"Eh bien! Eh bien!" he exclaimed as he burst into my den, his keen eyes shining. "It is too good to be true—and not a word to us about it until now! Ah, les rosses! Ah, les rosses!" he repeated with a broad grin of delight as he eagerly read Tanrade's letter, telling him that the banns were published; that he was to marry them in the little gray church with the new bells and that but ten days remained before the wedding. He began pacing the floor, his hands clasped behind him—a habit he had when he was very happy.
"And Suzette?" I asked, "has she told you?"
"Yes," he returned with a nod. "She is a good child—she deserves to be happy." Then he stopped and inquired seriously—"What will you do without her?"
"One must not be selfish," I replied with a helpless shrug. "Suzette has earned it—so has Tanrade. It was his unfinished opera that was in the way: Alice was clever."
He crossed to where I stood and laid his hand on my shoulder, and though he did not open his lips I knew what was passing in his mind.
"Charity to all," he said softly at length. "It is so good to make others happy! Courage, mon petit—the price we pay for love, devotion—friendship, is always a heavy one." Suddenly his face lighted up. "Have you any idea?" he exclaimed, "how much there is to do and how little time to do it in? Let us prepare!"
And thus began the busiest week the house abandoned had ever known, beginning with the curé and I restocking the garret with dry wood while Suzette worked ferociously at house cleaning, and every detail of the wedding breakfast was planned and arranged for—no easy problem in my lost village in midwinter. If there was a good fish to be had out of the sea we knew we could rely on Marianne to get it. Even the old fisherman, Varnet, went off with fresh courage in search for clams and good Madame Vinet opened her heart and her wine cellar.
It was the curé who knew well a certain dozen of rare burgundy that had lain snug beneath the stairs of Madame Vinet's small café—a vintage the good soul had come into possession of the first year of her own marriage and which she ceded to me for the ridiculously low price of twenty sous the bottle, precisely what it had cost her in her youth.
It is over, and I am alone by my fire.