"Do you not think it has a vague resemblance to social life?" he said.
"To each its destiny. How many inequalities in that mass of trees!
Those placed the highest lack earth and moisture; they die first."
"Some there are whom the shears of the woman gathering fagots cut short in their prime," she said bitterly.
"Do not fall back into those thoughts," said the rector sternly, though with indulgence still. "The misfortune of this forest is that it has never been cut. Do you see the phenomenon these masses present?"
Veronique, to whose mind the singularities of the forest nature suggested little, looked obediently at the forest and then let her eyes drop gently back upon the rector.
"You do not notice," he said, perceiving from that look her total ignorance, "the lines where the trees of all species still hold their greenness?"
"Ah! true," she said. "I see them now. Why is it?"
"In that," replied the rector, "lies the future of Montegnac, and your own fortune, an immense fortune, as I once explained to Monsieur Graslin. You see the furrows of those three dells, the mountain streams of which flow into the torrent of the Gabou. That torrent separates the forest of Montegnac from the district which on this side adjoins ours. In September and October it goes dry, but in November it is full of water, the volume of which would be greatly increased by a partial clearing of the forest, so as to send all the lesser streams to join it. As it is, its waters do no good; but if one or two dams were made between the two hills on either side of it, as they have done at Riquet, and at Saint-Ferreol--where they have made immense reservoirs to feed the Languedoc canal--this barren plain could be fertilized by judicious irrigation through trenches and culverts managed by watergates; sending the water when needed over these lands, and diverting it at other times to our little river. You could plant fine poplars along these water-courses and raise the finest cattle on such pasturage as you would then obtain. What is grass, but sun and water? There is quite soil enough on the plains to hold the roots; the streams will furnish dew and moisture; the poplars will hold and feed upon the mists, returning their elements to the herbage; these are the secrets of the fine vegetation of valleys. If you undertook this work you would soon see life and joy and movement where silence now reigns, where the eye is saddened by barren fruitlessness. Would not that be a noble prayer to God? Such work would be a better occupation of your leisure than the indulgence of melancholy thoughts."
Veronique pressed the rector's hand, answering with four brief words, but they were grand ones:--"It shall be done."
"You conceive the possibility of this great work," he went on; "but you cannot execute it. Neither you nor I have the necessary knowledge to accomplish an idea which might have come to all, but the execution of which presents immense difficulties; for simple as it may seem, the matter requires the most accurate science with all its resources.
Seek, therefore, at once for the proper human instruments who will enable you within the next dozen years to get an income of six or seven thousand louis out of the six thousand acres you irrigate and fertilize. Such an enterprise will make Montegnac at some future day the most prosperous district in the department. The forest, as yet, yields you no return, but sooner or later commerce will come here in search of its fine woods--those treasures amassed by time; the only ones the production of which cannot be hastened or improved upon by man. The State may some day provide a way of transport from this forest, for many of the trees would make fine masts for the navy; but it will wait until the increasing population of Montegnac makes a demand upon its protection; for the State is like fortune, it comes only to the rich. This estate, well managed, will become, in the course of time, one of the finest in France; it will be the pride of your grandson, who may then find the chateau paltry, comparing it with its revenues."
"Here," said Veronique, "is a future for my life."
"A beneficent work such as that will redeem wrongdoing," said the rector.
Seeing that she understood him, he attempted to strike another blow on this woman's intellect, judging rightly that in her the intellect led the heart, whereas in other women the heart is their road to intelligence.
"Do you know," he said after a pause, "the error in which you are living?"
She looked at him timidly.
"Your repentance is as yet only a sense of defeat endured,--which is horrible, for it is nothing else than the despair of Satan; such, perhaps, was the repentance of mankind before the coming of Jesus Christ. But our repentance, the repentance of Christians, is the horror of a soul struck down on an evil path, to whom, by this very shock, God has revealed Himself. You are like the pagan Orestes; make yourself another Paul."
"Your words have changed me utterly," she cried. "Now--oh! now I want to live."
"The spirit conquers," thought the modest rector, as he joyfully took his leave. He had cast nourishment before a soul hunted into secret despair by giving to its repentance the form of a good and noble action.
