“Why, you stupid,” said Beauchene, laughing, “it was he who crushed the omnibus, since here he is, telling you the tale.  Ah! my poor Maurice, your mother is really ridiculous.  I know how strong you are, and I’m quite at ease about you.”

That day Madame Angelin returned to Janville with Mathieu.  They found themselves alone in the railway carriage, and all at once, without any apparent cause, tears started from the young woman’s eyes.  At this she apologized, and murmured as if in a dream:  “To have a child, to rear him, and then lose him—­ah! certainly one’s grief must then be poignant.  Yet one has had him with one; he has grown up, and one has known for years all the joy of having him at one’s side.  But when one never has a child—­never, never—­ah! come rather suffering and mourning than such a void as that!”

And meantime, at Chantebled, Mathieu and Marianne founded, created, increased, and multiplied, 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, of 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.  Yet even during those two years it was not without constant struggling that they achieved victory.  True, victory was becoming more and more certain as the estate expanded.  The petty worries of earlier days had disappeared, and the chief question was now one of ruling sensibly and equitably.  All the land had been purchased northward on the plateau, from the farm of Mareuil to the farm of Lillebonne; there was not a copse that did not belong to the Froments, and thus beside the surging sea of corn there rose a royal park of centenarian trees.  Apart from the question of felling portions of the wood for timber, Mathieu was not disposed to retain the remainder for mere beauty’s sake; and accordingly avenues were devised connecting the broad clearings, and cattle were then turned into this part of the property.  The ark of life, increased by hundreds of animals, expanded, burst through the great trees.  There was a fresh growth of fruitfulness:  more and more cattle-sheds had to be built, sheepcotes had to be created, and manure came in loads and loads to endow the land with wondrous fertility.  And now yet other children might come, for floods of milk poured forth, and there were herds and flocks to clothe and nourish them.  Beside the ripening crops the woods waved their greenery, quivering with the eternal seeds that germinated in their shade, under the dazzling sun.  And only one more stretch of land, the sandy slopes on the east, remained to be conquered in order that the kingdom might be complete.  Assuredly this compensated one for all former tears, for all the bitter anxiety of the first years of toil.