the door within. At this time it was still the only fastening known
in most of the dwellings of our hamlet. The groom’s band burst into
the bride’s house, but not without a struggle; for the young men
quartered within, and even the old hemp-dresser and the gossips,
made it their duty to defend the hearth. The spit-bearer, upheld
by his supporters, had to plant the roast before the fireplace.
It was a regular battle, although people abstained from striking,
and there was no anger shown in this struggle. But everybody was
pushing and shoving so hard, and there was so much playful pride
in this display of muscular strength, that the results might well
have been serious, although they did not appear so across the
laughs and songs. The poor old hemp-dresser, fighting like a lion,
was pinned to the wall and squeezed by the crowd until his breath
almost left him. More than one champion was upset and trodden under
foot involuntarily; more than one hand, jammed against the spit,
was covered with blood. These games are dangerous, and latterly the
accidents have been so severe that our peasants have determined to
allow the ceremony of the favors to fall into disuse; I believe we
saw the last at the marriage of François Meillant, although there
was no real struggle on that occasion.
The battle was earnest enough, however, at Germain’s wedding. It
was a point of honor on one side to invade, on the other to defend,
Mother Guillette’s hearth. The great spit was twisted like a screw
beneath the strong fists which fought for it. A pistol-shot set
fire to a small quantity of hemp arranged in sheaves and laid on a
wicker shelf near the ceiling. This incident created a diversion,
and while some of the company crowded about to extinguish the
sparks, the grave-digger, who had climbed unbeknown into the
garret, came down the chimney and seized the spit, at the very
moment when the ox-driver, who was defending it near the hearth,
raised it above his head to prevent it from being torn away. Some
time before the attack, the women had taken the precaution to put
out the fire lest in the struggle somebody should fall in and get
burned. The jocular grave-digger, in league with the ox-driver,
grasped the trophy and tossed it easily across the andirons. It was
done! Nobody might interfere. The grave-digger sprang to the middle
of the room and lighted a few wisps of straw, which he placed about
the spit under pretense of cooking the roast, for the goose was in
pieces and the floor was strewn with its scattered fragments.
Then there was a great deal of laughter and much boastful dispute.
Everybody showed the marks of the blows he had received, and as it
was often a friend’s hand that had struck them, there was no word
of complaint nor of quarreling. The hemp-dresser, half flattened
out, kept rubbing the small of his back and saying that, although
it made small difference to him, he protested against the ruse of
his friend, the grave-digger, and that if he had not been half
dead, the hearth had never been captured so easily. The women swept
the floor and order was restored. The table was covered with jugs
of new wine. When the contestants had drunk together and taken
breath, the bridegroom was led to the middle of the chamber, and,
armed with a wand, he was obliged to submit to a fresh trial.
During the struggle, the bride and three of her companions had been
hidden by her mother, godmother, and aunts, who had made the four
girls sit down in a remote corner of the room while they covered
them with a large white cloth. Three friends of Marie’s height,
with caps of a uniform size, were chosen, so that when they were
enveloped from head to toe by the cloth it was impossible to tell
them apart.
The bridegroom might not touch them, except with the tip of his
staff, and then merely to designate which he thought to be his
wife. They allowed him time enough to make an examination with no
other help than his eyes afforded, and the women, placed on either
side, kept zealous watch lest cheating should occur. Should he
guess wrong, he might not dance with his bride, but only with her
he had chosen by mistake.
When Germain stood in front of these ghosts wrapped in the same
shroud, he feared he should make a wrong choice; and, in truth,
that had happened to many another, so carefully and conscientiously
were the precautions made. His heart beat loud. Little Marie did
her best to breathe hard and shake the cloth a little, but her
malicious companions followed her example, and kept poking the
cloth with their fingers, so that there were as many mysterious
signals as there were girls beneath the canopy. The square
head-dresses upheld the cloth so evenly that it was impossible to
discern the contour of a brow outlined by its folds.
