every thing is! There are the two shops abreast of the
chapel, Marx's on this side, Lichtenstein's on that, their dingy false
fronts covered with their same old huge rain-faded words of promise.
Yonder, too, behind the blacksmith's shop, is the little schoolhouse,
dirty, half-ruined, and closed--that is, wide-open and empty--it may
be for lack of a teacher, or funds, or even of scholars.

"It shall not be so," said the traveller to himself, "when _she_ and
I"--

His steps grow slow. Yet here, not twenty paces before him, is the
home of the cure. Ah! that is just the trouble. Shall he go here
first? May he not push on and out once more upon the prairie and make
himself known first of all to _her_? Stopping here first, will not the
cure say tarry till to-morrow? His steps grow slower still.

And see, now. One of the Jews in the shop across the street has
observed him. Now two stand together and scrutinize him; and now there
are three, looking and smiling. Plainly, they recognize him. One
starts to come across, but on that instant the quiet of the hamlet is
broken by a sound of galloping hoofs.

Bonaventure stands still. How sudden is this change! He is not noticed
now; every thing is in the highest animation. There are loud calls and
outcries; children are shouting and running, and women's heads are
thrust out of doors and windows. Horsemen come dashing into the
village around through the lanes and up the street. Look! they wheel,
they rein up, they throw themselves from the rattling saddles; they
leave the big wooden stirrups swinging and the little unkempt ponies
shaking themselves, and rush into the _boutique de_ Monsieur
Lichtenstein, and are talking like mad and decking themselves out on
hats and shoulders with ribbons in all colors of the rainbow!

Suddenly they shout, all together, in answer to a shout outside. More
horsemen appear. Lichtenstein's store belches all its population.

"_La calege! La calege!_" The caleche is coming!

Something, he knows not what, makes Bonaventure tremble.

"Madame," he says in French to a chattering woman who has just run
out of her door, and is standing near him tying a red Madras kerchief
on her head as she prattles to a girl,--"madame, what wedding is
this?"

"_C'est la noce a_ Zosephine," she replies, without looking at him,
and goes straight on telling her companion how fifty dollars has been
paid for the Pope's dispensation, because the bridal pair are first
cousins