Love poured down its treasures of light upon their hearts; they saw nought else but themselves in the midst of the joyous tumult; they were there alone, in that crowd, as they were destined to be, henceforth, in life.Their witnesses, indifferent to what was happening, conversed quietly on their own affairs.
"Oats are very dear," said the sergeant to the mason.
"But they have not gone up like lime, relatively speaking," replied the contractor.
Then they walked round the hall.
"How one loses time here," said the mason, replacing a thick silver watch in his fob.
Luigi and Ginevra, sitting pressed to one another, seemed like one person.A poet would have admired their two heads, inspired by the same sentiment, colored in the same tones, silent and saddened in presence of that humming happiness sparkling in diamonds, gay with flowers,--a gayety in which there was something fleeting.The joy of those noisy and splendid groups was visible; that of Ginevra and Luigi was buried in their bosom.On one side the tumult of common pleasure, on the other, the delicate silence of happy souls,--earth and heaven!
But Ginevra was not wholly free from the weaknesses of women.
Superstitious as an Italian, she saw an omen in this contrast, and in her heart there lay a sense of terror, as invincible as her love.
Suddenly the office servant, in the town livery, opened a folding-door.Silence reigned, and his voice was heard, like the yapping of a dog, calling Monsieur Luigi da Porta and Mademoiselle Ginevra di Piombo.This caused some embarrassment to the young pair.The celebrity of the bride's name attracted attention, and the spectators seemed to wonder that the wedding was not more sumptuous.Ginevra rose, took Luigi's arm, and advanced firmly, followed by the witnesses.A murmur of surprise, which went on increasing, and a general whispering reminded Ginevra that all present were wondering at the absence of her parents; her father's wrath seemed present to her.
"Call in the families," said the mayor to the clerk whose business it was to read aloud the certificates.
"The father and mother protest," replied the clerk, phlegmatically.
"On both sides?" inquired the mayor.
"The groom is an orphan."
"Where are the witnesses?"
"Here," said the clerk, pointing to the four men, who stood with arms folded, like so many statues.
"But if the parents protest--" began the mayor.
"The respectful summons has been duly served," replied the clerk, rising, to lay before the mayor the papers annexed to the marriage certificate.
This bureaucratic decision had something blighting about it; in a few words it contained the whole story.The hatred of the Portas and the Piombos and their terrible passions were inscribed on this page of the civil law as the annals of a people (contained, it may be, in one word only,--Napoleon, Robespierre) are engraved on a tombstone.Ginevra trembled.Like the dove on the face of the waters, having no place to rest its feet but the ark, so Ginevra could take refuge only in the eyes of Luigi from the cold and dreary waste around her.
The mayor assumed a stern, disapproving air, and his clerk looked up at the couple with malicious curiosity.No marriage was ever so little festal.Like other human beings when deprived of their accessories, it became a simple act in itself, great only in thought.
After a few questions, to which the bride and bridegroom responded, and a few words mumbled by the mayor, and after signing the registers, with their witnesses, duly, Luigi and Ginevra were made one.Then the wedded pair walked back through two lines of joyous relations who did not belong to them, and whose only interest in their marriage was the delay caused to their own wedding by this gloomy bridal.When, at last, Ginevra found herself in the mayor's court-yard, under the open sky, a sigh escaped her breast.
"Can a lifetime of devotion and love suffice to prove my gratitude for your courage and tenderness, my Ginevra?" said Luigi.
At these words, said with tears of joy, the bride forgot her sufferings; for she had indeed suffered in presenting herself before the public to obtain a happiness her parents refused to sanction.
"Why should others come between us?" she said with an artlessness of feeling that delighted Luigi.
A sense of accomplished happiness now made the step of the young pair lighter; they saw neither heaven, nor earth, nor houses; they flew, as it were, on wings to the church.When they reached a dark little chapel in one corner of the building, and stood before a plain undecorated altar, an old priest married them.There, as in the mayor's office, two other marriages were taking place, still pursuing them with pomp.The church, filled with friends and relations, echoed with the roll of carriages, and the hum of beadles, sextons, and priests.Altars were resplendent with sacramental luxury; the wreaths of orange-flowers that crowned the figures of the Virgin were fresh.
Flowers, incense, gleaming tapers, velvet cushions embroidered with gold, were everywhere.When the time came to hold above the heads of Luigi and Ginevra the symbol of eternal union,--that yoke of satin, white, soft, brilliant, light for some, lead for most,--the priest looked about him in vain for the acolytes whose place it was to perform that joyous function.Two of the witnesses fulfilled it for them.The priest addressed a hasty homily to the pair on the perils of life, on the duties they must, some day, inculcate upon their children,--throwing in, at this point, an indirect reproach to Ginevra on the absence of her parents; then, after uniting them before God, as the mayor had united them before the law, he left the now married couple.
