She could not remain in the shop, but remained standing by the doorway, with her neck outstretched and her eyes fixed on the street corner.  All at once a deep cry came from her:  “Ah! here they are!”

Leisurely, and with a sour, harassed air, La Couteau came in and placed the sleeping child in Madame Menoux’s arms, saying as she did so:  “Well, your George is a tidy weight, I can tell you.  You won’t say that I’ve brought you this one back like a skeleton.”

Quivering, her legs sinking beneath her for very joy, the mother had been obliged to sit down, keeping her child on her knees, kissing him, examining him, all haste to see if he were in good health and likely to live.  He had a fat and rather pale face, and seemed big, though puffy.  When she had unfastened his wraps, her hands trembling the while with nervousness, she found that he was pot-bellied, with small legs and arms.

“He is very big about the body,” she murmured, ceasing to smile, and turning gloomy with renewed fears.

“Ah, yes! complain away!” said La Couteau.  “The other was too thin; this one will be too fat.  Mothers are never satisfied!”

At the first glance Mathieu had detected that the child was one of those who are fed on pap, stuffed for economy’s sake with bread and water, and fated to all the stomachic complaints of early childhood.  And at the sight of the poor little fellow, Rougemont, the frightful slaughter-place, with its daily massacre of the innocents, arose in his memory, such as it had been described to him in years long past.  There was La Loiseau, whose habits were so abominably filthy that her nurslings rotted as on a manure heap; there was La Vimeux, who never purchased a drop of milk, but picked up all the village crusts and made bran porridge for her charges as if they had been pigs; there was La Gavette too, who, being always in the fields, left her nurslings in the charge of a paralytic old man, who sometimes let them fall into the fire; and there was La Cauchois, who, having nobody to watch the babes, contented herself with tying them in their cradles, leaving them in the company of fowls which came in bands to peck at their eyes.  And the scythe of death swept by; there was wholesale assassination; doors were left wide open before rows of cradles, in order to make room for fresh bundles despatched from Paris.  Yet all did not die; here, for instance, was one brought home again.  But even when they came back alive they carried with them the germs of death, and another hecatomb ensued, another sacrifice to the monstrous god of social egotism.

“I’m tired out; I must sit down,” resumed La Couteau, seating herself on the narrow bench behind the counter.  “Ah! what a trade!  And to think that we are always received as if we were heartless criminals and thieves!”