the impossible. How can you think
that we shall ever possess so much--that our fortune will spread over
the entire region? Think of the capital, the arms that would be needed
for such a conquest!"

For a moment Mathieu remained silent on thus suddenly being brought back
to reality. Then with his affectionate, sensible air, he began to laugh.
"You are right; I have been dreaming and talking wildly," he replied. "I
am not yet so ambitious as to wish to be King of Chantebled. But there
is truth in what I have said to you; and, besides, what harm can
there be in dreaming of great plans to give oneself faith and courage?
Meantime I intend to try cultivating just a few acres, which Seguin will
no doubt sell me cheaply enough, together with the little pavilion in
which we live. I know that the unproductiveness of the estate weighs on
him. And, later on, we shall see if the earth is disposed to love us and
come to us as we go to her. Ah well, my dear, give that little glutton
plenty of life, and you, my darlings, eat and drink and grow in
strength, for the earth belongs to those who are healthy and numerous."

Blaise and Denis made answer by taking some fresh slices of
bread-and-butter, while Rose drained the mug of wine and water
which Ambroise handed her. And Marianne sat there like the symbol of
blossoming Fruitfulness, the source of vigor and conquest, while Gervais
heartily nursed on. He pulled so hard, indeed, that one could hear the
sound of his lips. It was like the faint noise which attends the rise
of a spring--a slender rill of milk that is to swell and become a river.
Around her the mother heard that source springing up and spreading on
all sides. She was not nourishing alone: the sap of April was dilating
the land, sending a quiver through the woods, raising the long herbage
which embowered her. And beneath her, from the bosom of the earth,
which was ever in travail, she felt that flood of sap reaching and ever
pervading her. And it was like a stream of milk flowing through the
world, a stream of eternal life for humanity's eternal crop. And on
that gay day of spring the dazzling, singing, fragrant countryside was
steeped in it all, triumphal with that beauty of the mother, who, in the
full light of the sun, in view of the vast horizon, sat there nursing
her child.

VIII

ON the morrow, after a morning's hard toil at his office at the works,
Mathieu, having things well advanced, bethought himself of goin