"Pardon ... excuse ... Sir, if we, I and my companion, come alone. The other witnesses of the wedding, Michael-kill-bread and Big Peter, they have just been laid up with the fever which they caught draining the swamp of our good seigneur. Their teeth are clattering and they are shaking on the straw. That's why they have not been able to come to town. I am William, the father of the bride; this is my companion, Adam, who witnessed the wedding." "These witnesses will suffice, I think, for the amende honorable, will they not, seigneur?" said the notary to the Sire of Nointel. The latter answered with an affirmative nod of the head, while continuing to laugh aloud with his friends at the stupid and timorous appearance of the two boors. All the while, on his knees a few paces from his seigneur, Mazurec could not repress his tears at the sight of Aveline's father; they rolled down slowly from his inflamed eyes while the notary addressed him, saying: "Cross your hands over your chest, and raise your eyes to heaven." The condemned man clenched his fists with rage and did not follow the notary's orders. "Ho! pshaw!" cried William Caillet, addressing Mazurec in a reproachful tone. "Don't you hear what this kind gentleman says? He told you to cross your two hands, in this way ... look ... this way ... look at me ..." These last words, "look at me," were pronounced by the peasant with such force that Mazurec raised his head, and understood the meaning of the rapid glance that Caillet darted at him. Quickly obeying the orders of the notary, the condemned man crossed his arms on his breast. "Now," proceeded the scribe, "raise your head towards our seigneur and repeat my words: 'Seigneur, I humbly repent having had the audacity of using unseemly words towards you.'" The serf hesitated a moment, and then, overcoming his aversion with a violent effort, he repeated in a hollow voice: "Seigneur, I humbly repent having had the audacity of ... using ... unseemly words ... towards you." "Further," pursued the notary, "I repent no less humbly, my seigneur, of having wickedly wished to oppose your exercise of your right of the first fruits upon one of your female vassals, whom I took for my wife."