joy-streams into one, when the sky-queen besprinkled with blossoms the bride, descended upon Earth in her timid joy, full of quivering, humble love; when the bells began; when the procession-column set forth with the whole village round and before it; when the organ, the congregation, the officiating priest, and the sparrows on the trees of the church-window, struck louder and louder their rolling peals on the drum of the jubilee-festival.

* * * The heart of the singing bridegroom was like to leap from its place for joy “that on his bridal-day it was all so respectable and grand.”  Not till the marriage benediction could he pray a little.

Still worse and louder grew the business during dinner, when pastry-work and march-pane-devices were brought forward, when glasses, and slain fishes (laid under the napkins to frighten the guests) went round, and when the guests rose and themselves went round, and, at length, danced round:  for they had instrumental music from the city there.

One minute handed over to the other the sugar-bowl and bottle-case of joy:  the guests heard and saw less and less, and the villagers began to see and hear more and more, and toward night they penetrated like a wedge into the open door—­nay, two youths ventured even in the middle of the parsonage-court to mount a plank over a beam and commence seesawing.  Out of doors, the gleaming vapor of the departed sun was encircling the earth, the evening-star was glittering over parsonage and churchyard; no one heeded it.

However, about nine o’clock, when the marriage-guests had well nigh forgotten the marriage-pair, and were drinking or dancing along for their own behoof; when poor mortals, in this sunshine of Fate, like fishes in the sunshine of the sky, were leaping up from their wet cold element; and when the bridegroom under the star of happiness and love, casting like a comet its long train of radiance over all his heaven, had in secret pressed to his joy-filled breast his bride and his mother—­then did he lock a slice of wedding-bread privily into a press, in the old superstitious belief that this residue secured continuance of bread for the whole marriage.  As he returned, with greater love for the sole partner of his life, she herself met him with his mother, to deliver him in private the bridal-nightgown and bridal-shirt, as is the ancient usage.  Many a countenance grows pale in violent emotions, even of joy.  Thiennette’s wax-face was bleaching still whiter under the sunbeams of Happiness.  O, never fall, thou lily of Heaven, and may four springs instead of four seasons open and shut thy flower-bells to the sun!  All the arms of his soul, as he floated on the sea of joy, were quivering to clasp the soft warm heart of his beloved, to encircle it gently and fast, and draw it to his own.

He led her from the crowded dancing-room into the cool evening.  Why does the evening, does the night, put warmer love in our hearts?  Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness or is it the exalting separation from the turmoil of life—­that veiling of the world, in which for the soul nothing more remains but souls;—­is it therefore that the letters in which the loved name stands written on our spirit appear, like phosphorus-writing, by night, in fire, while by day in their cloudy traces they but smoke?