VII
I GO TO A WEDDING
A FEW months later, in the summer, I went to Blérancourt with my grandfather to a wedding. I had already seen a great number, Arthémise having a passion for looking at brides, but I had never participated in person at the ceremony.
A friend of my mother, Camille—I cannot recall her family name—was going to marry Monsieur Ambroise Godin, under-director of the manufacture of glass of Saint-Gobain, the head office of which was at Chauny. My grandfather was to be her witness, and grandmother took the trouble to explain to me that the witness to a marriage acted in place of the bride’s father, Camille having lost her own.
My joy at going to the wedding expressed itself in all manner of freaks and excessive selfishness. I neither showed nor felt the least sorrow at leaving grandmother and Arthémise. However, my absence was to be only for four days.
My grandfather, since my “campaign of Caumenchon,” as he called it, had conceived such a passion for me that he stayed for long hours together in the house, even after meals. In the evening, when I so wished it, I would also keep him at home. His friends at the club could not believe their eyes.
“He is his granddaughter’s slave,” would they say, and he would repeat: “Yes, I am my granddaughter’s slave.”
He was so tall, so big, so noisy, he talked so much that I would stare at him from his feet upward, my head raised, always laughing, and I would only play “at making faces” with him, while I often played with grandmother “at being good.”
He could not contain himself with joy at going away quite alone with me.
“It is my turn to carry her off,” said he on the day of our departure.
They tied me with two silk handkerchiefs in grandfather’s cabriolet, and they stuffed behind my back, at my sides, and under my feet a number of packages well sewn together by Arthémise, in which, folded and packed carefully, were my linen, my gowns, and everything that I might need. They did not make use of valises or trunks at that time at grandmother’s.
I can still remember my three white frocks with their coloured ribbon sashes, which had to be ironed when we arrived and which my mother showed to her friends at Blérancourt, who came to see me and to make my acquaintance. I had held my handsome Leghorn straw hat, ornamented with white ribbons, in a box in my hands and had never let it go once in spite of the jolts of the famous “execrable” road.
Having left at eight o’clock in the morning to drive three leagues, we did not arrive until two o’clock in the afternoon. One cannot fancy what the road was, going through meadows and alongside of a river which continually overflowed.
How many times since have I passed over that road, where one ran the risk of actual danger, and where the ruts were so deep that people were frequently upset.
My grandfather kept up my courage, for I did not hide my fears, by saying that Cocotte was a very good horse, the carriage strong, and that he knew how to drive very well.
My father kissed me many times when I arrived, and directly after breakfast took me by the hand to see all his friends. We went to the château where the Varniers lived and where I found a dear little girl of my own age, with whom I often later played at the house of her neighbour, the chemist Descaines, “nephew of some one whom I shall teach you to know and to love later,” said my father, “but remember his name now—Saint-Just.”
“Saint-Just,” I repeated.
I can perfectly recall the effort I made to please my father’s friends at Blérancourt, and how, after having gone in quest of compliments about me, he brought back a great number to my grandfather and mother.
“How charming she is, how good she was, and how she talks!” he said.
My mother had unsewed Arthémise’s packages and she ironed my frocks herself. I took part in the ironing and the hanging up, and I asked innumerable questions about the wedding.
On the morrow, the great day, all the guests gathered at the bride’s house near the church. The weather was superb. They went on foot, two by two, in a long file, the bride leading with my grandfather, of whom they said: “What a handsome man he is who is acting as father.”
I leaned out from the rank and dragged my mother’s hand so as to see better, and, perhaps, to be better seen, for there was a row of people along the length of the cortége.
The gentleman who gave his arm to my mother was very handsome and he laughed to see her continually dragged out of file by me.
All Blérancourt was there to see the fine wedding pass by, and several times I heard, not without pleasure, little boys and girls and even grown persons say:
“Look, look, it’s Monsieur Lambert’s little Juliette. How prettily she is dressed.”
Some one added:
“Monsieur Lambert is not here. He never goes to churches.”
I asked mamma why they said that. She drew me brusquely towards her and did not answer.
We reached the church. I heard the music of the organ and was going to enter, when my mother, after having spoken in a low voice to an old lady with a cap and dressed in black, who was not of the wedding party, said to her:
“Two ceremonies will tire her too much, please keep her for me and amuse her in the curé’s garden. Give her some flowers, don’t let her soil her frock, and I will come for her myself.”
I protested, I struggled, I wanted to be all the time at the wedding, but the old lady took me in her arms, passed through the crowd, opened a door, shut it, and put me down, laughing.
“You will amuse yourself a great deal more here than at the church, my darling,” she said to me; “see the lovely garden and the beautiful flowers, they are all for you.”
She put a cushion on the doorstep, and gave me some nasturtium flowers to suck. There was near the stalk a little bud that I found of a sweet taste. I see myself still on the doorstep of Monsieur the Curé’s garden, pointing out to his servant the flowers I wanted, which she went and pulled for me.
