--Napoleon, Robespierre) are engraved on a tombstone. Ginevra
trembled. Like the dove on the face of the waters, having no place to
rest its feet but the ark, so Ginevra could take refuge only in the eyes
of Luigi from the cold and dreary waste around her.

The mayor assumed a stern, disapproving air, and his clerk looked up
at the couple with malicious curiosity. No marriage was ever so little
festal. Like other human beings when deprived of their accessories, it
became a simple act in itself, great only in thought.

After a few questions, to which the bride and bridegroom responded, and
a few words mumbled by the mayor, and after signing the registers, with
their witnesses, duly, Luigi and Ginevra were made one. Then the wedded
pair walked back through two lines of joyous relations who did not
belong to them, and whose only interest in their marriage was the
delay caused to their own wedding by this gloomy bridal. When, at last,
Ginevra found herself in the mayor's court-yard, under the open sky, a
sigh escaped her breast.

"Can a lifetime of devotion and love suffice to prove my gratitude for
your courage and tenderness, my Ginevra?" said Luigi.

At these words, said with tears of joy, the bride forgot her sufferings;
for she had indeed suffered in presenting herself before the public to
obtain a happiness her parents refused to sanction.

"Why should others come between us?" she said with an artlessness of
feeling that delighted Luigi.

A sense of accomplished happiness now made the step of the young pair
lighter; they saw neither heaven, nor earth, nor houses; they flew, as
it were, on wings to the church. When they reached a dark little chapel
in one corner of the building, and stood before a plain undecorated
altar, an old priest married them. There, as in the mayor's office, two
other marriages were taking place, still pursuing them with pomp. The
church, filled with friends and relations, echoed with the roll of
carriages, and the hum of beadles, sextons, and priests. Altars were
resplendent with sacramental luxury; the wreaths of orange-flowers that
crowned the figures of the Virgin were fresh. Flowers, incense, gleaming
tapers, velvet cushions embroidered with gold, were everywhere. When
the time came to hold above the heads of Luigi and Ginevra the symbol
of eternal union,--that yoke of satin, white, soft, brilliant, light
for some, lead for most,--the priest looked about him in vain for the
acolytes w