f Janville and the family grave in which all the
children hoped some day to be laid, one after the other, side by side.
Rather did that evocation, coming amid that gay wedding assembly, seem
like a promise of future blessed peace. The memory of the dear departed
ones remained alive, and lent to one and all a kind of loving gravity
even amid their mirth. Was it not impossible to accept life without
accepting death. Each came here to perform his task, and then, his work
ended, went to join his elders in that slumber of eternity where the
great fraternity of humankind was fulfilled.

But in presence of those jesters, Beauchene and Seguin, quite a flood
of words rose to Mathieu's lips. He would have liked to answer them;
he would have liked to triumph over the mendacious theories which they
still dared to assert even in their hour of defeat. To fear that the
earth might become over-populated, that excess of life might produce
famine, was this not idiotic? Others only had to do as he had done:
create the necessary subsistence each time that a child was born to
them. And he would have pointed to Chantebled, his work, and to all the
corn growing up under the sun, even as his children grew. They could not
be charged with having come to consume the share of others, since each
was born with his bread before him. And millions of new beings might
follow, for the earth was vast: more than two-thirds of it still
remained to be placed under cultivation, and therein lay endless
fertility for unlimited humanity. Besides, had not every civilization,
every progress, been due to the impulse of numbers? The improvidence
of the poor had alone urged revolutionary multitudes to the conquest of
truth, justice, and happiness. And with each succeeding day the human
torrent would require more kindliness, more equity, the logical division
of wealth by just laws regulating universal labor. If it were true, too,
that civilization was a check to excessive natality, this phenomenon
itself might make one hope in final equilibrium in the far-off ages,
when the earth should be entirely populated and wise enough to live in a
sort of divine immobility. But all this was pure speculation beside
the needs of the hour, the nations which must be built up afresh and
incessantly enlarged, pending the eventual definitive federation of
mankind. And it was really an example, a brave and a necessary one, that
Marianne and he were giving, in order that manners and custo