With its sideboard and the other furniture in carved wood? My uncle presided, very tall and thin, with that finely shaped brow of his beneath a head of hair that was still black; on his little finger was a large emerald which we greatly envied him, and he wore a brown surtout coat. When I stooped (I was sitting beside him) to pick up my fork, I could see his arched feet in those famous boots he always wore,—a habit to which he declared he owed his complete exemption from colds and other aches and pains. My Aunt Laure sat opposite to him, with her black mittens and her two gray curls which depended from a cap with lilac ribbons down the whole length of that wrinkled, faded, weary face of hers, which was lighted by a pair of the softest black eyes. There was also present Monsieur Optat Viple, former inspector, who is represented in our family albums by a photograph in which he is looking at a flower stuck in his hat. He colored the flower himself with red in your family album, with blue in mine; the flower is the same,—a circumstance which caused us a puzzled amazement that never lessened. The other guests were Madame Alexis, Greslou the engineer, Captain Hippolyte Morin, old Monsieur Largeyx, Mademoiselle Elisa, and my other aunt Claudia, who had come from Saint-Saturn in for the holidays. She is the only one of those present except Uncle Gaspard and myself who is still
