Then with great emotion Mathieu, who had risen, replied in a powerful voice:  “To your health! my boy.  To the health of my son Nicolas, his wife, Lisbeth, and all who have been born from them!  And to the health of all who will follow, from generation to generation!”

And Marianne, who had likewise risen, in her turn said:  “To the health of your wives, and your daughters, your spouses and your mothers!  To the health of those who will love and produce the greatest sum of life, in order that the greatest possible sum of happiness may follow!”

Then, the banquet ended, they quitted the table and spread freely over the lawn.  There was a last ovation around Mathieu and Marianne, who were encompassed by their eager offspring.  At one and the same time a score of arms were outstretched, carrying children, whose fair or dark heads they were asked to kiss.  Aged as they were, returning to a divine state of childhood, they did not always recognize those little lads and lasses.  They made mistakes, used wrong names, fancied that one child was another.  Laughter thereupon arose, the mistakes were rectified, and appeals were made to the old people’s memory.  They likewise laughed, the errors were amusing, but it mattered little if they no longer remembered a name, the child at any rate belonged to the harvest that had sprung from them.

Then there were certain granddaughters and great-granddaughters whom they themselves summoned and kissed by way of bringing good luck to the babes that were expected, the children of their children’s children, the race which would ever spread and perpetuate them through the far-off ages.  And there were mothers, also, who were nursing, mothers whose little ones, after sleeping quietly during the feast, had now awakened, shrieking their hunger aloud.  These had to be fed, and the mothers merrily seated themselves together under the trees and gave them the breast in all serenity.  Therein lay the royal beauty of woman, wife and mother; fruitful maternity triumphed over virginity by which life is slain.  Ah! might manners and customs change, might the idea of morality and the idea of beauty be altered, and the world recast, based on the triumphant beauty of the mother suckling her babe in all the majesty of her symbolism!  From fresh sowings there ever came fresh harvests, the sun ever rose anew above the horizon, and milk streamed forth endlessly like the eternal sap of living humanity.  And that river of milk carried life through the veins of the world, and expanded and overflowed for the centuries of the future.

The greatest possible sum of life in order that the greatest possible happiness might result:  that was the act of faith in life, the act of hope in the justice and goodness of life’s work.  Victorious fruitfulness remained the one true force, the sovereign power which alone moulded the future.  She was the great revolutionary, the incessant artisan of progress, the mother of every civilization, ever re-creating