Chapter 9 THE WEDDING.

A horse and buggy have this moment been stopped and are standing on a faint rise of ground seven miles out beyond the south-western outskirt of Carancro. The two male occupants of the vehicle are lifting their heads, and looking with well-pleased faces at something out over the plain. You know the curé?-and the ex-governor.

In the far distance, across the vast level, something that looks hardly so large on the plain as an ant on the floor, is moving this way across it. This is what the curé and his friend are watching. Open in the curé's hand, as if he had just read it aloud again, is that last letter of Bonaventure's, sent ahead of him from New Orleans and received some days ago. The governor holds the reins.

What do they see? Some traveller afoot? Can it be that Bonaventure is in sight? That is not even the direction from which Bonaventure, when he comes, will appear. No, speck though it is, the object they are looking at is far larger than a man afoot, or any horse, or horse and calèche. It is a house. It is on wheels, and is drawn by many yoke of oxen. From what the curé is saying we gather that Sosthène has bought this very small dwelling from a neighbor, and is moving it to land of his own. Two great beams have been drawn under the sills at each end, the running gear of two heavy ox-wagons is made to bear up the four ends of these beams, all is lashed firmly into place, the oxen are slowly pulling, the long whips are cracking, the house is answering the gentle traction, and, already several miles away from its first site, it will to-morrow settle down upon new foundations, a homely type of one whose wreath will soon be a-making, and who will soon after come to be the little house's mistress.

But what have we done-let time slip backward? A little; not much; for just then, as the ex-governor said, "And where is Bonaventure by this time?" Bonaventure had been only an hour or two in the negro-cabin where fever had dragged him down.

Since then the house had not only settled safely upon its new foundations, but Sosthène, in the good, thorough way that was his own, had carried renovation to a point that made the cottage to all intents and purposes a new house. And the curé had looked upon it again, much nearer by; for before a bride dared enter a house so nearly new, it had been deemed necessary for him to come and, before a temporary altar within the dwelling, to say mass in the time of full moon. But not yet was the house really a dwelling; it, and all Carancro, were waiting for the wedding. Make haste, Bonaventure!

He had left the Teche behind him on the east. And now a day breaks whose sunset finds him beyond the Vermilion River. He cannot go aside to the ex-governor's, over yonder on the right. He is making haste. This day his journey will end. His heart is light; he has thought out the whole matter now; he makes no doubt any longer that the story told him is true. And he knows now just what to do: this very sunset he will reach his goal; he goes to fill 'Thanase's voided place; to lay his own filial service at the feet of the widowed mother; to be a brother in the lost brother's place; and Zoséphine?-why, she shall be her daughter, the same as though 'Thanase, not he, had won her. And thus, too, Zoséphine shall have her own sweet preference-that preference which she had so often whispered to him-for a scholar rather than a soldier. Such is the plan, and Conscience has given her consent.

The sun soars far overhead. It, too, makes haste. But the wasted, flushed, hungry-eyed traveller is putting the miles behind him. He questions none to-day that pass him or whom he overtakes; only bows, wipes his warm brow, and presses on across the prairie. Straight before him, though still far away, a small, white, wooden steeple rises from out a tuft of trees. It is la chapelle!

The distance gets less and less. See! the afternoon sunlight strikes the roofs of a few unpainted cottages that have begun to show themselves at right and left of the chapel. And now he sees the green window-shutters of such as are not without them, and their copperas or indigo-dyed curtains blowing in and out. Nearer; nearer; here is a house, and yonder another, newly built. Carancro is reached.

He enters a turfy, cattle-haunted lane between rose-hedges. In a garden on one side, and presently in another over the way, children whom he remembers-but grown like weeds since he saw them last-are at play; but when they stop and gaze at him, it is without a sign of recognition. Now he walks down the village street. How empty it seems! was it really always so? Still, yonder is a man he knows-and yonder a woman-but they disappear without seeing him.

How familiar every thing is! There are the two shops abreast of the chapel, Marx's on this side, Lichtenstein's on that, their dingy false fronts covered with their same old huge rain-faded words of promise. Yonder, too, behind the blacksmith's shop, is the little schoolhouse, dirty, half-ruined, and closed-that is, wide-open and empty-it may be for lack of a teacher, or funds, or even of scholars.

"It shall not be so," said the traveller to himself, "when she and I"-

His steps grow slow. Yet here, not twenty paces before him, is the home of the curé. Ah! that is just the trouble. Shall he go here first? May he not push on and out once more upon the prairie and make himself known first of all to her? Stopping here first, will not the curé say tarry till to-morrow? His steps grow slower still.

