“It’s classée,” the priest sighed, meaning classified as a historical monument and thus protected by the government. “If you take my advice, you’ll never get a church classée. Afterward, you can’t do anything. And you have to get a special architect, who costs four times as much. He tells you what to do, which is pretty much nothing, and that nothing costs, naturally, four times as much. The mayor wanted to lay stones here.” He gestured to the gravelly bit between the church and the roadway. “Eh, ben, the architect wouldn’t let her because he said we had to spend our money on more important things first. And you saw those pews in there?”

Those wonderful pews, that Claudine coveted. “Oh, yes,” she said, her eyes wide with awe.

“Well, the government won’t let us replace them. It says this is one of the very few churches still to have them.”

“They are very rare,” Claudine couldn’t help saying. I could see the hair standing up on her arms at the thought of their destruction.

“That may be,” the curé grumbled. “But they’re very uncomfortable. Never get a church classée.”

Neither of the other two churches were classées, the curé having learned his lesson, but each had its own beauty. The second one, thirteenth century, was approached through two matching rows of cypress. The last, St. Remiel, was the youngest of the three at a sprightly fourteenth century. We entered St. Remiel through a great vault of a door; inside it, pale off-white stone soared upward, lending a magical luminosity to the church that none of the others had. Joyful gold filigree etched the dark wood altar. A general air of dilapidation and lack of restoration funds only added to the magic of the place. I could see our wedding here. I had grown up in redneck Georgia and would be confirming my marriage to Sébastien in a church three times the age of my country. Everyone else concurred. This was the spot.

We had such a quaint, kindly, old priest, too. “Why did you tell him you were baptized?” I asked Sébastien indignantly as soon as we were in the car again. “You lied to a priest when I was standing right next to you! Lightning travels, you know.”

“So that he would perform the ceremony,” Sébastien said, in a tone that suggested I was remarkably dense.

“He would perform the ceremony anyway! The Catholic Church allows mixed marriages now.”

Sébastien and Claudine exchanged glances. “The American Catholic Church must have different rules from the French one,” Claudine said, puzzled. “You can’t do that kind of thing here.”

“No, it doesn’t have different rules!” I said indignantly. “You’re thinking of the way the church was when you were little.”

“No,” Claudine said. “I’m thinking of it as it is right now.”