Near her, and at her right, the grandfather, M. Philippe Oberlé, had always sat. For some years, five minutes before the time of the meal the dining-room door would open, the old man would come in, leaning on the arm of his valet, trying to walk straight, clothed in an anomalous garment of dark wool, his red ribbon in his button-hole, his head weary and bent, his eyelids nearly closed, his face swollen and bloodless. They placed him in a large chair with arms upholstered in grey; they tied his table napkin round his neck, and he waited, his body leaning against the chair-back, his hands on the table--hands pale as wax, in which the knotted blue veins were distinctly visible. When the others arrived M. Joseph Oberlé shook him by the hand; Lucienne threw him a kiss and a number of words audibly spoken in her fresh young voice; Madame Oberlé bent down and pressed her faithful lips on the old man's forehead. He thanked her by watching her sit down. He did not look at the others. Then he made the sign of the cross, she and he alone, being a son of that old Alsace which still prayed. And served by this neighbour so silently charitable, who knew all his tastes, his shame of a certain clumsiness, and who forestalled his wishes, he began to eat, slowly, with difficulty moving his relaxed muscles. His dreamy head remained leaning against the chair. His head alone was watching in a body nearly destroyed. It was the theatre where, for the pleasure and pain of one alone, there passed before his mental vision the forebears of those whose names were mentioned before him. He did not speak, but he remembered. Sometimes he drew from his pocket a schoolboy's slate and pencil, and he wrote, with an uncertain writing, two or three words, which he made his neighbour read; some rectification, some forgotten date, his approval or disapproval to join in with the words just spoken on the other side of the table. Generally they knew when he was interested by the movement of his heavy eyelids. It was only for a moment. Life sank again to the depth of the prison whose bars she had tried to shake. Night closed in once more round those thoughts of his, unable to make themselves intelligible. And in spite of being accustomed to it, the sight of this suffering and of this ruin weighed on each of the members of the assembled family. It was less painful to strangers who sat for one evening at the Alsheim table, for the grandfather on those days did not try to break the circle of darkness and death which oppressed him. Until these last years M. Joseph Oberlé had always continued to present his guests to his father, up to the day when he wrote on his slate: "Do not present any one to me, above all, no Germans. Let them acknowledge my presence: that will be enough." The son had kept the habit--and it was a touching thought on the part of this selfish man--to give every evening an account of the business of the factory to the old chief. After dinner, smoking in the