The bell rang for luncheon, rang out from the Oberlés' house, and recalled him to himself. It had a thin, miserable sound, which gave some idea of the immensity of free space in which the noise vanished away, and the strength of the tide of the wind which carried it away over the lands of Alsace. CHAPTER III THE FIRST FAMILY MEETING Jean turned slowly towards this bell which was calling him. He was full of joy at this moment. He was taking possession of a world which, after some years, had just been opened to him and pointed out as his place of habitation, of work, and of happiness. These words played on his troubled mind deliciously. They pursued each other like a troop of porpoises, those travellers on the surface, and other words accompanied them. Family life, comfort, social authority, embellishments, enlargements. The house took to itself a name--"the paternal home." He looked at it with tenderness, following the alley near the stream; he went up the steps with a feeling of respect, remembering that they had been built by the grandfather to whom the house still belonged, as also all the grounds except the saw-mill and the timber yard. After having gone across the entrance hall, which extended from the front to the back of the house, he opened the last door on the left. The dining-room was the only room which had been "done up" according to the directions and the taste of M. Joseph Oberlé. Whilst one found elsewhere--in the drawing-room, the billiard-room, and the other rooms--the furniture bought by the grandfather, of yellow or green Utrecht velvet and mahogany, "My Creation," according to the expression of M. Joseph Oberlé, showed a complete absence of line. Colour took the place of style. The walls were covered with wainscoting of veined maple, blue-grey, purple in places, ash-grey, and pink-grey, covering half the height of the room. Above this, and reaching to the small beams, were four panels of stretched cloth, decorated with designs of smooth felt representing irises, hollyhocks, verbena, and gladioli. Everywhere, as far as possible, the straight line had been modified. The door mouldings described curves which rambled madly like stalks of tropical bindweed without any apparent reason. The framework of the large window was curved. The chairs of bent beechwood came from Vienna. The whole had no character, but a charm of softened light, and a remote resemblance to the vegetable kingdom. One would have taken it for the dining-room of a newly married couple. The four usual table companions Jean was going to meet there hardly corresponded to this joyous picture, and there was no harmony between them and the decorations of the room. They invariably sat in the same places, round the square table, according to the established order of deep affinities and antipathies.