s satisfaction of their
appetites, had consumed themselves too quickly. Louiset, dead in
infancy; Jacques Louis, a half imbecile, carried off by a nervous
disease; Victor returned to the savage state, wandering about in who
knows what dark places; our poor Charles, so beautiful and so frail;
these are the latest branches of the tree, the last pale offshoots into
which the puissant sap of the larger branches seems to have been unable
to mount. The worm was in the trunk, it has ascended into the fruit, and
is devouring it. But one must never despair; families are a continual
growth. They go back beyond the common ancestor, into the unfathomable
strata of the races that have lived, to the first being; and they
will put forth new shoots without end, they will spread and ramify to
infinity, through future ages. Look at our tree; it counts only five
generations. It has not so much importance as a blade of grass, even,
in the human forest, vast and dark, of which the peoples are the great
secular oaks. Think only of the immense roots which spread through the
soil; think of the continual putting forth of new leaves above, which
mingle with other leaves of the ever-rolling sea of treetops, at the
fructifying, eternal breath of life. Well, hope lies there, in the daily
reconstruction of the race by the new blood which comes from without.
Each marriage brings other elements, good or bad, of which the effect
is, however, to prevent certain and progressive regeneration.
Breaches are repaired, faults effaced, an equilibrium is inevitably
re-established at the end of a few generations, and it is the average
man that always results; vague humanity, obstinately pursuing its
mysterious labor, marching toward its unknown end."

He paused, and heaved a deep sigh.

"Ah! our family, what is it going to become; in what being will it
finally end?"

He continued, not now taking into account the survivors whom he had just
named; having classified these, he knew what they were capable of, but
he was full of keen curiosity regarding the children who were
still infants. He had written to a _confrere_ in Noumea for precise
information regarding the wife whom Etienne had lately married there,
and the child which she had had, but he had heard nothing, and he feared
greatly that on that side the tree would remain incomplete. He was more
fully furnished with documents regarding the two children of Octave
Mouret, with whom he continued to correspond;