Big tears welled into La Moineaude's eyes. And Mathieu, who had listened
with passionate interest, felt quite upset. Ah! that wretched toil-doomed
flesh that hastened to offer itself without waiting until it was even
ripe for work! Ah! the laborer who is prepared to lie, whom hunger sets
against the very law designed for his own protection!

When La Moineaude had gone off in despair the doctor continued speaking
of juvenile and female labor. As soon as a woman first finds herself a
mother she can no longer continue toiling at a factory. Her lying-in and
the nursing of her babe force her to remain at home, or else grievous
infirmities may ensue for her and her offspring. As for the child, it
becomes anemic, sometimes crippled; besides, it helps to keep wages down
by being taken to work at a low scale of remuneration. Then the doctor
went on to speak of the prolificness of wretchedness, the swarming of the
lower classes. Was not the most hateful natality of all that which meant
the endless increase of starvelings and social rebels?

"I perfectly understand you," Beauchene ended by saying, without any show
of anger, as he abruptly brought his perambulations to an end. "You want
to place me in contradiction with myself, and make me confess that I
accept Moineaud's seven children and need them, whereas I, with my fixed
determination to rest content with an only son, suppress, as it were, a
family in order that I may not have to subdivide my estate. France, 'the
country of only sons,' as folks say nowadays--that's it, eh? But, my dear
fellow, the question is so intricate, and at bottom I am altogether in
the right!"

Then he wished to explain things, and clapped his hand to his breast,
exclaiming that he was a liberal, a democrat, ready to demand all really