"
"On the contrary, I intend to make a display of magnificence _a la_
Louis XIV.," said Crevel, who of late had held the eighteenth century
rather cheap. "I have ordered new carriages; there is one for monsieur
and one for madame, two neat coupes; and a chaise, a handsome
traveling carriage with a splendid hammercloth, on springs that
tremble like Madame Hulot."
"Oh, ho! _You intend?_--Then you have ceased to be my lamb?--No, no,
my friend, you will do what _I_ intend. We will sign the contract
quietly--just ourselves--this afternoon. Then, on Wednesday, we will
be regularly married, really married, in mufti, as my poor mother
would have said. We will walk to church, plainly dressed, and have
only a low mass. Our witnesses are Stidmann, Steinbock, Vignon, and
Massol, all wide-awake men, who will be at the mairie by chance, and
who will so far sacrifice themselves as to attend mass.
"Your colleague will perform the civil marriage, for once in a way, as
early as half-past nine. Mass is at ten; we shall be at home to
breakfast by half-past eleven.
"I have promised our guests that we will sit at table till the
evening. There will be Bixiou, your old official chum du Tillet,
Lousteau, Vernisset, Leon de Lora, Vernou, all the wittiest men in
Paris, who will not know that we are married. We will play them a
little trick, we will get just a little tipsy, and Lisbeth must join
us. I want her to study matrimony; Bixiou shall make love to her, and
--and enlighten her darkness.
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