Fruitfulness - Fecondite | Page 4

end of which, facing the quay,
stood a handsome private house of brickwork with white stone
dressings, that had been erected by Leon Beauchene, father of
Alexandre, the present master of the works. From the balconies one
could perceive the houses which were perched aloft in the midst of
greenery on the height of Passy, beyond the Seine; whilst on the right
arose the campanile of the Trocadero palace. On one side, skirting the
Rue de la Federation, one could still see a garden and a little house,
which had been the modest dwelling of Leon Beauchene in the heroic
days of desperate toil when he had laid the foundations of his fortune.
Then the factory buildings and sheds, quite a mass of grayish structures,
overtopped by two huge chimneys, occupied both the back part of the
ground and that which fringed the Boulevard de Grenelle, the latter
being shut off by long windowless walls. This important and
well-known establishment manufactured chiefly agricultural appliances,
from the most powerful machines to those ingenious and delicate
implements on which particular care must be bestowed if perfection is

to be attained. In addition to the hundreds of men who worked there
daily, there were some fifty women, burnishers and polishers.
The entry to the workshops and offices was in the Rue de la Federation,
through a large carriage way, whence one perceived the far-spreading
yard, with its paving stones invariably black and often streaked by
rivulets of steaming water. Dense smoke arose from the high chimneys,
strident jets of steam emerged from the roof, whilst a low rumbling and
a shaking of the ground betokened the activity within, the ceaseless
bustle of labor.
It was thirty-five minutes past eight by the big clock of the central
building when Mathieu crossed the yard towards the office which he
occupied as chief designer. For eight years he had been employed at the
works where, after a brilliant and special course of study, he had made
his beginning as assistant draughtsman when but nineteen years old,
receiving at that time a salary of one hundred francs a month. His father,
Pierre Froment,* had four sons by Marie his wife--Jean the eldest, then
Mathieu, Marc, and Luc--and while leaving them free to choose a
particular career he had striven to give each of them some manual
calling. Leon Beauchene, the founder of the works, had been dead a
year, and his son Alexandre had succeeded him and married Constance
Meunier, daughter of a very wealthy wall-paper manufacturer of the
Marais, at the time when Mathieu entered the establishment, the master
of which was scarcely five years older than himself. It was there that
Mathieu had become acquainted with a poor cousin of Alexandre's,
Marianne, then sixteen years old, whom he had married during the
following year.
* Of _Lourdes_, _Rome_, and Paris.
Marianne, when only twelve, had become dependent upon her uncle,
Leon Beauchene. After all sorts of mishaps a brother of the latter, one
Felix Beauchene, a man of adventurous mind but a blunderhead, had
gone to Algeria with his wife and daughter, there to woo fortune afresh;
and the farm he had established was indeed prospering when, during a
sudden revival of Arab brigandage, both he and his wife were murdered
and their home was destroyed. Thus the only place of refuge for the
little girl, who had escaped miraculously, was the home of her uncle,
who showed her great kindness during the two years of life that
remained to him. With her, however, were Alexandre, whose

companionship was rather dull, and his younger sister, Seraphine, a big,
vicious, and flighty girl of eighteen, who, as it happened, soon left the
house amid a frightful scandal--an elopement with a certain Baron
Lowicz, a genuine baron, but a swindler and forger, to whom it became
necessary to marry her. She then received a dowry of 300,000 francs.
Alexandre, after his father's death, made a money match with
Constance, who brought him half a million francs, and Marianne then
found herself still more a stranger, still more isolated beside her new
cousin, a thin, dry, authoritative woman, who ruled the home with
absolute sway. Mathieu was there, however, and a few months sufficed:
fine, powerful, and healthy love sprang up between the young people;
there was no lightning flash such as throws the passion-swayed into
each other's arms, but esteem, tenderness, faith, and that mutual
conviction of happiness in reciprocal bestowal which tends to
indissoluble marriage. And they were delighted at marrying penniless,
at bringing one another but their full hearts forever and forever. The
only change in Mathieu's circumstances was an increase of salary to
two hundred francs a month. True, his new cousin by marriage just
vaguely hinted at a possible partnership, but that would not be