And then they burst into a hearty laugh, gayly excusing
themselves. To love! to love! to be able to love! Therein lies all
health, all will, and all power.
XII
FOUR years went by. And during those four years Mathieu and Marianne had
two more children, a daughter at the end of the first year and a son at
the expiration of the third. And each time that the family thus
increased, the estate at Chantebled was increased also--on the first
occasion by fifty more acres of rich soil reclaimed among the marshes of
the plateau, and the second time by an extensive expanse of wood and
moorland which the springs were beginning to fertilize. It was the
resistless conquest of life, it was fruitfulness spreading in the
sunlight, it was labor ever incessantly pursuing its work of creation
amid obstacles and suffering, making good all losses, and at each
succeeding hour setting more energy, more health, and more joy in the
veins of the world.
On the day when Mathieu called on Seguin to purchase the wood and
moorland, he lunched with Dr. Boutan, whom he found in an execrable
humor. The doctor had just heard that three of his former patients had
lately passed through the hands of his colleague Gaude, the notorious
surgeon to whose clinic at the Marbeuf Hospital society Paris flocked as
to a theatre.
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