La Lepailleur, after going to fetch a dozen eggs, now stood erect before her husband in admiration at hearing him talk so eloquently to a bourgeois.  They agreed very well together in their avaricious rage at being unable to amass money by the handful without any great exertion, and in their ambition to make their son a gentleman, since only a gentleman could become wealthy.  And thus, as Marianne was going off after placing the eggs under a cushion in Gervais’ little carriage, the other complacently called her attention to Antonin, who, having made a hole in the ground, was now spitting into it.

“Oh! he’s smart,” said she; “he knows his alphabet already, and we are going to put him to school.  If he takes after his father he will be no fool, I assure you.”

It was on a Sunday, some ten days later, that the supreme revelation, the great flash of light which was to decide his life and that of those he loved, fell suddenly upon Mathieu during a walk he took with his wife and the children.  They had gone out for the whole afternoon, taking a little snack with them in order that they might share it amid the long grass in the fields.  And after scouring the paths, crossing the copses, rambling over the moorland, they came back to the verge of the woods and sat down under an oak.  Thence the whole expanse spread out before them, from the little pavilion where they dwelt to the distant village of Janville.  On their right was the great marshy plateau, from which broad, dry, sterile slopes descended; while lower ground stretched away on their left.  Then, behind them, spread the woods with deep thickets parted by clearings, full of herbage which no scythe had ever touched.  And not a soul was to be seen around them; there was naught save wild Nature, grandly quiescent under the bright sun of that splendid April day.  The earth seemed to be dilating with all the sap amassed within it, and a flood of life could be felt rising and quivering in the vigorous trees, the spreading plants, and the impetuous growth of brambles and nettles which stretched invadingly over the soil.  And on all sides a powerful, pungent odor was diffused.

“Don’t go too far,” Marianne called to the children; “we shall stay under this oak.  We will have something to eat by and by.”

Blaise and Denis were already bounding along, followed by Ambroise, to see who could run the fastest; but Rose pettishly called them back, for she preferred to play at gathering wild flowers.  The open air fairly intoxicated the youngsters; the herbage rose, here and there, to their very shoulders.  But they came back and gathered flowers; and after a time they set off at a wild run once more, one of the big brothers carrying the little sister on his back.