"

Victoire paused for a moment to thread her needle. Norine was still
weeping, while Mathieu listened, mute with horror, and with his eyes
fixed upon the sleeping child.

"No doubt folks say less about Rougemont nowadays than they used to,"
the girl resumed; "but there's still enough to disgust one. We know
three or four baby-farmers who are not worth their salt. The rule is
to bring the little ones up with the bottle, you know; and you'd be
horrified if you saw what bottles they are--never cleaned, always
filthy, with the milk inside them icy cold in the winter and sour in the
summer. La Vimeux, for her part, thinks that the bottle system costs too
much, and so she feeds her children on soup. That clears them off all
the quicker. At La Loiseau's you have to hold your nose when you go near
the corner where the little ones sleep--their rags are so filthy. As for
La Gavette, she's always working in the fields with her man, so that the
three or four nurslings that she generally has are left in charge of the
grandfather, an old cripple of seventy, who can't even prevent the fowls
from coming to peck at the little ones.* And things are worse even at La
Cauchois', for, as she has nobody at all to mind the children when she
goes out working, she leaves them tied in their cradles, for fear lest
they should tumble out and crack their skulls. You might visit all the
houses in the village, and you would find the same thing everywhere.
There isn't a house where the trade isn't carried on. Round our part
there are places where folks make lace, or make cheese, or make cider;
but at Rougemont they only make dead bodies."

* There is no exaggeration in what M. Zola writes on this subject.
I have even read in French Government reports of instances in
which nurslings have been devoured by pigs! And it is a well-known
saying in France that certain Norman and Touraine villages are
virtually "paved with little Parisians."--Trans.

All at once she ceased sewing, and looked at Mathieu with her timid,
clear eyes.

"But the worst of all," she continued, "is La Couillard, an old thief
who once did six months in prison, and who now lives a little way out
of the village on the verge of the wood. No live child has ever left
La Couillard's. That's her specialty. When you see an agent, like La
Couteau, for instance, taking her a child, you know at once what's in
the wind. La Couteau has simply bargained that the little one s