Then she gave him the breast and he became quiet, simply purring like a happy little kitten. The beneficent source had begun to flow once more, as if it were inexhaustible. The trickling milk murmured unceasingly. One might have said that it could be heard descending and spreading, while Mathieu on his side continued opening his trench, assisted by the two men whose apprenticeship was long since past. He rose up at last, wiped his brow, and with his air of quiet certainty exclaimed: "It's only a trade to learn. In a few months' time I shall be nothing but a peasant. Look at that stagnant pond there, green with water-plants. The spring which feeds it is yonder in that big tuft of herbage. And when this trench has been opened to the edge of the slope, you will see the pond dry up, and the spring gush forth and take its course, carrying the beneficent water away." "Ah!" said Marianne, "may it fertilize all that stony expanse, for nothing can be sadder than dead land. How happy it will be to quench its thirst and live again!" Then she broke off to scold Gervais: "Come, young gentleman, don't pull so hard," said she. "Wait till it comes; you know very well that it's all for you." Meantime the blows of the pickaxes rang out, the trench rapidly made its way through the fat, moist soil, and soon the water would flow into the parched veins of the neighboring sandy tracts to endow them with fruitfulness. And the light trickling of the mother's milk also continued with the faint murmur of an inexhaustible source, flowing from her breast into the mouth of her babe, like a fountain of eternal life. It ever and ever flowed, it created flesh, intelligence, and labor, and strength. And soon its whispering would mingle with the babble of the delivered spring as it descended along the trenches to the dry hot lands. And at last there would be but one and the same stream, one and the same river, gradually overflowing and carrying life to all the earth, a mighty river of nourishing milk flowing through the world's veins, creating without a pause, and producing yet more youth and more health at each return of springtide. Four months later, when Mathieu and his men had finished the autumn ploughing, there came the sowing on the same spot. Marianne was there again, and it was such a very mild gray day that she was still able to sit down, and once more gayly give the breast to little Gervais. He was already eight months old and had become quite a personage. He grew a little more every day, always in his mother's arms, on that warm breast whence he sucked life. He was like the seed which clings to the seed-pod so long as it is not ripe. And at that first quiver of November, that approach of winter through which the germs would slumber in the furrows, he pressed his chilly little face close to his mother's warm bosom, and nursed on in silence as if the river of life were lost, buried deep beneath the soil.