ave great
relief at the farm whither the prodigal son had not yet dared to return.
It was believed that the young couple, after eloping together, had lived
in some out of the way district of Paris, and it was even suspected that
Ambroise, who was liberally minded, had, in a brotherly way, helped them
with his purse. And if, on the one hand, Lepailleur consented to the
marriage in a churlish, distrustful manner--like one who deemed himself
robbed, and was simply influenced by the egotistical dread of some
day finding himself quite alone again in his gloomy house--Mathieu and
Marianne, on the other side, were delighted with an arrangement which
put an end to an equivocal situation that had caused them the greatest
suffering, grieved as they were by the rebellion of one of their
children.

Curiously enough, it came to pass that Gregoire, once married and
installed at the mill in accordance with his wife's desire, agreed with
his father-in-law far better than had been anticipated. This resulted in
particular from a certain discussion during which Lepailleur had wished
to make Gregoire swear, that, after his death, he would never dispose
of the moorland enclosure, hitherto kept uncultivated with peasant
stubbornness, to any of his brothers or sisters of the farm. Gregoire
took no oath on the subject, but gayly declared that he was not such
a fool as to despoil his wife of the best part of her inheritance,
particularly as he proposed to cultivate those moors and, within two or
three years' time, make them the most fertile land in the district. That
which belonged to him did not belong to others, and people would soon
see that he was well able to defend the property which had fallen to
his lot. Things took a similar course with respect to the mill, where
Gregoire at first contented himself with repairing the old mechanism,
for he was unwilling to upset the miller's habits all at once, and
therefore postponed until some future time the installation of an
engine, and the laying down of a line of rails to Janville station--all
those ideas formerly propounded by Mathieu which henceforth fermented in
his audacious young mind.

In this wise, then, people found themselves in presence of a new
Gregoire. The madcap had become wise, only retaining of his youthful
follies the audacity which is needful for successful enterprise. And it
must be said that he was admirably seconded by the fair and energetic
Therese. They were both enraptur