iness, and after the birth of several children, who soon ceased
to live, he wedded her by civil rite. The birth of his daughter soon
followed. "And thus it was," says George, "that I was born legitimate."

"My mother had on a pretty pink dress that day, and my father was
playing some _contredanses_ on his faithful Cremona (I have it yet, that
old instrument by the sound of which I first saw the light). My mother
left the dance and passed into her own room. As she went out very
quietly, the dance continued. At the last _chassez all round_, my Aunt
Lucy went into my mother's room, and immediately cried,--

"Come, come here, Maurice! You have a daughter!"

"She shall be named Aurore, for my poor mother, who is not here to bless
her, but who will bless her one day," said my father, receiving me in
his arms.

"She was born in music and in pink," said my aunt. "She will be happy."

Not eminent, perhaps, has been the realization of this augury.

The young couple were so poor, at this moment of their marriage, that a
slender thread of gold was forced to serve for the nuptial ring; it was
not until some days later that they were able to expend six francs in
the purchase of that indispensable ornament. The act once consummated,
Maurice gave himself up to some hours of bitter suffering, made
inevitable by what he considered a grave act of disobedience against the
best of mothers. His conscience, however, on the whole, justified
him. He had obeyed the Scripture precept, forsaking the old for the
inevitable new relation, and surrounding her who was really his wife
with the immunities of civil recognition. The marriage was concealed for
some months from his mother,--who at a subsequent period left no stone
unturned to prove its nullity. The religious ceremony, which Catholicism
considers as the indissoluble tie, had not yet been performed, and
Mme. Dupin hoped to prove some informality in the civil rite. In
this, however, she did not succeed, and after long resistance, and
ill-concealed displeasure, she concluded by acknowledging the unwelcome
alliance. It was the little Aurore herself whose unconscious hand
severed the Gordian knot of the family difficulties. Introduced by a
stratagem into her grandmother's presence, and seated in her lap as the
child of a stranger, the family traits were suddenly recognized, and the
little one (eight months old) effected a change of heart which neither
lawyer nor priest could have induced. St.