Eighty-three years after the founding of the town they held a grand celebration. Only one member of Pierre Laclede Liquist's company, who had planted and named the town, was living. This was the president of the day, Pierre Chouteau. The fine old madame, who had gloried in her brave sons, had passed to the other country. Four mounted Indians in full costume were the bodyguard of the venerable president, and in the carriages were a few withered-up, brown-faced Frenchmen, who had made themselves log houses along those early years and lived their simple lives, raised their families, danced in the merry-makings and now felt almost like aliens.
Gaspard Denys, still hale and hearty, was among them, past eighty, but clear of eye and steady of step. He had seen his godson, young Gaspard, grow up into a fine, manly fellow, marry a sweet girl and have sons to carry on the name. What more could a man ask than a well-used life and a certain share of happiness? But they had gone back on the next rise of ground, for business had seized with its inexorable grasp on the old home where Renée had sat and dreamed beside the great chimney and Mère Lunde had nodded.
Way out to the side of the old pond they had gone, where there was still a forest on one side of them. Great hickories, pecans, trees useful for food and fuel and building houses, long reaches of tangled grapes that made all the air sweet at their blossoming and again at their ripening, fields and meadows, the garden near by, the house with great porches, a wide hall and beautiful stairway, with no need of outside climbing.
"Here we will end our days," Gaspard Denys said to the child of the woman he still dreamed about, more vividly, perhaps, now than at middle life. For there was the wide stone chimney, the great corners in the fireplace. Sometimes on a winter night they stood a pine torch in the corner, and it gave the weird, flickering light they used to love.
Across the hall would be young people dancing. But there was no more Guinolee, no more anxious, eager crowds to see who would get the beans in the cake, no strife to be queens, no anxiety to be chosen kings; that, with other old things, had passed away.
"I wonder," Renée says, smiling absently, "if they have as good times as they used to in old St. Louis? There are so many pleasures now."