foliage around them: "Come, Rose! come, Ambroise! come, Blaise
and Denis! It's time now; come at once to have something to eat."

They hastened up and the snack was set out on a patch of soft grass.
Mathieu unhooked the basket which hung in front of the baby's little
vehicle; and Marianne, having drawn some slices of bread-and-butter from
it, proceeded to distribute them. Perfect silence ensued while all four
children began biting with hearty appetite, which it was a pleasure to
see. But all at once a scream arose. It came from Master Gervais, who
was vexed at not having been served first.

"Ah! yes, it's true I was forgetting you," said Marianne gayly; "you
shall have your share. There, open your mouth, you darling;" and, with
an easy, simple gesture, she unfastened her dress-body; and then, under
the sunlight which steeped her in golden radiance, in full view of the
far-spreading countryside, where all likewise was bare--the soil, the
trees, the plants, streaming with sap--having seated herself in the long
grass, where she almost disappeared amid the swarming growth of April's
germs, the babe on her breast eagerly sucked in her warm milk, even as
all the encompassing verdure was sucking life from the soil.

"How hungry you are!" she exclaimed. "Don't pinch me so hard, you little
glutton!"

Meantime Mathieu had remained standing amid the enchantment of the
child's first smile and the gayety born of the hearty hunger around him.
Then his dream of creation came back to him, and he at last gave voice
to those plans for the future which haunted him, and of which he had so
far spoken to nobody: "Ah, well, it is high time that I should set to
work and found a kingdom, if these children are to have enough soup to
make them grow. Shall I tell you what I've thought--shall I tell you?"

Marianne raised her eyes, smiling and all attention. "Yes, tell me your
secret if the time has come. Oh! I could guess that you had some great
hope in you. But I did not ask you anything; I preferred to wait."

He did not give a direct reply, for at a sudden recollection his
feelings rebelled. "That Lepailleur," said he, "is simply a lazy fellow
and a fool in spite of all his cunning airs. Can there be any more
sacrilegious folly than to imagine that the earth has lost her
fruitfulness and is becoming bankrupt--she, the eternal mother,
eternal life? She only shows herself a bad mother to her bad sons, the
malicious, the obstinate, and the du