First it was Gervais who married Caroline Boucher, daughter of a big farmer of the region, a fair, fine-featured, gay, strong girl, one of those superior women born to rule over a little army of servants.  On leaving a Parisian boarding-school she had been sensible enough to feel no shame of her family’s connection with the soil.  Indeed she loved the earth and had set herself to win from it all the sterling happiness of her life.  By way of dowry she brought an expanse of meadow-land in the direction of Lillebonne, which enlarged the estate by some seventy acres.  But she more particularly brought her good humor, her health, her courage in rising early, in watching over the farmyard, the dairy, the whole home, like an energetic active housewife, who was ever bustling about, and always the last to bed.

Then came the turn of Claire, whose marriage with Frederic Berthaud, long since foreseen, ended by taking place.  There were tears of soft emotion, for the memory of her whom Berthaud had loved and whom he was to have married disturbed several hearts on the wedding day when the family skirted the little cemetery of Janville as it returned to the farm from the municipal offices.  But, after all, did not that love of former days, that faithful fellow’s long affection, which in time had become transferred to the younger sister, constitute as it were another link in the ties which bound him to the Froments?  He had no fortune, he brought with him only his constant faithfulness, and the fraternity which had sprung up between himself and Gervais during the many seasons when they had ploughed the estate like a span of tireless oxen drawing the same plough.  His heart was one that could never be doubted, he was the helper who had become indispensable, the husband whose advent would mean the best of all understandings and absolute certainty of happiness.

From the day of that wedding the government of the farm was finally settled.  Though Mathieu was barely five-and-fifty he abdicated, and transferred his authority to Gervais, that son of the earth as with a laugh he often called him, the first of his children born at Chantebled, the one who had never left the farm, and who had at all times given him the support of his arm and his brain and his heart.  And now Frederic in turn would think and strive as Gervais’s devoted lieutenant, in the great common task.  Between them henceforth they would continue the father’s work, and perfect the system of culture, procuring appliances of new design from the Beauchene works, now ruled by Denis, and ever drawing from the soil the largest crops that it could be induced to yield.  Their wives had likewise divided their share of authority; Claire surrendered the duties of supervision to Caroline, who was stronger and more active than herself, and was content to attend to the accounts, the turnover of considerable sums of money, all that was paid away and all that was received.  The two couples seemed to have been expressly and cleverly selected to complete one another and to accomplish the greatest sum of work without ever the slightest fear of conflict.  And, indeed, they lived in perfect union, with only one will among them, one purpose which was ever more and more skilfully effected—­the continual increase of the happiness and wealth of Chantebled under the beneficent sun.