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But one loves them dearly all the same, though, so far as there is happiness in life, it would perhaps be better for them never to have been born. However, my duty to the country is done. Each wife ought to have a boy and a girl as I have." Thereupon Mathieu, seeing that she was jesting, ventured to say with a laugh: "Well, that isn't the opinion of your medical man, Dr. Boutan.
The husband rushed hither and thither, banging the doors and declaring that he would never more occupy himself about anything. "And so," added Boutan, "I have now been instructed to choose a fresh nurse. And it is a pressing matter, for I am really feeling anxious about that poor little Andree." "But why did not the mother nurse her child?" asked Mathieu. The doctor made a gesture of despair.
"Ah! so you know La Couteau!" exclaimed Boutan, when Mathieu had told him of his meetings with the woman. "Then you know the depths of crime. La Couteau is an ogress! And yet, think of it, with our fine social organization, she is more or less useful, and perhaps I myself shall be happy to choose one of the nurses that she has brought with her."
"Pooh!" exclaimed Beauchene with a hearty laugh, "women are all the same! A child who is as strong as a Turk! I should just like anybody to tell me that he isn't strong." Precisely at that moment in walked Dr. Boutan, a short, stout man of forty, with very keen eyes set in a clean-shaven, heavy, but extremely good-natured face.
Boutan, who was now nearly seventy-two, and was quietly spending his last years in serene cheerfulness, born of his hope in life, had virtually ceased practising, only attending a very few old patients, his friends. However, he did not refuse Mathieu's request.
And Beauchene, having recognized the wife of Moineaud, the fitter, bade her come in. Boutan, who had now risen, was prompted by curiosity to remain a little longer. La Moineaude, short and fat like her husband, was a woman of about forty, worn out before her time, with ashen face, pale eyes, thin faded hair, and a weak mouth which already lacked many teeth.