Yes, Zosephine sees the whole bright scene over again whenever that strain sounds. [Music] It was fine from first to last! The ball closed with the bride's dance. Many a daughter Madame Sosthene had waltzed that farewell measure with, and now Zosephine was the last. So they danced it, they two, all the crowd looking on: the one so young and lost in self, the other so full of years and lost to self; eddying round and round each other in this last bright embrace before they part, the mother to swing back into still water, the child to enter the current of a new life. And then came the wedding supper! At one end of the long table the bride and groom sat side by side, and at their left and right the wedding singers stood and sang. In each corner of the room there was a barrel of roasted sweet potatoes. How everybody ate, that night! Rice! beef-balls! pass them here! pass them there! help yourself! reach them with a fork! _des riz! des boulettes!_ more down this way! pass them over heads! _des riz! des boulettes!_ And the anisette!--bad whiskey and oil of anise--never mind that; pour, fill, empty, fill again! Don't take too much--and make sure not to take too little! How merrily all went on! How gay was Zosephine! "Does she know that Bonaventure, too, has come back?" the young maidens whisper, one to another; for the news was afloat. "Oh, yes, of course; some one had to let it slip. But if it makes any difference, she is only brighter and prettier than before. I tell you--it seems strange, but I believe, now, she never cared for anybody but 'Thanase. When she heard Bonaventure had come back, she only let one little flash out of her eyes at the fool who told her, then said it was the best news that could be, and has been as serene as the picture of a saint ever since." The serenity of the bride might have been less perfect, and the one flash of her eyes might have been two, had she known what the cure was that minute saying to the returned wanderer, with the youth's head pressed upon his bosom, in the seclusion of his own chamber: "It is all for the best, Bonaventure. It is not possible that thou shouldst see it so now, but thou shalt hereafter. It is best this way." And the tears rolled silently down his cheek as the weary head in his bosom murmured back: "It is best. It is best." The cure could only press him closer then. It was much more than a year afterward when he for the first time ventured to add: