live in the future."

She counted six thousand four hundred francs and quietly put them in
her pocket. This was the ninth of thirty-one farms that they had
inherited which they had sold in this way. Nevertheless they still
possessed about twenty thousand livres income annually in land
rentals, which, with proper care, would have yielded about thirty
thousand francs a year.

Living simply as they did, this income would have sufficed had there
not been a bottomless hole always open in their house--kind-hearted
generosity. It dried up the money in their hands as the sun dries the
water in marshes. It flowed, fled, disappeared. How? No one knew.
Frequently one would say to the other, "I don't know how it happens,
but I have spent one hundred francs to-day, and I have bought nothing
of any consequence." This faculty of giving was, however, one of the
greatest pleasures of their life, and they all agreed on this point in
a superb and touching manner.

Jeanne asked her father, "Is it beautiful now, my castle?" The baron
replied, "You shall see, my little girl."

The storm began to abate. The vault of clouds seemed to rise and
heighten and suddenly, through a rift, a long ray of sunshine fell
upon the fields, and presently the clouds separated, showing the blue
firmament, and then, like the tearing of a veil, the opening grew
larger and the beautiful azure sky, clear and fathomless, spread over
the world. A fresh and gentle breeze passed over the earth like a
happy sigh, and as they passed beside gardens or woods they heard
occasionally the bright chirp of a bird as he dried his wings.