One curious point of the affair was that Beauchene’s dissolute sister, Seraphine, having heard of these so-called cures, which the newspapers had widely extolled, had actually sought out the Benards and the Moineauds to interview Euphrasie and Cecile on the subject.  And in the result she likewise had placed herself in Gaude’s hands.  She certainly was of little account, and, whatever might become of her, the world would be none the poorer by her death.  But Boutan pointed out that during the fifteen years that Gaude’s theories and practices had prevailed in France, no fewer than half a million women had been treated accordingly, and, in the vast majority of cases, without any such treatment being really necessary.  Moreover, Boutan spoke feelingly of the after results of such treatment—­comparative health for a few brief years, followed in some cases by a total loss of muscular energy, and in others by insanity of a most violent form; so that the padded cells of the madhouses were filling year by year with the unhappy women who had passed through the hands of Gaude and his colleagues.  From a social point of view also the effects were disastrous.  They ran counter to all Boutan’s own theories, and blasted all his hopes of living to see France again holding a foremost place among the nations of the earth.

“Ah!” said he to Mathieu, “if people were only like you and your good wife!”

During those four years at Chantebled the Froments had been ever founding, creating, increasing, and multiplying, again and again proving victorious in the eternal battle which life wages against death, thanks to that continual increase both of offspring and of fertile land which was like their very existence, their joy and their strength.  Desire passed like a gust of flame—­desire divine and fruitful, since they possessed the power of love, kindliness, and health.  And their energy did the rest—­that will of action, that quiet bravery in the presence of the labor that is necessary, the labor that has made and that regulates the earth.  But during the first two years they had to struggle incessantly.  There were two disastrous winters with snow and ice, and March brought hail-storms and hurricanes which left the crops lying low.  Even as Lepailleur had threateningly predicted with a laugh of impotent envy, it seemed as if the earth meant to prove a bad mother, ungrateful to them for their toil, indifferent to their losses.  During those two years they only extricated themselves from trouble thanks to the second fifty acres that they purchased from Seguin, to the west of the plateau, a fresh expanse of rich soil which they reclaimed amid the marshes, and which, in spite of frost and hail, yielded a prodigious first harvest.  As the estate gradually expanded, it also grew stronger, better able to bear ill-luck.