But Mathieu and Marianne also had great family worries.  Their five elder children gave them much anxiety, much fatigue.  As with the soil, here again there was a daily battle, endless cares and endless fears.  Little Gervais was stricken with fever and narrowly escaped death.  Rose, too, one day filled them with the direst alarm, for she fell from a tree in their presence, but fortunately with no worse injury than a sprain.  And, on the other hand, they were happy in the three others, Blaise, Denis, and Ambroise, who proved as healthy as young oak-trees.  And when Marianne gave birth to her sixth child, on whom they bestowed the gay name of Claire, Mathieu celebrated the new pledge of their affection by further acquisitions.

Then, during the two ensuing years, their battles and sadness and joy all resulted in victory once more.  Marianne gave birth, and Mathieu conquered new lands.  There was ever much labor, much life expended, and much life realized and harvested.  This time it was a question of enlarging the estate on the side of the moorlands, the sandy, gravelly slopes where nothing had grown for centuries.  The captured sources of the tableland, directed towards those uncultivated tracts, gradually fertilized them, covered them with increasing vegetation.  There were partial failures at first, and defeat even seemed possible, so great was the patient determination which the creative effort demanded.  But here, too, the crops at last overflowed, while the intelligent felling of a part of the purchased woods resulted in a large profit, and gave Mathieu an idea of cultivating some of the spacious clearings hitherto overgrown with brambles.

And while the estate spread the children grew.  It had been necessary to send the three elder ones—­Blaise, Denis, and Ambroise—­to a school in Paris, whither they gallantly repaired each day by the first train, returning only in the evening.  But the three others, little Gervais and the girls Rose and Claire, were still allowed all freedom in the midst of Nature.  Marianne, however, gave birth to a seventh child, amid circumstances which caused Mathieu keen anxiety.  For a moment, indeed, he feared that he might lose her.  But her healthful temperament triumphed over all, and the child—­a boy, named Gregoire—­soon drank life and strength from her breast, as from the very source of existence.  When Mathieu saw his wife smiling again with that dear little one in her arms, he embraced her passionately, and triumphed once again over every sorrow and every pang.  Yet another child, yet more wealth and power, yet an additional force born into the world, another field ready for to-morrow’s harvest.

And ’twas ever the great work, the good work, the work of fruitfulness spreading, thanks to the earth and to woman, both victorious over destruction, offering fresh means of subsistence each time a fresh child was born, and loving, willing, battling, toiling even amid suffering, and ever tending to increase of life and increase of hope.