There were tiresome ceremonies yesterday, and to-day, which I went
through almost mechanically.
First, there is the yes before the mayor at the civil ceremony,[11] like
some everyday response in church, which one is in a hurry to get over,
and which has almost the suggestion of an imperious law, to which one is
bound to submit, and of a state of bondage, which will, perhaps, be very
irksome, since the whole of existence is made up of chances.
[Footnote 11: Civil marriages are obligatory in France, though usually
followed by the religious rite.--TRANSLATOR.]
And then the service in church, with the decorated altar, the voices of
the choir, the solemn music of the organ, the unctuous address of the
old priest who marks his periods, who seemed quite proud of having
prepared Elaine for confirmation, and then the procession to the vestry,
the shaking hands, and the greetings of people whom you scarcely see,
and whom you do, or do not recognize.
Under the long tulle veil, which almost covered her, with the symbolical
orange flowers on her bright, light hair, in her white dress, with her
downcast eyes and her graceful figure, Elaine looked to me like a
_Psyche_, whose innocent heart was vowed to love. I felt how vain and
artificial all this form was, how little this show counted before this
_Kiss_, the triumphant, revealing, maddening Kiss, which rivets the
flesh of the wife to the lips and all the flesh of the husband, which
turns the Immaculate youth of the virgin into a woman, and consecrates
it to tender caresses, to dreams and to future ecstacies, through the
sufferings of a rape.