By adding to the above
those who had married into the family as husbands and wives they would be
three hundred in number. And where at the farm could they find a room
large enough for the huge table of the patriarchal feast that they dreamt
of? The anniversary fell on June 2, and the spring that year was one of
incomparable mildness and beauty. So they decided that they would lunch
out of doors, and place the tables in front of the old pavilion, on the
large lawn, enclosed by curtains of superb elms and hornbeams, which gave
the spot the aspect of a huge hall of verdure. There they would be at
home, on the very breast of the beneficent earth, under the central and
now gigantic oak, planted by the two ancestors, whose blessed
fruitfulness the whole swarming progeny was about to celebrate.
Thus the festival was settled and organized amid a great impulse of love
and joy. All were eager to take part in it, all hastened to the triumphal
gathering, from the white-haired old men to the urchins who still sucked
their thumbs. And the broad blue sky and the flaming sun were bent on
participating in it also, as well as the whole estate, the streaming
springs and the fields in flower, giving promise of bounteous harvests.
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