and the news that they
were about to marry off their daughter. Then, at La Gavette's, the old
grandfather, who looked after the nurslings while the family was at
work in the fields, had fallen into the fire with a baby in his arms.
Fortunately they had been pulled out of it, and only the little one had
been roasted. La Cauchois, though at heart she wasn't downcast, now had
some fears that she might be worried, because four little ones had gone
off from her house all in a body, a window being forgetfully left open
at night-time. They were all four little Parisians, it seemed--two
foundlings and two that had come from Madame Bourdieu's. Since the
beginning of the year as many had died at Rougemont as had arrived
there, and the mayor had declared that far too many were dying, and
that the village would end by getting a bad reputation. One thing was
certain, La Couillard would be the very first to receive a visit from
the gendarmes if she didn't so arrange matters as to keep at least one
nursling alive every now and then.

"Ah? that Couillard!" added the nurse-agent. "Just fancy, my dear, I
took her a child, a perfect little angel--the boy of a very pretty young
person who was stopping at Madame Bourdieu's. She paid four hundred
francs to have him brought up until his first communion, and he lived
just five days! Really now, that wasn't long enough! La Couillard need
not have been so hasty. It put me in such a temper! I asked her if she
wanted to dishonor me. What will ruin me is my good heart. I don't know
how to refuse when folks ask me to do them a service. And God in Heaven
knows how fond I am of children! I've always lived among them, and in
future, if anybody who's a friend of mine gives me a child to put out to
nurse, I shall say: 'We won't take the little one to La Couillard, for
it would be tempting Providence. But after all, I'm an honest woman, and
I wash my hands of it, for if I do take the cherubs over yonder I
don't nurse them. And when one's conscience is at ease one can sleep
quietly.'"

"Of course," chimed in Celeste, with an air of conviction.

While they thus waxed maudlin over their malaga, there arose a horrible
red vision--a vision of that terrible Rougemont, paved with little
Parisians, the filthy, bloody village, the charnel-place of cowardly
murder, whose steeple pointed so peacefully to the skies in the midst of
the far-spreading plain.

But all at once a rush was heard in the passage, and the