ht the
wedding singers stood and sang. In each corner of the room there was a
barrel of roasted sweet potatoes. How everybody ate, that night! Rice!
beef-balls! pass them here! pass them there! help yourself! reach them
with a fork! _des riz! des boulettes!_ more down this way! pass them
over heads! _des riz! des boulettes!_ And the anisette!--bad whiskey
and oil of anise--never mind that; pour, fill, empty, fill again!
Don't take too much--and make sure not to take too little! How merrily
all went on! How gay was Zosephine!

"Does she know that Bonaventure, too, has come back?" the young
maidens whisper, one to another; for the news was afloat.

"Oh, yes, of course; some one had to let it slip. But if it makes any
difference, she is only brighter and prettier than before. I tell
you--it seems strange, but I believe, now, she never cared for anybody
but 'Thanase. When she heard Bonaventure had come back, she only let
one little flash out of her eyes at the fool who told her, then said
it was the best news that could be, and has been as serene as the
picture of a saint ever since."

The serenity of the bride might have been less perfect, and the one
flash of her eyes might have been two, had she known what the cure was
that minute saying to the returned wanderer, with the youth's head
pressed upon his bosom, in the seclusion of his own chamber:

"It is all for the best, Bonaventure. It is not possible that thou
shouldst see it so now, but thou shalt hereafter. It is best this
way." And the tears rolled silently down his cheek as the weary head
in his bosom murmured back:

"It is best. It is best."

The cure could only press him closer then. It was much more than a
year afterward when he for the first time ventured to add:

"I never wanted you to get her, my dear boy; she is not your kind at
all--nay, now, let me say it, since I have kept it unsaid so long and
patiently. Do you imagine she could ever understand an unselfish life,
or even one that tried to be unselfish? She makes an excellent Madame
'Thanase. 'Thanase is a good, vigorous, faithful, gentle animal, that
knows how to graze and lie in the shade and get up and graze again.
But you--it is not in you to know how poor a Madame Bonaventure she
would have been; not now merely, but poorer and poorer as the years go
by.

"And so I say, do not go away. I know why you want to go; you want to
run away from a haunting thought that some unlikely accident or other