Now we sit down at the table, Yves, Marie, little Corentine, little Pierre and I, round the spotless white cloth on which the dinner has been placed. And Yves, my brother Yves, becomes self-conscious and nervous all at once in his rôle of master of the house. And so it is I who have to carve, and, as it is the first time in my life, I get a little confused too. At this dinner, I eat to please them; but this great happiness which I feel here near me and of which in some small measure I am the cause, this deep gratitude which surrounds me, all this moves me very strangely. To be in the midst of these rare things brings me the surprise of a new, delightful experience. "You know," Yves says to me, low as if in confidence, "I go with her to mass now every Sunday." And he makes in the direction of his wife a little grimace of childlike submission, very comical to see in one so serious. But his manner with Marie has quite changed, and I saw as soon as I entered that love had come at last to make its home for good and all in the new house. And my dear friends, therefore, have attained all that is best on earth. As Yves said "All that was wanted now was that the pendulum of time should stop so that this great happiness of their fulfilled dreams might never leave them." They also are silent in their happiness, as if they feared they might frighten it away if they spoke too loud or too lightheartedly about it. Besides we have to speak of the dead, of that little Yvonne who departed last autumn without waiting for the return of the _Primauguet_ and whom Yves never saw; of old Corentin, her grandfather, who had found the cold weather of December too much for him. It is Marie who speaks: "He became very difficult towards the end, he who had always been so considerate. He said we did not know how to look after him, and he asked continually for his son Yves: 'Oh! if Yves were here he would help me; he would lift me in his strong arms and turn me over in my bed.' On the last night he called him without ceasing." And Yves replied: "What grieves me most when I think of our father, is that we were a little angry with each other on the day I went away, in connection with the settlement, you know. You cannot believe how often the recollection of that dispute with him comes into my mind." Dinner is finished. It is evening, the long mild evening of May. We are walking, Yves and I, towards the church, to pay a visit to a white cross which stands there on a little flower-decked mound: _Yvonne Kermadec, thirteen months._ "They say that she was very like me," says Yves. And this resemblance of the dead infant to him makes him very thoughtful.