The news gave great
relief at the farm whither the prodigal son had not yet dared to return.
It was believed that the young couple, after eloping together, had lived
in some out of the way district of Paris, and it was even suspected that
Ambroise, who was liberally minded, had, in a brotherly way, helped them
with his purse. And if, on the one hand, Lepailleur consented to the
marriage in a churlish, distrustful manner--like one who deemed himself
robbed, and was simply influenced by the egotistical dread of some day
finding himself quite alone again in his gloomy house--Mathieu and
Marianne, on the other side, were delighted with an arrangement which put
an end to an equivocal situation that had caused them the greatest
suffering, grieved as they were by the rebellion of one of their
children.
Curiously enough, it came to pass that Gregoire, once married and
installed at the mill in accordance with his wife's desire, agreed with
his father-in-law far better than had been anticipated. This resulted in
particular from a certain discussion during which Lepailleur had wished
to make Gregoire swear, that, after his death, he would never dispose of
the moorland enclosure, hitherto kept uncultivated with peasant
stubbornness, to any of his brothers or sisters of the farm.
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