But at this moment Constance interrupted him.  She had hitherto walked on with bowed head amid that flow of chatter which brought her so much torture and shame, an aggravation, as it were, of her defeat.  But now she raised her face, down which two big tears were trickling.

“Alexandre!” she said.

“What is it, my dear?”

He did not yet understand.  But on seeing her tears, he ended by feeling disturbed, in spite of all his fine assurance.  He looked at the others, and wishing to have the last word, he added:  “Ah, yes! our poor child.  But particular cases have nothing to do with general theories; ideas are still ideas.”

Silence fell between them.  They were now near the lawn where the family had remained.  And for the last moment Mathieu had been thinking of Morange, whom he had also invited to the wedding, but who had excused himself from attending, as if he were terrified at the idea of gazing on the joy of others, and dreaded, too, lest some sacrilegious attempt should be made in his absence on the mysterious sanctuary where he worshipped.  Would he, Morange—­so Mathieu wondered—­have clung like Beauchene to his former ideas?  Would he still have defended the theory of the only child; that hateful, calculating theory which had cost him both his wife and his daughter?  Mathieu could picture him flitting past, pale and distracted, with the step of a maniac hastening to some mysterious end, in which insanity would doubtless have its place.  But the lugubrious vision vanished, and then again before Mathieu’s eyes the lawn spread out under the joyous sun, offering between its belt of foliage such a picture of happy health and triumphant beauty, that he felt impelled to break the mournful silence and exclaim: 

“Look there! look there!  Isn’t that gay; isn’t that a delightful scene—­all those dear women and dear children in that setting of verdure?  It ought to be painted to show people how healthy and beautiful life is!”

Time had not been lost on the lawn since the Beauchenes and Seguins had gone off to visit the stables.  First of all there had been a distribution of the menu cards, which Charlotte had adorned with such delicate water-color sketches.  This surprise of hers had enraptured them all at lunch, and they still laughed at the sight of those pretty children’s heads.  Then, while the servants cleared the table, Gregoire achieved a great success by offering the bride a bouquet of splendid white roses, which he drew out of a bush where he had hitherto kept it hidden.  He had doubtless been waiting for some absence of his father’s.  They were the roses of the mill; with Therese’s assistance he must have pillaged the bushes in the enclosure.  Marianne, recognizing how serious was the transgression, wished to scold him.  But what superb white roses they were, as big as cabbages, as he himself had said!  And he was entitled to triumph over them, for they were the only white roses there, and had been secured by himself, like the wandering urchin he was with a spice of knight-errantry in his composition, quite ready to jump over walls and cajole damsels in order to deck a bride with snowy blooms.