An hour later, Baby sat in Amélie's lap. She had given him milk and soup and he was covering her face with kisses,--this child whom she loved more than ever since renouncing for him what was dearer to her than life. Suddenly the doors were thrown wide open and the Duchess entered accompanied by the two liveried attendants, bearing handsome clothes, jewels and laces. Amélie did not raise her eyes. Two girls, the maid-servants who had been so curious to see her, approached eagerly and began to deck the bride. They fastened a velvet petticoat beneath an embroidered silk jacket and pinned the veil and flowers in her beautiful hair. Soon she was transformed into a lovely Breton bride. Then the Duchess summoned Jean Vilon, who, in gala costume, a spray of wild flowers on his breast tied with many colored ribbons, made a brilliant handsome picture. He was pale, ecstatic, scarcely sensible of what was in preparation. Things had happened in so bewildering a manner that he could not co-ordinate his thoughts; he remembered that the Duchess had unexpectedly arrived and imposed her authority as René's mother to force entrance into the castle; then she had ordered him in her son's name to prepare to marry the girl above, who was under the family's special protection, adding that her misfortunes were the consequence of being abandoned by a man who had betrayed her. Jean, tho wild with joy, hesitated and the Duchess added that Amélie came from his class and was unconnected with the de Brezé family. "Be a good husband to her, Jean, and you will lack nothing. Be a good father to the child, and I will give you the Plouret farm." O what did the farm matter to him! He trembled in a rapture of love. The husband of Amélie! He enveloped her now in a glance that was a wave of flame and then, intimidated by the prize he longed to grasp, he turned interrogating eyes upon the Duchess. At length they went into the chapel. Two tenants of the de Brezés served as witnesses. The altar was adorned with gorgeous pots, holding paper flowers, and the chaplain stood ready to perform the ceremony. The two serving-maids pressed near the bride, according to the custom of Breton girls, in eagerness to touch her so as to hasten their own marriage. Amélie seemed more a statue than an animate body. She recalled René's words: "In Picmort are the tombs of my ancestors, the ashes of my fathers; in Picmort I was baptized; in Picmort we shall receive heaven's blessing on our union." Since living in the castle she had often pictured their marriage in that chapel. She gazed on the long row of sepulchral arches to right and left and on the tombs with slabs supporting the prone forms of Crusader-paladins, hands crossed on breast; on the superb crucifix surmounting the altar; on the colored oblong windows. This was the chapel in which she was to have been united to René de Giac, but there stood now at her side a peasant, a rustic, a servant of the House of Brezé.