that archway of apple trees, and a sort of vapor came out of open door
and windows and an almost overpowering odor of eatables was exhaled from
the vast building, from all its openings and from its very walls. The
string of guests extended through the yard; but when the foremost of them
reached the house, they broke the chain and dispersed, while those behind
were still coming in at the open gate. The ditches were now lined with
urchins and curious poor people, and the firing did not cease, but came
from every side at once, and a cloud of smoke, and that odor which has
the same intoxicating effect as absinthe, blended with the atmosphere.
The women were shaking their dresses outside the door, to get rid of the
dust, were undoing their cap-strings and pulling their shawls over their
arms, and then they went into the house to lay them aside altogether for
the time. The table was laid in the great kitchen that would hold a
hundred persons; they sat down to dinner at two o'clock; and at eight
o'clock they were still eating, and the men, in their shirt-sleeves, with
their waistcoats unbuttoned and with red faces, were swallowing down the
food and drink as if they had been whirlpools. The cider sparkled
merrily, clear and golden in the large glasses, by the side of the dark,
blood-colored wine, and between every dish they made a "hole," the
Normandy hole, with a glass of brandy which inflamed the body and put
foolish notions into the head. Low jokes were exchanged across the table
until the whole arsenal of peasant wit was exhausted. For the last
hundred years the same broad stories had served for similar occasions,
and, although every one knew them, they still hit the mark and made both
rows of guests roar with laughter.

At one end of the table four young fellows, who were neighbors, were
preparing some practical jokes for the newly married couple, and they
seemed to have got hold of a good one by the way they whispered and
laughed, and suddenly one of them, profiting by a moment of silence,