preserved portrait representing him at the age of
seven-and-twenty when he had begun the conquest of Chantebled.

Mathieu, for his part, rose, trembling, while Marianne smiled divinely,
for she understood the truth before all the others.

"Who are you, my child?" asked Mathieu, "you, who call me grandfather,
and who resemble me as if you were my brother?"

"I am Dominique, the eldest son of your son Nicolas, who lives with my
mother, Lisbeth, in the vast free country yonder, the other France!"

"And how old are you?"

"I shall be seven-and-twenty next August, when, yonder, the waters of
the Niger, the good giant, come back to fertilize our spreading fields."

"And tell us, are you married, have you any children?"

"I have taken for my wife a French woman, born in Senegal, and in the
brick house which I have built, four children are already growing up
under the flaming sun of the Soudan."

"And tell us also, have you any brothers, any sisters?"

"My father, Nicolas, and Lisbeth, my mother, have had eighteen children,
two of whom are dead. We are sixteen, nine boys and seven girls."

At this Mathieu laughed gayly, as if to say that his son Nicolas at
fifty years of age had already proved a more valiant artisan of life
than himself.

"Well then, my boy," he said, "since you are the son of my son Nicolas,
come and embrace us to celebrate our wedding. And a cover shall be
placed for you; you are at home here."

In four strides Dominique made the round of the tables, then cast his
strong arms about the old people and embraced them--they the while
feeling faint with happy emotion, so delightful was that surprise, yet
another child falling among them, and on that day, as from some distant
sky, and telling them of the other family, the other nation which
had sprung from them, and which was swarming yonder with increase of
fruitfulness amid the fiery glow of the tropics.

That surprise was due to the sly craft of Ambroise, who merrily
explained how he had prepared it like a masterly coup de theatre. For
a week past he had been lodging and hiding Dominique in his house in
Paris; the young man having been sent from the Soudan by his father to
negotiate certain business matters, and in particular to order of Denis
a quantity of special agricultural machinery adapted to the soil of
that far-away region. Thus Denis alone had been taken into the other's
confidence.

When all those seated at the table saw Dominique in th