A work such as this
can only live by force of love. The love which created it can alone
perpetuate it; it crumbles as soon as the bond of fraternal solidarity is
broken. Thus it seemed to Mathieu that instead of leaving his work behind
him in full florescence of kindliness, joy, and vigor, he would see it
cast to the ground in fragments, soiled, and dead even before he were
dead himself. Yet what a fruitful and prosperous work had hitherto been
that estate of Chantebled, whose overflowing fertility increased at each
successive harvest; and that mill too, so enlarged and so flourishing,
which was the outcome of his own inspiring suggestions, to say nothing of
the prodigious fortunes which his conquering sons had acquired in Paris!
Yet it was all this admirable work, which faith in life had created, that
a fratricidal onslaught upon life was about to destroy!
One evening, in the mournful gloaming of one of the last days of
September, the couch on which Marianne lay dying of silent grief was, by
her desire, rolled to the window. Charlotte alone nursed her, and of all
her sons she had but the last one, Benjamin, beside her in the now
over-spacious house which had replaced the old shooting-box.
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