On the 4th of September, Pierre Langevin, miller at Vergaville, celebrated the marriage of Cadet Langevin, his second son. The miller's family was numerous, respectable, and in comfortable circumstances. First, there was the grandfather, a fine, hale old man, who took his four meals a day, and doctored his little ailings with the wine of Bar or Thiaucourt. The grandmother, Catharine, had been pretty in her day, and a little frivolous; but she expiated by absolute deafness the crime of having listened too tenderly to gallants. M. Pierre Langevin, alias Pierrot, alias Big Peter, after having sought his fortune in America (a custom becoming quite general in the rural districts), had returned to the village in pretty much the condition of the infant Saint John, and God only knows how many jokes were perpetrated over his ill luck. The people of Lorraine are terrible wags, and if you are not fond of personal jokes, I advise you not to travel in their neighborhood. Big Peter, stung to the quick, and half crazed at having run through his inheritance, borrowed money at ten per cent., bought the mill at Vergaville, worked like a plough-horse in heavy land, and repaid his capital and the interest. Fortune, who owed him some compensations, gave him _gratis pro Deo_, a half dozen superb workers--six big boys, whom his wife presented him with, one annually, as regularly as clock-work. Every year, nine months, to a day, after the _fete_ of Vergaville, Claudine (otherwise known as Glaudine) presented one for baptism. At last she died after the sixth, from eating four huge pieces of _quiche_ before her churching. Big Peter did not marry again, having concluded that he had workers enough, and he continued to add to his fortune nicely. But, as standing jokes last a long time in villages, the miller's comrades still spoke to him about those famous millions which he did not bring back from America, and Big Peter grew very red under his flour, just as he used to in his earlier days. On the 4th of September, then, he married his second son to a good big woman of Altroff, who had fat and blazing cheeks: this being a kind of beauty much affected in the country. The wedding took place at the mill, because the bride was orphaned of father and mother, and had previously lived with the nuns of Molsheim. A messenger came and told Pierre Langevin that a gentleman wearing decorations had something to say to him, and Fougas appeared in all his glory. "My good sir," said the miller, "I am far from being in a mood to talk business, as we just took a good pull at white wine before mass; but we are going to drink some red wine that's by no means bad, at dinner, and if your heart prompts you, don't be backward! The table is a long one. We can talk afterwards. You don't say no? Then that's yes."