Slowly! The bridegroom first, his mark. Step back. Now the little bride--steady! Zosephine, _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 caleches, Sosthene after Madame Sosthene; '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 cure 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 caleche, 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 caleche moves. Other caleches 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 calege! Adjieu, la calege!_--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 calege! Adjieu, les mariees!_" CHAPTER X. AFTER ALL. Adieu; but only till the fall of night shall bring the wedding ball. One little tune--and every Acadian fiddler in Louisiana knows it--always brings back to Zosephine the opening scene of that festive and jocund convocation. She sees again the great clean-swept seed-cotton room of a cotton-gin house belonging to a cousin of the ex-governor, lighted with many candles stuck into a perfect wealth of black bottles ranged along the beams of the walls. The fiddler's seat is mounted on a table in the corner, the fiddler is in it, each beau has led a maiden into the floor, the sets are made for the contra-dance, the young men stand expectant, their partners wait with downcast eyes and mute lips as Acadian damsels should, the music strikes up, and away they go.