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Down below, directly the accident had been discovered, old Moineaud had been told to take a cab and hasten to Dr. Boutan's to bring him back with a surgeon, if one could be found on the way. "All the same, I prefer to have him here rather than in the basement," Beauchene repeated mechanically as he stood before the bed. "He still breathes. There! see, it is quite apparent. Who knows?
Like Alexandre, too, he nowadays only lived chancewise, and it was not even known where he had been sleeping, since Mother Moineaud had died at a hospital exhausted by her long life of wretchedness and family cares which had proved far too heavy for her. She was only sixty at the time of her death, but was as bent and as worn out as a centenarian.
"And you, old Moineaud, how many children have you?" he inquired. "Seven, Monsieur Beauchene," the workman replied, somewhat taken aback. "I've lost three." "So, including them, you would now have ten? Well, that's a nice state of things! How can you do otherwise than starve?" Moineaud began to laugh like the gay thriftless Paris workman that he was. The little ones?
Mathieu thereupon recognized Victor Moineaud, now five-and-fifty years old, and aged, and wrecked by labor to even a greater degree than his father had been at the time when mother Moineaud had come to offer the Monster her children's immature flesh. Entering the works at sixteen years of age, Victor, like his father, had spent forty years between the forge and the anvil.
One day then it happened that Alexandre upon calling at Norine's there encountered Alfred, who came at times to try to extract a half-franc from old Moineaud, his father. The two young bandits went off together, chatted, and met again. And from that chance encounter there sprang a band. Alexandre was living with Richard, and Alfred brought Toinette to them.
He thought of old Moineaud, the fitter, whom he again saw standing silent and unmoved in the women's workroom while his daughter Euphrasie was being soundly rated by Beauchene, and while Norine, the other girl, looked on with a sly laugh.
Moineaud knew well enough that he would never be a cabinet minister, and so it was all the same to them how many children they might have on their hands. Indeed, a number proved a help when the youngsters grew old enough to go out to work. Beauchene had become silent and slowly paced the room.
Then, on reaching the rendezvous appointed by Morange, he found himself in presence of those bleeding bodies which Victor Moineaud had just picked up and laid out side by side!
Moineaud, two years older, bent like herself, his legs twisted by paralysis, a lamentable wreck after fifty years of unjust toil, had been obliged to quit the factory, and thus the home was empty, and its few poor sticks had been cast to the four winds of heaven. Moineaud fortunately received a little pension, for which he was indebted to Denis's compassionate initiative.
Fortunately for Beauchene, Euphrasie did not know the whole truth, and Norine, after giving her employer a humble, supplicating glance, kept silence; but old Moineaud was present, and the public revelation of his daughter's shame sent him into a fury.
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