ll the little winding paths.

The birds were all asleep. But the grasshoppers, crickets, and all manner
of creeping things hidden in the grass, or in the moss on the trees, were
singing and chattering in their stead.

Behind us, at some distance--in fact, as far off as we could manage--the
gravel crackled beneath the equal tread of the two elders, and in a
murmur we could catch occasional scraps of sentences:

"A granddaughter like Jeanne, Monsieur Charnot . . . ."

"A grandson like Fabien, Monsieur Mouillard . . . ."

CHAPTER XX

A HAPPY FAMILY

PARIS, September 18th.

We are married. We are just back from the church. We have said good-by to
all our friends, not without a quick touch or two of sadness, as quickly
swallowed up in the joy which for the first time in the history of my
heart is surging there at full tide, and widening to a limitless horizon.
In the two hours I have to spare before starting for Italy, I am writing
the last words in this brown diary, which I do not intend to take with
me.

Jeanne, my own Jeanne, is leaning upon me and reading over my shoulder,
which distracts the flow of my recollections.

There were crowds at the church. The papers had put us down among the
fashionable marriages of the week. The Institute, the army, men of
letters, public officials, had come out of respect for M. Charnot;
lawyers of Bourges and Paris had come out of respect for my uncle. But
the happiest, the most radiant, next to ourselves, were the people who
came only for Jeanne's sake and mine; Sylvestre Lampron,
painter-in-ordinary to Mademoiselle Charnot, bringing his pretty sketch
as a wedding-present; M. Flamaran and Sidonie; Jupille, who wept as he
used to "thirty years ago;" and M. and Madame Plumet, who took it in
turns to carry their white-robed infant.

Jeanne and I certainly shook hands with a good many persons, but not with
nearly as many as M. Mouillard. Clean-shaven, his cravat tied with
exquisite care, he spun round in the crowd like a top, always dragging
with him some one who was to introduce him to some one else. "One should
make acquaintances immediately on arrival," he kept saying.

Yes, Uncle Mouillard has just arrived in Paris; he has settled down near
us on the Quai Malaquais, in a pretty set of rooms which Jeanne chose for
him. He thinks them perfect because she thought they would do. The tastes
and interests of old student days have suddenly reawakened with