The wedding at last took place, when Nise was twenty and Nanet twenty-three years old. It had long been wished for, foreseen, and awaited. For seven years not a day had elapsed without a step towards this _dénouement_ of the long and happy idyll. And as this marriage of Delaveau's daughter with the brother of Josine, who was now to all intents and purposes Luc's wife, extinguished all hatred, and sealed a pact of alliance, there was a desire that it should be made a festival celebrating forgiveness of the past and the new community's radiant entry into the future. With this object it was decided that there should be singing and dancing on the very site of the Abyss, in one of the halls now erected there as an adjunct to La Crêcherie, which at present spread over acres and acres of ground, and ever and ever grew. Luc and Sœurette were the organisers and masters of the ceremonies of this marriage festival, as well as the witnesses of the bridal pair, Luc being witness for Nanet, and Sœurette for Nise. They wished to impart to the festival all the splendour of a triumph, to endow it with the gaiety of hope's fulfilment, to make it like the very victory of the city of work and peace, now founded and prosperous. It is good that communities should indulge in great rejoicings; public life needs frequent days of beauty, joy, and exultation. Thus Luc and Sœurette chose the great foundry hall, where so many of the monster-like hammers, the gigantic rolling bridges, the movable cranes of prodigious strength were gathered together. The new buildings, all bricks and steelwork, were clean and healthy, and full of joyous brightness with their large windows through which streamed both air and sunlight. And the plant was left in position, especially as, for a festival of triumphant work, one could not have devised any better decorations than were provided by those gigantic appliances, whose powerful forms were instinct with a sovereign beauty compounded of logic, strength, and certainty. However, they were decorated with foliage and crowned with flowers, even as were altars in ancient times. The brick walls, too, were ornamented with garlands of verdure, and the very pavement was strewn with roses and broom flowers. The whole seemed like the blossoming of man's effort to attain happiness, an effort which had ended by flowering there, scattering perfume around the toil of the worker, a toil once unjust and hard, but now attractive and leading solely to happiness.