Here comes the bride!” one of the urchins shouted, pointing to Madame Gaudron.
“Oh! Isn’t it too bad!
She must have swallowed something!”
The entire wedding procession burst into laughter.
Bibi-the-Smoker turned around and laughed.
Madame Gaudron laughed the most of all.
She wasn’t ashamed as she thought more than one of the women watching had looked at her with envy.
They turned into the Rue de Clery. Then they took the Rue du Mail.
On reaching the Place des Victoires, there was a halt. The bride’s left shoe lace had come undone, and as she tied it up again at the foot of the statue of Louis XIV., the couples pressed behind her waiting, and joking about the bit of calf of her leg that she displayed.
At length, after passing down the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, they reached the Louvre.
Monsieur Madinier politely asked to be their cicerone.
It was a big place, and they might lose themselves; besides, he knew the best parts, because he had often come there with an artist, a very intelligent fellow from whom a large dealer bought designs to put on his cardboard boxes.
Down below, when the wedding party entered the Assyrian Museum, a slight shiver passed through it.
The deuce!
It was not at all warm there; the hall would have made a capital cellar.
And the couples slowly advanced, their chins raised, their eyes blinking, between the gigantic stone figures, the black marble gods, dumb in their hieratic rigidity, and the monstrous beasts, half cats and half women, with death-like faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips.
They thought all these things very ugly.
The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better.
An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them.
No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl.
But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, shouting beneath the vaulted ceiling:
“Come along!
They’re nothing, all those things! The things to see are on the first floor!”
The severe barrenness of the staircase made them very grave.
An attendant, superbly attired in a red waistcoat and a coat trimmed with gold lace, who seemed to be awaiting them on the landing, increased their emotion.
It was with great respect, and treading as softly as possible, that they entered the French Gallery.
Then, without stopping, their eyes occupied with the gilding of the frames, they followed the string of little rooms, glancing at the passing pictures too numerous to be seen properly.
It would have required an hour before each, if they had wanted to understand it.
What a number of pictures!
There was no end to them.
They must be worth a mint of money.
Right at the end, Monsieur Madinier suddenly ordered a halt opposite the “Raft of the Medusa” and he explained the subject to them.
All deeply impressed and motionless, they uttered not a word.
When they started off again, Boche expressed the general feeling, saying it was marvellous.
In the Apollo Gallery, the inlaid flooring especially astonished the party — a shining floor, as clear as a mirror, and which reflected the legs of the seats.
Mademoiselle Remanjou kept her eyes closed, because she could not help thinking that she was walking on water.
They called to Madame Gaudron to be careful how she trod on account of her condition.
Monsieur Madinier wanted to show them the gilding and paintings of the ceiling; but it nearly broke their necks to look up above, and they could distinguish nothing.
Then, before entering the Square Salon, he pointed to a window, saying:
“That’s the balcony from which Charles IX. fired on the people.”
He looked back to make sure the party was following.
In the middle of the Salon Carre, he held up his hand.
“There are only masterpieces here,” he said, in a subdued voice, as though in church.
They went all around the room.
Gervaise wanted to know about
“The Wedding at Cana.”
Coupeau paused to stare at the
“Mona Lisa,” saying that she reminded him of one of his aunts.
Boche and Bibi-the-Smoker snickered at the nudes, pointing them out to each other and winking.
The Gaudrons looked at the