The funeral ceremony two days later was an imposing one.  The five hundred workmen of the establishment followed the hearse, notabilities of all sorts made up an immense cortege.  It was much noticed that an old workman, father Moineaud, the oldest hand of the works, was one of the pall-bearers.  Indeed, people thought it touching, although the worthy old man dragged his legs somewhat, and looked quite out of his element in a frock coat, stiffened as he was by thirty years’ hard toil.  In the cemetery, near the grave, Mathieu felt surprised on being approached by an old lady who alighted from one of the mourning-coaches.

“I see, my friend,” said she, “that you do not recognize me.”

He made a gesture of apology.  It was Seraphine, still tall and slim, but so fleshless, so withered that one might have thought she was a hundred years old.  Cecile had warned Mathieu of it, yet if he had not seen her himself he would never have believed that her proud insolent beauty, which had seemed to defy time and excesses, could have faded so swiftly.  What frightful, withering blast could have swept over her?

“Ah! my friend,” she continued, “I am more dead than the poor fellow whom they are about to lower into that grave.  Come and have a chat with me some day.  You are the only person to whom I can tell everything.”

The coffin was lowered, the ropes gave out a creaking sound, and there came a little thud—­the last.  Beauchene, supported by a relative, looked on with dim, vacant eyes.  Constance, who had had the bitter courage to come, and had now wept all the tears in her body, almost fainted.  She was carried away, driven back to her home, which would now forever be empty, like one of those stricken fields that remain barren, fated to perpetual sterility.  Mother earth had taken back her all.

And at Chantebled Mathieu and Marianne founded, created, increased, and multiplied, again proving victorious in the eternal battle which life wages against death, thanks to that continual increase, both of offspring and of fertile land, which was like their very existence, their joy and their strength.  Desire passed like a gust of flame, desire divine and fruitful, since they possessed the power of love, kindliness, and health.  And their energy did the rest—­that will of action, that quiet bravery in the presence of the labor that is requisite, the labor that has made and that regulates the world.

Still, during those two years it was not without constant battling that victory remained to them.  At last it was complete.  Piece by piece Seguin had sold the entire estate, of which Mathieu was now king, thanks to his prudent system of conquest, that of increasing his empire by degrees as he gradually felt himself stronger.  The fortune which the idler had disdained and dissipated had passed into the hands of the toiler, the creator.  There were 1250 acres, spreading from horizon to horizon; there were woods intersected