Thus the festival was settled and organized amid a great impulse of love and joy.  All were eager to take part in it, all hastened to the triumphal gathering, from the white-haired old men to the urchins who still sucked their thumbs.  And the broad blue sky and the flaming sun were bent on participating in it also, as well as the whole estate, the streaming springs and the fields in flower, giving promise of bounteous harvests.  Magnificent looked the huge horseshoe table set out amid the grass, with handsome china and snowy cloths which the sunbeams flecked athwart the foliage.  The august pair, the father and mother, were to sit side by side, in the centre, under the oak tree.  It was decided also that the other couples should not be separated, that it would be charming to place them side by side according to the generation they belonged to.  But as for the young folks, the youths and maidens, the urchins and the little girls, they, it was thought, might well be left to seat themselves as their fancy listed.

Early in the morning those bidden to the feast began to arrive in bands; the dispersed family returned to the common nest, swooping down upon it from the four points of the compass.  But alas! death’s scythe had been at work, and there were many who could not come.  Departed ones slept, each year more numerous, in the peaceful, flowery, Janville cemetery.  Near Rose and Blaise, who had been the first to depart, others had gone thither to sleep the eternal sleep, each time carrying away a little more of the family’s heart, and making of that sacred spot a place of worship and eternal souvenir.  First Charlotte, after long illness, had joined Blaise, happy in leaving Berthe to replace her beside Mathieu and Marianne, who were heart-stricken by her death, as if indeed they were for the second time losing their dear son.  Afterwards their daughter Claire had likewise departed from them, leaving the farm to her husband Frederic and her brother Gervais, who likewise had become a widower during the ensuing year.  Then, too, Mathieu and Marianne had lost their son Gregoire, the master of the mill, whose widow Therese still ruled there amid a numerous progeny.  And again they had to mourn another of their daughters, the kind-hearted Marguerite, Dr. Chambouvet’s wife, who sickened and died, through having sheltered a poor workman’s little children, who were affected with croup.  And the other losses could no longer be counted among them were some who had married into the family, wives and husbands, and there were in particular many children, the tithe that death always exacts, those who are struck down by the storms which sweep over the human crop, all the dear little ones for whom the living weep, and who sanctify the ground in which they rest.