On the morning of the day he died Gauine sent for an old poacher whom he had formerly condemned to a heavy punishment for killing a gendarme who had dealt him a sabre stroke, and he publicly expressed his contrition, and cried aloud all the doubts which had poisoned his career. He proclaimed all the crimes of the Code, all the errors and falsehoods of the Statutes, those weapons of social oppression and hatred, those corrupt foundations of the social system whence spring perfect epidemics of theft and murder.
'And so,' Ragu resumed, 'those young folk seated at that table, that Félicien and his wife Hélène, at whose house we called this morning, are at once the grandchildren of the Froments, the Morfains, the Jollivets, and the Gaumes? But doesn't the blood of such enemies poison those in whose veins it now flows?'
'No, indeed,' Bonnaire quietly replied, 'that commingling of blood has brought reconciliation, and the race has acquired more beauty and strength from it.'
Fresh bitterness awaited Ragu at the next table—that of Bourron, his old chum, the boon companion of his days of sloth and drunkenness, whom he had ruled and led astray so easily. The idea of it! Bourron happy, Bourron saved, when he himself remained in his hell! In spite of his many years Bourron did indeed look quite triumphant as he sat there beside his wife Babette, she who had ever remained cheerful, whose unchangeable hopes and optimism had found fulfilment without even moving her to astonishment. Was it not natural? One was happy because one always ends by being happy.
And around the Bourrons there had been no limit to the swarming of offspring. There was first their eldest daughter, Marthe, who had married Auguste Laboque and had given birth to Adolphe, who in his turn had married Germaine, the daughter of Zoé Bonnaire and Nicholas Yvonnot. There was next their son Sébastien, who had married Agathe Fauchard, and had begotten Clémentine, who on her side had married Alexandre Feuillat, the son of Léon Feuillat and of Eugénie Yvonnot. The fourth generation proceeding from those two branches of Bourron's family was already represented by two little girls, Simonne Laboque and Amélie Feuillat, each of them in their fifth year. And by virtue of the kinship established by marriage the party further included Louis Fauchard, married to Julienne Dacheux, who had given him a daughter, Laure; and Évariste Mitaine, married to Olympe Lenfant, by whom he had had a son Hippolyte. Then there was the aforesaid Hippolyte himself, now the husband of Laure Fauchard, and the father of a lad in his eighth year, named François, in such wise that the fourth generation was sprouting vigorously on this side also. Throughout festive Beauclair one could not have found a larger table than that where intermingled the descendants of the Bourrons, the Laboques, the Bonnaires, the Yvonnots, the Fauchards, the Feuillats, the Dacheux, the Lenfants, and the Mitaines.
Bonnaire, who here again found one of his own children, Zoé, gave Ragu some particulars respecting those whom death had carried off. Old Fauchard and his wife Natalie—he always in a state of stupor and she always complaining—had gone off without understanding the great changes which were taking place. Feuillat, on his side, had beheld the triumph of his work, that vast estate of Les Combettes, ere he departed. Lenfant and Yvonnot had lately followed him to their graves, in that earth which was now loved with intelligence and fertilised with virile power. And after the Dacheux, the Caffiaux and the Laboques, those relics of the vanished trading system, the beautiful bakeress, the good Madame Mitaine, had passed away full of years, kindliness, and beauty.
But Ragu was no longer listening—he could not take his eyes from Bourron. 'He looks quite young,' he muttered, 'and his Babette still has her pretty laugh.'
He recalled the sprees of other days, Bourron and he lingering late in Caffiaux's den, railing against the masters, and at last staggering home, dead drunk. And he recalled his own long life of wretchedness, the fifty years that he had squandered in rolling from workshop to workshop through the world. To-day the experiment had been made and made successfully. Work, reorganised and regenerated, had saved his old chum when he was already half lost, whereas he, Ragu, had come back annihilated by the old labour system, full of misery and suffering, that iniquitous wage-system, which poisoned and destroyed.
All at once there came a charming incident which brought Ragu's anguish to a climax. Simonne Laboque, the daughter of Adolphe and Germaine, a fair-haired little maid about five years old, took some rose petals, scattered over the table, in her chubby little hands, and smilingly poured them over her great-grandfather's white head.
'There! grandpa Bourron, there you are, and there's some more! They're to make you a crown. Oh! you've some in your hair, and in your ears, and on your nose too. You've some everywhere! And bonne fête, bonne fête, grandpa Bourron!'