"It is true that I have a perfect wife, but I certainly married her much
against my will."

"Nonsense!"

"Yes--this is the adventure. I was thirty-five, and I had no more
idea of marrying than I had of hanging myself. Young girls seemed to me
to be inane, and I loved pleasure.

"During the month of May I was invited to the wedding of my cousin, Simon
d'Erabel, in Normandy. It was a regular Normandy wedding. We sat down at
the table at five o'clock in the evening and at eleven o'clock we were
still eating. I had been paired off, for the occasion, with a
Mademoiselle Dumoulin, daughter of a retired colonel, a young, blond,
soldierly person, well formed, frank and talkative. She took complete
possession of me for the whole day, dragged me into the park, made me
dance willy-nilly, bored me to death. I said to myself: 'That's all very
well for to-day, but tomorrow I'll get out. That's all there is to it!'

"Toward eleven o'clock at night the women retired to their rooms; the men
stayed, smoking while they drank or drinking while they smoked, whichever
you will.

"Through the open window we could see the country folks dancing. Farmers
and peasant girls were jumping about in a circle yelling at the top of
their lungs a dance air which was feebly accompanied by two violins and a
clarinet. The wild song of the peasants often completely drowned the
sound of the instruments, and the weak music, interrupted by the
unrestrained voices, seemed to come to us in little fragments of
scattered notes. Two enormous casks, surrounded by flaming torches,
contained drinks for the crowd. Two men were kept busy rinsing the
glasses or bowls in a bucket and immediately holding them under the
spigots, from which flowed the red stream of wine or the golden stream of
pure cider; and the parched dancers, the old ones quietly, the girls
panting, came up, stretched out their arms and grasped some receptacle,
threw back their heads and poured down their throats the drink which they
preferred. On a table were bread, butter, cheese and sausages. Each one
would step up from time to time and swallow a mouthful, and under the
starlit sky this healthy and violent exercise was a pleasing sight, and
made one also feel like drinking from these enormous casks and eating the
crisp bread and butter with a raw onion.

"A mad desire seized me to take part in this merrymaking, and I left my
companions. I must admit that I was probably a little tipsy, but I was