And it was his, Mathieu's, son
whom fortune had made prince of that branch of industry, and it was his
daughter-in-law who, with her three strong, healthy children near her,
received her friends in the little salon hung with yellow silk.
As Mathieu, moved by his recollections, glanced towards the right,
towards the pavilion where he had dwelt with Marianne, and where Gervais
had been born, an old workman who passed, lifted his cap to him, saying,
"Good day, Monsieur Froment."
Mathieu thereupon recognized Victor Moineaud, now five-and-fifty years
old, and aged, and wrecked by labor to even a greater degree than his
father had been at the time when mother Moineaud had come to offer the
Monster her children's immature flesh. Entering the works at sixteen
years of age, Victor, like his father, had spent forty years between the
forge and the anvil. It was iniquitous destiny beginning afresh: the most
crushing toil falling upon a beast of burden, the son hebetated after the
father, ground to death under the millstones of wretchedness and
injustice.
"Good day, Victor," said Mathieu, "are you well?"
"Oh, I'm no longer young, Monsieur Froment," the other replied.
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