deserts, carrying the good seed of humanity under the
spreading sky into unknown climes.

"Ah!" said Benjamin softly, his eyes dilating and gazing far, far away
as if to the world's end; "ah! he's happy, for he sees other rivers, and
other forests, and other suns than ours!"

But Marianne shuddered. "No, no, my boy," said she; "there are no other
rivers than the Yeuse, no other forests but our woods of Lillebonne,
no other sun but that of Chantebled. Come and kiss me again--let us
all kiss once more, and I shall get well, and we shall never be parted
again."

The laughter began afresh with the embraces. It was a great day, a day
of victory, the most decisive victory which the family had ever won by
refusing to let discord destroy it. Henceforth it would be invincible.

At twilight, on the evening of that day, Mathieu and Marianne again
found themselves, as on the previous evening, hand in hand near the
window whence they could see the estate stretching to the horizon; that
horizon behind which arose the breath of Paris, the tawny cloud of its
gigantic forge. But how little did that serene evening resemble the
other, and how great was their present felicity, their trust in the
goodness of their work.

"Do you feel better?" Mathieu asked his wife; "do you feel your strength
returning; does your heart beat more freely?"

"Oh! my friend, I feel cured; I was only pining with grief. To-morrow I
shall be strong."

Then Mathieu sank into a deep reverie, as he sat there face to face with
his conquest--that estate which spread out under the setting sun.
And again, as in the morning, did recollections crowd upon him; he
remembered a morning more than forty years previously when he had
left Marianne, with thirty sous in her purse, in the little tumbledown
shooting-box on the verge of the woods. They lived there on next to
nothing; they owed money, they typified gay improvidence with the four
little mouths which they already had to feed, those children who had
sprung from their love, their faith in life.

Then he recalled his return home at night time, the three hundred
francs, a month's salary, which he had carried in his pocket, the
calculations which he had made, the cowardly anxiety which he had felt,
disturbed as he was by the poisonous egotism which he had encountered
in Paris. There were the Beauchenes, with their factory, and their only
son, Maurice, whom they were bringing up to be a future prince, the
Beauchenes,