For many years already, the romantic, ivy-covered
old mill, with its ancient mossy wheel, had ceased to exist. Gregoire, at
last putting his father's ideas into execution, had thrown it down to
replace it by a large steam mill, with spacious meal-stores which a light
railway-line connected with Janville station. And he himself, since he
had been making a big fortune--for all the wheat of the district was now
sent to him--had greatly changed, with nothing of his youthful turbulence
left save a quick temper, which his wife Therese with her brave, loving
heart alone could somewhat calm. On a score of occasions he had almost
broken off all relations with his father-in-law, Lepailleur, who
certainly abused his seventy years. Though the old miller, in spite of
all his prophecies of ruin, had been unable to prevent the building of
the new establishment, he none the less sneered and jeered at it,
exasperated as he was at having been in the wrong. He had, in fact, been
beaten for the second time. Not only did the prodigious crops of
Chantebled disprove his theory of the bankruptcy of the earth, that
villainous earth in which, like an obstinate peasant weary of toil and
eager for speedy fortune, he asserted nothing more would grow; but now
that mill of his, which he had so disdained, was born as it were afresh,
growing to a gigantic size, and becoming in his son-in-law's hands an
instrument of great wealth.
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