ht.

Leaning against that giant tree Mathieu and Marianne became merged in
its sovereign glory and majesty, and was not their royalty akin to
its own? Had they not begotten as many beings as the tree had begotten
branches? Did they not reign there over a nation of their children, who
lived by them, even as the leaves above lived by the tree? The three
hundred big and little ones seated around them were but a prolongation
of themselves; they belonged to the same tree of life, they had sprung
from their love and still clung to them by every fibre. Mathieu and
Marianne divined how joyous they all were at glorifying themselves in
making much of them; how moved the elder ones, how turbulently merry the
younger felt. They could hear their own hearts beating in the breasts of
the fair-haired urchins who already laughed with ecstasy at the sight of
the cakes and pastry on the table. And their work of human creation was
assembled in front of them and within them, in the same way as the
oak's huge dome spread out above it; and all around they were likewise
encompassed by the fruitfulness of their other work, the fertility and
growth of nature which had increased even as they themselves multiplied.

Then was the true beauty which had its abode in Mathieu and Marianne
made manifest, that beauty of having loved one another for seventy years
and of still worshipping one another now even as on the first day. For
seventy years had they trod life's pathway side by side and arm in arm,
without a quarrel, without ever a deed of unfaithfulness. They could
certainly recall great sorrows, but these had always come from without.
And if they had sometimes sobbed they had consoled one another by
mingling their tears. Under their white locks they had retained the
faith of their early days, their hearts remained blended, merged one
into the other, even as on the morrow of their marriage, each having
then been freely given and never taken back. In them the power of love,
the will of action, the divine desire whose flame creates worlds, had
happily met and united. He, adoring his wife, had known no other
joy than the passion of creation, looking on the work that had to
be performed and the work that was accomplished as the sole why and
wherefore of his being, his duty and his reward. She, adoring her
husband, had simply striven to be a true companion, spouse, mother,
and good counsellor, one who was endowed with delicacy of judgment and
helped to