That morning, as it happened, Celeste the maid received in the linen room, where she usually remained, a visit from her friend Madame Menoux, the little haberdasher of the neighborhood, in whose tiny shop she was so fond of gossiping.  They had become more intimate than ever since La Couteau, at Celeste’s instigation, had taken Madame Menoux’s child, Pierre, to Rougemont, to be put out to nurse there in the best possible way for the sum of thirty francs a month.  La Couteau had also very complaisantly promised to call each month at one or another of her journeys in order to receive the thirty francs, thereby saving the mother the trouble of sending the money by post, and also enabling her to obtain fresh news of her child.  Thus, each time a payment became due, if La Couteau’s journey happened to be delayed a single day, Madame Menoux grew terribly frightened, and hastened off to Celeste to make inquiries of her.  And, moreover, she was glad to have an opportunity of conversing with this girl, who came from the very part where her little Pierre was being reared.

“You will excuse, me, won’t you, mademoiselle, for calling so early,” said she, “but you told me that your lady never required you before nine o’clock.  And I’ve come, you know, because I’ve had no news from over yonder, and it occurred to me that you perhaps might have received a letter.”

Blonde, short and thin, Madame Menoux, who was the daughter of a poor clerk, had a slender pale face, and a pleasant, but somewhat sad, expression.  From her own slightness of build probably sprang her passionate admiration for her big, handsome husband, who could have crushed her between his fingers.  If she was slight, however, she was endowed with unconquerable tenacity and courage, and she would have killed herself with hard work to provide him with the coffee and cognac which he liked to sip after each repast.

“Ah! it’s hard,” she continued, “to have had to send our Pierre so far away.  As it is, I don’t see my husband all day, and now I’ve a child whom I never see at all.  But the misfortune is that one has to live, and how could I have kept the little fellow in that tiny shop of mine, where from morning till night I never have a moment to spare!  Yet, I can’t help crying at the thought that I wasn’t able to keep and nurse him.  When my husband comes home from the museum every evening, we do nothing but talk about him, like a pair of fools.  And so, according to you, mademoiselle, that place Rougemont is very healthy, and there are never any nasty illnesses about there?”

But at this moment she was interrupted by the arrival of another early visitor, whose advent she hailed with a cry of delight.

“Oh! how happy I am to see you, Madame Couteau!  What a good idea it was of mine to call here!”

Amid exclamations of joyous surprise, the nurse-agent explained that she had arrived by the night train with a batch of nurses, and had started on her round of visits as soon as she had deposited them in the Rue Roquepine.