put me in such a temper!  I asked her if she wanted to dishonor me.  What will ruin me is my good heart.  I don’t know how to refuse when folks ask me to do them a service.  And God in Heaven knows how fond I am of children!  I’ve always lived among them, and in future, if anybody who’s a friend of mine gives me a child to put out to nurse, I shall say:  ’We won’t take the little one to La Couillard, for it would be tempting Providence.  But after all, I’m an honest woman, and I wash my hands of it, for if I do take the cherubs over yonder I don’t nurse them.  And when one’s conscience is at ease one can sleep quietly.’”

“Of course,” chimed in Celeste, with an air of conviction.

While they thus waxed maudlin over their malaga, there arose a horrible red vision—­a vision of that terrible Rougemont, paved with little Parisians, the filthy, bloody village, the charnel-place of cowardly murder, whose steeple pointed so peacefully to the skies in the midst of the far-spreading plain.

But all at once a rush was heard in the passage, and the servant hastened to the door to rid herself of Gaston and Lucie, who were approaching.  “Be off!  I don’t want you here.  Your mamma has told you that you mustn’t come here.”

Then she came back into the room quite furious.  “That’s true!” said she; “I can do nothing but they must come to bother me.  Why don’t they stay a little with the nurse?”

“Oh! by the way,” interrupted La Couteau, “did you hear that Marie Lebleu’s little one is dead?  She must have had a letter about it.  Such a fine child it was!  But what can one expect? it’s a nasty wind passing.  And then you know the saying, ’A nurse’s child is the child of sacrifice!’”

“Yes, she told me she had heard of it,” replied Celeste, “but she begged me not to mention it to madame, as such things always have a bad effect.  The worst is that if her child’s dead madame’s little one isn’t much better off.”

At this La Couteau pricked up her ears.  “Ah! so things are not satisfactory?”

“No, indeed.  It isn’t on account of her milk; that’s good enough, and she has plenty of it.  Only you never saw such a creature—­such a temper! always brutal and insolent, banging the doors and talking of smashing everything at the slightest word.  And besides, she drinks like a pig—­as no woman ought to drink.”

La Couteau’s pale eyes sparkled with gayety, and she briskly nodded her head as if to say that she knew all this and had been expecting it.  In that part of Normandy, in and around Rougemont, all the women drank more or less, and the girls even carried little bottles of brandy to school with them in their baskets.  Marie Lebleu, however, was a woman of the kind that one picks up under the table, and, indeed, it might be said that since the birth of her last child she had never been quite sober.

“I know her, my dear,” exclaimed La Couteau; “she is impossible.  But then, that doctor who chose her didn’t ask my opinion.  And, besides, it isn’t a matter that concerns me.  I simply bring her to Paris and take her child back to the country.  I know nothing about anything else.  Let the gentlefolks get out of their trouble by themselves.”