Great joys at first affect us like great griefs.  We are stunned by them, and know not how deep they are till the night comes with its solemn stillness, and we are alone with our own hearts.  Then comes the season of thankfulness, and wonder and joy.  Then our souls rise up within us, and chant a hymn of praise; and the great vault of Heaven is as the roof of a mighty cathedral studded with mosaics of golden stars, and the night winds join in with the bass of their mighty organ-pipes; and the poplars rustle, like the leaves of the hymn-books in the hands of the congregation.

So it was with me that evening when I went forth into the quiet fields where the summer moon was shining, and knew that Hortense was mine at last—­mine now and for ever.  Overjoyed and restless, I wandered about for hours.  I could not go home.  I felt I must breathe the open air of the hills, and tread the dewy grass, and sing my hymn of praise and thanksgiving after my own fashion.  At length, as the dawning light came widening up the east, I turned my steps homewards, and before the sun had risen above the farthest pine-ridge, I was sleeping the sweetest sleep that had been mine for years.

The conjuror’s grave was green with grass and purple with wild thyme when Hortense knelt beside it, and there consummated the weary pilgrimage of half a life.  The sapling willow had spread its arms above him in a pleasant canopy, leaning farther and reaching higher, year by year,

“And lo! the twig to which they laid his head had now become a tree!”

Hortense found nothing of her father but this grave.  Papers and title-deeds there were none.

I well remembered the anxious search made thirteen years ago, when not even a card was found to indicate the whereabouts of his friends or family.  Not to lose the vestige of a chance, we pushed inquiry farther; but in vain.  Our rector, now a very old man, remembered nothing of the wandering lecturer.  Mine host and hostess of the Red Lion were both dead.  The Red Lion itself had disappeared, and become a thing of tradition.  All was lost and forgotten; and of all her hereditary wealth, station, and honors, Hortense de Sainte Aulaire retained nothing but her father’s sword and her ancestral name.

—­Not even the latter for many weeks, O discerning reader! for before the golden harvest was gathered in, we two were wedded.

CHAPTER LVI.

BRINGETH THIS TRUE STORY TO AN END.

     Ye who have traced the pilgrim to the scene
     Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
     A thought that once was his, if on ye swell
     A single recollection, not in vain
     He wore his sandal shoon and scallop-shell.

     BYRON.