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Amid exclamations of joyous surprise, the nurse-agent explained that she had arrived by the night train with a batch of nurses, and had started on her round of visits as soon as she had deposited them in the Rue Roquepine. "After bidding Celeste good-day in passing," said she, "I intended to call on you, my dear lady. But since you are here, we can settle our accounts here, if you are agreeable."
At that moment, however, Madame Bourdieu came in, accompanied by a woman, whom he recognized as Sophie Couteau, "La Couteau," that nurse-agent whom he had seen at the Seguins' one day when she had gone thither to offer to procure them a nurse.
Celeste thereupon placed Andree on a blanket, which was lying there, side by side with the infant of which the new nurse had rid herself a moment previously, and undertook to conduct La Couteau to Marie Lebleu's room. Deathlike silence now reigned there, but the nurse-agent only had to give her name to secure admittance. She went in, and for a few moments one only heard her dry curt voice.
And what strange suffering it was; a heart-pang at each fresh accusation, as if her husband's illegitimate child had become in some degree her own! She ended indeed by silencing the nurse-agent. "Thank you. The boy is no longer at Rougemont, that is all we wished to know." La Couteau thereupon turned to Mathieu, continuing her narrative, in order to give him his money's worth.
The alert had certainly come from the inquiry intrusted to the nurse-agent at Rougemont, that visit which she had made to the hamlet of Saint-Pierre in quest of information respecting the lad who was supposed to be in apprenticeship with Montoir the wheelwright.
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.
"Ah? that Couillard!" added the nurse-agent. "Just fancy, my dear, I took her a child, a perfect little angel the boy of a very pretty young person who was stopping at Madame Bourdieu's. She paid four hundred francs to have him brought up until his first communion, and he lived just five days! Really now, that wasn't long enough! La Couillard need not have been so hasty.
In thus complaining her object perhaps was to extract from the haberdasher as large a present as possible. Madame Menoux was certainly disturbed by it all. Her boy woke up and began to wail loudly, and it became necessary to give him a little lukewarm milk. At last, when the accounts were settled, the nurse-agent, seeing that she would have ten francs for herself, grew calmer.
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