THE FOUR GOSPELS (Les Quatre Évangiles). Эмиль Золя

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      XII

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      FOUR years went by. And during those four years Mathieu and Marianne had two more children, a daughter at the end of the first year and a son at the expiration of the third. And each time that the family thus increased, the estate at Chantebled was increased also — on the first occasion by fifty more acres of rich soil reclaimed among the marshes of the plateau, and the second time by an extensive expanse of wood and moorland which the springs 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. СКАЧАТЬ