At this point Victoire ceased speaking, for La Couteau came in to fetch Norine’s child.  Norine, who had emerged from her distress during the servant girl’s stories, had ended by listening to them with great interest.  But directly she perceived the agent she once more hid her face in her pillows, as though she feared to see what was about to happen.  Mathieu, on his side, had risen from his chair and stood there quivering.

“So it’s understood, I’m going to take the child,” said La Couteau.  “Madame Bourdieu has given me a slip of paper bearing the date of the birth and the address.  Only I ought to have some Christian names.  What do you wish the child to be called?”

Norine did not at first answer.  Then, in a faint distressful voice, she said:  “Alexandre.”

“Alexandre, very well.  But you would do better to give the boy a second Christian name, so as to identify him the more readily, if some day you take it into your head to run after him.”

It was again necessary to tear a reply from Norine.  “Honore,” she said.

“Alexandre Honore—­all right.  That last name is yours, is it not?* And the first is the father’s?  That is settled; and now I’ve everything I need.  Only it’s four o’clock already, and I shall never get back in time for the six o’clock train if I don’t take a cab.  It’s such a long way off—­the other side of the Luxembourg.  And a cab costs money.  How shall we manage?”

  * Norine is, of course, a diminutive of Honorine, which is the
    feminine form of Honore.—­Trans.

While she continued whining, to see if she could not extract a few francs from the distressed girl, it suddenly occurred to Mathieu to carry out his mission to the very end by driving with her himself to the Foundling Hospital, so that he might be in a position to inform Beauchene that the child had really been deposited there, in his presence.  So he told La Couteau that he would go down with her, take a cab, and bring her back.

“All right; that will suit me.  Let us be off!  It’s a pity to wake the little one, since he’s so sound asleep; but all the same, we must pack him off, since it’s decided.”

With her dry hands, which were used to handling goods of this description, she caught up the child, perhaps, however, a little roughly, forgetting her assumed wheedling good nature now that she was simply charged with conveying it to hospital.  And the child awoke and began to scream loudly.

“Ah! dear me, it won’t be amusing if he keeps up this music in the cab.  Quick, let us be off.”

But Mathieu stopped her.  “Won’t you kiss him, Norine?” he asked.

At the very first squeal that sorry mother had dipped yet lower under her sheets, carrying her hands to her ears, distracted as she was by the sound of those cries.  “No, no,” she gasped, “take him away; take him away at once.  Don’t begin torturing me again!”

Then she closed her eyes, and with one arm repulsed the child who seemed to be pursuing her.  But when she felt that the agent was laying him on the bed, she suddenly shuddered, sat up, and gave a wild hasty kiss, which lighted on the little fellow’s cap.  She had scarcely opened her tear-dimmed eyes, and could have seen but a vague phantom of that poor feeble creature, wailing and struggling at the decisive moment when he was being cast into the unknown.