And they were all one
family; one sole little nation, assembling in joy and pride to celebrate
that diamond wedding, the rare prodigious nuptials of two heroic
creatures whom life had glorified and from whom all had sprung! And what
an epic, what a Biblical numbering of that people suggested itself! How
even name all those who entered the farm, how simply set forth their
names, their ages, their degree of relationship, the health, the
strength, and the hope that they had brought into the world!
Before everybody else there were those of the farm itself, all those who
had been born and who had grown up there. Gervais, now sixty-two, was
helped by his two eldest sons, Leon and Henri, who between them had ten
children; while his three daughters, Mathilde, Leontine, and Julienne,
who were married in the district, in like way numbered between them
twelve. Then Frederic, Claire's husband, who was five years older than
Gervais, had surrendered his post as a faithful lieutenant to his son
Joseph, while his daughters Angele and Lucille, as well as a second son
Jules, also helped on the farm, the four supplying a troop of fifteen
children, some of them boys and some girls.
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