It may be mentioned here that Penelope succumbed to a pleurisy which she acquired about six weeks before the marriage; nothing could save her.
Madame Granson, Mariette, Madame du Coudrai, Madame du Ronceret, and through them the whole town, remarked that Madame du Bousquier entered the church _with her left foot_,--an omen all the more dreadful because the term Left was beginning to acquire a political meaning.

The priest whose duty it was to read the opening formula opened his book by chance at the De Profundis.

Thus the marriage was accompanied by circumstances so fateful, so alarming, so annihilating that no one dared to augur well of it.

Matters, in fact, went from bad to worse.

There was no wedding party; the married pair departed immediately for Prebaudet.