orious and essential need.

It is not true that labor has been imposed on mankind as punishment
for sin, it is on the contrary an honor, a mark of nobility, the most
precious of boons, the joy, the health, the strength, the very soul of
the world, which itself labors incessantly, ever creating the future.
And misery, the great, abominable social crime, will disappear amid the
glorification of labor, the distribution of the universal task among one
and all, each accepting his legitimate share of duties and rights. And
may children come, they will simply be instruments of wealth, they will
but increase the human capital, the free happiness of a life in which
the children of some will no longer be beasts of burden, or food for
slaughter or for vice, to serve the egotism of the children of others.
And life will then again prove the conqueror; there will come the
renascence of life, honored and worshipped, the religion of life so long
crushed beneath the hateful nightmare of Roman Catholicism, from which
on divers occasions the nations have sought to free themselves by
violence, and which they will drive away at last on the now near
day when cult and power, and sovereign beauty shall be vested in the
fruitful earth and the fruitful spouse.

In that last resplendent hour of eventide, Mathieu and Marianne reigned
by virtue of their numerous race. They ended as heroes of life, because
of the great creative work which they had accomplished amid battle and
toil and grief. Often had they sobbed, but with extreme old age had come
peace, deep smiling peace, made up of the good labor performed and the
certainty of approaching rest while their children and their children's
children resumed the fight, labored and suffered, lived in their own
turn. And a part of Mathieu and Marianne's heroic grandeur sprang from
the divine desire with which they had glowed, the desire which moulds
and regulates the world. They were like a sacred temple in which the
god had fixed his abode, they were animated by the inextinguishable fire
with which the universe ever burns for the work of continual creation.
Their radiant beauty under their white hair came from the light which
yet filled their eyes, the light of love's power, which age had been
unable to extinguish. Doubtless, as they themselves jestingly remarked
at times, they had been prodigals, their family had been such a large
one. But, after all, had they not been right? Their children had
diminis