ers grew old enough to go out to work.

Beauchene had become silent and slowly paced the room. A slight chill,
a feeling of uneasiness was springing up, and so Constance made haste to
inquire: "Well, my good woman, what is it I can do for you?"

"_Mon Dieu_, madame, it worries me; it's something which Moineaud didn't
dare to ask of Monsieur Beauchene. For my part I hoped to find you alone
and beg you to intercede for us. The fact is we should be very, very
grateful if our little Victor could only be taken on at the works."

"But he is only fifteen," exclaimed Beauchene. "You must wait till he's
sixteen. The law is strict."

"No doubt. Only one might perhaps just tell a little fib. It would be
rendering us such a service--"

"No, it is impossible."

Big tears welled into La Moineaude's eyes. And Mathieu, who had
listened with passionate interest, felt quite upset. Ah! that wretched
toil-doomed flesh that hastened to offer itself without waiting until
it was even ripe for work! Ah! the laborer who is prepared to lie, whom
hunger sets against the very law designed for his own protection!

When La Moineaude had gone off in despair the doctor continued speaking
of juvenile and female labor. As soon as a woman first finds herself a
mother she can no longer continue toiling at a factory. Her lying-in and
the nursing of her babe force her to remain at home, or else grievous
infirmities may ensue for her and her offspring. As for the child, it
becomes anemic, sometimes crippled; besides, it helps to keep wages down
by being taken to work at a low scale of remuneration. Then the doctor
went on to speak of the prolificness of wretchedness, the swarming of
the lower classes. Was not the most hateful natality of all that which
meant the endless increase of starvelings and social rebels?

"I perfectly understand you," Beauchene ended by saying, without any
show of anger, as he abruptly brought his perambulations to an end. "You
want to place me in contradiction with myself, and make me confess that
I accept Moineaud's seven children and need them, whereas I, with my
fixed determination to rest content with an only son, suppress, as it
were, a family in order that I may not have to subdivide my estate.
France, 'the country of only sons,' as folks say nowadays--that's it,
eh? But, my dear fellow, the question is so intricate, and at bottom I
am altogether in the right!"

Then he wished to explain things, and clapped his hand t