"De Tous Les Bruits Du Monde Celui De La Musique Est Le Plus
Desagreable!" Was My Ever-Recurring Thought.
Happily, this agony
did not last long, and was replaced by the choral singing of
Brahmans and nautches, which
Was very original, but perfectly bearable.
The wedding was a rich one, and so the "vestals" appeared in state.
A moment of silence, of restrained whispering, and one of them, a
tall, handsome girl with eyes literally filling half her forehead,
began approaching one guest after the other in perfect silence,
and rubbing their faces with her hand, leaving traces of sandal
and saffron powders. She glided towards us also, noiselessly
moving over the dusty road with her bare feet; and before we
realized what she was doing she had daubed me as well as the colonel
and Miss X - -, which made the latter sneeze and wipe her face for
at least ten minutes, with loud but vain utterances of indignation.
The Babu and Mulji offered their faces to the little hand, full
of saffron, with smiles of condescending generosity. But the
indomitable Narayan shrank from the vestal so unexpectedly at the
precise moment when, with fiery glances at him, she stood on tiptoe
to reach his face, that she quite lost countenance and sent a full
dose of powder over his shoulder, whilst he turned away from her
with knitted brow. Her forehead also showed several threatening
lines, but in a moment she overcame her anger and glided towards
Ram-Runjit-Das, sparkling with engaging smiles.
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