"Monsieur and Madame Dubois!" I said, in some excitement.
"Yes; do you know them?" asked Josef, curiously.
"I am not sure. I may have met them; I met a Monsieur and Madame Dubois once at Chantilly near Paris," I answered carelessly, "but very likely they are not the same."
"No, they could not be," answered Josef, "for they were married only just before leaving for America."
And then there was no chance to say anything more, for our end of the procession was nearing the church door, where on either side stood Mademoiselle Chouteau and Pelagie, holding out their silver plates already piled high with livres.
As I glanced at Pelagie I felt as if royalty radiated from her—from the proud pose of her dainty head to the high-bred arch of her little foot. "A princess of Condé!" I exclaimed to myself half angrily, "and meekly holding the church plate for negroes and Indians and humble habitans, and smiling up into the faces of her old friends with a royal sweetness."
I was on the side next her as we drew near the door. Will she look at me? I wondered. We were the last in the line; it would hinder no one if I stopped a moment beside her.
But I could not make her look up at me. One louis d'or after another I piled upon her plate, but the only effect it had was to make it tremble in her hands and the color deepen steadily in her face. I could not stand there gazing rudely at her, and I went into the church beside Josef Papin as in a dream, half doubting it was mademoiselle, yet watching her eagerly as she and Mademoiselle Chouteau bore the plates up the aisle and held them aloft before the altar for the priest to bless.
The service that followed was indescribably solemn and touched me greatly; it was as though it were a service for the dead, and the people (the whole village was there, every man, woman, and child I had known the year before) chanted the responses with the tears running down their cheeks. Josef Papin had told me that the old priest who had baptized all the younger generation and married their parents was going away with the Spaniards, unwilling to be subject to a foreign rule, and the mourning of the people for their father was from the heart.
As they knelt upon the floor to receive the benediction (and the sound of their kneeling was like the breeze among the dry leaves of autumn) they broke out into a long, low wail that rose and swelled and then died away in the sound of suppressed sobbing. Nevermore under Latin rule would they kneel in their dear old church, but under the rule of the hated Anglo-Saxons, their hereditary foe. Nevermore would the priest they had loved and reverenced for years extend his hands over them in blessing. The good father's voice broke again and again as he tried in vain to utter the familiar words, until at length, his hands upraised to heaven, tears streaming from his eyes, he uttered the simple words, "Go in peace, my children."