From Les Mes!

Learn this: joy is not only joyous; it is great.

But be in love gayly then, what the deuce! Marry, when you marry, with fever and giddiness, and tumult, and the uproar of happiness! Be grave in church, well and good.

But, as soon as the mass is finished, sarpejou! you must make a dream whirl around the bride. A marriage should be royal and chimerical; it should promenade its ceremony from the cathedral of Rheims to the pagoda of Chanteloup.

I have a horror of a paltry wedding. Ventregoulette! be in Olympus for that one day, at least. Be one of the gods.

My friends, every recently made bridegroom ought to be Prince Aldobrandini. Profit by that unique minute in life to soar away to the empyrean with the swans and the eagles, even if you do have to fall back on the morrow into the bourgeoisie of the frogs.

Don't economize on the nuptials, do not prune them of their splendors; don't scrimp on the day when you beam. The wedding is not the housekeeping. Oh! If I were to carry out my fancy, it would be gallant; violins would be heard under the trees.

Here is my programme: sky−blue and silver. I would mingle with the festival the rural divinities; I would convoke the Dryads and the Nereids. The nuptials of Amphitrite, a rosy cloud, nymphs with well dressed locks and entirely naked, an Academician offering quatrains to the goddess, a chariot drawn by marine monsters.

"Triton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque Des sons si ravissants qu'il ravissait quiconque!"[65]

−−there's a festive programme, there's a good one, or else I know nothing of such matters, deuce take it!"

[65]

"Triton trotted on before, and drew from his conch−shell sounds so ravishing that he delighted

everyone!" 

The night of the 16th to the 17th of February, 1833, was a blessed night. Above its shadows heaven stood open. It was the wedding night of Marius and Cosette.

The day had been adorable.

It had not been the grand festival dreamed by the grandfather, a fairy spectacle, with a confusion of cherubim and Cupids over the heads of the bridal pair, a marriage worthy to form the subject of a painting to be placed over a door; but it had been sweet and smiling.