He had shown an unusual deference to
the Italian, however, throughout the whole of their short intercourse, and
on no occasion was it less equivocal, than in the promptness with which he
received the present hint. The prisoners and officers were commanded to
stand aside, but so near as to remain beneath his eye, while some of the
officials of the abbaye were ordered to give notice to the train, which
awaited these arrangements in silent wonder, that it might now approach.
Chapter XVIII.
Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense
Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such;
Say, here he gives too little, there too much;
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
And say, if man's unhappy, God's unjust.
Pope.
It is unnecessary to repeat the list of characters that acted the
different parts in the train of the village nuptials. All were there at
the close of the ceremonies, as they had appeared earlier in the day, and
as the last of the legal forms of the marriage was actually to take place
in presence of the bailiff, preparatory to the more solemn rites of the
church, the throng yielded to its curiosity, breaking through the line of
those who were stationed to restrain its inroads, and pressing about the
foot of the estrade in the stronger interest which reality is known to
possess over fiction.
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