60
ity for you! you will never say that to Alexander Augustus!
Monsieur Leclerc soothed this frightened, happy, incredulous little woman into quiet before very long; and if he really began to feel a true affection for her from the moment he perceived her humble and entire devotion to him, who shall blame him? Not I. If we were all heroes, who would be _valet-de-chambre_? if we were all women, who would be men? He was very good as far as he went; and if you expect the chivalries of grace out of Nature, you "may expect," as old Fuller saith. So it was peacefully settled that they should be married, with a due amount of tears and smiles on Lucinda's part, and a great deal of tender sincerity on Monsieur's. She missed her dancing-lesson next day, and when Monsieur Leclerc came in the evening he found a shade on her happy face.
"Oh, dear!" said she, as he entered.
"Oh, dear!" was Lucinda's favorite aspiration. Had she thought of it as an Anglicizing of "_O Dieu_!" perhaps she would have dropped it; but this time she went on headlong, with a valorous despair,--
"I have thought of something! I'm afraid I can't! Monsieur, aren't you a Romanist?"
"What is that?" said he, surprised.
"A Papist,--a Catholic!"
"Ah!" he returned, sighing, "once I was _bon Catholique_,--once in my gone youth; after then I was nothing but the poor man who bats for his life; now I am of the religion that shelters the stranger and binds up the broken poor."
Monsieur was a diplomatist. This melted Miss Lucinda's orthodoxy right down; she only said,--
"Then you will go to church with me?"
"And to the skies above, I pray," said Monsieur, kissing her knotty hand like a lover.
So in the earliest autumn they were married, Monsieur having previously presented Miss Lucinda with a delicate plaided gray silk for her wedding attire, in which she looked almost young; and old Israel was present at the ceremony, which was briefly performed by Parson Hyde in Miss Manners's parlor.