have nursed it.  But to-day, with the imbecile, spoilt life she leads, it is quite certain that she is incapable of making such an effort.  The worst is, my dear fellow, as any doctor will tell you, that after three or four generations of mothers who do not feed their children there comes a generation that cannot do so.  And so, my friend, we are fast coming, not only in France, but in other countries where the odious wet-nurse system is in vogue, to a race of wretched, degenerate women, who will be absolutely powerless to nourish their offspring.”

Mathieu then remembered what he had witnessed at Madame Bourdieu’s and the Foundling Hospital.  And he imparted his impressions to Boutan, who again made a despairing gesture.  There was a great work of social salvation to be accomplished, said he.  No doubt a number of philanthropists were trying their best to improve things, but private effort could not cope with such widespread need.  There must be general measures; laws must be passed to save the nation.  The mother must be protected and helped, even in secrecy, if she asked for it; she must be cared for, succored, from the earliest period, and right through all the long months during which she fed her babe.  All sorts of establishments would have to be founded—­refuges, convalescent homes, and so forth; and there must be protective enactments, and large sums of money voted to enable help to be extended to all mothers, whatever they might be.  It was only by such preventive steps that one could put a stop to the frightful hecatomb of newly-born infants, that incessant loss of life which exhausted the nation and brought it nearer and nearer to death every day.

“And,” continued the doctor, “it may all be summed up in this verity:  ’It is a mother’s duty to nurse her child.’  And, besides, a mother, is she not the symbol of all grandeur, all strength, all beauty?  She represents the eternity of life.  She deserves a social culture, she should be religiously venerated.  When we know how to worship motherhood, our country will be saved.  And this is why, my friend, I should like a mother feeding her babe to be adopted as the highest expression of human beauty.  Ah! how can one persuade our Parisiennes, all our French women, indeed, that woman’s beauty lies in being a mother with an infant on her knees?  Whenever that fashion prevails, we shall be the sovereign nation, the masters of the world!”

He ended by laughing in a distressed way, in his despair at being unable to change manners and customs, aware as he was that the nation could be revolutionized only by a change in its ideal of true beauty.

“To sum up, then, I believe in a child being nursed only by its own mother.  Every mother who neglects that duty when she can perform it is a criminal.  Of course, there are instances when she is physically incapable of accomplishing her duty, and in that case there is the feeding-bottle, which, if employed with care and extreme cleanliness, only sterilized milk being used, will yield a sufficiently good result.  But to send a child away to be nursed means almost certain death; and as for the nurse in the house, that is a shameful transaction, a source of incalculable evil, for both the employer’s child and the nurse’s child frequently die from it.”