During this year a man from Montegnac started a diligence between the chief town of the arrondissement and Limoges, leaving both places each day.  Monsieur Clousier’s nephew sold his office and obtained a license as notary in Montegnac.  The government appointed Fresquin collector of the district.  The new notary built himself a pretty house in the upper part of Montegnac, planted mulberries in the grounds, and became after a time assistant-mayor to his friend Gerard.

The engineer, encouraged by so much success, now conceived a scheme of a nature to render Madame Graslin’s fortune colossal,—­she herself having by this time recovered possession of the income which had been mortgaged for the repayment of the loan.  Gerard’s new scheme was to make a canal of the little river, and turn into it the superabundant waters of the Gabou.  This canal, which he intended to carry into the Vienne, would form a waterway by which to send down timber from the twenty thousand acres of forest land belonging to Madame Graslin in Montegnac, now admirably managed by Colorat, but which, for want of transportation, returned no profit.  A thousand acres could be cut over each year without detriment to the forest, and if sent in this way to Limoges, would find a ready market for building purposes.

This was the original plan of Monsieur Graslin himself, who had paid very little attention to the rector’s scheme relating to the plain, being much more attracted by that of turning the little river into a canal.

XIX

A DEATH BLOW

At the beginning of the following year, in spite of Madame Graslin’s assumption of strength, her friends began to notice symptoms which foreshadowed her coming death.  To all the doctor’s remarks, and to the inquiries of the most clear-sighted of her friends, Veronique made the invariable answer that she was perfectly well.  But when the spring opened she went round to visit her forests, farms, and beautiful meadows with a childlike joy and delight which betrayed to those who knew her best a sad foreboding.

Finding himself obliged to build a small cemented wall between the dam of the Gabou and the park of Montegnac along the base of the hill called especially La Correze, Gerard took up the idea of enclosing the whole forest and thus uniting it with the park.  Madame Graslin agreed to this, and appointed thirty thousand francs a year to this work, which would take seven years to accomplish and would then withdraw that fine forest from the rights exercised by government over the non-enclosed forests of private individuals.  The three ponds of the Gabou would thus become a part of the park.  These ponds, ambitiously called lakes, had each its island.