hose place it was to perform that joyous function. Two of the
witnesses fulfilled it for them. The priest addressed a hasty homily
to the pair on the perils of life, on the duties they must, some day,
inculcate upon their children,--throwing in, at this point, an indirect
reproach to Ginevra on the absence of her parents; then, after uniting
them before God, as the mayor had united them before the law, he left
the now married couple.

"God bless them!" said Vergniaud, the sergeant, to the mason, when they
reached the church porch. "No two creatures were ever more fitted for
one another. The parents of the girl are foolish. I don't know a braver
soldier than Colonel Luigi. If the whole army had behaved like him,
'l'autre' would be here still."

This blessing of the old soldier, the only one bestowed upon their
marriage-day, shed a balm on Ginevra's heart.

They parted with hearty shakings of hand; Luigi thanked his landlord.

"Adieu, 'mon brave,'" he said to the sergeant. "I thank you."

"I am now and ever at your service, colonel,--soul, body, horses, and
carriages; all that is mine is yours."

"How he loves you!" said Ginevra.

Luigi now hurried his bride to the house they were to occupy. Their
modest apartment was soon reached; and there, when the door closed upon
them, Luigi took his wife in his arms, exclaiming,--

"Oh, my Ginevra! for now you are mine, here is our true wedding. Here,"
he added, "all things will smile upon us."

Together they went through the three rooms contained in their lodging.
The room first entered served as salon and dining-room in one; on
the right was a bedchamber, on the left a large study which Luigi had
arranged for his wife; in it she found easels, color-boxes, lay-figures,
casts, pictures, portfolios,--in short, the paraphernalia of an artist.

"So here I am to work!" she said, with an expression of childlike
happiness.

She looked long at the hangings and the furniture, turning again
and again to thank Luigi, for there was something that approached
magnificence in the little retreat. A bookcase contained her favorite
books; a piano filled an angle of the room. She sat down upon a divan,
drew Luigi to her side, and said, in a caressing voice, her hand in
his,--

"You have good taste."

"Those words make me happy," he replied.

"But let me see all," said Ginevra, to whom Luigi had made a mystery of
the adornment of the rooms.

They entered the nuptial chamber, fresh a