uarrel."

This scene was taking place eight days after Marceline de Lorlauge, at
the Church of the Madeleine, before the altar, hidden under a mountain
of roses, had answered "yes," with just the right amount of nervousness
and emotion (neither too much nor too little, but exactly right), when
she was asked if she was willing to take for husband her cousin, Jean
Leopold Mathurin Arbert Gontran, Duke of Lannilis.

This marriage had been the great marriage of the season. There had been
an absolute crush under the colonnade and against the railings of the
church to see the bride walk down those fearful steps of the Madeleine.
What an important feat that is! Merely to be beautiful is not all that
is needful; it is necessary besides to know how to be beautiful. There
is an art about being pretty which requires certain preparations and
study. In society, as in the theatre, success rarely comes at once. Mme.
de Lannilis had the good-fortune to make her first appearance with
decisive success. She was at once quite easily and boldly at home in her
beauty; she had only to appear to triumph. Prince Nerins had not a
moment's hesitation concerning it, and he it is, as every one knows,
who, with general consent, has made himself the distributor of the
patents of supreme Parisian elegance; so while the new duchess, beneath
the fire of a thousand eyes and behind the ringing staffs, was taking
her first steps as a young married woman with calm assurance, Nerins,
struck with admiration, was giving way, under the colonnade of the
Madeleine, to veritable transports of enthusiasm. He went from group to
group repeating:

"She is aerial! There is no other expression for her--aerial! She does
not walk, she glides! If she had the fantasy, with one little kick of
her heel, she could raise herself lightly over the heads of those two
tall fellows with spears, cross the Place de la Concorde, and go and
place herself on the pediment of the Chamber of Deputies. Look at her
well; that is true beauty, radiant beauty, blazing beauty! She is a
goddess, a young goddess! she will reign long, gentlemen--as long as
possible."

The young goddess, for the present, did not go farther than Lannilis, in
Poitou, to her husband's home--her home--in a mansion that had seen many
Duchesses of Lannilis, but never one more charming, and never, it must
be said, one more absolutely in love. This little duchess of nineteen
was wild about this little duke of twenty-five