“Cruel?” repeated he; then, losing his deathlike composure in a wild bitterness, “Heaven judge which of us has been cruel to the other!  In youth you deprived me of my happiness, my hopes, my aims; you took away all the substance of my life and made it a dream without reality enough even to grieve at—­with only a pervading gloom, through which I walked wearily and cared not whither.  But after forty years, when I have built my tomb and would not give up the thought of resting there—­no, not for such a life as we once pictured—­you call me to the altar.  At your summons I am here.  But other husbands have enjoyed your youth, your beauty, your warmth of heart and all that could be termed your life.  What is there for me but your decay and death?  And therefore I have bidden these funeral-friends, and bespoken the sexton’s deepest knell, and am come in my shroud to wed you as with a burial-service, that we may join our hands at the door of the sepulchre and enter it together.”

It was not frenzy, it was not merely the drunkenness of strong emotion in a heart unused to it, that now wrought upon the bride.  The stern lesson of the day had done its work; her worldliness was gone.  She seized the bridegroom’s hand.

“Yes!” cried she; “let us wed even at the door of the sepulchre.  My life is gone in vanity and emptiness, but at its close there is one true feeling.  It has made me what I was in youth:  it makes me worthy of you.  Time is no more for both of us.  Let us wed for eternity.”

With a long and deep regard the bridegroom looked into her eyes, while a tear was gathering in his own.  How strange that gush of human feeling from the frozen bosom of a corpse!  He wiped away the tear, even with his shroud.

“Beloved of my youth,” said he, “I have been wild.  The despair of my whole lifetime had returned at once and maddened me.  Forgive and be forgiven.  Yes; it is evening with us now, and we have realized none of our morning dreams of happiness.  But let us join our hands before the altar as lovers whom adverse circumstances have separated through life, yet who meet again as they are leaving it and find their earthly affection changed into something holy as religion.  And what is time to the married of eternity?”

Amid the tears of many and a swell of exalted sentiment in those who felt aright was solemnized the union of two immortal souls.  The train of withered mourners, the hoary bridegroom in his shroud, the pale features of the aged bride and the death-bell tolling through the whole till its deep voice overpowered the marriage-words,—­all marked the funeral of earthly hopes.  But as the ceremony proceeded, the organ, as if stirred by the sympathies of this impressive scene, poured forth an anthem, first mingling with the dismal knell, then rising to a loftier strain, till the soul looked down upon its woe.  And when the awful rite was finished and with cold hand in cold hand the married of eternity withdrew, the organ’s peal of solemn triumph drowned the wedding-knell.