Children who might well have lived were taken from
their mothers, the only nurses whose milk would have nourished them, to
be carted away and to die for lack of proper nutriment.
A rush of blood warmed Mathieu's heart when, all at once, he thought of
Marianne, so strong and healthy, who would be waiting for him on the
bridge over the Yeuse, in the open country, with their little Gervais at
her breast. Figures that he had seen in print came back to his mind. In
certain regions which devoted themselves to baby-farming the mortality
among the nurslings was fifty per cent; in the best of them it was forty,
and seventy in the worst. It was calculated that in one century seventeen
millions of nurslings had died. Over a long period the mortality had
remained at from one hundred to one hundred and twenty thousand per
annum. The most deadly reigns, the greatest butcheries of the most
terrible conquerors, had never resulted in such massacre. It was a giant
battle that France lost every year, the abyss into which her whole
strength sank, the charnel-place into which every hope was cast. At the
end of it is the imbecile death of the nation.
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