But Alexandre did not
reappear there. He doubtless feared that corner of the Rue de la
Federation, and remained as it were submerged in the dim unsoundable
depths of the ocean of Paris.
XX
DURING the ten years which followed, the vigorous sprouting of the
Froments, suggestive of some healthy vegetation of joy and strength,
continued in and around the ever and ever richer domain of Chantebled. As
the sons and the daughters grew up there came fresh marriages, and more
and more children, all the promised crop, all the promised swarming of a
race of conquerors.
First it was Gervais who married Caroline Boucher, daughter of a big
farmer of the region, a fair, fine-featured, gay, strong girl, one of
those superior women born to rule over a little army of servants. On
leaving a Parisian boarding-school she had been sensible enough to feel
no shame of her family's connection with the soil. Indeed she loved the
earth and had set herself to win from it all the sterling happiness of
her life. By way of dowry she brought an expanse of meadow-land in the
direction of Lillebonne, which enlarged the estate by some seventy acres.
But she more particularly brought her good humor, her health, her courage
in rising early, in watching over the farmyard, the dairy, the whole
home, like an energetic active housewife, who was ever bustling about,
and always the last to bed.
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