Madame Graslin agreed to his request, doing justice to the good sense of it. From the time the work on the plain began, Veronique’s life assumed the regularity of country existence. In the morning she heard mass, took care of her son, whom she idolized, and went to see her laborers. After dinner she received her friends from Montegnac in the little salon to the right of the clock-tower. She taught Roubaud, Clousier, and the rector to play whist, which Gerard knew already. The rubbers usually ended at nine o’clock, after which the company withdrew. This peaceful life had no other events to mark it than the success of the various parts of the great enterprise. In June the torrent of the Gabou went dry, and Gerard established his headquarters in the keeper’s house. Farrabesche had already built his farmhouse, which he called Le Gabou. Fifty masons, brought from Paris, joined the two mountains by a wall twenty feet thick, with a foundation twelve feet deep and heavily cemented. The wall, or dam, rose nearly sixty feet and tapered in until it was not more than ten feet thick at the summit. Gerard backed this wall on the valley side with a cemented slope, about twelve feet wide at its base. On the side toward the commons a similar slope, covered with several feet of arable earth, still further supported this great work, which no rush of water could possibly damage. The engineer provided in case of unusual rains an overflow at a proper height. The masonry was inserted into the flank of each mountain until the granite or the hard-pan was reached, so that the water had absolutely no outlet at the sides. This dam was finished by the middle of August. At the same time Gerard was preparing three canals in the principal valleys, and none of these works came up to his estimated costs. The chateau farm could now be finished. The irrigation channels through the plain, superintended by Fresquin, started from the canal made by nature along the base of the mountains on the plain side, through which culverts were cut to the irrigating channels. Water-gates were fitted into those channels, the sides of which the abundance of rock had enabled them to stone up, so as to keep the flow of water at an even height along the plain.