glass windows, the archangels, full of kind feeling, whispered as they
watched me. As I advanced, heads were bent as a wheat-field bends
beneath the breeze. My friends, my relatives, my enemies, bowed to us,
and I saw--for one sees everything in spite of one's self on these solemn
occasions--that they did not think that I looked ugly. On reaching the
gilt chair, I bent forward with restrained eagerness--my chignon was
high, revealing my neck, which is passable--and thanked the Lord. The
organ ceased its triumphal song and I could hear my poor mother bursting
into tears beside me. Oh! I understand what a mother's heart must feel
during such a ceremony. While watching with satisfaction the clergy who
were solemnly advancing, I noticed Georges; he seemed irritated; he was
stiff, upright, his nostrils dilated, and his lips set. I have always
been rather vexed at him for not having been a little more sensible to
what I was experiencing that day, but men do not understand this kind of
poetry.

The discourse of his Reverence who married us was a masterpiece, and was
delivered, moreover, with that unction, that dignity, that persuasive
charm peculiar to him. He spoke of our two families "in which pious
belief was hereditary, like honor." You could have heard a pin drop,
such was the attention with which the prelate's voice was listened to.
Then at one point he turned toward me, and gave me to understand with a
thousand delicacies that I was wedding one of the noblest officers in the
army. "Heaven smiles," said he, "on the warrior who places at the
service of his country a sword blessed by God, and who, when he darts
into the fray, can place his hand upon his heart and shout to the enemy
that noble war-cry, 'I believe!'" How well that was turned! What
grandeur in this holy eloquence! A thrill ran through the assembly.
But that was not all. His Lordship then addressed Georges in a voice as
soft and unctuous as it had before been ringing and enthusiastic.