“Madame,” he said, presenting himself with Catherine, “you were so good as to offer me the farm at the chateau.  By granting me so great a favor I know you intended to put me in the way of making my fortune.  But Catherine has ideas about our future which we desire to submit to you.  If I were to succeed and make money there would certainly be persons envious of my good fortune; a word is soon said; I might have quarrels,—­I fear them; besides, Catherine would always be uneasy.  In short, too close intercourse with the world will not suit us.  I have come therefore to ask you to give us only the land at the opening of the Gabou on the commons, with a small piece of the woodland behind the Roche-Vive.  In July you will have a great many workmen here, and it would be very easy then to build a farmhouse in a good position on the slope of the hill.  We should be happy there.  I will send for Guepin.  My poor comrade will work like a horse; perhaps I could marry him here.  My son is not a do-nothing either.  No one would put us out of countenance; we could colonize this corner of the estate, and I should make it my ambition to turn it into a fine farm for you.  Moreover, I want to propose as farmer of your great farm near the chateau a cousin of Catherine, who has money and would therefore be more capable than I could be of managing such a large affair as that farm.  If it please God to bless your enterprise, in five years from now you will have five or six thousand horned beasts or horses on that plain below, and it wants a better head than mine to manage them.”

Madame Graslin agreed to his request, doing justice to the good sense of it.

From the time the work on the plain began, Veronique’s life assumed the regularity of country existence.  In the morning she heard mass, took care of her son, whom she idolized, and went to see her laborers.  After dinner she received her friends from Montegnac in the little salon to the right of the clock-tower.  She taught Roubaud, Clousier, and the rector to play whist, which Gerard knew already.  The rubbers usually ended at nine o’clock, after which the company withdrew.  This peaceful life had no other events to mark it than the success of the various parts of the great enterprise.

In June the torrent of the Gabou went dry, and Gerard established his headquarters in the keeper’s house.  Farrabesche had already built his farmhouse, which he called Le Gabou.  Fifty masons, brought from Paris, joined the two mountains by a wall twenty feet thick, with a foundation twelve feet deep and heavily cemented.  The wall, or dam, rose nearly sixty feet and tapered in until it was not more than ten feet thick at the summit.  Gerard backed this wall on the valley side with a cemented slope, about twelve feet wide at its base.  On the side toward the commons a similar slope, covered with several feet of arable earth, still further supported this great work, which no rush of water could possibly damage.  The engineer provided in case of unusual rains an overflow at a proper height.  The masonry was inserted into the flank of each mountain until the granite or the hard-pan was reached, so that the water had absolutely no outlet at the sides.