Lippincotts Magazine, January 1875 | Page 9

scented cambric handkerchief, a rosebud, and a snowy waistcoat, in which, as in a whited sepulchre, I concealed the decay of my toilet. These changes were judged to be sufficient for my accoutrement. They might have done very well, but on my way back I paused at a lace-shop window to inspect some present for Francine. A band, with many banners and figures in masquerade, swept past, followed by a shouting crowd. My friends lost me in a moment, and I lost my way. I turned into a street which I was sure led to the hotel, gave it up for another, lost that in a blind alley, and finally brought up in a steep, narrow ca?on, where I was forced to ask a direction. The passer-by who obliged me was a man bearing a bag of charcoal. He answered with a ready intelligence that did honor to his heart and his sense of Progressive Geography. But he left on my white waistcoat, alas! a charcoal sketch, full of chiaroscuro and _coloris_, representing his index-finger surrounded with a sort of cloud-effect. My waistcoat had to be given over in favor of the elder garment buttoned up in the all-concealing overcoat.
[Illustration: ST. GUDOLE, BRUSSELS.]
The ceremonies of the day, I soon found, were to consist in an early and informal breakfast at the house of Frau Kranich; then the civil wedding at the mayor's office, followed by the usual church-service, from which the Protestant godmother of Francine begged to be excused; the day to wind up with a general dinner at a place of resort outside the city at four o'clock, the usual dining-hour in old Brabant.
The early breakfast gave a renewal of my friendship with good Frau Kranich and a glimpse of the bride, with her sweet, patient, dewy face shadowed like a honey-drop in the gauzy calyx of her artisanne cap; for she was in the simplest of morning dresses--something gray, with a clean white apron. The quaint, old-fashioned house where we met was decorated with exquisite trifles, the memorials of the mistress's old fashionable taste, but scattered over the tables also were lecture programmes, hospital reports and photographs of eminent philosophers. As I took up for a plaything a gold pen-case, well used, which rested on a magnificent old fan, the Kranich said, with just a reminiscence of her former vivacity, "You find me much changed, Mr. Flemming. I used to be the grasshopper in the fable--now I am the ant."
"I bless any change, ma'am," said I, "which increases your kindness toward this charming girl."
"Dear Mr. Flemming," said pretty Francine, "how nice and shabby you look! You will do admirably to stand by a poor girl--so poor that she has hardly a bridesmaid. I hope you are as indigent as you were at Carlsruhe." Upon this I felt very fatherly, and clasped her waist from behind as I kissed her forehead.
The lawyer, a professionally bland old man, with a porous bald head like an emu's egg, said as he was introduced, "Ah, I have heard of you before, monsieur. You are the man of the two chickens."
Joliet was so enchanted with this rare joke, laughing and clapping all his nearer neighbors on the back, that I could not but accept it graciously. For this exceptional day, at least, I must bear my eternal nickname. Was not the maid now present whose dower had been hatched by those well-omened fowls? and was not the dower now coming to use? Hohenfels paired off with the notary, and discussed with that parchment person the music of Mozart, and, what would have been absurd and incredible in any Anglo-Saxon country, the scribe understood it!
Our party had to wait but ten minutes for the groom and his men. Fortnoye, in a grand blue suit, with a wondrous dazzle of frilling on his broad chest, looked a noble husband, but was preoccupied and silent. His chorus supported him--Grandstone, Somerard, my engineer and the others--in dignified black clothes, official boutonni��res and ceremonial cravats: they greeted Frau Kranich with awe, and bowed before the polished head of the lawyer with the parallelism of ninepins. My little group of fellow-travelers was almost complete. The young duelist, of course, was not expected or wanted. The Scotch doctor, Somerard told me, had been obliged to fly to London, where a mammoth meeting of the homoeopathic faith was in progress.
The great feature of the breakfast came on when every crumb of breakfast had been eaten. Charles and the maid cleared away the table, and the notary stood up to read the marriage contract. The reading, ordinarily a dull affair, was in this instance vivified by curious incidents. In the first place, Frau Kranich. amending the injustice her over-credulity had caused, gave her _prot��g��e_ a wedding-present of twenty thousand francs, accompanying the