nd their energy
did the rest--that will of action, that quiet bravery in the presence of
the labor that is necessary, the labor that has made and that regulates
the earth. But during the first two years they had to struggle
incessantly. There were two disastrous winters with snow and ice, and
March brought hail-storms and hurricanes which left the crops lying low.
Even as Lepailleur had threateningly predicted with a laugh of impotent
envy, it seemed as if the earth meant to prove a bad mother, ungrateful
to them for their toil, indifferent to their losses. During those two
years they only extricated themselves from trouble thanks to the second
fifty acres that they purchased from Seguin, to the west of the plateau,
a fresh expanse of rich soil which they reclaimed amid the marshes, and
which, in spite of frost and hail, yielded a prodigious first harvest.
As the estate gradually expanded, it also grew stronger, better able to
bear ill-luck.

But Mathieu and Marianne also had great family worries. Their five elder
children gave them much anxiety, much fatigue. As with the soil, here
again there was a daily battle, endless cares and endless fears. Little
Gervais was stricken with fever and narrowly escaped death. Rose, too,
one day filled them with the direst alarm, for she fell from a tree in
their presence, but fortunately with no worse injury than a sprain. And,
on the other hand, they were happy in the three others, Blaise, Denis,
and Ambroise, who proved as healthy as young oak-trees. And when
Marianne gave birth to her sixth child, on whom they bestowed the gay
name of Claire, Mathieu celebrated the new pledge of their affection by
further acquisitions.

Then, during the two ensuing years, their battles and sadness and joy
all resulted in victory once more. Marianne gave birth, and Mathieu
conquered new lands. There was ever much labor, much life expended,
and much life realized and harvested. This time it was a question of
enlarging the estate on the side of the moorlands, the sandy, gravelly
slopes where nothing had grown for centuries. The captured sources of
the tableland, directed towards those uncultivated tracts, gradually
fertilized them, covered them with increasing vegetation. There were
partial failures at first, and defeat even seemed possible, so great was
the patient determination which the creative effort demanded. But here,
too, the crops at last overflowed, while the intelligent felling of a
part