he soldiers I
had seen below, stepped forward to ask us to excuse him for not having at
once ushered us into the Mayor's drawing-room, which is no other than the
first-class waiting-room. I darted into it as one jumps into a cab when
it begins to rain suddenly. Almost immediately two serious persons, one
of whom greatly resembled the old cashier at the Petit-Saint-Thomas,
brought in two registers, and, opening them, wrote for some time; only
stopping occasionally to ask the name, age, and baptismal names of both
of us, then, saying to themselves, "Semi-colon . . . between the
aforesaid . . . fresh paragraph, etc., etc."

When he had done, the one like the man cashier at the Petit-Saint-Thomas
read aloud, through his nose, that which he had put down, and of which I
could understand nothing, except that my name was several times repeated
as well as that of the other "aforesaid." A pen was handed to us and we
signed. Voila.

"Is it over?" said I to Georges, who to my great surprise was very pale.

"Not yet, dear," said he; "we must now go into the hall, where the
marriage ceremony takes place."

We entered a large, empty hall with bare walls; a bust of the Emperor was
at the farther end over a raised platform, some armchairs, and some
benches behind them, and dust upon everything. I must have been in a
wrong mood, for it seemed to me I was entering the waiting-room at a
railway-station; nor could I help looking at my aunts, who were very
merry, over the empty chairs. The gentlemen, who no doubt affected not to
think as we did, were, on the contrary, all very serious, and I could
discern very well that Georges was actually trembling. At length the
Mayor came in by a little door and appeared before us, awkward and podgy
in his dress-coat, which was too large for him, and which his scarf
caused to rise up. He was a very respectable man who had amassed a decent
fortune from the sale of iron bedsteads; yet how could I bring myself to
think that this embarrassed-looking, ill-dressed, timid little creature
could, with a word hesitatingly uttered, unite me in eternal bonds?
Moreover, he had a fatal likeness to my piano-tuner.

The Mayor, after bowing to us, as a man bows when without his hat, and in
a white cravat, that is to say, clumsily, blew his nose, to the great
relief of his two arms which he did not know what to do with, and briskly
began the little ceremony. He hurriedly mumbled over several passages of
the Code, giv