*Used the familiar form of address.
Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of
his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back
in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here
he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way.
When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the
cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh.
Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of
his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her
from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion,
trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the
country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from
the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that
it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he
saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently
under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from
time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would
have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the
road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling
with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he
felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was
afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went
right away home.
Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock.
The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife.
The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not
having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should
look over her house.