e ant-hill. And after so many
terrible Rougons, so many vile Macquarts, still another had been born.
Life did not fear to create another of them, in the brave defiance of
its eternity. It continued its work, propagated itself according to its
laws, indifferent to theories, marching on in its endless labor. Even
at the risk of making monsters, it must of necessity create, since, in
spite of all it creates, it never wearies of creating in the hope, no
doubt, that the healthy and the good will one day come. Life, life,
which flows like a torrent, which continues its work, beginning it over
and over again, without pause, to the unknown end! life in which we
bathe, life with its infinity of contrary currents, always in motion,
and vast as a boundless sea!

A transport of maternal fervor thrilled Clotilde's heart, and she
smiled, seeing the little voracious mouth drinking her life. It was a
prayer, an invocation, to the unknown child, as to the unknown God! To
the child of the future, to the genius, perhaps, that was to be, to the
Messiah that the coming century awaited, who would deliver the people
from their doubt and their suffering! Since the nation was to be
regenerated, had he not come for this work? He would make the experiment
anew, he would raise up walls, give certainty to those who were in
doubt, he would build the city of justice, where the sole law of
labor would insure happiness. In troublous times prophets were to be
expected--at least let him not be the Antichrist, the destroyer, the
beast foretold in the Apocalypse--who would purge the earth of its
wickedness, when this should become too great. And life would go on
in spite of everything, only it would be necessary to wait for other
myriads of years before the other unknown child, the benefactor, should
appear.

But the child had drained her right breast, and, as he was growing
angry, Clotilde turned him round and gave him the left. Then she began
to smile, feeling the caress of his greedy little lips. At all events
she herself was hope. A mother nursing, was she not the image of the
world continued and saved? She bent over, she looked into his limpid
eyes, which opened joyously, eager for the light. What did the child say
to her that she felt her heart beat more quickly under the breast which
he was draining? To what cause would he give his blood when he should
be a man, strong with all the milk which he would have drunk? Perhaps he
said nothing to her, pe