harmed with her
modest loveliness, men smile on her as she glides forward, while
children, changed into little angels, strew fresh flowers before her.
The bishop and attendant priests look bright in gay dalmatics; and
throngs of people crowd round, praising, envying, and wishing bliss. She
alone is silent, with long lashes shading her downcast eyes, as she
leans on the arms of her maidens.

Weariness is in every movement of her slight form, her nerves seem
unstrung, and the rays of soul gleam vague and troubled through the
expanded pupils of her blue eyes; it were indeed hard to divine whether
plaint or prayer would breathe through the half-open lips. As she passes
on before the shrines and chapels she lifts her hand, as if intending to
make the sign of the cross, but she seems without energy to complete the
symbols, and they fall broken and half formed in the air. Inclining her
head before the Mother of God, she bends as if about to kneel, but, her
strength evidently failing her, she moves tremblingly on toward the
sanctuary, and the Great Altar in its gloomy depths looms before her
like a sepulchre.

There, encircled by relations and friends, with pride and pleasure
beaming from his aged eyes, her father awaits her; and well may he be
proud, for never had God given to declining years a lovelier child. She
shines upon the sunset of his life with the growing lustre of the
evening star, and never has its light beamed dim upon him until this
very hour. He will not, however, think of this momentary eclipse now,
for this same hour will see the fulfilment of his brightest dreams. In
his joy and pride he exclaims to the friends around him: 'Look on my
child; how young, pure, and innocent she is--trembling in the ignorance
of her approaching happiness!' Then he gazes wistfully, far as his eye
can reach, down the long aisles of the church, to ascertain if the
bridegroom yet appears, and, seeing him not, his gray eyebrows fall, and
settle into a frown.

* * * * *

But peace soon again smoothes his broad forehead. Alas! the illusions of
the old stand round their petrifying souls like statues of granite; no
earthly power avails to strike them down, and death alone can break
them. The young see their dreams floating in the air, while shifting
rainbows play above them as they rise and melt upon the view. But the
hopes of the old grow hard and stony as they near the grave; their
_desires_ assume th