to carry her husband off to Italy, there to look for
some spot on which to settle down and found their home. When they had
made up their minds whether Florence, or Rome, or Venice was to be
their resting-place, they were to return and get little Frances, who
would have been rather out of place in this wintry wedding-journey of
her parents.

Meanwhile Julie had taken advantage of a favorable opportunity to enter
into a low conversation with old Schoepf in regard to the future of his
grandchild. In spite of the power she exerted over all with whom she
came in contact, she did not find it easy to break down the old man's
obstinacy. Finding that all her assertions of how sincere the baron's
remorse was were of as little avail as her efforts to convince him of
the material benefit which the reconciliation would be to his
grandchild's future, she finally summoned cunning to her aid, and
represented that in granting this request he would be conferring a
personal favor upon her, a sort of wedding-present, which such an old
friend of her husband surely could not refuse her. The chivalrous old
man could resist no longer, and so, with a solemn shake of the hand,
Julie secured all that the baron could demand with any kind of justice,
although a complete reconciliation still seemed quite unattainable for
the present.

Jansen had been listening to this conversation, which had been carried
on in a low tone; and now he, in his turn, thanked the old man by a
pressure of the hand. All this time he had scarcely uttered a word. His
heart was full of a bliss too deep for words; the cheerful noise of the
good people about him sounded in his ears as if it came from a great
distance; his eyes rested on the flowers before his plate, and did not
even venture to gaze at the noble woman who was really his own at last;
and it was only with difficulty that he could force himself even to
smile when the others burst into roars of laughter over some joke of
the lieutenant's, or some enthusiastic expression of Angelica's.

As they sat thus, there suddenly burst forth from Julie's piano, at
which Elfinger was seated, the first bars of the wedding-march in the
"Midsummer Night's Dream." On the instant all voices were hushed, and
they stood listening to the fairy strains that made them forget, for
the moment, that the winter night with its thousand glittering stars
looked in upon them, and suffered no other elfin tricks than those
which possibly lurked