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swords to see which of us should have her. Come now! I am
in love with you, mademoiselle. It’s perfectly simple. It is
your right. You are in the right. Ah! what a sweet, charm-
ing little wedding this will make! Our parish is Saint-Denis
du Saint Sacrament, but I will get a dispensation so that
you can be married at Saint-Paul. The church is better. It
was built by the Jesuits. It is more coquettish. It is opposite
the fountain of Cardinal de Birague. The masterpiece of Je-
suit architecture is at Namur. It is called Saint-Loup. You
must go there after you are married. It is worth the jour-
ney. Mademoiselle, I am quite of your mind, I think girls
ought to marry; that is what they are made for. There is a
certain Sainte-Catherine whom I should always like to see
uncoiffed.[62] It’s a fine thing to remain a spinster, but it is
chilly. The Bible says: Multiply. In order to save the people,
Jeanne d’Arc is needed; but in order to make people, what
is needed is Mother Goose. So, marry, my beauties. I re-
ally do not see the use in remaining a spinster! I know that
they have their chapel apart in the church, and that they fall
back on the Society of the Virgin; but, sapristi, a handsome
husband, a fine fellow, and at the expiration of a year, a big,
blond brat who nurses lustily, and who has fine rolls of fat
on his thighs, and who musses up your breast in handfuls
with his little rosy paws, laughing the while like the dawn,—
that’s better than holding a candle at vespers, and chanting
Turris eburnea!’
[62] In allusion to the expression, coiffer Sainte-Cathe-
rine, ‘to remain unmarried.’
The grandfather executed a pirouette on his eighty-year-