Marie returned to the salon leaning on the arm of the venerable old man. A deep and secret emotion brought her to the arms of her lover more brilliant than on any of her past days, for a serenity like that which painters give to the martyrs added to her face an imposing dignity. She held out her hand to the marquis and together they advanced to the altar and knelt down. The marriage was about to be celebrated beside the nuptial bed, the altar hastily raised, the cross, the vessels, the chalice, secretly brought thither by the priest, the fumes of incense rising to the ceiling, the priest himself, who wore a stole above his cassock, the tapers on an altar in a salon,--all these things combined to form a strange and touching scene, which typified those times of saddest memory, when civil discord overthrew all sacred institutions. Religious ceremonies then had the savor of the mysteries. Children were baptized in the chambers where the mothers were still groaning from their labor. As in the olden time, the Saviour went, poor and lowly, to console the dying. Young girls received their first communion in the home where they had played since infancy. The marriage of the marquis and Mademoiselle de Verneuil was now solemnized, like many other unions, by a service contrary to the recent legal enactments. In after years these marriages, mostly celebrated at the foot of oaks, were scrupulously recognized and considered legal. The priest who thus preserved the ancient usages was one of those men who hold to their principles in the height of the storm. His voice, which never made the oath exacted by the Republic, uttered no word throughout the tempest that did not make for peace. He never incited, like the Abbe Gudin, to fire and sword; but like many others, he devoted himself to the still more dangerous mission of performing his priestly functions for the souls of faithful Catholics. To accomplish this perilous ministry he used all the pious deceptions necessitated by persecution, and the marquis, when he sought his services on this occasion, had found him in one of those excavated caverns which are known, even to the present day, by the name of “the priest’s hiding-place.” The mere sight of that pale and suffering face was enough to give this worldly room a holy aspect. All was now ready for the act of misery and of joy. Before beginning the ceremony the priest asked, in the dead silence, the names of the bride. “Marie-Nathalie, daughter of Mademoiselle Blanche de Casteran, abbess, deceased, of Notre-Dame de Seez, and Victor-Amedee, Duc de Verneuil.” “Where born?” “At La Chasterie, near Alencon.” “I never supposed,” said the baron in a low voice to the count, “that Montauran would have the folly to marry her. The natural daughter of a duke!--horrid!”