the
last day become mere lies."

Then Mathieu, whom her grievous fears of a disaster gained, went off to
weep in the adjoining room, already picturing his wife dead and himself
in utter solitude.

It was with reference to Lepailleur's moorland, the plots intersecting
the Chantebled estate, that the wretched quarrel had broken out between
the mill and the farm. For many years already, the romantic, ivy-covered
old mill, with its ancient mossy wheel, had ceased to exist. Gregoire,
at last putting his father's ideas into execution, had thrown it down
to replace it by a large steam mill, with spacious meal-stores which
a light railway-line connected with Janville station. And he himself,
since he had been making a big fortune--for all the wheat of the
district was now sent to him--had greatly changed, with nothing of his
youthful turbulence left save a quick temper, which his wife Therese
with her brave, loving heart alone could somewhat calm. On a score of
occasions he had almost broken off all relations with his father-in-law,
Lepailleur, who certainly abused his seventy years. Though the old
miller, in spite of all his prophecies of ruin, had been unable to
prevent the building of the new establishment, he none the less sneered
and jeered at it, exasperated as he was at having been in the wrong.
He had, in fact, been beaten for the second time. Not only did the
prodigious crops of Chantebled disprove his theory of the bankruptcy
of the earth, that villainous earth in which, like an obstinate peasant
weary of toil and eager for speedy fortune, he asserted nothing more
would grow; but now that mill of his, which he had so disdained, was
born as it were afresh, growing to a gigantic size, and becoming in his
son-in-law's hands an instrument of great wealth.

The worst was that Lepailleur so stubbornly lived on, experiencing
continual defeats, but never willing to acknowledge that he was beaten.
One sole delight remained to him, the promise given and kept by Gregoire
that he would not sell the moorland enclosure to the farm. The old man
had even prevailed on him to leave it uncultivated, and the sight of
that sterile tract intersecting the wavy greenery of the beautiful
estate of Chantebled, like a spot of desolation, well pleased his
spiteful nature. He was often to be seen strolling there, like an old
king of the stones and the brambles, drawing up his tall, scraggy figure
as if he were quite proud of the poverty of th