uffering,
and ever tending to increase of life and increase of hope.

XIII

TWO more years went by, and during those two years Mathieu and Marianne
had yet another daughter; and this time, as the family increased,
Chantebled also was increased by all the woodland extending eastward
of the plateau to the distant farms of Mareuil and Lillebonne. All the
northern part of the property was thus acquired: more than five hundred
acres of woods, intersected by clearings which roads soon connected
together. And those clearings, transformed into pasture-land, watered
by the neighboring springs, enabled Mathieu to treble his live-stock and
attempt cattle-raising on a large scale. 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.

Since the Froments had become conquerors, busily founding a little
kingdom and building up a substantial fortune in land, the Beauchenes
no longer derided them respecting what they had once deemed their
extravagant idea in establishing themselves in the country. Astonished
and anticipating now the fullest success, they treated them as
well-to-do relatives, and occasionally visited them, delighted with the
aspect of that big, bustling farm, so full of life and prosperity. It
was in the course of these visits that Constance renewed her intercourse
with her former schoolfellow, Madame Angelin, the Froments' neighbor. A
great change had come over the Angelins; they had ended by purchasing a
little house at the end of the village, where they invariably spent the
summer, but their buoyant happiness seemed to have departed. They had
long desired to remain unburdened by children, and now they eagerly
longed to have a child, and none came, though Claire, the wife, was as
yet but six-and-thirty. Her husband, the once gay, handsome musketeer,
was already turning gray and losing his eyesight--to such a degree,
indeed, that he could scarcely see well enough to continue his
profession as a fan-painter.

When Madame Angelin went to Paris she often called on Constance, to
whom, before long, she confided all her worries. She had been in a
doctor's hands for three years, but all to no avail, and now during
the last six months she had been consulting a person in the