It was nearly eight o’clock when we prepared to start for Ille. But before we started there was a pathetic scene. Mademoiselle de Puygarrig’s aunt, who had taken the place of a mother to her, a woman of a very advanced age and very religious, was not to go to the town with us. At our departure, she delivered a touching sermon to her niece on her duties as a wife, the result of which was a torrent of tears, and embraces without end. M. de Peyrehorade compared this separation to the abduction of the Sabine women. We started at last, however, and on the road we all exerted ourselves to the utmost to divert the bride and make her laugh; but it was all to no purpose. At Ille supper awaited us, and such a supper! If the vulgar hilarity of the morning had disgusted me, I was fairly sickened by the equivocal remarks and jests which were aimed at the groom, and especially at the bride. M. Alphonse, who had disappeared a moment before taking his place at the table, was as pale as death and as solemn as an iceberg. He kept drinking old Collioure wine, almost as strong as brandy. I was by his side and felt in duty bound to warn him. “Take care! they say that this wine----” I have no idea what foolish remark I made, to put myself in unison with the other guests. He pressed my knee with his and said in a very low tone: “When we leave the table, let me have a word with you.” His solemn tone surprised me. I looked at him more closely and noticed the extraordinary change in his expression. “Are you feeling ill?” I asked him. “No.” And he returned to his drinking. Meanwhile, amid shouts and clapping of hands, a child of eleven years, who had slipped under the table, exhibited to the guests a dainty white and rose-coloured ribbon which he had taken from the bride’s ankle. They called that her garter. It was immediately cut into pieces and distributed among the young men, who decorated their buttonholes with them, according to an ancient custom still observed in some patriarchal families. This episode caused the bride to blush to the whites of her eyes. But her confusion reached its height when M. de Peyrehorade, having called for silence, sang some Catalan verses, impromptu, so he said. Their meaning, so far as I understood it, was this: “Pray, what is this, my friends? Does the wine I have drunk make me see double? There are two Venuses here----” The bridegroom abruptly turned his head away with a terrified expression which made everybody laugh. “Yes,” continued M. de Peyrehorade, “there are two Venuses beneath my roof. One I found in the earth, like a truffle; the other, descended from the skies, has come to share her girdle with us.” He meant to say her garter. “My son, choose whichever you prefer--the Roman or the Catalan Venus. The rascal chooses the Catalan, and his choice is wise. The Roman is black, the Catalan white. The Roman is cold, the Catalan inflames all who approach her.”