forcing back, revealed how much the future terrified her.
She was there erect and brave in spite of everything; but what a downfall
if she were no longer able to keep her room tidy, stew a piece of veal on
Sundays, and gossip with the neighbours while awaiting her husband's
return from work! Why, they might just as well be thrown into the gutter
and carried off in the scavenger's cart.

However, Thomas intervened: "Isn't there an Asylum for the Invalids of
Labour, and couldn't your husband get admitted to it?" he asked. "It
seems to me that is just the place for him."

"Oh dear, no," the woman answered. "People spoke to me of that place
before, and I got particulars of it. They don't take sick people there.
When you call they tell you that there are hospitals for those who are
ill."

With a wave of his hand Pierre confirmed her statement: it was useless to
apply in that direction. He could again see himself scouring Paris,
hurrying from the Lady President, Baroness Duvillard, to Fonsegue, the
General Manager, and only securing a bed for Laveuve when the unhappy man
was dead.

However, at that moment an infant was heard wailing, and to the amazement
of both visitors Madame Toussaint entered the little closet where her son
Charles had so long slept, and came out of it carrying a child, who
looked scarcely twenty months old. "Well, yes," she explained, "this is
Charles's boy. He was sleeping there in his father's old bed, and now you
hear him, he's woke up.... You see, only last Wednesday, the day
before Toussaint had his stroke, I went to fetch the little one at the
nurse's at St. Denis, because she had threatened to cast him adrift since
Charles had got into bad habits, and no longer paid her. I said to myself
at the time that work was looking up, and that my husband and I would
always be able to provide for a little mouth like that.... But just
afterwards everything collapsed! At the same time, as the child's here
now I can't go and leave him in the street."

While speaking in this fashion she walked to and fro, rocking the baby in
her arms. And naturally enough she reverted to Charles's folly with the
girl, who had run away, leaving that infant behind her. Things might not
have been so very bad if Charles had still worked as steadily as he had
done before he went soldiering. In those days he had never lost an hour,
and had always brought all his pay home! But he had come back from the
army with much less taste for