Guy de Maupassant complete short stories volume 2 - Penn State ...

emember which one, while visiting Gisors had been feted so
much by the authorities that during a triumphal procession
through the town she stopped before one of the houses in this
street, halting the procession, and exclaimed:
“Oh, the pretty house! How I should like to go through it! To
whom does it belong?”
They told her the name of the owner, who was sent for and
brought, proud and embarrassed, before the princess. She
alighted from her carriage, went into the house, wishing to go
over it from top to bottom, and even shut herself in one of the
rooms alone for a few seconds.
When she came out, the people, flattered at this honor paid
to a citizen of Gisors, shouted “Long live the dauphine!” But a
rhymester wrote some words to a refrain, and the street retained
the title of her royal highness, for
“The princess, in a hurry,
Without bell, priest, or beadle,
But with some water only,
Had baptized it.”
But to come back to Isidore.
They had scattered flowers all along the road as they do for
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processions at the Fete-Dieu, and the National Guard was
present, acting on the orders of their chief, Commandant
Desbarres, an old soldier of the Grand Army, who pointed with
pride to the beard of a Cossack cut with a single sword stroke
from the chin of its owner by the commandant during the retreat
in Russia, and which hung beside the frame containing
the cross of the Legion of Honor presented to him by the emperor
himself.
The regiment that he commanded was, besides, a picked regiment
celebrated all through the province, and the company of
grenadiers of Gisors was called on to attend all important ceremonies
for a distance of fifteen to twenty leagues. The story goes that
Louis Philippe, while reviewing the militia of Eure, stopped in
astonishment before the company from Gisors, exclaiming:
“Oh, who are those splendid grenadiers?”
“The grenadiers of Gisors,” replied the general.
“I might have known it,” murmured the king.
So Commandant Desbarres came at the head of his men, preceded
by the band, to get Isidore in his mother’s store.
After a little air had been played by the band beneath the
windows, the “Rosier” himself appeared—on the threshold. He
was dressed in white duck from head to foot and wore a straw
hat with a little bunch of orange blossoms as a cockade.