o wipe away her tears and
to remain erect. "I wish to see Charlotte, and prepare and tell her of
the misfortune. I alone can find the words to say, so that she may not
die of the shock, circumstanced as she is."

But Mathieu, full of anxiety, sought to detain his wife, and spare her
this fresh trial. "No, I beg you," he said; "Denis will go, or I will go
myself."

With gentle obstinacy, however, she still went towards the stairs. "I
am the only one who can tell her of it, I assure you--I shall have
strength--"

But all at once she staggered and fainted. It became necessary to lay
her on a sofa in the drawing-room. And when she recovered consciousness,
her face remained quite white and distorted, and an attack of nausea
came upon her. Then, as Constance, with an air of anxious solicitude,
rang for her maid and sent for her little medicine-chest, Mathieu
confessed the truth, which hitherto had been kept secret; Marianne, like
Charlotte, was _enceinte_. It confused her a little, he said, since she
was now three-and-forty years old; and so they had not mentioned
it. "Ah! poor brave wife!" he added. "She wished to spare our
daughter-in-law too great a shock; I trust that she herself will not be
struck down by it."

_Enceinte_, good heavens! As Constance heard this, it seemed as if a
bludgeon were falling on her to make her defeat complete. And so, even
if she should now let Denis, in his turn, kill himself, another Froment
was coming who would replace him. There was ever another and another of
that race--a swarming of strength, an endless fountain of life, against
which it became impossible to battle. Amid her stupefaction at
finding the breach repaired when scarce opened, Constance realized her
powerlessness and nothingness, childless as she was fated to remain. And
she felt vanquished, overcome with awe, swept away as it were herself;
thrust aside by the victorious flow of everlasting Fruitfulness.

XVIII

FOURTEEN months later there was a festival at Chantebled. Denis, who had
taken Blaise's place at the factory, was married to Marthe Desvignes.
And after all the grievous mourning this was the first smile, the bright
warm sun of springtime, so to say, following severe winter. Mathieu and
Marianne, hitherto grief-stricken and clad in black, displayed a gayety
tinged with soft emotion in presence of the sempiternal renewal of life.
The mother had been willing to don less gloomy a gown, and the father
had agree