ORANGE-BLOSSOMS.
There be marriages which are made in heaven, some poet tells us, but in
France they are more usually negotiated over the desk of the notary
public. This is the system: Monsieur A---- wants a wife, he goes to
Lawyer B----, says:
'Old friend, you are aware of my pecuniary circumstances--it is time for
me to think of getting mated--do you know any lady with an eligible
fortune in your _clientèle_?'
'Let me see,' says B----, taking a pinch of snuff. 'Oh! there's C----'s
widow, a capital alliance; got a good annuity in her own right.'
Perhaps A---- is particularly nice, doesn't like widows.
'Then, what d'ye think of D----'s daughter?' continues the lawyer.
'Faded and ugly.'
'But rich, accomplished, and of good family.'
A---- shakes his head negatively.
'Hem, so we must have beauty! What do you say to E----'s sister?'
'Do you want me to marry my grandmother--don't like the reigning toasts
of the last generation. Good-morning.'
'Stay, there's F----'s niece; that's your mark.'
'Ah! now you're getting reasonable; think I could like the woman; saw
her once at the opera.'
'And she has a pretty dowry and big expectations.'
A----'s face is getting radiant.
'Where can I meet her?'
'Madame B---- will give a little _soirée_ on Thursday night; we shall
invite her.'
Mdlle. F---- is trotted out like a filly at Tattersail's--her paces are
shown--report favourable.
'Have you any objection to receiving Monsieur A---- as a suitor?' asks
the nearest of kin.
Mademoiselle blushes, but is too well-bred to say no. Monsieur comes,
dressed to death, spruce as if he stepped out of a bandbox, and
mademoiselle is prepared to receive him, nearest of kin being always
present. Mademoiselle has got her instructions; they were somewhat in
the key of the admonition little boys make to the bears in the Jardin
des Plantes: _fais le beau_, 'do the handsome.' Monsieur pays
compliments to mademoiselle, always through the nearest of kin, and she,
dear, well-bred creature, listens to monsieur with sweetest politeness,
never betraying a vulgar desire to look into the face, much less into
the heart, of the man who is to be her future guide through life, her
partner in the tomb. Thus the comedy proceeds. Nearest of kin does the
courting, which is not too painfully elongated. The _trousseau_ is
bought and exhibited. Monsieur buys the _corbeille_, which is ordinarily
expected to amount in value to one-tenth of the dowry he gets with his
wife (which dowry particular care is taken to settle on the wife
herself). The banns are published; one day a party appears before the
Mairie, and a commercial--we beg pardon, a marriage contract is signed,
a supererogatory gallop to a neighbouring church takes place to satisfy
conventionalism, and Mdlle. F---- becomes Madame A----. There is no love
before marriage in nine cases out of ten; of the love which grows up
after marriage we are too delicate to speak. It is understood--only
sometimes it will happen that monsieur has a club and madame a _cavalier
eservente_. And madame, dear, well-bred creature, endeavours to make up
for the reserve imposed on mademoiselle, and it is perfectly astonishing
to discover what a profound knowledge of the world and its schemes and
slanders the shy young maiden of last week contrives to develop all at
once in her married household.
The reader will have remarked that O'Hara received the announcement that
his Irish friend had succeeded in his proposal without surprise. The
sole reason was that O'Hara had been living sufficiently long in France
to know that marriages are arranged with the same celerity that one
would toss a pancake, and that if the financial requirements are
satisfied it is easy to fulfil the exigencies of affection.
During the interval that preceded the interesting ceremony (to borrow a
phrase from the newspapers), which was not to take place until after
Easter, the O'Hoolohan Roe was a constant visitor at the Rue de la
Vieille Estrapade, only now he called himself the O'Hoolohan Dhuv, his
sly countryman having bantered him on the affix Roe, which applies only
to a light-complexioned, red-haired man, while he was tawny of
complexion and black-haired as a Spaniard of the south. A most
unmerciful bantering he did give him anent his assumption of the _The_.
'You a democrat!' he said, 'how is it that you cling to that
particle?'--and then he told him the anecdotes of the English officer in
charge of a detachment of troops at Bruff, one Captain Bull, upon whom
the O'Grady of Kilballyowen left his card, who had scribbled The Bull of
Bruff on the pasteboard he left in return; and of Sir Allan M'Nab, who
had had the good taste to write on his card The _other_ M'Nab, after he
had received a visit from _The_ M'Nab in Scotland. But O'Hoolohan was
proof against satire, and retorted to his friend's joking that Mr. Bull
and the Canadian knight were snobs, and deserved to be horse-whipped by
The O'Grady and The M'Nab--that he was The O'Hoolohan, and that though
his father chose to call himself Holland, he reverted to the old Irish
name, O'Hoolohan, for which it was the substitute, and which meant
'proud little man.' He repeated the lines:
'By Mac and O
You'll always know
True Irishmen, they say;
But if they lack
Both O and Mac,
No Irishmen are they.'
And in the end O'Hara, who was also proud of his Milesian patronymic,
was obliged to admit he was right.
The banns were published at the church and at the Mairie, and at the
close of the necessary three weeks, during which Berthe received a
delicious fresh bouquet every morning from her lover, and then secluded
herself over some mysterious female work with Caroline, the happy day
(we draw on the newspapers again) arrived. Two carriages were marshalled
before the municipal institution in the Place du Panthéon; two charming
girls in white and a venerable, stately, white-haired man descended from
the one; a man in the prime of life, with a younger companion of the
same sex, both in suit of ceremony, alighted from the other. There was a
brief series of interrogatories and a jotting down of signatures
inside, and the party emerged, re-entered the carriages in the same
order, and leisurely drove to the Church of St. Stephen of the Mount at
the other side of the square. A beadle, magnificently attired, awaited
and conducted them with pompous air, pounding his staff of office at
intervals on the sacred pavement, to a little altar, where the priest
stood ready-vested. The ceremony by which two are made one was
solemnized: there was blushing as a ring was pressed on a little finger,
and a few tears as a little hand parted from the tight grasp of Captain
Chauvin; and then the nuptial Mass was said and the Benediction
pronounced in which God is prayed to make the newly-wedded amiable to
her husband as Rachel, wise as Rebecca, and faithful as Sarah. Again the
party emerged, but this time Captain Chauvin, Caroline, and O'Hara
entered the second carriage together, for the first was occupied by
Monsieur and Madame O'Hoolohan.
Half an hour afterwards there was solemn silence in the apartment in the
Rue de la Vieille Estrapade, for Mr. Manus O'Hara, in a particularly
neat and appropriate speech, had proposed the memory of the Man, and
Captain Chauvin was crying, but--the wicked old man!--there was more
gladness than sorrow in his tears. The Irish are born orators. Nobody
who heard the brilliant discourse in which Monsieur O'Hoolohan gave
France, and eulogized the _entente cordiale_ which had been made that
morning before the altar between it and Ireland, could deny that fact.
His voice, like O'Brien's of the Irish Brigade, in the lyric of Thomas
Davis, was 'hoarse with joy,' as he fondly regarded his bride, and wound
up a florid and flourishing peroration by a marked allusion to future
alliances between the countries which he hoped to live to see,
illustrated by playful winks at O'Hara and the brunette. But the
brunette kept never minding, and O'Hara's hand rose involuntarily to his
shirt-bosom, under which reposed a certain tress of woman's hair. As for
Pat, who was among the guests, he had feasted so heartily in honour of
the occasion that he fell asleep while his master was on his legs.