Henceforth it would be invincible.
At twilight, on the evening of that day, Mathieu and Marianne again found
themselves, as on the previous evening, hand in hand near the window
whence they could see the estate stretching to the horizon; that horizon
behind which arose the breath of Paris, the tawny cloud of its gigantic
forge. But how little did that serene evening resemble the other, and how
great was their present felicity, their trust in the goodness of their
work.
"Do you feel better?" Mathieu asked his wife; "do you feel your strength
returning; does your heart beat more freely?"
"Oh! my friend, I feel cured; I was only pining with grief. To-morrow I
shall be strong."
Then Mathieu sank into a deep reverie, as he sat there face to face with
his conquest--that estate which spread out under the setting sun. And
again, as in the morning, did recollections crowd upon him; he remembered
a morning more than forty years previously when he had left Marianne,
with thirty sous in her purse, in the little tumbledown shooting-box on
the verge of the woods. They lived there on next to nothing; they owed
money, they typified gay improvidence with the four little mouths which
they already had to feed, those children who had sprung from their love,
their faith in life.
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