After ten minutes’ hesitation, Germain shut his eyes, commended his
soul to God, and stretched out the wand at random. It touched the
forehead of little Marie, who cast the cloth from her, and shouted
with triumph. Then it was his right to kiss her, and lifting her
in his strong arms, he bore her to the middle of the room, where
together they opened the dance, which lasted until two in the
morning. The company separated to meet again at eight. As many
people had come from the country round, and as there were not beds
enough for everybody, each of the village maidens took to her bed
two or three other girls, while the men spread themselves pell-mell
on the hay in the barn-loft. You can imagine well that they had
little sleep, for they did nothing but wrestle and joke, and tell
foolish stories. Properly, there were three sleepless nights at
weddings, and these we cannot regret.
At the time appointed for departure, when they had partaken of
milk-soup, seasoned with a strong dose of pepper to stimulate the
appetite,--for the wedding-feast gave promise of great bounty,--the
guests assembled in the farm-yard. Since our parish had been
abolished, we had to go half a league from home to receive the
marriage blessing. It was cool and pleasant weather, but the
roads were in such wretched condition that everybody was on
horseback, and each man took a companion on his crupper, whether
she were young or old. Germain started on the gray, and the mare,
well-groomed, freshly shod, and decked out with ribbons, pranced
about and snorted fire from her nostrils. The husbandman went to
the cottage for his bride in company with his brother-in-law,
Jacques, who rode the old gray, and carried Mother Guillette on
the crupper, while Germain returned to the farm-yard in triumph,
holding his dear little wife before him.
Then the merry cavalcade set out, escorted by the children, who
ran ahead and fired off their pistols to make the horses jump.
Mother Maurice was seated in a small cart, with Germain’s three
children and the fiddlers. They led the march to the sound of their
instruments. Petit-Pierre was so handsome that his old grandmother
was pride itself. But the eager child did not stay long at her
side. During a moment’s halt made on the journey, before passing
through a difficult piece of road, he slipped away and ran to beg
his father to carry him in front on the gray.
“No, no,” replied Germain, “that will call forth some disagreeable
joke; we mustn’t do it.”
“It’s little that I care what the people of Saint Chartier say,”
said little Marie. “Take him up, Germain, please do; I shall be
prouder of him than I am of my wedding-gown.”
Germain yielded, and the pretty trio darted into the crowd borne by
the triumphant gallop of the gray.
And so it was; the people of Saint Chartier, although they were
very sarcastic, and somewhat disdainful of the neighboring parishes
which had been annexed to theirs, never thought of laughing when
they saw such a handsome husband, such a lovely wife, and a child
that a king’s wife might court. Petit-Pierre was all dressed in
light blue cloth, with a smart red waistcoat so short that it
descended scarcely below his chin. The village tailor had fitted
his armholes so tight that he could not bring his two little hands
together. But, oh, how proud he was! He wore a round hat, with a
black-and-gold cord, and a peacock’s plume which stuck out proudly
from a tuft of guinea feathers. A bunch of flowers, bigger than
his head, covered his shoulder, and ribbons fluttered to his feet.
The hemp-dresser, who was also the barber and hair-dresser of the
district, had cut his hair evenly, by covering his head with a
bowl, and clipping off the protruding locks, an infallible method
for guiding the shears. Thus arrayed, the poor child was less
poetic, certainly, than with his curls streaming in the wind, and
his Saint John Baptist’s sheepskin about him; but he knew nothing
of this, and everybody admired him and said that he had quite the
air of a little man. His beauty triumphed over everything, for what
is there over which the exceeding beauty of childhood could not
triumph?
His little sister, Solange, had, for the first time in her life,
a peasant’s cap in place of the calico hood which little girls
wear until they are two or three years old. And what a cap it was!
Longer and larger than the poor little thing’s whole body. How
beautiful she thought it! She dared not even turn her head; so she
kept quite still and thought the people would take her for the
bride.
