And when Mathieu sought to console him he muttered:  “Oh, it is all over.  They have both gone, one after the other, and I alone am guilty.  The first time it was I who lied to Reine, telling her that her mother was travelling; and then she in her turn lied to me the other day with that story of an invitation to a chateau in the country.  Ah! if eight years ago I had only opposed my poor Valerie’s madness, my poor Reine would still be alive to-day. . . .  Yes, it is all my fault; I alone killed them by my weakness.  I am their murderer.”

Shivering, deathly cold, he went on amid his sobs:  “And, wretched fool that I have been, I have killed them through loving them too much.  They were so beautiful, and it was so excusable for them to be rich and gay and happy.  One after the other they took my heart from me, and I lived only in them and by them and for them.  When one had left me, the other became my all in all, and for her, my daughter, I again indulged in the dream of ambition which had originated with her mother.  And yet I killed them both, and my mad desire to rise and conquer fortune led me to that twofold crime.  Ah! when I think that even this morning I still dared to esteem myself happy at having but that one child, that daughter to cherish!  What foolish blasphemy against love and life!  She is dead now, dead like her mother, and I am alone, with nobody to love and nobody to love me—­neither wife nor daughter, neither desire nor will, but alone—­ah! all alone, forever!”

It was the cry of supreme abandonment that he raised, while sinking to the floor strengthless, with a great void within him; and all he could do was to press Mathieu’s hands and stammer:  “Leave me—­tell me nothing.  You alone were right.  I refused the offers of life, and life has now taken everything from me.”

Mathieu, in tears himself, kissed him and lingered yet a few moments longer in that tragic den, feeling more moved than he had ever felt before.  And when he went off he left the unhappy Morange in the charge of Seraphine, who now treated him like a little ailing child whose will-power was entirely gone.

And at Chantebled, as time went on, Mathieu and Marianne founded, created, increased, and multiplied.  During the two years which elapsed, they again proved 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 world.  They were, however, still in the hard, trying, earlier stage of their work of conquest, and they often wept with grief and anxiety.  Many were their cares, too, in transforming the old pavilion into a farm.