"Yes, yes, certainly," was the young man's reply, "but it depends upon the song whether it touches the heart more than the senses. Won't you sing that perfect thing, 'La Claire Fontaine'?" he added, with eyes as bright as passion and the hectic fires of his lung-trouble could make them.
She nodded and was about to sing, for she loved the song, and it had been ringing in her head all day; but at that point M. Fille rose, and with his glass raised high—for at that moment Seraphe Corniche and another carried round native wine and cider to the company—he said:
"To Monsieur Jean Jacques Barbille, and his fifty years, good health— bonne sante! This is his birthday. To a hundred years for Jean Jacques!"
Instantly everyone was up with glass raised, and Zoe ran and threw her arms round her father's neck. "Kiss me before you drink," she said.
With a touch almost solemn in its tenderness Jean Jacques drew her head to his shoulder and kissed her hair, then her forehead. "My blessed one —my angel," he whispered; but there was a look in his eyes which only M. Fille had seen there before. It was the look which had been in his eyes at the flax-beaters' place by the river.
"Sing—father, you must sing," said Zoe, and motioned to the fiddler. "Sing It's Fifty Years," she cried eagerly. They all repeated her request, and he could but obey.
Jean Jacques' voice was rather rough, but he had some fine resonant notes in it, and presently, with eyes fastened on the distance, and with free gesture and much expression, he sang the first verse of the haunting ballad of the man who had reached his fifty years:
"Wherefore these flowers?
This fete for me?
Ah, no, it is not fifty years,
Since in my eyes the light you see
First shone upon life's joys and tears!
How fast the heedless days have flown
Too late to wail the misspent hours,
To mourn the vanished friends I've known,
To kneel beside love's ruined bowers.
Ah, have I then seen fifty years,
With all their joys and hopes and fears!"
Through all the verses he ranged, his voice improving with each phrase, growing more resonant, till at last it rang out with a ragged richness which went home to the hearts of all. He was possessed. All at once he was conscious that the beginning of the end of things was come for him; and that now, at fifty, in no sphere had he absolutely "arrived," neither in home nor fortune, nor—but yes, there was one sphere of success; there was his fatherhood. There was his daughter, his wonderful Zoe. He drew his eyes from the distance, and saw that her ardent look was not towards him, but towards one whom she had known but a few weeks.
Suddenly he stopped in the middle of a verse, and broke forward with his arms outstretched, laughing. He felt that he must laugh, or he would cry; and that would be a humiliating thing to do.