“God bless them!” said Vergniaud, the sergeant, to the mason, when they reached the church porch.  “No two creatures were ever more fitted for one another.  The parents of the girl are foolish.  I don’t know a braver soldier than Colonel Luigi.  If the whole army had behaved like him, ‘l’autre’ would be here still.”

This blessing of the old soldier, the only one bestowed upon their marriage-day, shed a balm on Ginevra’s heart.

They parted with hearty shakings of hand; Luigi thanked his landlord.

“Adieu, ‘mon brave,’” he said to the sergeant.  “I thank you.”

“I am now and ever at your service, colonel,—­soul, body, horses, and carriages; all that is mine is yours.”

“How he loves you!” said Ginevra.

Luigi now hurried his bride to the house they were to occupy.  Their modest apartment was soon reached; and there, when the door closed upon them, Luigi took his wife in his arms, exclaiming,—­

“Oh, my Ginevra! for now you are mine, here is our true wedding.  Here,” he added, “all things will smile upon us.”

Together they went through the three rooms contained in their lodging.  The room first entered served as salon and dining-room in one; on the right was a bedchamber, on the left a large study which Luigi had arranged for his wife; in it she found easels, color-boxes, lay-figures, casts, pictures, portfolios,—­in short, the paraphernalia of an artist.

“So here I am to work!” she said, with an expression of childlike happiness.

She looked long at the hangings and the furniture, turning again and again to thank Luigi, for there was something that approached magnificence in the little retreat.  A bookcase contained her favorite books; a piano filled an angle of the room.  She sat down upon a divan, drew Luigi to her side, and said, in a caressing voice, her hand in his,—­

“You have good taste.”

“Those words make me happy,” he replied.

“But let me see all,” said Ginevra, to whom Luigi had made a mystery of the adornment of the rooms.

They entered the nuptial chamber, fresh and white as a virgin.

“Oh! come away,” said Luigi, smiling.

“But I wish to see all.”

And the imperious Ginevra looked at each piece of furniture with the minute care of an antiquary examining a coin; she touched the silken hangings, and went over every article with the artless satisfaction of a bride in the treasures of her wedding outfit.

“We begin by ruining ourselves,” she said, in a half-joyous, half-anxious tone.

“True! for all my back pay is there,” replied Luigi.  “I have mortgaged it to a worthy fellow named Gigonnet.”

“Why did you do so?” she said, in a tone of reproach, through which could be heard her inward satisfaction.  “Do you believe I should be less happy in a garret?  But,” she added, “it is all charming, and—­it is ours!”