As for little Sylvain, he was still in long clothes, and, fast
asleep on his grandmother’s knees, he did not even know what a
wedding was.
Germain looked at his children tenderly, and when they reached the
town hall, he said to his bride:
“Marie, I have come here with a happier heart than I had the day
when I brought you home from the forest of Chanteloube, thinking
that you could never love me. I took you in my arms to put you on
the ground as I do here; but I thought that never again should we
be mounted on the good gray with the child on our knees. I love you
so dearly, I love these little creatures so dearly, I am so happy
that you love me and that you love them, and that my family love
you, and I love your mother so well and all my friends so well,
and everybody else so well to-day, that I wish I had three or four
hearts to fill all of them; for surely one is too small to hold so
much love and so much happiness. It almost makes my stomach ache.”
There was a crowd at the door of the town hall and another at
the church to see the pretty bride. Why should we not tell about
her dress? it became her so well. Her muslin cap, without spot
and covered with embroidery, had lappets trimmed with lace. At
that time peasant women never allowed a single lock to be seen,
and, although they conceal beneath their caps splendid coils of
hair tied up with tape to hold the coif in place, even to-day it
would be thought a scandal and a shame for them to show themselves
bareheaded to men. Nowadays, however, they allow a slender braid
to appear over their foreheads, and this improves their appearance
very much. Yet I regret the classic head-dress of my time; its
spotless laces next the bare skin gave an effect of pristine purity
which seemed to me very solemn; and when a face looked beautiful
thus it was with a beauty of which nothing can express the charm
and unaffected majesty.
Little Marie wore her cap thus, and her forehead was so white and
so pure that it defied the whiteness of linen to cast it in the
shade. Although she had not closed an eye the night before, the
morning air and, yet more, the joy within of a soul pure as the
heaven, and, more than all, a small secret flame guarded with the
modesty of girlhood, caused a bloom to mount to her cheeks delicate
as the peach-blossom in the first beams of an April sun.
Her white scarf, modestly crossed over her breast, left visible
only the soft curves of a neck rounded like a turtle-dove’s; her
home-made cloth gown of myrtle-green outlined her pretty figure,
which looked already perfect, yet which must still grow and
develop, for she was but seventeen. She wore an apron of violet
silk with the bib our peasant women were so foolish as to suppress,
which added so much elegance and decency to the breast. Nowadays
they display their scarfs more proudly, but there is no longer in
their dress that delicate flower of the purity of long ago, which
made them look like Holbein’s virgins. They are more forward and
more profuse in their courtesies. The good old custom used to be a
kind of staid reserve which made their rare smile deeper and more
ideal.
During the offertory, after the fashion of the day, Germain placed
the “thirteen”--that is to say, thirteen pieces of silver--in his
bride’s hand. He slipped over her finger a silver ring of a form
unchanged for centuries, but which is replaced for henceforth by
the golden wedding-ring. As they walked out of church, Marie said
in a low voice:
“Is this really the ring I wanted? Is it the one I asked you for,
Germain?”
“Yes,” answered he, “my Catherine wore it on her finger when she
died. There is but one ring for both my weddings.”
“Thank you, Germain,” said the young woman, in a serious and
impressive tone. “I shall die with it on, and if I go before you,
you must keep it for the marriage of your little Solange.”
