"Story?" said the friar. "I, advise and abet a lie? I am not one of those who damn their souls for the love of the young girls, my little one. I should gain nothing by it. You must be helped some other way; and I have already been working at it more than you think. Have patience; all will come out right, as it did in another matter, where, as Maître Huriel knows, I have not been a bad friend to him." "I know that I owe you the peace and safety of my life," said Huriel. "People may say what they like of monks, I know one, at least, for whom I would be drawn and quartered. Sit down, Brother, and spend the day with us. What is ours is yours, and the house we are in is yours too." Thérence and the Head-Woodsman were showing their hospitality to the good friar, when my aunt Marghitonne came hurrying up, and would not let us stay anywhere but with her. She said the wedding party were going to perform the "cabbage ceremony;" which is an old-fashioned foolery practised the day after the marriage; the procession, she said, was already forming and was coming round our way. The company drank, and sang, and danced at each stopping-place. It was impossible for Thérence now to keep aloof, and she accepted my arm to go and meet the crowd, while Huriel escorted Brulette. My aunt took charge of the little one, and the Head-Woodsman marched off with the monk, who was easily persuaded into joining a jovial company. The fellow who played the part of gardener, or as we still say among us, the pagan, seated on a hand-barrow, was decorated in a style that astonished everybody. He had picked up near the park a beautiful garland of waterlilies tied with a silver ribbon, which he had bound about his flaxen poll. It didn't take us much time to recognize Joseph's bunch, which he had dropped or thrown away on leaving us. The ribbons were the envy of all the girls of the party, who deliberated how to get possession of them unspoiled; at last, flinging themselves on the pagan, they snatched them away from him and divided the booty, though in defending himself he managed to kiss more than one with a mouth that was covered with foam. So scraps of Joseph's ribbon glittered all day in the caps of the prettiest girls in the neighborhood, and came to a much better end than their owner thought for when he left his bunch in the dust of the road. This farce, played from door to door through the village, was as crazy as usual, ending with a fine repast and dancing till twilight. After which, we all took leave, Brulette and I, the Head-Woodsman, Thérence, and Huriel, and started for Nohant, with the monk at our head, leading the _clairin_, on which Charlot was perched, tipsy with excitement at what he had seen, laughing like a monkey, and trying to sing as he had heard others do all that day.