Mr. Roquevillard, his eye fixed on La Vigie, beheld this phenomenon of the resurrection. For a few minutes nature lived again beneath the caresses of the evening. Once more the blood coursed through its marble face. Along the vines, on the summit of the hill, where the almost horizontal beams of the sun struck more directly, the dispossessed proprietor could make out now, instead of a piece of land uniform in its whiteness, the distinguishing marks of the different places he had put under cultivation; and behold, here and there were trees, tall poplars standing calm and proud like palms, lindens with tapering branches, thin birches, massive chestnuts, delicate fruit trees puny of limb yet so expert in bearing their branches; trees, but just now nameless and lost in mist, which seemed to him to surge forth again like living beings. And he was no longer conscious of being alone there, for he knew names for these phantoms. With swelling breast he summoned up all the successive generations that had cleared these lands, the hands that built this mansion and these farm buildings, this rustic work, that had laid the foundation of this domain, from the first shirt-sleeves of the oldest peasant to the lawyer’s robes and the togas of the senate of Savoy. The high plateau which spread before him was invested like a fortress by the hosts of ancestors that had planted with their wheat and rye and oats and orchards and vines in this corner of the earth traditions of uprightness and honour, examples of courage and nobility. And as the products of these their lands had scattered their good repute abroad, so this tradition lighted up the city down there within the circle of the mountains where the shadows were beginning to fall upon it, and the province which it had served and protected and even in certain moments of its history made illustrious; shed lustre even upon their native land, whose power was made of the continuity and hardihood of such breeds of men as they were. “One doesn’t argue through the dead,” he repeated a second time. “With the dead, no; but with the living, yes. They are there, all of them. Not one but will answer to his name. The earth has opened up to let them pass. I will overleap this valley that lies between us. I am going to join them.” And he measured the already darkened hollow of the vale, as if these phantoms all were massed there before him. The shadows were laying hold of nature. Already all the plain belonged to them. They rose. Only the mountains were still defiant, especially the storeyed Nivolet that faced the setting sun and received all its flame, glowing with the purple and violet snow like heated metal.