“No one loves and understands the land better than I,” he replied, raising his tone a little. “No one has listened to its counsels, put his ear to its breast when it has been sick, more truly than I have. And yet I am the one to be reproached with having forgotten it. Let me tell you then, if you don’t know it already, that in the human plan of things there is a divine order that must be respected. Over and above material legacies I place, for my part, the heritage of morality. It is not the patrimony that makes a family, but the long line of generations that have created and maintained the patrimony. If a family is dispossessed, it can found a new estate elsewhere. If it has lost its traditions, its faith, its joint responsibility, its honour, if it is reduced to an assemblage of individuals ruled by contrary interests and following their own destinies rather than the family’s, then it is a body emptied of its soul, a corpse that reeks of death, and the finest estates can never make it live again. A piece of land can be regained by purchase; the virtue of a race is not for sale. That is why the loss of La Vigie affects me less than the danger to my son and my name. But because La Vigie has been from one century to another the portion of the Roquevillards I was not willing to interrupt so continuous a transmission without warning, and consulting all of you. I have given you my own opinion first: I was wrong. Give me yours now as I call your names, honestly. I don’t say I shall follow your advice if it is opposed to mine. I am the head of the family and must take the responsibility myself. But a decision that with one blow shatters the work of so many generations is a grave one, and it will be a comfort to me to have the approval of our family council.” By the silence that followed these words he realised that the group around him had seized the importance of the occasion. He glanced toward the map of La Vigie on the wall, with its notations of the new lands successively added to it, and the dates of the contracts under which they had been made. So often during the preparation of his cases his gaze had dwelt on this map, not to trace its lines and figures, but to summon up the vision of its woods and fields and vines, with their tillage and vintages. A bit of the land, with all its agricultural work and the movement of the seasons over it, lived in its narrow frame, the mere black lines of which were potent over his imagination.