were banked on the staircase and in the
vestibules. Wall partitions had disappeared to enlarge the supper-room
and the ball-room where the dancing was to be. Bordeaux, a city famous
for the luxury of colonial fortunes, was on a tiptoe of expectation for
this scene of fairyland. About eight o'clock, as the last discussion
of the contract was taking place within the house, the inquisitive
populace, anxious to see the ladies in full dress getting out of their
carriages, formed in two hedges on either side of the porte-cochere.
Thus the sumptuous atmosphere of a fete acted upon all minds at the
moment when the contract was being signed, illuminating colored lamps
lighted up the shrubs, and the wheels of the arriving guests echoed
from the court-yard. The two notaries had dined with the bridal pair and
their mother. Mathias's head-clerk, whose business it was to receive the
signatures of the guests during the evening (taking due care that the
contract was not surreptitiously read by the signers), was also present
at the dinner.

No bridal toilet was ever comparable with that of Natalie, whose beauty,
decked with laces and satin, her hair coquettishly falling in a myriad
of curls about her throat, resembled that of a flower encased in its
foliage. Madame Evangelista, robed in a gown of cherry velvet, a color
judiciously chosen to heighten the brilliancy of her skin and her black
hair and eyes, glowed with the beauty of a woman at forty, and wore her
pearl necklace, clasped with the "Discreto," a visible contradiction to
the late calumnies.

To fully explain this scene, it is necessary to say that Paul and
Natalie sat together on a sofa beside the fireplace and paid no
attention to the reading of the documents. Equally childish and equally
happy, regarding life as a cloudless sky, rich, young, and loving, they
chattered to each other in a low voice, sinking into whispers. Arming
his love with the presence of legality, Paul took delight in kissing the
tips of Natalie's fingers, in lightly touching her snowy shoulders and
the waving curls of her hair, hiding from the eyes of others these
joys of illegal emancipation. Natalie played with a screen of peacock's
feathers given to her by Paul,--a gift which is to love, according to
superstitious belief in certain countries, as dangerous an omen as the
gift of scissors or other cutting instruments, which recall, no doubt,
the Parces of antiquity.

Seated beside the two notaries, Ma