of the purchased woods resulted in a large profit, and gave Mathieu
an idea of cultivating some of the spacious clearings hitherto overgrown
with brambles.

And while the estate spread the children grew. It had been necessary to
send the three elder ones--Blaise, Denis, and Ambroise--to a school
in Paris, whither they gallantly repaired each day by the first train,
returning only in the evening. But the three others, little Gervais and
the girls Rose and Claire, were still allowed all freedom in the midst
of Nature. Marianne, however, gave birth to a seventh child, amid
circumstances which caused Mathieu keen anxiety. For a moment, indeed,
he feared that he might lose her. But her healthful temperament
triumphed over all, and the child--a boy, named Gregoire--soon drank
life and strength from her breast, as from the very source of existence.
When Mathieu saw his wife smiling again with that dear little one in her
arms, he embraced her passionately, and triumphed once again over every
sorrow and every pang. Yet another child, yet more wealth and power,
yet an additional force born into the world, another field ready for
to-morrow's harvest.

And 'twas ever the great work, the good work, the work of fruitfulness
spreading, thanks to the earth and to woman, both victorious over
destruction, offering fresh means of subsistence each time a fresh child
was born, and loving, willing, battling, toiling even amid suffering,
and ever tending to increase of life and increase of hope.

* * * * * *

Then two more years rolled on. And during those two years Mathieu and
Marianne had yet another child, a girl. And again, at the same time as
the family increased, the estate of Chantebled was increased also--on
one side by five-and-seventy acres of woodland stretching over
the plateau as far as the fields of Mareuil, and on the other by
five-and-seventy acres of sloping moorland, extending to the village of
Monval, alongside the railway line. But the principal change was that,
as the old hunting-box, the little dilapidated pavilion, no longer
offered sufficient accommodation, a whole farmstead had to be
erected--stone buildings, and barns, and sheds, and stables, and
cowhouses--for farm hands and crops and animals, whose number increased
at each enlargement of the estate.

It was the resistless conquest of life; it was fruitfulness spreading
in the sunlight; it was labor ever incessantly pursuing its work of
creation amid o