nice as she was in
contradistinction to the girls of Touraine, who are as wide-awake as a
spring morning--permitted the good man first to kiss her hand, and
afterwards her neck, rather low-down; at least so said the archbishop
who married them the week after; and that was a beautiful bridal, and
a still more beautiful bride.

The said Blanche was slender and graceful as no other girl, and still
better than that, more maidenly than ever maiden was; a maiden all
ignorant of love, who knew not why or what it was; a maiden who
wondered why certain people lingered in their beds; a maiden who
believed that children were found in parsley beds. Her mother had thus
reared her in innocence, without even allowing her to consider, trifle
as it was, how she sucked in her soup between her teeth. Thus she was
a sweet flower, and intact, joyous and innocent; an angel, who needed
but the wings to fly away to Paradise. When she left the poor lodging
of her weeping mother to consummate her betrothal at the cathedral of
St. Gatien and St. Maurice, the country people came to a feast their
eyes upon the bride, and on the carpets which were laid down all along
the Rue de la Scellerie, and all said that never had tinier feet
pressed the ground of Touraine, prettier eyes gazed up to heaven, or a
more splendid festival adorned the streets with carpets and with
flowers. The young girls of St. Martin and of the boroughs of
Chateau-Neuf, all envied the long brown tresses with which doubtless
Blanche had fished for a count, but much more did they desire the gold
embroidered dress, the foreign stones, the white diamonds, and the
chains with which the little darling played, and which bound her for
ever to the said seneschal. The old soldier was so merry by her side,
that his happiness showed itself in his wrinkles, his looks, and his
movements. Although he was hardly as straight as a billhook, he held
himself so by the side of Blanche, that one would have taken him for a
soldier on parade receiving his officer, and he placed his hand on his
diaphragm like a man whose pleasure stifles and troubles him.
Delighted with the sound of the swinging bells, the procession, the
pomps, and the vanities of the said marriage, which was talked of long
after the episcopal rejoicings, the women desired a harvest of Moorish
girls, a deluge of old seneschals, and baskets full of Egyptian
baptisms. But this was the only one that ever happened in Touraine,
seeing that