And everybody at the table laughed heartily at the rustic jests of the old Berrichon peasant, whose colossal fortune filled the place of manliness, of education, of kindness of heart, but not of wit; for he had plenty of that, the rascal—­more than all his bourgeois fellow-guests together.  Among the very rare persons who inspired a sympathetic feeling in his breast, little Chebe, whom he had known as an urchin, appealed particularly to him; and she, for her part, having become rich too recently not to venerate wealth, talked to her right-hand neighbor with a very perceptible air of respect and coquetry.

With her left-hand-neighbor, on the contrary, Georges Fromont, her husband’s partner, she exhibited the utmost reserve.  Their conversation was restricted to the ordinary courtesies of the table; indeed there was a sort of affectation of indifference between them.

Suddenly there was that little commotion among the guests which indicates that they are about to rise:  the rustling of silk, the moving of chairs, the last words of conversations, the completion of a laugh, and in that half-silence Madame Chebe, who had become communicative, observed in a very loud tone to a provincial cousin, who was gazing in an ecstasy of admiration at the newly made bride’s reserved and tranquil demeanor, as she stood with her arm in Monsieur Gardinois’s: 

“You see that child, cousin—­well, no one has ever been able to find out what her thoughts were.”

Thereupon the whole party rose and repaired to the grand salon.

While the guests invited for the ball were arriving and mingling with the dinner-guests, while the orchestra was tuning up, while the cavaliers, eyeglass in position, strutted before the impatient, white-gowned damsels, the bridegroom, awed by so great a throng, had taken refuge with his friend Planus—­Sigismond Planus, cashier of the house of Fromont for thirty years—­in that little gallery decorated with flowers and hung with a paper representing shrubbery and clambering vines, which forms a sort of background of artificial verdure to Vefour’s gilded salons.

“Sigismond, old friend—­I am very happy.”

And Sigismond too was happy; but Risler did not give him time to say so.  Now that he was no longer in dread of weeping before his guests, all the joy in his heart overflowed.

“Just think of it, my friend!—­It’s so extraordinary that a young girl like Sidonie would consent to marry me.  For you know I’m not handsome.  I didn’t need to have that impudent creature tell me so this morning to know it.  And then I’m forty-two—­and she such a dear little thing!  There were so many others she might have chosen, among the youngest and the richest, to say nothing of my poor Frantz, who loved her so.  But, no, she preferred her old Risler.  And it came about so strangely.  For a long time I noticed that she was sad, greatly changed.  I felt sure there was some disappointment in love at