you mustn't touch it, for if it
woke up we shouldn't be able to hear ourselves."

Then, as the two children leant inquisitively over the cradle, Mathieu
also glanced at it, and saw a healthy, sturdy-looking child, with a
square face and strong features. And it seemed to him that the infant
was singularly like Beauchene.

At that moment, however, Madame Bourdieu came in, accompanied by
a woman, whom he recognized as Sophie Couteau, "La Couteau," that
nurse-agent whom he had seen at the Seguins' one day when she had gone
thither to offer to procure them a nurse. She also certainly recognized
this gentleman, whose wife, proud of being able to suckle her own
children, had evinced such little inclination to help others to do
business. She pretended, however, that she saw him for the first time;
for she was discreet by profession and not even inquisitive, since so
many matters were ever coming to her knowledge without the asking.

Little Cecile and little Irma went off at once; and then Madame
Bourdieu, addressing Norine, inquired: "Well, my child, have you
thought it over; have you quite made up your mind about that poor little
darling, who is sleeping there so prettily? Here is the person I spoke
to you about. She comes from Normandy every fortnight, bringing nurses
to Paris; and each time she takes babies away with her to put them out
to nurse in the country. Though you say you won't feed it, you surely
need not cast off your child altogether; you might confide it to this
person until you are in a position to take it back. Or else, if you have
made up your mind to abandon it altogether, she will kindly take it to
the Foundling Hospital at once."

Great perturbation had come over Norine, who let her head fall back on
her pillow, over which streamed her thick fair hair, whilst her face
darkened and she stammered: "_Mon Dieu_, _mon Dieu_! you are going to
worry me again!"

Then she pressed her hands to her eyes as if anxious to see nothing
more.

"This is what the regulations require of me, monsieur," said Madame
Bourdieu to Mathieu in an undertone, while leaving the young mother for
a moment to her reflections. "We are recommended to do all we can to
persuade our boarders, especially when they are situated like this one,
to nurse their infants. You are aware that this often saves not only the
child, but the mother herself, from the sad future which threatens her.
And so, however much she may wish to abandon the child