Yet there came another departure which brought them many tears.  Nicolas, the youngest but one of their boys, who was approaching his twentieth birthday, and thus nigh the cross-roads of life, had not yet decided which one he would follow.  He was a dark, sturdy young man, with an open, laughing face.  As a child, he had adored tales of travel and far-away adventure, and had always evinced great courage and endurance, returning home enraptured from interminable rambles, and never uttering complaints, however badly his feet might be blistered.  And withal he possessed a most orderly mind, ever carefully arranging and classifying his little belongings in his drawers, and looking down with contempt on the haphazard way in which his sisters kept their things.

Later on, as he grew up, he became thoughtful, as if he were vainly seeking around him some means of realizing his two-fold craving, that of discovering some new land and organizing it properly.  One of the last-born of a numerous family, he no longer found space enough for the amplitude and force of his desires.  His brothers and sisters had already taken all the surrounding lands, and he stifled, threatened also, as it were, with famine, and ever sought the broad expanse that he dreamt of, where he might grow and reap his bread.  No more room, no more food!  At first he knew not in which direction to turn, but groped and hesitated for some months.  Nevertheless, his hearty laughter continued to gladden the house; he wearied neither his father nor his mother with the care of his destiny, for he knew that he was already strong enough to fix it himself.

There was no corner left for him at the farm where Gervais and Claire took up all the room.  At the Beauchene works Denis was all sufficient, reigning there like a conscientious toiler, and nothing justified a younger brother in claiming a share beside him.  At the mill, too, Gregoire was as yet barely established, and his kingdom was so small that he could not possibly cede half of it.  Thus an opening was only possible with Ambroise, and Nicolas ended by accepting an obliging offer which the latter made to take him on trial for a few months, by way of initiating him into the higher branches of commerce.  Ambroise’s fortune was becoming prodigious since old uncle Du Hordel had died, leaving him his commission business.  Year by year the new master increased his trade with all the countries of the world.  Thanks to his lucky audacity and broad international views, he was enriching himself with the spoils of the earth.  And though Nicolas again began to stifle in Ambroise’s huge store-houses, where the riches of distant countries, the most varied climes, were collected together, it was there that his real vocation came to him; for a voice suddenly arose, calling him away yonder to dim, unknown regions, vast stretches of country yet sterile, which needed to be populated, and cleared and sowed with the crops of the future.