The Mayor, after bowing to us, as a man bows when without his hat, and in a white cravat, that is to say, clumsily, blew his nose, to the great relief of his two arms which he did not know what to do with, and briskly began the little ceremony. He hurriedly mumbled over several passages of the Code, giving the numbers of the paragraphs; and I was given confusedly to understand that I was threatened with the police if I did not blindly obey all the orders and crotchets of my husband, and if I did not follow wherever he might choose to take me, even if it should be to a sixth floor in the Rue-Saint-Victor. A score of times I was on the point of interrupting the Mayor, and saying, “Excuse me, Monsieur, but those remarks are hardly polite as regards myself, and you yourself must know that they are devoid of meaning.” But I restrained myself for fear I might frighten the magistrate, who seemed to me to be in a hurry to finish. He added, however, a few words on the mutual duties of husband and wife--copartnership--paternity, etc., etc.; but all these things, which would perhaps have made me weep anywhere else, seemed grotesque to me, and I could not forget that dozen of soldiers playing piquet round the stove, and that row of doors on which I had read “Public Health,” “Burials,” “Deaths,” “Expropriations,” etc. I should have been aggrieved at this dealer in iron bedsteads touching on my cherished dreams if the comic side of the situation had not absorbed my whole attention, and if a mad wish to laugh outright had not seized me. “Monsieur Georges--------, do you swear to take for your wife Mademoiselle-----------,” said the Mayor, bending forward. My husband bowed and answered “Yes” in a very low voice. He has since acknowledged to me that he never felt more emotion in his life than in uttering that “Yes.” “Mademoiselle Berthe--------,” continued the magistrate, turning to me, “do you swear to take for your husband-----------” I bowed, with a smile, and said to myself: “Certainly; that is plain enough; I came here for that express purpose.” That was all. I was married! My father and my husband shook hands like men who had not met for twenty years; the eyes of both were moist. As for myself, it was impossible for me to share their emotion. I was very hungry, and mamma and I had the carriage pulled up at the pastry-cook’s before going on to the dressmaker’s.