Such were the young man’s thoughts when the landlord of _The Orange Blossom_ suddenly burst into the eating room. “Daniel,” he cried, “you must make haste, my lad! here’s the wedding party coming, they’re not late after all; quick, put on your apron and jacket, breakfast will be served instanter!” Two landaus had just drawn up at the entrance to the gardens, two simple, unpretending vehicles, with none of your wide plate-glass windows, none of your big carriage lamps at the four corners of the coach. CHAPTER XXIII THE WEDDING BREAKFAST As Ascott desired the wedding was carried out in the strictest privacy. The party reached the _Mairie_ at an early hour. Ascott had for witnesses his man servant John, and a casual secretary from the Consulate, bound over to the closest secrecy. Moreover, the young man in question, a person of much discretion who saw how things were with half an eye, had vanished immediately after the ceremony, saying he did not care to attend the breakfast, understanding in fact that his absence would not be taken in ill part, but very much the reverse. Nini Guinon’s witnesses were her uncle, Père Moche, recruited again for the purpose, and the vagabond Bouzille, who had been fetched from a drinking shop at Ménilmontant, and dressed up for the occasion in a second-hand frock coat. The formalities at the _Mairie_ were quickly completed, the party adjourned to hear a mass at the nearest church, and then set off for the Bois de Vincennes. The last act of the grotesque adventure, the wedding breakfast, remained to be staged. Ascott, to Mme. Guinon’s bitter chagrin, had emphatically refused to make her acquaintance, thereby making the good woman desperately unhappy. Thus she had barely caught a glimpse of her son-in-law, when at the _Mairie_ she authorized her daughter as a minor to pronounce a definitive and binding “Yes.” Ascott, in fact, had shown himself quite uncompromising all the morning. For this marriage, this hole and corner marriage, so to speak, in which he had systematically avoided all publicity, he had not chosen that his bride should wear the orthodox white gown sacred to such occasions. In a word, the ceremony was a gloomy, funereal function, depressing to the last degree. It was abundantly clear the bridegroom was fulfilling a duty, carrying out an irksome obligation; indeed, the whole thing wore so lugubrious an aspect that Nini Guinon began to feel anxious, asking herself if really and truly she had acted wisely in following old Moche’s advice, for at the bottom of her heart she was far from convinced of the advantages to accrue for her from her union with the rich Englishman. On the drive to the restaurant, sitting silent in her corner of the carriage, Nini was thinking all the while: “If I’m in for a bad time, if old Moche has got me in a hole, I’ll make him pay for it.”