But if the dear departed yonder slept in deepest silence, how gay was the uproar and how great the victory of life that morning along the roads which led to Chantebled!  The number of those who were born surpassed that of those who died.  From each that departed, a whole florescence of living beings seemed to blossom forth.  They sprang up in dozens from the ground where their forerunners had laid themselves to sleep when weary of their work.  And they flocked to Chantebled from every side, even as swallows return at spring to revivify their old nests, filling the blue sky with the joy of their return.  Outside the farm, vehicles were ever setting down fresh families with troops of children, whose sea of fair heads was always expanding.  Great-grandfathers with snowy hair came leading little ones who could scarcely toddle.  There were very nice-looking old ladies whom young girls of dazzling freshness assisted to alight.  There were mothers expecting the arrival of other babes, and fathers to whom the charming idea had occurred of inviting their daughters’ affianced lovers.  And they were all related, they had all sprung from a common ancestry, they were all mingled in an inextricable tangle, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers-in-law, mothers-in-law, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, and cousins, of every possible degree, down to the fourth generation.  And they were all one family; one sole little nation, assembling in joy and pride to celebrate that diamond wedding, the rare prodigious nuptials of two heroic creatures whom life had glorified and from whom all had sprung!  And what an epic, what a Biblical numbering of that people suggested itself!  How even name all those who entered the farm, how simply set forth their names, their ages, their degree of relationship, the health, the strength, and the hope that they had brought into the world!

Before everybody else there were those of the farm itself, all those who had been born and who had grown up there.  Gervais, now sixty-two, was helped by his two eldest sons, Leon and Henri, who between them had ten children; while his three daughters, Mathilde, Leontine, and Julienne, who were married in the district, in like way numbered between them twelve.  Then Frederic, Claire’s husband, who was five years older than Gervais, had surrendered his post as a faithful lieutenant to his son Joseph, while his daughters Angele and Lucille, as well as a second son Jules, also helped on the farm, the four supplying a troop of fifteen children, some of them boys and some girls.

Then, of all those who came from without, the mill claimed the first place.  Therese, Gregoire’s widow, arrived with her offspring, her son Robert, who now managed the mill under her control, and her three daughters, Genevieve, Aline, and Natalie, followed by quite a train of children, ten belonging to the daughters and four to Robert.  Next came Louise, notary Mazaud’s wife, and Madeleine, architect