, or
toil and moil, but would merely live beside them and love them, and be
loved in return? This was the dream of their old age, the share which,
in return for long fruitfulness, they would have liked to snatch
from devouring life, which, though it gives one everything, yet takes
everything away.

"Oh! just listen, Benjamin," Ambroise suddenly resumed, "you are
interested in our brave Nicolas, I know. Would you like to have some
news of him? I heard from him only the day before yesterday. And it's
right that I should speak of him, since he's the only one of the brood,
as mamma puts it, who cannot be here."

Benjamin at once became quite excited, asking, "Is it true? Has he
written to you? What does he say? What is he doing?"

He could never think without emotion of Nicolas's departure for Senegal.
He was twelve years old at that time, and nearly nine years had gone by
since then, yet the scene, with that eternal farewell, that flight, as
it were, into the infinite of time and hope, was ever present in his
mind.

"You know that I have business relations with Nicolas," resumed
Ambroise. "Oh! if we had but a few fellows as intelligent and courageous
as he is in our colonies, we should soon rake in all the scattered
wealth of those virgin lands. Well, Nicolas, as you are aware, went to
Senegal with Lisbeth, who was the very companion and helpmate he needed.
Thanks to the few thousand francs which they possessed between them,
they soon established a prosperous business; but I divined that the
field was still too small for them, and that they dreamt of clearing and
conquering a larger expanse. And now, all at once, Nicolas writes to me
that he is starting for the Soudan, the valley of the Niger, which has
only lately been opened. He is taking his wife and his four children
with him, and they are all going off to conquer as fortune may will
it, like valiant pioneers beset by the idea of founding a new world. I
confess that it amazes me, for it is a very hazardous enterprise. But
all the same one must admit that our Nicolas is a very plucky fellow,
and one can't help admiring his great energy and faith in thus setting
out for an almost unknown region, fully convinced that he will subject
and populate it."

Silence fell. A great gust seemed to have swept by, the gust of the
infinite coming from the far away mysterious virgin plains. And the
family could picture that young fellow, one of themselves, going off
through the