Captain Antifer (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX. WHILE Antifer was performing in this quartette party Enogate and Juhel had gone off to the mairie and the church. At the mairie the clerk of the marriage department--a leather-faced old fellow, engaged in the manufacture of honeymoons--had shown them the notice of their banns stuck up among the other notices. At the Cathedral the vicar promised them a choral service, address, organ and bells complete. How happy they were? With what impatience--illdisguised on the part of Juhel, more reserved on the part of Enogate--did they wait for the 5th of April, the date that had been won from their uncle's hesitations How busy they were with their preparations, their wardrobe, their furniture for the pretty room on the first floor, which the generous Tregomain embellished every day with odds and ends that during many years he had collected among the shorefolk of the Rance. Was he not their confidant, and could they have found a better, a safer depository of their hopes and future projects? And twenty times a day would the old bargeman repeat, --"I would give a lot for the marriage to be over." "And why, my good Gildas?" the girl would ask, a little uneasy. "Friend Antifer is so singular when he gets astride of his hobby, and goes prancing among his millions " That, too, was Juhel's opinion. When you depend on an uncle, an excellent man but somewhat unsettled, you are sure of nothing until the "Yes" has been uttered before the maire. And as is usual among sailor families there was no time to lose. Either they would have to remain unmarried, or be married as soon as possible. Juhel was under orders to sail as first mate of one of Le Baillif's largest ships. And then for what months, for what years even, he might be on the seas, thousands...