“We only learnt last night, my dear,” said she, “that you had arrived the day before.  We didn’t expect you for another eight or ten days.  And so, as we passed the house just now, we couldn’t resist calling.  You will forgive us, won’t you?” Then, never waiting for an answer, she added with the petulant vivacity of a tom-tit whom the open air had intoxicated:  “Oh! so there is the new little gentleman—­a boy, am I not right?  And your health is good?  But really I need not ask it. Mon Dieu, what a pretty little fellow he is!  Look at him, Robert; how pretty he is!  A real little doll!  Isn’t he funny now, isn’t he funny!  He is quite amusing.”

Her husband, observing her gayety, drew near and began to admire the child by way of following her example.  “Ah yes, he is really a pretty baby.  But I have seen so many frightful ones—­thin, puny, bluish little things, looking like little plucked chickens.  When they are white and plump they are quite nice.”

Mathieu began to laugh, and twitted the Angelins on having no child of their own.  But on this point they held very decided opinions.  They wished to enjoy life, unburdened by offspring, while they were young.  As for what might happen in five or six years’ time, that, of course, was another matter.  Nevertheless, Madame Angelin could not help being struck by the delightful picture which Marianne, so fresh and gay, presented with her plump little babe at her breast in that white bed amid the bright sunshine.

At last she remarked:  “There’s one thing.  I certainly could not feed a child.  I should have to engage a nurse for any baby of mine.”

“Of course!” her husband replied.  “I would never allow you to feed it.  It would be idiotic.”

These words had scarcely passed his lips when he regretted them and apologized to Marianne, explaining that no mother possessed of means was nowadays willing to face the trouble and worry of nursing.

“Oh! for my part,” Marianne responded, with her quiet smile, “if I had a hundred thousand francs a year I should nurse all my children, even were there a dozen of them.  To begin with, it is so healthful, you know, both for mother and child:  and if I didn’t do my duty to the little one I should look on myself as a criminal, as a mother who grudged her offspring health and life.”

Lowering her beautiful soft eyes towards her boy, she watched him with a look of infinite love, while he continued nursing gluttonously.  And in a dreamy voice she continued:  “To give a child of mine to another—­oh no, never!  I should feel too jealous.  I want my children to be entirely my own.  And it isn’t merely a question of a child’s physical health.  I speak of his whole being, of the intelligence and heart that will come to him, and which he ought to derive from me alone.  If I should find him foolish or malicious later on, I should think that his nurse had poisoned him.  Dear little fellow! when he pulls like that it is as if he were drinking me up entirely.”