"She understood all that and was resigned, so the next day when M. Duvallon came back we gave him our word.
"For a fortnight M. Belmont came to see us every day. Folks say that sailors are rough and surly. He was very polite, very kind, very complaisant to Marie, so she ended by seeing him without dislike and was touched by the proofs of affection that he showed her.
"Then what was more pleasing to us was that Marie was not to be separated from us, for he meant to buy a little country place near Thouars, and so we should be able to see each other every day.
"Well, at last she got so used to seeing M. Belmont that she consented to paint his portrait. She keeps it up there in her study in the tower, where she doesn't permit any one to enter. It is as like as like can be.
"About the last of December, M. Belmont told us that he was going to Paris to buy the wedding presents, the marriage was to take place at Nantes during the month of January.
"At the end of a fortnight, M. Belmont came back with splendid things for Marie.
"Since the sad event which has separated us, I have remembered that after his return from Paris M. Belmont often seemed to be very much depressed; but he was always good and kind to us; only he insisted that instead of waiting until the first of February, the date fixed for the marriage, the wedding should take place sooner.
"We consented to this, and they were married on the seventeenth of January; it was a Friday. In the morning we signed the contract. M. Belmont settled on Marie six thousand francs a year. For folks like us it was very fine, was it not, monsieur?
"After signing the contract we went to the mairie, and then to the church, and we all came back to dinner to the country house of M. Duvallon, who was M. Belmont's best man.
"We were all seated at the table and had got as far as dessert. M. Belmont had just begun to sing some verses he had composed on his marriage, the poor dear man, when all of a sudden there arrived from Nantes one of M. Duvallon's servants. He hands a letter to his master. M. Duvallon turns pale, gets up from the table and cries out, 'Belmont! listen!' I remember that poor Belmont was singing at that moment a verse that began like this: 'Hymen waves his torch.'