Thus she too could live; but ... it was not as yet in her heart so to do ...  In a little while, this season of mourning at an end, Lorenzo Surprenant would come back from the States for the third time and would bear her away to the unknown delights of the city—­away from the great forest she hated—­away from that cruel land where men who go astray perish helplessly, where women endure endless torment the while ineffectual aid is sought for them over the long roads buried in snow.  Why should she stay here to toil and suffer when she might escape to the lands of the south and a happier life

The soft breeze telling of spring came against the window, bringing a confusion of gentle sounds; the swish and sigh of branches swaying and touching one another, the distant hooting of an owl.  Then the great silence reigned once more.  Samuel Chapdelaine was sleeping; but in this repose beside the dead was nothing unseemly or wanting in respect; chin fallen on his breast, bands lying open on his knees, he seemed to be plunged into the very depths of sorrow or striving to relinquish life that be might follow the departed a little way into the shades.

Again Maria asked herself:—­“Why stay here, to toil and suffer thus?  Why? ...”  And when she found no answer, it befell at length that out of the silence and the night voices arose.

No miraculous voices were these; each of us bears them when he goes apart and withdraws himself far enough to escape from the petty turmoil of his daily life.  But they speak more loudly and with plainer accents to the simple-hearted, to those who dwell among the great northern woods and in the empty places of the earth.  While yet Maria was dreaming of the city’s distant wonders the first voice brought murmuringly to her memory a hundred forgotten charms of the land she wished to flee.

The marvel of the reappearing earth in the springtime after the long months of winter ...  The dreaded snow stealing away in prankish rivulets down every slope; the tree-roots first resurgent, then the mosses drenched with wet, soon the ground freed from its burden whereon one treads with delighted glances and sighs of happiness like the sick man who feels glad life returning to his veins ...  Later yet, the birches, alders, aspens swelling into bud; the laurel clothing itself in rosy bloom ...  The rough battle with the soil a seeming holiday to men no longer condemned to idleness; to draw the hard breath of toil from morn till eve a gracious favour ...

—­The cattle, at last set free from their shed, gallop to the pasture and glut themselves with the fresh grass.  All the new-born creatures—­the calves, the fowls, the lambs, gambol in the sun and add daily to their stature like the hay and the barley.  The poorest farmer sometimes halts in yard or field, hands in pockets, and tastes the great happiness of knowing that the sun’s heat, the warm rain, the earth’s unstinted alchemy—­every mighty force of nature—­is working as a humble slave for him ... for him.