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 Herbette's wife,
followed by Dr. Chambouvet, who had lost his wife, the good Marguerite.
And here again were three valiant companies; in the first, four
daughters, of whom Colette was the eldest; in the second, five sons with
Hilary at the head of them; and in the third, a son and daughter only,
Sebastien and Christine; the whole, however, forming quite an army, for
there were twenty of Mathieu's great-grandchildren in the rear.

But Paris arrived on the scene with Denis and his wife Marthe,
who headed a grand cortege. Denis, now nearly seventy, and a
great-grandfather through his daughters Hortense and Marcelle, had
enjoyed the happy rest which follows accomplished labor ever since he
had handed his works over to his eldest sons Lucien and Paul, who were
both men of more than forty, and whose own sons were already on the road
to every sort of fortune. And what with the mother and father, the four
children, the fifteen grandchildren, and the three great-grandchildren,
two of whom were yet in swaddling clothes, this was really an invading
tribe packed into five vehicles.

Then the final entry was that of the little nation which had sprung from
Ambroise, who to his great grief had early lost his wif