Among the trading, agricultural, and labouring classes each party is expected to bring his or her portion of the articles necessary to set up housekeeping. The man, for example, provides the bedstead, the woman, the bed and the household linen, and very often the crockery and furniture. All, however, is looked upon as belonging to the wife, and is frequently secured to her by a regular contract entered into before marriage, so that in case of the husband getting into pecuniary difficulties, his creditors cannot lay claim to the household furniture. The handsomely carved oaken chests, or large leather-covered boxes studded with brass nails, which were formerly to be seen in almost all the old country houses, were used to contain the stock of linen, and appear to have been in early days almost the only piece of ornamental furniture of which the house could boast. This used to be brought to the bridegroom’s residence, with the rest of the articles provided by the bride, a day or two before the wedding, and with a certain degree of form, the bridegroom, or his best man, conducting the cart which contained them,[44] and the nearest unmarried female relative of the bride carrying the looking-glass or some other valued or brittle article. A similar custom still exists in Normandy and Brittany. It is considered highly unlucky for a bride to take any other way in going to the church to be married than that which she follows when going thither for her usual devotions. Flowers and rushes are invariably strewn in the path of the bride and bridegroom as they leave the church, and before the door of their future habitation.[45] On the first or second Sunday after their wedding the newly-married pair appear in church attended by the best man and the bridesmaid, and it is a point of etiquette for the bride and bridegroom to read and sing out of the same book, however many books there may be in the pew. Among well-to-do people a series of parties in honour of the young couple ensue, which in the dialect of the country are called “_reneuchons_,” “_neuches_” being the local pronunciation of the French word “noces.” It appears from an ordinance of the Royal Court of 1625, when the puritanical spirit, which had come in with the Genevan discipline, was at its height, that the poor at that time were in the habit of soliciting alms at weddings, baptisms, and burials. This practice, as tending to keep up superstition and as dishonouring to God, was expressly forbidden by the legislation under pain of corporal punishment to the beggar, and a fine to the giver of alms.[46]