"He is very big about the body," she murmured, ceasing to smile, and
turning gloomy with renewed fears.
"Ah, yes! complain away!" said La Couteau. "The other was too thin; this
one will be too fat. Mothers are never satisfied!"
At the first glance Mathieu had detected that the child was one of those
who are fed on pap, stuffed for economy's sake with bread and water, and
fated to all the stomachic complaints of early childhood. And at the
sight of the poor little fellow, Rougemont, the frightful
slaughter-place, with its daily massacre of the innocents, arose in his
memory, such as it had been described to him in years long past. There
was La Loiseau, whose habits were so abominably filthy that her nurslings
rotted as on a manure heap; there was La Vimeux, who never purchased a
drop of milk, but picked up all the village crusts and made bran porridge
for her charges as if they had been pigs; there was La Gavette too, who,
being always in the fields, left her nurslings in the charge of a
paralytic old man, who sometimes let them fall into the fire; and there
was La Cauchois, who, having nobody to watch the babes, contented herself
with tying them in their cradles, leaving them in the company of fowls
which came in bands to peck at their eyes.
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