dmiration which is felt for the
strength and the healthfulness which create great nations.

"Besides, we have only friends now," remarked Mathieu. "Everybody is
cordial with us!"

"Oh, everybody!" muttered Rose. "Just look at the Lepailleurs yonder, in
front of that booth."

The Lepailleurs were indeed there--the father, the mother, Antonin, and
Therese. In order to avoid the Froments they were pretending to take
great interest in a booth, where a number of crudely-colored china
ornaments were displayed as prizes for the winners at a "lucky-wheel."
They no longer even exchanged courtesies with the Chantebled folks; for
in their impotent rage at such ceaseless prosperity they had availed
themselves of a petty business dispute to break off all relations.
Lepailleur regarded the creation of Chantebled as a personal insult,
for he had not forgotten his jeers and challenges with respect to those
moorlands, from which, in his opinion, one would never reap anything
but stones. And thus, when he had well examined the china ornaments, it
occurred to him to be insolent, with which object he turned round and
stared at the Froments, who, as the train they were expecting would not
arrive for another quarter of an hour, were gayly promenading through
the fair.

The miller's bad temper had for the last two months been increased
by the return of his son Antonin to Janville under very deplorable
circumstances. This young fellow, who had set off one morning to conquer
Paris, sent there by his parents, who had a blind confidence in his fine
handwriting, had remained with Maitre Rousselet the attorney for four
years as a petty clerk, dull-witted and extremely idle. He had not made
the slightest progress in his profession, but had gradually sunk into
debauchery, cafe-life, drunkenness, gambling, and facile amours. To him
the conquest of Paris meant greedy indulgence in the coarsest pleasures
such as he had dreamt of in his village. It consumed all his money, all
the supplies which he extracted from his mother by continual promises
of victory, in which she implicitly believed, so great was her faith
in him. But he ended by grievously suffering in health, turned thin and
yellow, and actually began to lose his hair at three-and-twenty, so that
his mother, full of alarm, brought him home one day, declaring that he
worked too hard, and that she would not allow him to kill himself in
that fashion. It leaked out, however, later on, that Maitre