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
IV
The Cabbage
They mounted and returned very quickly to Belair. The feast was
bountiful, and, mingled with songs and dances, it lasted until
midnight. For fourteen hours the old people did not leave the
table. The grave-digger did the cooking, and did it very well. He
was celebrated for this, and he would leave his fire to come in
and dance and sing before and after every course. And yet this
poor Father Bontemps was epileptic. Who would have thought it? He
was fresh and strong, and merry as a young man. One day we found
him in a ditch, struck down by his malady at nightfall. We carried
him home with us, in a wheelbarrow, and we spent all night in
caring for him. Three days afterward, he was at a wedding, singing
like a thrush, jumping like a kid, and bustling about after his
old fashion. When he left a marriage, he would go to dig a grave,
and nail up a coffin. Then he would become very grave, and though
nothing of this appeared in his gay humor, it left a melancholy
impression which hastened the return of his attacks. His wife was
paralyzed, and had not stirred from her chair for twenty years. His
mother is living yet, at a hundred and forty, but he, poor man, so
happy and good and amusing, was killed last year by falling from
his loft to the sidewalk. Doubtless he died a victim to a fatal
attack of his disease, and, as was his habit, had hidden in the
hay, so as not to frighten and distress his family. In this tragic
manner he ended a life strange as his disposition--a medley of
things sad and mad, awful and gay; and, in the midst of all, his
heart was ever good and his nature kind.
Now we come to the third day of the wedding, the most curious of
all, which is kept to-day in all its vigor. We shall not speak of
the roast which they carry to the bridal bed; it is a very silly
custom, and hurts the self-respect of the bride, while it tends to
ruin the modesty of the attendant girls. Besides, I believe that it
is practised in all the provinces, and does not belong peculiarly
to our own.
Just as the ceremony of the wedding favors is a symbol that the
heart and home of the bride are won, that of the cabbage is a
symbol of the fruitfulness of marriage. When breakfast is over on
the day after the wedding, this fantastic representation begins.
Originally of Gallic derivation, it has passed through primitive
Christianity, and little by little it has become a kind of mystery,
or droll morality-play of the Middle Ages.
Two boys, the merriest and most intelligent of the company,
disappear from breakfast, and after costuming themselves, return
escorted by dogs, children, and pistol-shots. They represent a
pair of beggars--husband and wife--dressed in rags. The husband is
the filthier of the two; it is vice which has brought him so low;
the wife is unhappy and degraded only through the misdeeds of her
husband.
They are called the gardener and the gardener’s wife, and they
pretend it is their duty to guard and care for the sacred cabbage.
The husband has several names, each with a meaning. Sometimes they
call him the “scarecrow,” because his head is covered with straw or
hemp, and because his legs and a portion of his body are surrounded
with straw to hide his nakedness, ill concealed by his rags. He has
also a great belly, or hump, constructed of straw or hay underneath
his blouse. Then he is known as the “ragamuffin,” on account of his
covering of rags. Lastly he is termed the “infidel,” and this is
most significant of all, because by his cynicism and his debauchery
he is supposed to typify the opposite of every Christian virtue.
He comes with his face all smeared with soot and the lees of
wine, and sometimes made yet more hideous by a grotesque mask. An
earthenware cup, notched and broken, or an old sabot attached to
his girdle by a cord, shows that he has come to beg for alms of
wine. Nobody refuses him, and he pretends to drink; then he pours
the wine on the ground by way of libation. At every step he falls,
rolls in the mud, and feigns to be a prey to the most shameful
drunkenness. His poor wife runs after him, picks him up, calls for
help, arranges his hempen locks, which straggle forth in unkempt
wisps from beneath his filthy hat, sheds tears over her husband’s
degradation, and pours forth pathetic reproaches.
“Wretched man,” she cries, “see the misery to which your wickedness
has brought us. I have to spend all my time sewing and working
for you, mending your clothes. You tear and bedraggle yourself
incessantly. You have eaten up all my little property; our six
children lie on straw, and we are living in a stable with the
beasts. Here we are forced to beg for alms, and, besides, you are
so ugly and vile and despicable that very soon they will be tossing
us bread as if we were dogs. Ah, my poor people, take pity on us!
