remain with them, if they should some day leave behind them work of value and health and happiness, it would be solely because they had possessed the power of love and the courage to love freely, harvesting, in an ever-increasing family, both the means of support and the means of conquest.  And this sudden conviction filled Mathieu with such a glow that he leant towards his wife, who sat there deeply moved by what he said, and kissed her ardently upon the lips.  It was divine love passing like a flaming blast.  But she, though her own eyes were sparkling, laughingly scolded him, saying:  “Hush, hush, you will wake Gervais.”

Then they remained there hand in hand, pressing each other’s fingers amid the silence.  Evening was coming on, and at last the children, their village finished, raised cries of rapture at seeing it standing there among bits of wood, which figured trees.  And then the softened glances of the parents strayed now through the window towards the crops sleeping beneath the crystalline rime, and now towards their last-born’s cradle, where hope was likewise slumbering.

Again did two long months go by.  Gervais had just completed his first year, and fine weather, setting in early, was hastening the awaking of the earth.  One morning, when Marianne and the children went to join Mathieu on the plateau, they raised shouts of wonder, so completely had the sun transformed the expanse in a single week.  It was now all green velvet, a thick endless carpet of sprouting corn, of tender, delicate emerald hue.  Never had such a marvellous crop been seen.  And thus, as the family walked on through the mild, radiant April morning, amid the country now roused from winter’s sleep, and quivering with fresh youth, they all waxed merry at the sight of that healthfulness, that progressing fruitfulness, which promised the fulfilment of all their hopes.  And their rapture yet increased when, all at once, they noticed that little Gervais also was awaking to life, acquiring decisive strength.  As he struggled in his little carriage and his mother removed him from it, behold! he took his flight, and, staggering, made four steps; then hung to his father’s legs with his little fists.  A cry of extraordinary delight burst forth.

“Why! he walks, he walks!”

Ah! those first lispings of life, those successive flights of the dear little ones; the first glance, the first smile, the first step—­what joy do they not bring to parents’ hearts!  They are the rapturous etapes of infancy, for which father and mother watch, which they await impatiently, which they hail with exclamations of victory, as if each were a conquest, a fresh triumphal entry into life.  The child grows, the child becomes a man.  And there is yet the first tooth, forcing its way like a needle-point through rosy gums; and there is also the first stammered word, the “pa-pa,” the “mam-ma,” which one is quite ready to detect amid the vaguest babble, though it be but the purring of a kitten, the chirping of a bird.  Life does its work, and the father and the mother are ever wonderstruck with admiration and emotion at the sight of that efflorescence alike of their flesh and their souls.