The discourse of his Reverence who married us was a masterpiece, and was delivered, moreover, with that unction, that dignity, that persuasive charm peculiar to him.  He spoke of our two families “in which pious belief was hereditary, like honor.”  You could have heard a pin drop, such was the attention with which the prelate’s voice was listened to.  Then at one point he turned toward me, and gave me to understand with a thousand delicacies that I was wedding one of the noblest officers in the army.  “Heaven smiles,” said he, “on the warrior who places at the service of his country a sword blessed by God, and who, when he darts into the fray, can place his hand upon his heart and shout to the enemy that noble war-cry, ‘I believe!’” How well that was turned!  What grandeur in this holy eloquence!  A thrill ran through the assembly.  But that was not all.  His Lordship then addressed Georges in a voice as soft and unctuous as it had before been ringing and enthusiastic.

“Monsieur, you are about to take as your companion a young girl”—­I scarcely dare recall the graceful and delicate things that his Reverence said respecting me—­“piously reared by a Christian mother who has been able to share with her, if I may say so, all the virtues of her heart, all the charms of her mind.” (Mamma was sobbing.) “She will love her husband as she has loved her father, that father full of kindness, who, from the cradle, implanted in her the sentiments of nobility and disinterestedness which—­” (Papa smiled despite himself.) “Her father, whose name is known to the poor, and who in the house of God has his place marked among the elect.” (Since his retirement, papa has become churchwarden.) “And you, Monsieur, will respect, I feel certain, so much purity, such ineffable candor”—­I felt my eyes grow moist—­“and without forgetting the physical and perishable charms of this angel whom God bestows upon you, you will thank Heaven for those qualities a thousand times more precious and more lasting contained in her heart and her mind.”

We were bidden to stand up, and stood face to face with one another like the divine spouses in the picture of Raphael.  We exchanged the golden ring, and his Reverence, in a slow, grave voice, uttered some Latin words, the sense of which I did not understand, but which greatly moved me, for the prelate’s hand, white, delicate, and transparent, seemed to be blessing me.  The censer, with its bluish smoke, swung by the hands of children, shed in the air its holy perfume.  What a day, great heavens!  All that subsequently took place grows confused in my memory.  I was dazzled, I was transported.  I can remember, however, the bonnet with white roses in which Louise had decked herself out.  Strange it is how some people are quite wanting in taste!

Going to the vestry, I leaned on the General’s arm, and it was then that I saw the spectators’ faces.  All seemed touched.

Soon they thronged round to greet me.  The vestry was full, they pushed and pressed round me, and I replied to all these smiles, to all these compliments, by a slight bow in which religious emotion peeped forth in spite of me.  I felt conscious that something solemn had just taken place before God and man; I felt conscious of being linked in eternal bonds.  I was married!