secured the boundaries from dispute, were in good order; the elms and poplars were growing well.  With the new purchases and the new farming system well under way, the estate of Clochegourde, divided into four great farms, two of which still needed new houses, was capable of bringing in forty thousand francs a year, ten thousand for each farm, not counting the yield of the vineyards, and the two hundred acres of woodland which adjoined them, nor the profits of the model home-farm.  The roads to the great farms all opened on an avenue which followed a straight line from Clochegourde to the main road leading to Chinon.  The distance from the entrance of this avenue to Tours was only fifteen miles; tenants would never be wanting, especially now that everybody was talking of the count’s improvements and the excellent condition of his land.

The countess wished to put some fifteen thousand francs into each of the estates lately purchased, and to turn the present dwellings into two large farm-houses and buildings, in order that the property might bring in a better rent after the ground had been cultivated for a year or two.  These ideas, so simple in themselves, but complicated with the thirty odd thousand francs it was necessary to expend upon them, were just now the topic of many discussions between herself and the count, sometimes amounting to bitter quarrels, in which she was sustained by the thought of her children’s interests.  The fear, “If I die to-morrow what will become of them?” made her heart beat.  The gentle, peaceful hearts to whom anger is an impossibility, and whose sole desire is to shed on those about them their own inward peace, alone know what strength is needed for such struggles, what demands upon the spirit must be made before beginning the contest, what weariness ensues when the fight is over and nothing has been won.  At this moment, just as her children seemed less anemic, less frail, more active (for the fruit season had had its effect on them), and her moist eyes followed them as they played about her with a sense of contentment which renewed her strength and refreshed her heart, the poor woman was called upon to bear the sharp sarcasms and attacks of an angry opposition.  The count, alarmed at the plans she proposed, denied with stolid obstinacy the advantages of all she had done and the possibility of doing more.  He replied to conclusive reasoning with the folly of a child who denies the influence of the sun in summer.  The countess, however, carried the day.  The victory of commonsense over insanity so healed her wounds that she forgot the battle.  That day we all went to the Cassine and the Rhetoriere, to decide upon the buildings.  The count walked alone in front, the children went next, and we ourselves followed slowly, for she was speaking in a low, gentle tone, which made her words like the murmur of the sea as it ripples on a smooth beach.