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Updated: June 27, 2025
Then, with bleeding heart and a gesture of cruel resignation, Madame Menoux did what was expected of her. "Keep those five francs for yourself, Madame Couteau, since you have to take so much trouble. And, mon Dieu! may all this money bring me good luck, and at least enable my poor little fellow to grow up a fine handsome man like his father."
Indeed, that will greatly relieve me, for in all this I lose my time and trouble; but then, I'm always stupid enough to be too obliging." When Madame Menoux, again quivering and anxious, had given way, another difficulty arose. She had only some gold with her, two twenty-franc pieces and one ten-franc piece. The three coins lay glittering on the table.
He asked for news of her, saying that a friend of his was in need of a good nurse. "Well, monsieur, you are in luck's way," the maid replied; "La Couteau is to bring a child home to our neighbor, Madame Menoux, this very day. It is nearly four o'clock now, and that is the time when she promised to come. You know Madame Menoux's place, do you not?
Thus, each time a payment became due, if La Couteau's journey happened to be delayed a single day, Madame Menoux grew terribly frightened, and hastened off to Celeste to make inquiries of her. And, moreover, she was glad to have an opportunity of conversing with this girl, who came from the very part where her little Pierre was being reared.
"Madame Menoux's shop is no bigger than my pocket-handkerchief, and at the back of it there is only one little room where she and her husband take their meals and sleep. And that room, too, overlooks a tiny courtyard where one can neither see nor breathe. The baby would not live a week in such a place. And, besides, Madame Menoux would not have time to attend to the child.
Then, without leaving the scared, trembling mother time to recover, the nurse-agent continued: "Shall we go into our accounts, my dear lady?" Madame Menoux, who had intended to make a payment before returning to her shop, was delighted to have some money with her.
When Madame Menoux went off, La Couteau had lavished such flattery and such promises upon her that she felt quite light and gay; no longer regretting her money, but dreaming of the day when little Pierre would come back to her with plump cheeks and all the vigor of a young oak.
Blonde, short and thin, Madame Menoux, who was the daughter of a poor clerk, had a slender pale face, and a pleasant, but somewhat sad, expression. From her own slightness of build probably sprang her passionate admiration for her big, handsome husband, who could have crushed her between his fingers.
It was at Rougemont, no doubt, that she planned her return to the Seguins, of whose vicissitudes she was informed by La Couteau, the latter having kept up her intercourse with Madame Menoux, the little haberdasher of the neighborhood.
When at last the inevitable arrived she left her body for the family tomb, her heart to the convent of La Fleche, and her entrails to the priory of Menoux near Bourbon. These latter were thrust into a box and given to a peasant to convey to the priory.
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