“You wish?”
“Pray, Monsieur le Cure, embrace me, too.”
The old priest kissed her paternally on both cheeks, and then Bettina continued:
“You have often told me, Monsieur le Cure, that Jean was almost like your own son, and I shall be almost like your own daughter, shall I not? So you will have two children, that is all.”
...........................
A month after, on the 12th of September, at mid-day, Bettina, in the simplest of wedding-gowns, entered the church of Longueval, while, placed behind the altar, the trumpets of the 9th Artillery rang joyously through the arches of the old church.
Nancy Turner had begged for the honor of playing the organ on this solemn occasion, for the poor little harmonium had disappeared; an organ, with resplendent pipes, rose in the gallery of the church—it was Miss Percival’s wedding present to the Abbe Constantin.
The old Cure said mass, Jean and Bettina knelt before him, he pronounced the benediction, and then remained for some moments in prayer, his arms extended, calling down, with his whole soul, the blessings of Heaven on his two children.
Then floated from the organ the same reverie of Chopin’s which Bettina had played the first time that she had entered that little village church, where was to be consecrated the happiness of her life.
And this time it was Bettina who wept.