“What!” exclaimed La Couteau, “does Marie Lebleu frighten you?  She had better not give me any of her nonsense if she wants me ever to find her another situation.  I’ll speak to her, never fear.”

Celeste thereupon placed Andree on a blanket, which was lying there, side by side with the infant of which the new nurse had rid herself a moment previously, and undertook to conduct La Couteau to Marie Lebleu’s room.  Deathlike silence now reigned there, but the nurse-agent only had to give her name to secure admittance.  She went in, and for a few moments one only heard her dry curt voice.  Then, on coming out, she tranquillized Valentine, who had gone to listen, trembling.

“I’ve sobered her, I can tell you,” said she.  “Pay her her month’s wages.  She’s packing her box and going off.”

Then, as they went back into the linen-room, Valentine settled pecuniary matters and added five francs for this new service.  But a final difficulty arose.  La Couteau could not come back to fetch La Catiche’s child in the evening, and what was she to do with it during the rest of the day?  “Well, no matter,” she said at last, “I’ll take it; I’ll deposit it at the office, before I go my round.  They’ll give it a bottle there, and it’ll have to grow accustomed to the bottle now, won’t it?”

“Of course,” the mother quietly replied.

Then, as La Couteau, on the point of leaving, after all sorts of bows and thanks, turned round to take the little one, she made a gesture of hesitation on seeing the two children lying side by side on the blanket.

“The devil!” she murmured; “I mustn’t make a mistake.”

This seemed amusing, and enlivened the others.  Celeste fairly exploded, and even La Catiche grinned broadly; while La Couteau caught up the child with her long claw-like hands and carried it away.  Yet another gone, to be carted away yonder in one of those ever-recurring razzias which consigned the little babes to massacre!

Mathieu alone had not laughed.  He had suddenly recalled his conversation with Boutan respecting the demoralizing effects of that nurse trade, the shameful bargaining, the common crime of two mothers, who each risked the death of her child—­the idle mother who bought another’s services, the venal mother who sold her milk.  He felt cold at heart as he saw one child carried off still full of life, and the other remain there already so puny.  And what would be fate’s course?  Would not one or the other, perhaps both of them be sacrificed?

Valentine, however, was already leading both him and Santerre to the spacious salon again; and she was so delighted, so fully relieved, that she had recovered all her cavalier carelessness, her passion for noise and pleasure.  And as Mathieu was about to take his leave, he heard the triumphant Santerre saying to her, while for a moment he retained her hand in his clasp:  “Till to-morrow, then.”  And she, who had cast her buckler of defence aside, made answer:  “Yes—­yes, to-morrow.”