red in a band to some village market,
there was such a gallop in traps, on horseback, and on bicycles, while
the girls' hair streamed in the wind and loud laughter rang out from one
and all, that people would stop to watch the charming cavalcade. "Here
are the troops passing!" folks would jestingly exclaim, implying that
nothing could resist those Froments, that the whole countryside
was theirs by right of conquest, since every two years their number
increased. And this time, at the expiration of those last two years it
was again to a daughter, Marguerite, that Marianne gave birth. For a
while she remained in a feverish condition, and there were fears, too,
that she might be unable to nurse her infant as she had done all the
others. Thus, when Mathieu saw her erect once more and smiling, with her
dear little Marguerite at her breast, he embraced her passionately,
and triumphed once again over every sorrow and every pang. Yet another
child, yet more wealth and power, yet an additional force born into the
world, another field ready for to-morrow's harvest!

And 'twas ever the great work, the good work, the work of fruitfulness
spreading, thanks to the earth and thanks to woman, both victorious over
destruction, offering fresh means of subsistence each time a fresh child
was born, and loving, willing, battling, toiling, even amid suffering,
and ever tending to increase of life and increase of hope.

XIV

TWO more years went by, and during those two years yet another child,
this time a boy, was born to Mathieu and Marianne. And on this occasion,
at the same time as the family increased, the estate of Chantebled was
increased also by all the heatherland extending to the east as far as
the village of Vieux-Bourg. And this time the last lot was purchased,
the conquest of the estate was complete. The 1250 acres of uncultivated
soil which Seguin's father, the old army contractor, had formerly
purchased in view of erecting a palatial residence there were now,
thanks to unremitting effort, becoming fruitful from end to end. The
enclosure belonging to the Lepailleurs, who stubbornly refused to sell
it, alone set a strip of dry, stony, desolate land amid the broad green
plain. And it was all life's resistless conquest; 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,