And see, now. One of the Jews in the shop across the street has observed him. Now two stand together and scrutinize him; and now there are three, looking and smiling. Plainly, they recognize him. One starts to come across, but on that instant the quiet of the hamlet is broken by a sound of galloping hoofs.

Bonaventure stands still. How sudden is this change! He is not noticed now; every thing is in the highest animation. There are loud calls and outcries; children are shouting and running, and women's heads are thrust out of doors and windows. Horsemen come dashing into the village around through the lanes and up the street. Look! they wheel, they rein up, they throw themselves from the rattling saddles; they leave the big wooden stirrups swinging and the little unkempt ponies shaking themselves, and rush into the boutique de Monsieur Lichtenstein, and are talking like mad and decking themselves out on hats and shoulders with ribbons in all colors of the rainbow!

Suddenly they shout, all together, in answer to a shout outside. More horsemen appear. Lichtenstein's store belches all its population.

"La calége! La calége!" The calèche is coming!

Something, he knows not what, makes Bonaventure tremble.

"Madame," he says in French to a chattering woman who has just run out of her door, and is standing near him tying a red Madras kerchief on her head as she prattles to a girl,-"madame, what wedding is this?"

"C'est la noce à Zoséphine," she replies, without looking at him, and goes straight on telling her companion how fifty dollars has been paid for the Pope's dispensation, because the bridal pair are first cousins.

Bonaventure moves back and leans against a paling fence, pallid and faint. But there is no time to notice him-look, look!

Some women on horseback come trotting into the street. Cheers! cheers! and in a moment louder cheers yet-the calèche with the bride and groom and another with the parents have come.

Throw open the church door!

Horsemen alight, horsewomen descend; down, also, come they that were in the calèche. Look, Bonaventure! They form by twos-forward-in they go. "Hats off, gentlemen! Don't forget the rule!-Now-silence! softly, softly; speak low-or speak not at all; sh-sh! Silence! The pair are kneeling. Hush-sh! Frown down that little buzz about the door! Sh-sh!"

Bonaventure has rushed in with the crowd. He cannot see the kneeling pair; but there is the curé standing over them and performing the holy rite. The priest stops-he has seen Bonaventure! He stammers, and then he goes on. Here beside Bonaventure is a girl so absorbed in the scene that she thinks she is speaking to her brother, when presently she says to the haggard young stranger, letting herself down from her tiptoes and drawing a long breath:

"La sarimonie est fait."

It is true; the ceremony is ended. She rises on tiptoe again to see the new couple sign the papers.

Slowly! The bridegroom first, his mark. Step back. Now the little bride-steady! Zoséphine, sa marque. She turns; see her, everybody; see her! brown and pretty as a doe! They are kissing her. Hail, Madame 'Thanase!

"Make way, make way!" The man and wife come forth.-Ah! 'Thanase Beausoleil, so tall and strong, so happy and hale, you do not look to-day like the poor decoyed, drugged victim that woke up one morning out in the Gulf of Mexico to find yourself, without fore-intent or knowledge, one of a ship's crew bound for Brazil and thence to the Mediterranean!-"Make way, make way!" They mount the calèches, Sosthène after Madame Sosthène; 'Thanase after Madame 'Thanase. "To horse, ladies and gentlemen!" Never mind now about the youth who has been taken ill in the chapel, and whom the curé has borne almost bodily in his arms to his own house. "Mount! Mount! Move aside for the wedding singers!"-The wedding singers take their places, one on this side the bridal calèche, the other on that, and away it starts, creaking and groaning.

"Mais, arretez!-Stop, stop! Before going, passez le 'nisette!-pass the anisette!" May the New-Orleans compounder be forgiven the iniquitous mixture! "Boir les dames avant!-Let the ladies drink first!" Aham! straight from the bottle.

Now, go. The calèche moves. Other calèches bearing parental and grandparental couples follow. And now the young men and maidens gallop after; the cavalcade stretches out like the afternoon shadows, and with shout and song and waving of hats and kerchiefs, away they go! while from window and door and village street follows the wedding cry:

"Adjieu, la calége! Adjieu, la calége!-God speed the wedding pair!"

Coming at first from the villagers, it is continued at length, faint and far, by the attending cavaliers. As mile by mile they drop aside, singly or in pairs, toward their homes, they rise in their stirrups, and lifting high their ribbon-decked hats, they shout and curvette and curvette and shout until the eye loses them, and the ear can barely catch the faint farewell:

"Adjieu, la calége! Adjieu, les mariées!"

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