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 necessary, the labor that has made and that regulates the
earth. But during the first two years they had to struggle incessantly.
There were two disastrous winters with snow and ice, and March brought
hail-storms and hurricanes which left the crops lying low. Even as
Lepailleur had threateningly predicted with a laugh of impotent envy, it
seemed as if the earth meant to prove a bad mother, ungrateful to them
for their toil, indifferent to their losses. During those two years they
only extricated themselves from trouble thanks to the second fifty acres
that they purchased from Seguin, to the west of the plateau, a fresh
expanse of rich soil which they reclaimed amid the marshes, and which, in
spite of frost and hail, yielded a prodigious first harvest. As the
estate gradually expanded, it also grew stronger, better able to bear
ill-luck.
But Mathieu and Marianne also had great family worries. Their five elder
children gave them much anxiety, much fatigue.
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