farm sang from every corner. In the evening,
Pierre invented games and related stories of his regiment. On Sunday
Agathe made cakes for the girls. Marie knew some canticles, which she
sang like a chorister. She looked like a saint, with her blond hair
falling on her neck and her hands folded on her apron.

I had built another story on the house when Aimee had married Cyprien;
and I said laughingly that I would have to build another after the
wedding of Veronique and Gaspard. We never cared to leave each other. We
would sooner have built a city behind the farm, in our enclosure. When
families are united, it is so good to live and die where one has grown
up!

The month of May had been magnificent that year. It was long since the
crops gave such good promise. That day precisely, I had made a tour of
inspection with my son, Jacques. We started at about three o'clock. Our
meadows on the banks of the Garonne were of a tender green. The grass
was three feet high, and an osier thicket, planted the year before,
had sprouts a yard high. From there we went to visit our wheat and our
vines, fields bought one by one as fortune came to us. The wheat was
growing strong; the vines, in full flower, promised a superb vintage.
And Jacques laughed his good laugh as he slapped me on the shoulder.

"Well, father, we shall never want for bread nor for wine. You must be
a friend of the Divine Power to have silver showered upon your land in
this way."

We often joked among ourselves of our past poverty. Jacques was right. I
must have gained the friendship of some saint or of God himself, for all
the luck in the country was for us. When it hailed the hail ceased on
the border of our fields. If the vines of our neighbors fell sick, ours
seemed to have a wall of protection around them. And in the end I grew
to consider it only just. Never doing harm to any one, I thought that
happiness was my due.

As we approached the house, Rose gesticulated, calling out:

"Hurry up!"

One of our cows had just had a calf, and everybody was excited. The
birth of that little beast seemed one more blessing. We had been obliged
recently to enlarge the stables, where we had nearly one hundred head of
animals--cows and sheep, without counting the horses.

"Well, a good day's work!" I cried. "We will drink to-night a bottle of
ripened wine."

Meanwhile, Rose took us aside and told us that Gaspard, Veronique's
betrothed, had come to arrange the day for the we