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And the doctor listened without interrupting, evidently won over by the young man's growing, creative emotion. When at last Boutan had to express an opinion he replied: "Mon Dieu, my friend, I can tell you nothing from a practical point of view, for I have never even planted a lettuce.
He had suddenly recalled his conversation with Boutan respecting the demoralizing effects of that nurse trade, the shameful bargaining, the common crime of two mothers, who each risked the death of her child the idle mother who bought another's services, the venal mother who sold her milk.
With a weary air and her eyes half closed she began to reflect. After Rose's death, and when little Christophe likewise had been carried off, a revival of hope had come to her, for all at once she had felt quite young again. But when she consulted Boutan on the matter he dealt her a final blow by informing her that her hopes were quite illusive.
An old foreman who had occupied this pavilion, which still contained the simple furniture of former days, had lately died. And the young folks, desiring to be near their friend, worthy Dr. Boutan, had lived there for a month now, and did not intend to return to Chantebled until the first fine days in April. "Wait a moment," resumed Mathieu; "I will let the light in."
But he was pale and there was a faint ring round his heavy eyelids. His mother, that "bag of bones," a little dark woman, yellow and withered at six-and-twenty, looked at him with an expression of egotistical pride. "Oh, no! he's never ill," she answered. "Only he has been complaining of his legs. And so I made him lie down, and I wrote last night to ask Dr. Boutan to call this morning."
"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 the Rue Roquepine was the most important and the one with the best reputation in the district.
Boutan took a chair and seated himself near the table, while Mathieu explained to him that they had remained late in bed. "Yes, that is all right, let her rest: but she must also take as much exercise as possible. However, there is no cause to worry. I see that she has a good appetite. When I find my patients at table, I cease to be a doctor, you know, I am simply a friend making a call."
Meantime, as Constance gave no sign of life, seized as she was by one of those fainting fits which often left her quite breathless, Mathieu himself went for Boutan, and meeting him just as he was returning home for dinner, was luckily able to bring him back at once.
Ah! how truly had Boutan spoken in saying that people ought to wait to see the real results of those victorious operations which were sapping the vitality of France. Cecile, however, with eager affection, kissed the three children, who somehow continued to grow up in that wrecked household.
She certainly was of little account, and, whatever might become of her, the world would be none the poorer by her death. But Boutan pointed out that during the fifteen years that Gaude's theories and practices had prevailed in France, no fewer than half a million women had been treated accordingly, and, in the vast majority of cases, without any such treatment being really necessary.
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