XIV
TWO more years went by, and during those two years yet another child,
this time a boy, was born to Mathieu and Marianne. And on this occasion,
at the same time as the family increased, the estate of Chantebled was
increased also by all the heatherland extending to the east as far as the
village of Vieux-Bourg. And this time the last lot was purchased, the
conquest of the estate was complete. The 1250 acres of uncultivated soil
which Seguin's father, the old army contractor, had formerly purchased in
view of erecting a palatial residence there were now, thanks to
unremitting effort, becoming fruitful from end to end. The enclosure
belonging to the Lepailleurs, who stubbornly refused to sell it, alone
set a strip of dry, stony, desolate land amid the broad green plain. And
it was all life's resistless conquest; 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.
Blaise, now the father of a little girl some ten months old, had been
residing at the Beauchene works since the previous winter.
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