he fields spread out
with wondrous fertility under the sun's farewell, proclaiming the
battles, the heroic creative labor of their lives. There was their work,
there was what they had produced, whether in the realm of animate or
inanimate nature, thanks to the power of love within them, and their
energy of will. By love, and resolution, and action, they had created a
world.

"Look, look!" murmured Mathieu, waving his arm, "all that has sprung
from us, and we must continue to love, we must continue to be happy, in
order that it may all live."

"Ah!" Marianne gayly replied, "it will live forever now, since we have
all become reconciled and united amid our victory."

Victory! yes, it was the natural, necessary victory that is reaped by
the numerous family! Thanks to numbers they had ended by invading every
sphere and possessing everything. Fruitfulness was the invincible,
sovereign conqueress. Yet their conquest had not been meditated and
planned; ever serenely loyal in their dealings with others, they owed
it simply to the fulfilment of duty throughout their long years of toil.
And they now stood before it hand in hand, like heroic figures, glorious
because they had ever been good and strong, because they had created
abundantly, because they had given abundance of joy, and health, and
hope to the world amid all the everlasting struggles and the everlasting
tears.

XXIII

AND Mathieu and Marianne lived more than a score of years longer, and
Mathieu was ninety years old and Marianne eighty-seven, when their
three eldest sons, Denis, Ambroise, and Gervais, ever erect beside them,
planned that they would celebrate their diamond wedding, the seventieth
anniversary of their marriage, by a fete at which they would assemble
all the members of the family at Chantebled.

It was no little affair. When they had drawn up a complete list, they
found that one hundred and fifty-eight children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren had sprung from Mathieu and Marianne, without
counting a few little ones of a fourth generation. By adding to the
above those who had married into the family as husbands and wives they
would be three hundred in number. And where at the farm could they find
a room large enough for the huge table of the patriarchal feast that
they dreamt of? The anniversary fell on June 2, and the spring that year
was one of incomparable mildness and beauty. So they decided that they
would lunch out of doors, and p