Victoire paused for a moment to thread her needle.  Norine was still weeping, while Mathieu listened, mute with horror, and with his eyes fixed upon the sleeping child.

“No doubt folks say less about Rougemont nowadays than they used to,” the girl resumed; “but there’s still enough to disgust one.  We know three or four baby-farmers who are not worth their salt.  The rule is to bring the little ones up with the bottle, you know; and you’d be horrified if you saw what bottles they are—­never cleaned, always filthy, with the milk inside them icy cold in the winter and sour in the summer.  La Vimeux, for her part, thinks that the bottle system costs too much, and so she feeds her children on soup.  That clears them off all the quicker.  At La Loiseau’s you have to hold your nose when you go near the corner where the little ones sleep—­their rags are so filthy.  As for La Gavette, she’s always working in the fields with her man, so that the three or four nurslings that she generally has are left in charge of the grandfather, an old cripple of seventy, who can’t even prevent the fowls from coming to peck at the little ones.* And things are worse even at La Cauchois’, for, as she has nobody at all to mind the children when she goes out working, she leaves them tied in their cradles, for fear lest they should tumble out and crack their skulls.  You might visit all the houses in the village, and you would find the same thing everywhere.  There isn’t a house where the trade isn’t carried on.  Round our part there are places where folks make lace, or make cheese, or make cider; but at Rougemont they only make dead bodies.”

  * There is no exaggeration in what M. Zola writes on this subject. 
    I have even read in French Government reports of instances in
    which nurslings have been devoured by pigs!  And it is a well-known
    saying in France that certain Norman and Touraine villages are
    virtually “paved with little Parisians.”—­Trans.

All at once she ceased sewing, and looked at Mathieu with her timid, clear eyes.

“But the worst of all,” she continued, “is La Couillard, an old thief who once did six months in prison, and who now lives a little way out of the village on the verge of the wood.  No live child has ever left La Couillard’s.  That’s her specialty.  When you see an agent, like La Couteau, for instance, taking her a child, you know at once what’s in the wind.  La Couteau has simply bargained that the little one shall die.  It’s settled in a very easy fashion:  the parents give a sum of three or four hundred francs on condition that the little one shall be kept till his first communion, and you may be quite certain that he dies within a week.  It’s only necessary to leave a window open near him, as a nurse used to do whom my father knew.  At winter time, when she had half a dozen babies in her house, she would set the door wide open and then go out for a stroll.  And, by the way, that little boy in the next room, whom La Couteau has just gone to see, she’ll take him to La Couillard’s, I’m sure; for I heard the mother, Mademoiselle Rosine, agree with her the other day to give her a sum of four hundred francs down on the understanding that she should have nothing more to do in the matter.”