Take pity on me! I haven’t deserved my lot, and never had woman
a more dirty and detestable husband. Help me to pick him up, else
the wagons will run over him as they run over broken bottles, and
I shall be a widow, and that will end by killing me with grief,
though all the world says it would be an excellent riddance for
me.” Such is the part of the gardener’s wife, and her continued
lamentations last during the entire play. For it is a genuine
spontaneous comedy acted on the spur of the moment in the open
air, along the roads and across the fields, aided by every chance
occurrence that presents itself. Everybody shares in the acting,
people within the wedding-party and people without, wayfarers and
dwellers in houses, for three or four hours of the day, as we
shall see. The theme is always the same, but the variations are
infinite; and it is here that we can see the instinct of mimicry,
the abundance of droll ideas, the fluency, the wit at repartee, and
even the natural eloquence of our peasants.
The rôle of gardener’s wife is intrusted commonly to a slender
man, beardless and fresh of face, who can give a great appearance
of truth to his personification and plays the burlesque despair
naturally enough to make people sad and glad at once, as they are
in real life. These thin, beardless men are not rare among us, and,
strangely enough, they are sometimes most remarkable for their
muscular strength.
When the wife’s misfortunes have been explained, the young men of
the company try to persuade her to leave her drunken husband and
to amuse herself with them. They offer her their arms and drag her
away. Little by little she gives way; her spirits rise, and she
begins to run about, first with one and then with another, and
grows more scandalous in her behavior: a fresh “morality”; the
ill-conduct of the husband excites and aggravates the evil in the
wife.
Then the “infidel” wakes from his drunkenness. He looks about for
his companion, arms himself with a rope and a stick and rushes
after her. They make him run, they hide, they pass the wife from
one to another, they try to divert her attention and to deceive
her jealous spouse. His friends try to get him drunk. At length he
catches his unfaithful wife, and wishes to beat her. What is truest
and most carefully portrayed in this play is that the jealous
husband never attacks the men who carry off his wife. He is very
polite and prudent with them, and wishes only to take vengeance
on the sinning woman, because she is supposed to be too feeble to
offer resistance.
At the moment, however, when he raises his stick and prepares his
cord to strike the delinquent, all the men in the party interpose
and throw themselves between husband and wife.
“Don’t strike her! Never strike your wife,” is the formula repeated
to satiety during these scenes. They disarm the husband, and force
him to pardon and to kiss his wife, and soon he pretends to love
her better than ever. He walks along, his arm linked in hers,
singing and dancing until, in a new access of drunkenness, he rolls
upon the ground, and then begin all over again the lamentations
of the wife, her discouragements, her pretended unfaithfulness,
her husband’s jealousy, the interference of the neighbors, and
the reconciliation. In all this there is a simple and even coarse
lesson, which, though it savors strongly of its Middle-Age origin,
does not fail to fix its impression if not on the married folk,
who are too loving or too sensible to have need of it, at least
upon the children and the young people. The “infidel,” racing after
young girls and pretending to wish to kiss them, frightens and
disgusts them to such a degree that they fly in unaffected terror.
His dirty face and his great stick, harmless as it is, make the
children shriek aloud. It is the comedy of customs in their most
elementary but their most striking state.
When this farce is well under way, people make ready to hunt
for the cabbage. They bring a stretcher and place upon it the
“infidel,” armed with a spade, a cord, and a large basket. Four
powerful men raise him on their shoulders. His wife follows on
foot, and after her come the “elders” in a body with serious and
thoughtful looks; then the wedding-march begins by couples to
a step tuned to music. Pistol-shots begin anew, and dogs bark
louder than ever at the sight of the filthy “infidel” borne aloft
in triumph. The children swing incense in derision with sabots
fastened at the end of a cord.
But why this ovation to an object so repulsive? They are marching
to the capture of the sacred cabbage, emblem of the fruitfulness of
marriage, and it is this drunkard alone who can bear the symbolic
plant in his hand. Doubtless, there is in it a pre-Christian
mystery which recalls the Saturnalian feasts or some rout of the
Bacchanals. Perhaps this “infidel,” who is, at the same time,
preeminently a gardener, is none other than Priapus himself, god of
gardens and of drunkenness, a divinity who must have been pure and
serious in his origin as is the mystery of birth, but who has been
degraded bit by bit through license of manners and distraction of
thought.