owing like one of the young
trees in the neighboring wood, with hands which did not easily release
what they grasped, with eyes too full of light, now all laughter and now
all tears, and with the ever open beak of a greedy bird, that raised a
tempest whenever his mother kept him waiting.

"Yes, yes, I know you are there," said she; "come, don't deafen us any
longer."

Then she gave him the breast and he became quiet, simply purring like a
happy little kitten. The beneficent source had begun to flow once more,
as if it were inexhaustible. The trickling milk murmured unceasingly.
One might have said that it could be heard descending and spreading,
while Mathieu on his side continued opening his trench, assisted by the
two men whose apprenticeship was long since past.

He rose up at last, wiped his brow, and with his air of quiet certainty
exclaimed: "It's only a trade to learn. In a few months' time I shall
be nothing but a peasant. Look at that stagnant pond there, green with
water-plants. The spring which feeds it is yonder in that big tuft of
herbage. And when this trench has been opened to the edge of the slope,
you will see the pond dry up, and the spring gush forth and take its
course, carrying the beneficent water away."

"Ah!" said Marianne, "may it fertilize all that stony expanse, for
nothing can be sadder than dead land. How happy it will be to quench its
thirst and live again!"

Then she broke off to scold Gervais: "Come, young gentleman, don't pull
so hard," said she. "Wait till it comes; you know very well that it's
all for you."

Meantime the blows of the pickaxes rang out, the trench rapidly made its
way through the fat, moist soil, and soon the water would flow into
the parched veins of the neighboring sandy tracts to endow them
with fruitfulness. And the light trickling of the mother's milk also
continued with the faint murmur of an inexhaustible source, flowing from
her breast into the mouth of her babe, like a fountain of eternal life.
It ever and ever flowed, it created flesh, intelligence, and labor, and
strength. And soon its whispering would mingle with the babble of the
delivered spring as it descended along the trenches to the dry hot
lands. And at last there would be but one and the same stream, one
and the same river, gradually overflowing and carrying life to all the
earth, a mighty river of nourishing milk flowing through the world's
veins, creating without a pause, and producing yet m