At all events, she had for some time been ailing, and had finally
been removed to the hospital. Mathieu had for a while employed her young
sister Cecile, now seventeen, as a servant in the house at Chantebled,
but she was of poor health and had returned to Paris, where, curiously
enough, she also entered Doctor Gaude's clinic. And Boutan waxed
indignant at the methods which Gaude employed. The two sisters, the
married woman and the girl, had been discharged as cured, and so far,
this might seem to be the case; but time, in Boutan's opinion, would
bring round some terrible revenges.

One curious point of the affair was that Beauchene's dissolute sister,
Seraphine, having heard of these so-called cures, which the newspapers
had widely extolled, had actually sought out the Benards and the
Moineauds to interview Euphrasie and Cecile on the subject. And in the
result she likewise had placed herself in Gaude's hands. She certainly
was of little account, and, whatever might become of her, the world
would be none the poorer by her death. But Boutan pointed out that
during the fifteen years that Gaude's theories and practices had
prevailed in France, no fewer than half a million women had been treated
accordingly, and, in the vast majority of cases, without any such
treatment being really necessary. Moreover, Boutan spoke feelingly of
the after results of such treatment--comparative health for a few brief
years, followed in some cases by a total loss of muscular energy, and in
others by insanity of a most violent form; so that the padded cells of
the madhouses were filling year by year with the unhappy women who had
passed through the hands of Gaude and his colleagues. From a social
point of view also the effects were disastrous. They ran counter to all
Boutan's own theories, and blasted all his hopes of living to see France
again holding a foremost place among the nations of the earth.

"Ah!" said he to Mathieu, "if people were only like you and your good
wife!"

During those four years at Chantebled the Froments had been ever
founding, creating, increasing, and multiplying, again and again proving
victorious in the eternal battle which life wages against death, thanks
to that continual increase both of offspring and of fertile land which
was like their very existence, their joy and their strength. Desire
passed like a gust of flame--desire divine and fruitful, since they
possessed the power of love, kindliness, and health. A