during a season of snow. The modest dining-room would be opened at
the stroke of eight, and seated about the enlarged table, adorned
with Christmas roses, I would find all those for whom my soul mourns
beneath the cheery light of the lamps.

It seems to me that this meeting would be entirely natural with
little of the uncanny, and not at all like a fairy tale. My paternal
grandfather, the doctor of medicine who died at Guadeloupe, would
occupy the place of honor, and about his shoulders would be a little
traveling cloak on which grains of frost were shining. His steely blue
eyes behind the enormous gold-rimmed spectacles, which he wore and
which my mother uses to-day, would make him appear as he was, at the
same time severe and good. In a grave and melodious voice he would
speak of the Great Crossing, of the wind of the Eternal Ocean, of
earthquakes in unexplored countries, of shipwrecked men whom he had
saved.

And all would listen; and, death being eternal, it would be wonderful
to see each one again at the particular age which we with singular
obstinacy always attribute to our dear departed.

The cousins from Saint-Pierre-de-la-Martinique, there were four of
them I believe, would not be more than eighteen years old, and would
be dressed in white muslin gowns. They would laugh at some cake that
had not come out right. And my great aunts who were Huguenots, rigid
but happy, with long chains of gold about their necks, would interpret
the revelations of the Prophets to one another. And five and seventy
years would quaver in each of their cracked voices. And my maternal
grandsire at nineteen, with the green coat of a romantic student, all....