THE FOUR GOSPELS (Les Quatre Évangiles). Эмиль Золя
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were beginning to fertilize. It was the resistless conquest of life, it was fruitfulness spreading in the sunlight, it was labor ever incessantly pursuing its work of creation amid obstacles and suffering, making good all losses, and at each succeeding hour setting more energy, more health, and more joy in the veins of the world.
On the day when Mathieu called on Seguin to purchase the wood and moorland, he lunched with Dr. Boutan, whom he found in an execrable humor. The doctor had just heard that three of his former patients had lately passed through the hands of his colleague Gaude, the notorious surgeon to whose clinic at the Marbeuf Hospital society Paris flocked as to a theatre. One of these patients was none other than Euphrasie, old Moineaud’s eldest daughter, now married to Auguste Benard, a mason, and already the mother of three children. She had doubtless resumed her usual avocations too soon after the birth of her last child, as often happens in working-class families where the mother is unable to remain idle. At all events, she had for some time been ailing, and had finally been removed to the hospital. Mathieu had for a while employed her young sister Cecile, now seventeen, as a servant in the house at Chantebled, but she was of poor health and had returned to Paris, where, curiously enough, she also entered Doctor Gaude’s clinic. And Boutan waxed indignant at the methods which Gaude employed. The two sisters, the married woman and the girl, had been discharged as cured, and so far, this might seem to be the case; but time, in Boutan’s opinion, would bring round some terrible revenges.
One curious point of the affair was that Beauchene’s dissolute sister, Seraphine, having heard of these so-called cures, which the newspapers had widely extolled, had actually sought out the Benards and the Moineauds to interview Euphrasie and Cecile on the subject. And in the result she likewise had placed herself in Gaude’s hands. She certainly was of little account, and, whatever might become of her, the world would be none the poorer by her death. But Boutan pointed out that during the fifteen years that Gaude’s theories and practices had prevailed in France, no fewer than half a million women had been treated accordingly, and, in the vast majority of cases, without any such treatment being really necessary. Moreover, Boutan spoke feelingly of the after results of such treatment — comparative health for a few brief years, followed in some cases by a total loss of muscular energy, and in others by insanity of a most violent form; so that the padded cells of the madhouses were filling year by year with the unhappy women who had passed through the hands of Gaude and his colleagues. From a social point of view also the effects were disastrous. They ran counter to all Boutan’s own theories, and blasted all his hopes of living to see France again holding a foremost place among the nations of the earth.
“Ah!” said he to Mathieu, “if people were only like you and your good wife!”
During those four years at Chantebled the Froments had been ever founding, creating, increasing, and multiplying, again and again proving victorious in the eternal battle which life wages against death, thanks to that continual increase both of offspring and of fertile land which was like their very existence, their joy and their strength. Desire passed like a gust of flame — desire divine and fruitful, since they possessed the power of love, kindliness, and health. And their energy did the rest — that will of action, that quiet bravery in the presence of the labor that is necessary, the labor that has made and that regulates the earth. But during the first two years they had to struggle incessantly. There were two disastrous winters with snow and ice, and March brought hailstorms and hurricanes which left the crops lying low. Even as Lepailleur had threateningly predicted with a laugh of impotent envy, it seemed as if the earth meant to prove a bad mother, ungrateful to them for their toil, indifferent to their losses. During those two years they only extricated themselves from trouble thanks to the second fifty acres that they purchased from Seguin, to the west of the plateau, a fresh expanse of rich soil which they reclaimed amid the marshes, and which, in spite of frost and hail, yielded a prodigious first harvest. As the estate gradually expanded, it also grew stronger, better able to bear ill-luck.
But Mathieu and Marianne also had great family worries. Their five elder children gave them much anxiety, much fatigue. As with the soil, here again there was a daily battle, endless cares and endless fears. Little Gervais was stricken with fever and narrowly escaped death. Rose, too, one day filled them with the direst alarm, for she fell from a tree in their presence, but fortunately with no worse injury than a sprain. And, on the other hand, they were happy in the three others, Blaise, Denis, and Ambroise, who proved as healthy as young oak-trees. And when Marianne gave birth to her sixth child, on whom they bestowed the gay name of Claire, Mathieu celebrated the new pledge of their affection by further acquisitions.
Then, during the two ensuing years, their battles and sadness and joy all resulted in victory once more. Marianne gave birth, and Mathieu conquered new lands. There was ever much labor, much life expended, and much life realized and harvested. This time it was a question of enlarging the estate on the side of the moorlands, the sandy, gravelly slopes where nothing had grown for centuries. The captured sources of the tableland, directed towards those uncultivated tracts, gradually fertilized them, covered them with increasing vegetation. There were partial failures at first, and defeat even seemed possible, so great was the patient determination which the creative effort demanded. But here, too, the crops at last overflowed, while the intelligent felling of a part of the purchased woods resulted in a large profit, and gave Mathieu an idea of cultivating some of the spacious clearings hitherto overgrown with brambles.
And while the estate spread the children grew. It had been necessary to send the three elder ones — Blaise, Denis, and Ambroise — to a school in Paris, whither they gallantly repaired each day by the first train, returning only in the evening. But the three others, little Gervais and the girls Rose and Claire, were still allowed all freedom in the midst of Nature. Marianne, however, gave birth to a seventh child, amid circumstances which caused Mathieu keen anxiety. For a moment, indeed, he feared that he might lose her. But her healthful temperament triumphed over all, and the child — a boy, named Gregoire — soon drank life and strength from her breast, as from the very source of existence. When Mathieu saw his wife smiling again with that dear little one in her arms, he embraced her passionately, and triumphed once again over every sorrow and every pang. Yet another child, yet more wealth and power, yet an additional force born into the world, another field ready for tomorrow’s harvest.
And ‘twas ever the great work, the good work, the work of fruitfulness spreading, thanks to the earth and to woman, both victorious over destruction, offering fresh means of subsistence each time a fresh child was born, and loving, willing, battling, toiling even amid suffering, and ever tending to increase of life and increase of hope.
Then two more years rolled on. And during those two years Mathieu and Marianne had yet another child, a girl. And again, at the same time as the family increased, the estate of Chantebled was increased also — on one side by five-and-seventy acres of woodland stretching over the plateau as far as the fields of Mareuil, and on the other by five-and-seventy acres of sloping moorland, extending to the village of Monval, alongside the railway line. But the principal change was that, as the old hunting-box, the little dilapidated pavilion, no longer offered sufficient accommodation, a whole farmstead had to be erected — stone buildings, and barns, and sheds, and stables, and cowhouses — for farm hands and crops and animals, whose number increased at each enlargement of the estate.
It was the resistless conquest of life; it was fruitfulness spreading in the sunlight; it was labor ever incessantly pursuing its work of creation amid obstacles and suffering, ever making good all losses, and at each succeeding hour setting more energy, more health, and more joy in the veins of the world.
But during those two years, while Chantebled grew, while labor and worry and victory alternated, Mathieu suddenly found himself mixed up in a terribly tragedy. He was obliged to come to Paris at times — more often indeed than he cared — now through his business relations with Seguin, now to sell, now to buy, now to order one thing or another. He often purchased implements and appliances at the Beauchene works, and had thus kept up intercourse with Morange, who once more seemed a changed man. Time had largely healed the wound left by his wife’s death, particularly as she seemed to live again in Reine, to whom he was more attached than ever. Reine was no longer a child; she had become a woman. Still her father hoped to keep her with him some years yet, while working with all diligence, saving and saving every