bitable
than ever, if you had seen me with the child always in my arms. But
I won't nurse--I can't. As you say, we will take a third nurse; it's
simple enough, and we'll do so at once and risk it."

Seguin had abruptly halted in front of Andree, who, alarmed by the sight
of his stern dark figure began to cry. Blinded as he was by anger, he
perhaps failed to see her, even as he failed to see Gaston and Lucie,
who had hastened in at the noise of the dispute and stood near the door,
full of curiosity and fear. As nobody thought of sending them away they
remained there, and saw and heard everything.

"The carriage is waiting," resumed Seguin, in a voice which he strove to
render calm. "Let us make haste, let us go."

Valentine looked at him in stupefaction. "Come, be reasonable," said
she. "How can I leave this child when I have nobody to whom I can trust
her?"

"The carriage is waiting for us," he repeated, quivering; "let us go at
once."

And as his wife this time contented herself with shrugging her
shoulders, he was seized with one of those sudden fits of madness which
impelled him to the greatest violence, even when people were present,
and made him openly display his rankling poisonous sore, that absurd
jealousy which had upset his life. As for that poor little puny, wailing
child, he would have crushed her, for he held her to be guilty of
everything, and indeed it was she who was now the obstacle to that
excursion he had planned, that pleasure trip which he had promised
himself, and which now seemed to him of such supreme importance. And
'twas so much the better if friends were there to hear him. So in the
vilest language he began to upbraid his wife, not only reproaching her
for the birth of that child, but even denying that the child was his.
"You will only be content when you have driven me from the house!" he
finished in a fury. "You won't come? Well then, I'll go by myself!"

And thereupon he rushed off like a whirlwind, without a word to
Santerre, who had remained silent, and without even remembering
that Mathieu still stood there awaiting an answer. The latter, in
consternation at hearing all these things, had not dared to withdraw
lest by doing so he should seem to be passing judgment on the scene.
Standing there motionless, he turned his head aside, looked at little
Andree who was still crying, and at Gaston and Lucie, who, silent with
fright, pressed one against the other behind the armchair in which