection and deference.  She was a very young woman, of about the same age as Sidonie, but of a more regular, quiet and placid type of beauty.  She talked little, being out of her element in that conglomerate assemblage; but she tried to appear affable.