d April sunlight, which struck the painted glass of the windows
so that they seemed to be a burning of gems, a sacred bursting into
blossom of luminous flowers. But the background of the nave particularly
blazed with a swarming of wax-tapers, tapers as innumerable as the stars
of evening in a summer sky. In the centre, the high altar seemed on fire
from them, a true "burning bush," symbolic of the flame that consumes
souls; and there were also candles in large candelabra and in
chandeliers, while before the plighted couple, two enormous lustres with
round branches looked like two suns. About them was a garden of masses
of green plants and of living blossoms, where were in flower great tufts
of white azaleas, of white camellias, and of lilacs. Away to the back
of the apse sparkled bits of gold and silver, half-seen skirts of velvet
and of silk, a distant dazzling of the tabernacle among the sombre
surroundings of green verdure. Above all this burning the nave sprang
out, and the four enormous pillars of the transept mounted upward to
support the arched vaulting, in the trembling movement of these myriads
of little flames, which almost seemed to pale at times in the full
daylight which entered by the high Gothic windows.

Angelique had wished to be married by the good Abbe Cornille, and when
she saw him come forward in his surplice, and with the white stole,
followed by two clerks, she smiled. This was at last the triumphant
realisation of her dream--she was wedding fortune, beauty, and power far
beyond her wildest hopes. The church itself was singing by the organs,
radiant with its wax-tapers, and alive with the crowd of believers and
priests, whom she knew to be around her on every side. Never had the old
building been more brilliant or filled with a more regal pomp, enlarged
as it were in its holy, sacred luxury, by an expansion of happiness.
Angelique smiled again in the full knowledge that death was at her
heart, celebrating its victory over her, in the midst of this
glorious joy. In entering the Cathedral she had glanced at the Chapel
d'Hautecoeur, where slept Laurette and Balbine, the "Happy Dead," who
passed away when very young, in the full happiness of their love.
At this last hour she was indeed perfect. Victorious over herself,
reclaimed, renewed, having no longer any feeling of passion or of pride
at her triumph, resigned at the knowledge that her life was fast leaving
her, in this beautiful Hosanna of her gre