earliest period, and right through all the
long months during which she fed her babe. All sorts of establishments
would have to be founded--refuges, convalescent homes, and so forth; and
there must be protective enactments, and large sums of money voted to
enable help to be extended to all mothers, whatever they might be.
It was only by such preventive steps that one could put a stop to the
frightful hecatomb of newly-born infants, that incessant loss of life
which exhausted the nation and brought it nearer and nearer to death
every day.

"And," continued the doctor, "it may all be summed up in this verity:
'It is a mother's duty to nurse her child.' And, besides, a mother,
is she not the symbol of all grandeur, all strength, all beauty? She
represents the eternity of life. She deserves a social culture, she
should be religiously venerated. When we know how to worship motherhood,
our country will be saved. And this is why, my friend, I should like a
mother feeding her babe to be adopted as the highest expression of human
beauty. Ah! how can one persuade our Parisiennes, all our French women,
indeed, that woman's beauty lies in being a mother with an infant on her
knees? Whenever that fashion prevails, we shall be the sovereign nation,
the masters of the world!"

He ended by laughing in a distressed way, in his despair at being unable
to change manners and customs, aware as he was that the nation could be
revolutionized only by a change in its ideal of true beauty.

"To sum up, then, I believe in a child being nursed only by its own
mother. Every mother who neglects that duty when she can perform it is
a criminal. Of course, there are instances when she is physically
incapable of accomplishing her duty, and in that case there is the
feeding-bottle, which, if employed with care and extreme cleanliness,
only sterilized milk being used, will yield a sufficiently good result.
But to send a child away to be nursed means almost certain death; and as
for the nurse in the house, that is a shameful transaction, a source of
incalculable evil, for both the employer's child and the nurse's child
frequently die from it."

Just then the doctor's brougham drew up outside the nurse-agency in the
Rue Roquepine.

"I dare say you have never been in such a place, although you are the
father of five children," said Boutan to Mathieu, gayly.

"No, I haven't."

"Well, then, come with me. One ought to know everything."

The office in