"The church is now half full of water."
"Must I first bail out the church?"
"I draw the line there, monsieur the colonel. You are a prevailing man. You will doubtless wind me around your thumb as you do the Indians. But when I am married, I will be married in church, and sign the register in the old way. What, monsieur, do you think the water will never go down?"
"It will go down, yes, and the common fields will be the better for it. But it is hard a man should have to watch a rivergauge to find out the date of his own wedding."
"Yet one would rather do that than never have a wedding at all."
"I kiss your hand on that, mademoiselle."
"What are those little rings around the base of the trees, monsieur the colonel?"
"They are marks which show that the water is already falling. It must be two inches lower than last night on the Church of the Immaculate Conception. I am one sixth of a foot on my way toward matrimony."
A tent like a white blossom showed through the woods; then many more. The bluffs all about Pierre Menard's house were dotted with them. Boats could be seen coming back from the town, full of people. Two or three sails were tacking northward on that smooth and glistening fresh-water sea. Music came across it, meeting the rising sun; the nuns sang their matin service as they were rowed.
Angélique closed her eyes over tears. It seemed to her like floating into the next world,—in music, in soft shadow, in keen rapture,—seeing the light on the hills beyond while her beloved held her by the hand.