As for the father, he is a charming man, well educated, frank, cordial, but he likes calm and quiet above all else, and has thus contributed greatly to the mummifying of his family in order to live as he pleased in stagnant quiescence.  He reads a lot, loves to talk and is readily affected.  Lack of contact and of elbowing with the world has made his moral skin very tender and sensitive.  The slightest thing moves him, excites him, and makes him suffer.

The Chantals have limited connections carefully chosen in the neighborhood.  They also exchange two or three yearly visits with relatives who live in the distance.

As for me, I take dinner with them on the fifteenth of August and on Twelfth Night.  That is as much one of my duties as Easter communion is for a Catholic.

On the fifteenth of August a few friends are invited, but on Twelfth Night I am the only stranger.

Well, this year, as every former year, I went to the Chantals’ for my Epiphany dinner.

According to my usual custom, I kissed M. Chantal, Madame Chantal and Mademoiselle Pearl, and I made a deep bow to the Misses Louise and Pauline.  I was questioned about a thousand and one things, about what had happened on the boulevards, about politics, about how matters stood in Tong-King, and about our representatives in Parliament.  Madame Chantal, a fat lady, whose ideas always gave me the impression of being carved out square like building stones, was accustomed to exclaiming at the end of every political discussion:  “All that is seed which does not promise much for the future!” Why have I always imagined that Madame Chantal’s ideas are square?  I don’t know; but everything that she says takes that shape in my head:  a big square, with four symmetrical angles.  There are other people whose ideas always strike me as being round and rolling like a hoop.  As soon as they begin a sentence on any subject it rolls on and on, coming out in ten, twenty, fifty round ideas, large and small, which I see rolling along, one behind the other, to the end of the horizon.  Other people have pointed ideas—­but enough of this.

We sat down as usual and finished our dinner without anything out of the ordinary being said.  At dessert the Twelfth Night cake was brought on.  Now, M. Chantal had been king every year.  I don’t know whether this was the result of continued chance or a family convention, but he unfailingly found the bean in his piece of cake, and he would proclaim Madame Chantal to be queen.  Therefore, I was greatly surprised to find something very hard, which almost made me break a tooth, in a mouthful of cake.  Gently I took this thing from my mouth and I saw that it was a little porcelain doll, no bigger than a bean.  Surprise caused me to exclaim: 

“Ah!” All looked at me, and Chantal clapped his hands and cried:  “It’s Gaston!  It’s Gaston!  Long live the king!  Long live the king!”

All took up the chorus:  “Long live the king!” And I blushed to the tip of my ears, as one often does, without any reason at all, in situations which are a little foolish.  I sat there looking at my plate, with this absurd little bit of pottery in my fingers, forcing myself to laugh and not knowing what to do or say, when Chantal once more cried out:  “Now, you must choose a queen!”