the ecstasy into which they both sank,
forgetfulness of all else, of all those others who were there. They saw
them no longer; they felt but one desire, to say that they loved each
other, and that the season had come when love blossoms afresh. His lips
protruded, she offered hers, and then they kissed.

"Oh! don't disturb yourselves!" cried Beauchene merrily. "Why, what is
the matter with you?"

"Would you like us to move away?" added Seguin.

But while Valentine laughed wildly, and Constance put on a prudish air,
Morange, in whose voice tears were again rising, spoke these words,
fraught with supreme regret: "Ah! you are right!"

Astonished at what they had done, without intention of doing it, Mathieu
and Marianne remained for a moment speechless, looking at one another in
consternation. And then they burst into a hearty laugh, gayly excusing
themselves. To love! to love! to be able to love! Therein lies all
health, all will, and all power.

XII

FOUR years went by. And during those four years Mathieu and Marianne had
two more children, a daughter at the end of the first year and a son
at the expiration of the third. And each time that the family thus
increased, the estate at Chantebled was increased also--on the first
occasion by fifty more acres of rich soil reclaimed among the marshes
of the plateau, and the second time by an extensive expanse of wood
and moorland which the springs were beginning to fertilize. 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 obstacles and suffering, making good all losses, and at each
succeeding hour setting more energy, more health, and more joy in the
veins of the world.

On the day when Mathieu called on Seguin to purchase the wood and
moorland, he lunched with Dr. Boutan, whom he found in an execrable
humor. The doctor had just heard that three of his former patients had
lately passed through the hands of his colleague Gaude, the notorious
surgeon to whose clinic at the Marbeuf Hospital society Paris flocked as
to a theatre. One of these patients was none other than Euphrasie, old
Moineaud's eldest daughter, now married to Auguste Benard, a mason,
and already the mother of three children. She had doubtless resumed her
usual avocations too soon after the birth of her last child, as often
happens in working-class families where the mother is unable to remain
idle.