The social task was accomplished, bread was won,
subsistence had been created, drawn from the nothingness of barren soil.
And on what a lovely and well-loved spot did their happy, grateful race
offer them that festival! Those elms and hornbeams, which made the lawn a
great hall of greenery, had been planted by themselves; they had seen
them growing day by day like the most peaceable and most sturdy of their
children. And in particular that oak, now so gigantic, thanks to the
clear waters of the adjoining basin through which one of the sources ever
streamed, was their own big son, one that dated from the day when they
had founded Chantebled, he, Mathieu, digging the hole and she, Marianne,
holding the sapling erect. And now, as that tree stood there, shading
them with its expanse of verdure, was it not like some royal symbol of
the whole family? Like that oak the family had grown and multiplied, ever
throwing out fresh branches which spread far over the ground; and like
that oak it now formed by itself a perfect forest sprung from a single
trunk, vivified by the same sap, strong in the same health, and full of
song, and breeziness, and sunlight.
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