Monsieur and Madame Guillaume.

Some few months after this memorable Sunday the high altar of Saint-Leu
was the scene of two very different weddings. Augustine and Theodore
appeared in all the radiance of happiness, their eyes beaming with love,
dressed with elegance, while a fine carriage waited for them. Virginie,
who had come in a good hired fly with the rest of the family, humbly
followed her younger sister, dressed in the simplest fashion like a
shadow necessary to the harmony of the picture. Monsieur Guillaume had
exerted himself to the utmost in the church to get Virginie married
before Augustine, but the priests, high and low, persisted in addressing
the more elegant of the two brides. He heard some of his neighbors
highly approving the good sense of Mademoiselle Virginie, who was
making, as they said, the more substantial match, and remaining faithful
to the neighborhood; while they fired a few taunts, prompted by envy of
Augustine, who was marrying an artist and a man of rank; adding, with a
sort of dismay, that if the Guillaumes were ambitious, there was an end
to the business. An old fan-maker having remarked that such a prodigal
would soon bring his wife to beggary, father Guillaume prided himself
_in petto_ for his prudence in the matter of marriage settlements. In
the evening, after a splendid ball, followed by one of those substantial
suppers of which the memory is dying out in the present generation,
Monsieur and Madame Guillaume remained in a fine house belonging to them
in the Rue du Colombier, where the wedding had been held; Monsieur
and Madame Lebas returned in their fly to the old home in the Rue
Saint-Denis, to steer the good ship Cat and Racket. The artist,
intoxicated with happiness, carried off his beloved Augustine, and
eagerly lifting her out of their carriage when it reached the Rue des
Trois-Freres, led her to an apartment embellished by all the arts.

The fever of passion which possessed Theodore made a year fly over the
young couple without a single cloud to dim the blue sky under which they
lived. Life did not hang heavy on the lovers' hands. Theodore lavished
on every day inexhaustible _fioriture_ of enjoyment, and he delighted
to vary the transports of passion by the soft languor of those hours
of repose when souls soar so high that they seem to have forgotten all
bodily union. Augustine was too happy for reflection; she floated on
an undulating tide of rapture; she thought she