I think I forgot the wedding a little describing to her my large garden at my grandmother’s, speaking of my plums and apricot tree, of my strawberries and raspberries, when suddenly my mother appeared, very pale and excited.
“Quick, quick, come!” she said to me.
“To the wedding, mamma?”
“Yes, to the wedding.”
I entered the church. The bride was near the door with the groom, all the wedding party gathered around them. They drew me to a corner where there was a large stone vase full of water, like one in our garden at Chauny. I saw that everybody was looking at me.
The curé was near the vase, the bride and groom approached, my mother took me in her arms.
“Mamma, what are they going to do to me?” I asked, rather frightened.
“Be good, my Juliette, be very good, I beseech of you,” she replied in a very troubled voice, “they are going to baptise you.”
“No, no, not baptise me,” I cried in tears.
The bride said smiling to me: “You are going to cease being a vile heretic and enter the Catholic Church.”
I saw my grandfather and I cried out to him, thinking the vase full of water was the Catholic Church.
“Grandfather, come and prevent them from throwing me into the Catholic Church.”
My grandfather not only remained insensible to my appeal, but looked at me very severely.
“Be still,” said the curé to me, “or I will open your head and put the oil and salt in it.”
These threatening words put the finishing touch to my despair, and I cried and struggled all through the ceremony of my baptism. Finally grandfather came and took me from my mother’s arms.
“Juliette, you are a big girl,” he said, “listen to me. I am very pleased you are baptised, your grandmother will be so happy. You were a poor little unbaptised child, we did not know it. Your father forbade you being baptised. He doesn’t like churches.”
“Yes, grandfather, I heard people say so just now.”
“So, you understand, he is not like everybody else; it is a pity he is a heathen. Your mother had great courage in making you a Christian without his knowledge. He will be furious, and I shall not be sorry to be at Chauny. Oh! my darling, my darling, may the Supreme Being protect you!”
My grandmother made me say my prayers night and morning. She often spoke to me of God, but my grandfather never spoke except of the Supreme Being; I had known for a long time that the Supreme Being was God.
There was a table for children at the wedding. It was very amusing. At the end of the repast some persons rose from their seats and they talked and talked without any one stopping or answering them; then there were some others who sang, and then my grandfather said things which made everybody laugh, and we little ones laughed also.
And then finally papa read out something in a loud voice. One of the children said it was like a fable, and they repeated several times at the large table that “it was fine, very fine!”
Papa looked pleased. They danced to the music of a large orchestra, and I danced also, turning around as much as I could. A child older than I called me Camille Ambrosine. My father was near me at the moment, amused at seeing me enjoy myself so much.
“Why do you call her Camille Ambrosine?” asked my father. “Her name is Juliette.”
“I know it, Monsieur Lambert. Her name is Juliette Camille Ambrosine. Juliette is her every day name, Camille is her godmother’s, Ambrosine her godfather’s. I say so, because they baptised her after the wedding. I was there. It is droll, because she is very old to be baptised.”
My father shook me so violently that I screamed with fright. My grandfather and grandmother ran up to us and there was another “family drama.”
My father cried out insulting things to the bride and groom. But they did not get angry. They only laughed. My father ended by taking my mother by one hand and me by the other, and leading us back to the house, grandfather coming behind us.
My mother wept, grandfather did not say a word, my father kept repeating:
“You wish that my daughter should not be my daughter.”
A poor woman entered.
“Quick, come quickly, Monsieur Lambert,” she cried, “my husband Mathieu, the thatcher, you know him, has fallen off Monsieur Dutailly’s roof and is almost dead.”
My father and grandfather left suddenly together.
My mother undressed me, made up the packages and sewed them together, and put me to bed very early.
The next morning, while my father was still sleeping, because he had watched by Mathieu, the thatcher, all night, mamma tied me with my silk handkerchiefs in the cabriolet, together with my packages, the box with my handsome white hat, and without my going to the wedding festivities the next or the third day, without my being able to wear my two other pretty frocks, grandfather took me back to Chauny.
As I left, my mother told me to be sure to tell grandmother that in spite of my father’s anger she would never regret what she had done for me, and that she ought long ago to have confessed that I had never been baptised.
Grandmother was astonished to see us returning so soon.
“What is the matter? what is the matter?” she cried.
Grandfather related all the story to her, and I can hear now her exclamations:
“She had never been baptised, never baptised! My son-in-law is a dangerous madman with his democratic, socialistic ideas, without God, good heavens! Such ideas mean the end of religion, of the family circle, of the right of property, of the world!”
I still have this long phrase with all its terms ringing in my ears, from “My son-in-law is a dangerous madman,” because it never ceased for years to keep alive my grandmother’s political griefs against my father.