Another spring passed and another year went by, and the little home under the sycamores was still no less honest in its labours or bright in its rest.  It was one among a million of such homes in France, where a sunny temper made mirth with a meal of herbs, and filial love touched to poetry the prose of daily household tasks.

A child was born to Margot in the springtime with the violets and daisies, and Reine Allix was proud of the fourth generation, and, as she caressed the boy’s healthy, fair limbs, thought that God was indeed good to her, and that her race would live long in the place of her birth.  The child resembled Bernadou, and had his clear, candid eyes.  It soon learned to know the voice of “gran’mere,” and would turn from its young mother’s bosom to stretch its arms to Reine Allix.  It grew fair and strong, and all the ensuing winter passed its hours curled like a dormouse or playing like a puppy at her feet in the chimney-corner.  Another spring and summer came, and the boy was more than a year old, with curls of gold, and cheeks like apples, and a mouth that always smiled.  He could talk a little, and tumbled like a young rabbit among the flowering grasses.  Reine Allix watched him, and her eyes filled.  “God is too good,” she thought.  She feared that she should scarce be so willing to go to her last sleep under the trees on the hillside as she used to be.  She could not help a desire to see this child, this second Bernadou, grow up to youth and manhood; and of this she knew it was wild to dream.

It was ripe midsummer.  The fields were all russet and amber with an abundance of corn.  The little gardens had seldom yielded so rich a produce.  The cattle and the flocks were in excellent health.  There had never been a season of greater promise and prosperity for the little traffic that the village and its farms drove in sending milk and sheep and vegetable wealth to that great city which was to it as a dim, wonderful, mystic name without meaning.

One evening in this gracious and golden time the people sat out as usual when the day was done, talking from door to door, the old women knitting or spinning, the younger ones mending their husbands’ or brothers’ blouses or the little blue shirts of their infants, the children playing with the dogs on the sward that edged the stones of the street, and above all the great calm heavens and the glow of the sun that had set.

Reine Allix, like the others, sat before the door, for once doing nothing, but with folded hands and bended head dreamily taking pleasure in the coolness that had come with evening, and the smell of the limes that were in blossom, and the blithe chatter of Margot with the neighbours.  Bernadou was close beside them, watering and weeding those flowers that were at once his pride and his recreation, making the face of his dwelling bright and the air around it full of fragrance.

The little street was quiet in the evening light, only the laughter of the children and the gay gossip of their mothers breaking the pleasant stillness; it had been thus at evening with the Berceau centuries before their time; they thought that it would thus likewise be when the centuries should have seen the youngest-born there in his grave.