by broad meadows, where flocks and herds pastured; there was fat land overflowing with harvests, in the place of marshes that had been drained; there was other land, each year of increasing fertility, in the place of the moors which the captured springs now irrigated.  The Lepailleurs’ uncultivated enclosure alone remained, as if to bear witness to the prodigy, the great human effort which had quickened that desert of sand and mud, whose crops would henceforth nourish so many happy people.  Mathieu devoured no other man’s share; he had brought his share into being, increasing the common wealth, subjugating yet another small portion of this vast world, which is still so scantily peopled and so badly utilized for human happiness.  The farm, the homestead, had sprung up and grown in the centre of the estate like a prosperous township, with inhabitants, servants, and live stock, a perfect focus of ardent triumphal life.  And what sovereign power was that of the happy fruitfulness which had never wearied of creating, which had yielded all these beings and things that had been increasing and multiplying for twelve years past, that invading town which was but a family’s expansion, those trees, those plants, those grain crops, those fruits whose nourishing stream ever rose under the dazzling sun!  All pain and all tears were forgotten in that joy of creation, the accomplishment of due labor, the conquest of the future conducting to the infinite of Action.

Then, while Mathieu completed his work of conquest, Marianne during those two years had the happiness of seeing a daughter born to her son Blaise, even while she herself was expecting another child.  The branches of the huge tree had begun to fork, pending the time when they would ramify endlessly, like the branches of some great royal oak spreading afar over the soil.  There would be her children’s children, her grandchildren’s children, the whole posterity increasing from generation to generation.  And yet how carefully and lovingly she still assembled around her her own first brood, from Blaise and Denis the twins, now one-and-twenty, to the last born, the wee creature who sucked in life from her bosom with greedy lips.  There were some of all ages in the brood—­a big fellow, who was already a father; others who went to school; others who still had to be dressed in the morning; there were boys, Ambroise, Gervais, Gregoire, and another; there were girls, Rose, nearly old enough to marry; Claire, Louise, Madeleine, and Marguerite, the last of whom could scarcely toddle.  And it was a sight to see them roam over the estate like a troop of colts, following one another at varied pace, according to their growth.  She knew that she could not keep them all tied to her apron-strings; it would be sufficient happiness if the farm kept two or three beside her; she resigned herself to seeing the younger ones go off some day to conquer other lands.  Such was the law of expansion; the earth was the heritage of the most numerous race.