so that from the entrance
to the dining-room the procession would walk through an avenue of peace
and plenty. The effect was charming. Nothing could be more beautiful
than the luscious perfumed blossoms, richer than the deep foliage, more
picturesque than the scented golden fruit hanging gracefully from the
branches. As night went on, the sounds of merriment grew louder.
Champagne could not run like water without leading to noisy if not
brilliant wit. A hundred and fifty sons and daughters of sunny Southern
France might be trusted to make the most of their opportunity.

We left them to their rites when by-and-by the clock struck ten, lights
began to burn dim, and we realised that a sleepless night in the train
is more or less trying. Bidding madame _le bonsoir_, who flashed to and
fro like lightning, yet was neither hurried nor flurried, she politely
returned us _la bonne nuit_; adding, with a certain dry humour, that
after all she was glad marriages were not an everyday occurrence--at any
rate from her hotel. If profitable, they were fatiguing.

Next morning we rose before dawn. The man came in, lighted our candles,
and said it was time to rise. We thought we had slept five minutes; the
unconscious hours had passed too quickly. Overnight we had settled to
take an early train, and devote a few hours to Perpignan; hours of
enforced waiting on our way to Gerona. After an amount of rapping and
calling that might have roused the dead, H. C. had risen, lighted his
own candles, and protested by going back to bed and to slumber.
Fortunately the man went up to his room half an hour after, and seeing
the state of affairs upset the fire-irons, knocked down a couple of
chairs, and opened the window with a rattle.

"Are those wedding people still at it?" murmured H. C., in his dreams.
"It must be past midnight." Then consciousness dawned upon him and the
full measure of his iniquity; and presently he came down to a late
breakfast, subdued and repentant.

Early as it was, madame was at her post, brisk and wide-awake as though
yesterday had been nothing but a very ordinary fete-day. It was that
uncomfortable hour when the early morning light creeps in, and candles
and gas-lamps show pale and unearthly. The room looked chilly and
forsaken; that last-night aspect that is always so ghostlike and
unfamiliar. A white mist hung over the outer world.

Then the most comforting thing on earth made its triumphant entry--a
brimming teapot