The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled
cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young
people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in
rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot
and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from
Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany.
All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between
friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to.
From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then
the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the
steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all
sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets,
had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with
the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down
behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads,
dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes
(many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their
sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first
communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or
sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their
hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their
gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the
carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it
themselves. According to their different social positions they wore
tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats,
redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe
on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and
round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse
cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short
cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like
a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a
carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at
the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say,
with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small
plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt.
And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had
just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been
close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and
not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or
cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh
air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were
mottled here and there with red dabs.