ever want a genealogist.

The variations of this family kaleidoscope of four branches was now so
complicated by births and marriages that the genealogical tree of the
bourgeoisie of Nemours would have puzzled the Benedictines of the
Almanach of Gotha, in spite of the atomic science with which they
arrange those zigzags of German alliances. For a long time the
Minorets occupied the tanneries, the Cremieres kept the mills, the
Massins were in trade, and the Levraults continued farmers.
Fortunately for the neighbourhood these four stocks threw out suckers
instead of depending only on their tap-roots; they scattered cuttings
by the expatriation of sons who sought their fortune elsewhere; for
instance, there are Minorets who are cutlers at Melun; Levraults at
Montargis; Massins at Orleans; and Cremieres of some importance in
Paris. Divers are the destinies of these bees from the parent hive.
Rich Massins employ, of course, the poor working Massins--just as
Austria and Prussia take the German princes into their service. It may
happen that a public office is managed by a Minoret millionaire and
guarded by a Minoret sentinel. Full of the same blood and called by
the same name (for sole likeness), these four roots had ceaselessly
woven a human network of which each thread was delicate or strong,
fine or coarse, as the case might be. The same blood was in the head
and in the feet and in the heart, in the working hands, in the weakly
lungs, in the forehead big with genius.

The chiefs of the clan were faithful to the little town, where the
ties of family were relaxed or tightened according to the events which
happened under this curious cognomenism. In whatever part of France
you may be, you will find the same thing under changed names, but
without the poetic charm which feudalism gave to it, and which Walter