After examining the bounds of her forest and the meadows purchased by her husband, Veronique returned toward the outlet of the Gabou, but slowly. She then saw Farrabesche gazing into a sort of ditch which looked like one a speculator might have dug into this desolate corner of the earth expecting Nature to give up some hidden treasure.
“What is the matter?” asked Veronique, noticing on that manly face an expression of deep sadness.
“Madame, I owe my life to that ditch; or rather, to speak more correctly, I owe to it time for repentance, time to redeem my sins in the eyes of men.”
This method of explaining life so affected Madame Graslin that she stopped her horse on the brink of the ditch.
“I was hiding there, madame. The ground is so resonant that when my ear was against it I could hear the horses of the gendarmerie, or even the footsteps of the soldiers, which are always peculiar. That gave me time to escape up the Gabou to a place where I had a horse, and I always managed to put several miles between myself and my pursuers. Catherine used to bring me food during the night; if she did not find me I always found the bread and wine in a hole covered with a rock.”
This recollection of his wandering and criminal life, which might have injured Farrabesche with some persons, met with the most indulgent pity from Madame Graslin. She rode hastily on toward the Gabou, followed by her guide. While she measured with her eye this opening, through which could be seen the long valley, so smiling on one side, so ruined on the other, and at its lower end, a league away, the terraced hill-sides back of Montegnac, Farrabesche said:—
“There’ll be a famous rush of water in a few days.”
“And next year, on this day, not a drop shall flow there. Both sides belong to me, and I will build a dam solid enough and high enough to stop the freshet. Instead of a valley yielding nothing, I will have a lake twenty, thirty, forty feet deep over an extent of three or four miles,—an immense reservoir, which shall supply the flow of irrigation with which I will fertilize the plain of Montegnac.”
“Ah, madame! the rector was right, when he said to us as we finished our road, ‘You are working for a mother.’ May God shed his blessing on such an undertaking.”
“Say nothing about it, Farrabesche,” said Madame Graslin. “The idea was Monsieur Bonnet’s.”