“So it’s understood,” said Mathieu, “you won’t stay to dinner with us?”

“Oh, no, indeed!” they exclaimed in one breath.

Then, to attenuate the discourtesy of such a cry, Beauchene began to jest, and accepted the invitation for a later date when the warm weather should have arrived.

“On my word of honor, we have business in Paris,” he declared.  “But I promise you that when it’s fine we will all come and spend a day here—­yes, with our wives and children.  And you will then show us your work, and we shall see if you have succeeded.  So good-by!  All my good wishes, my dear fellow!  Au revoir, cousin!  Au revoir, children; be good!”

Then came more kisses and hand-shakes, and the two men disappeared.  And when the gentle silence had fallen once more Mathieu and Marianne again found themselves in front of the bright fire, while the children completed the building of their village with a great consumption of paste, and Gervais continued sleeping soundly.  Had they been dreaming?  Mathieu wondered.  What sudden blast from all the shame and suffering of Paris had blown into their far-away quiet?  Outside, the country retained its icy rigidity.  The fire alone sang the song of hope in life’s future revival.  And, all at once, after a few minutes’ reverie the young man began to speak aloud, as if he had at last just found the answer to all sorts of grave questions which he had long since put to himself.

“But those folks don’t love; they are incapable of loving!  Money, power, ambition, pleasure—­yes, all those things may be theirs, but not love!  Even the husbands who deceive their wives do not really love their mistresses.  They have never glowed with the supreme desire, the divine desire which is the world’s very soul, the brazier of eternal life.  And that explains everything.  Without desire there is no love, no courage, and no hope.  By love alone can one create.  And if love be restricted in its mission there is but failure.  Yes, they lie and deceive, because they do not love.  Then they suffer and lapse into moral and physical degradation.  And at the end lies the collapse of our rotten society, which breaks up more and more each day before our eyes.  That, then, is the truth I was seeking.  It is desire and love that save.  Whoever loves and creates is the revolutionary saviour, the maker of men for the new world which will shortly dawn.”

Never before had Mathieu so plainly understood that he and his wife were different from others.  This now struck him with extraordinary force.  Comparisons ensued, and he realized that their simple life, free from the lust of wealth, their contempt for luxury and worldly vanities, all their common participation in toil which made them accept and glorify life and its duties, all that mode of existence of theirs which was at once their joy and their strength, sprang solely from the source of eternal energy:  the love with which they glowed.  If, later on, victory should