"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.
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