“You know that I have business relations with Nicolas,” resumed Ambroise.  “Oh! if we had but a few fellows as intelligent and courageous as he is in our colonies, we should soon rake in all the scattered wealth of those virgin lands.  Well, Nicolas, as you are aware, went to Senegal with Lisbeth, who was the very companion and helpmate he needed.  Thanks to the few thousand francs which they possessed between them, they soon established a prosperous business; but I divined that the field was still too small for them, and that they dreamt of clearing and conquering a larger expanse.  And now, all at once, Nicolas writes to me that he is starting for the Soudan, the valley of the Niger, which has only lately been opened.  He is taking his wife and his four children with him, and they are all going off to conquer as fortune may will it, like valiant pioneers beset by the idea of founding a new world.  I confess that it amazes me, for it is a very hazardous enterprise.  But all the same one must admit that our Nicolas is a very plucky fellow, and one can’t help admiring his great energy and faith in thus setting out for an almost unknown region, fully convinced that he will subject and populate it.”

Silence fell.  A great gust seemed to have swept by, the gust of the infinite coming from the far away mysterious virgin plains.  And the family could picture that young fellow, one of themselves, going off through the deserts, carrying the good seed of humanity under the spreading sky into unknown climes.

“Ah!” said Benjamin softly, his eyes dilating and gazing far, far away as if to the world’s end; “ah! he’s happy, for he sees other rivers, and other forests, and other suns than ours!”

But Marianne shuddered.  “No, no, my boy,” said she; “there are no other rivers than the Yeuse, no other forests but our woods of Lillebonne, no other sun but that of Chantebled.  Come and kiss me again—­let us all kiss once more, and I shall get well, and we shall never be parted again.”

The laughter began afresh with the embraces.  It was a great day, a day of victory, the most decisive victory which the family had ever won by refusing to let discord destroy it.  Henceforth it would be invincible.

At twilight, on the evening of that day, Mathieu and Marianne again found themselves, as on the previous evening, hand in hand near the window whence they could see the estate stretching to the horizon; that horizon behind which arose the breath of Paris, the tawny cloud of its gigantic forge.  But how little did that serene evening resemble the other, and how great was their present felicity, their trust in the goodness of their work.

“Do you feel better?” Mathieu asked his wife; “do you feel your strength returning; does your heart beat more freely?”

“Oh! my friend, I feel cured; I was only pining with grief.  To-morrow I shall be strong.”