The cherubs were really nursing. One of them, cuddled under the goat's belly, went at it so heartily that you could hear the glou-glou of the warm milk as it went down, down into his little legs, which quivered with satisfaction. The other, more calm, lay indolently in his Auvergnat nurse's lap, and required some little encouragement from her.
"Come, suck, I tell you, suck, bougri!"
At last, as if he had formed a sudden resolution, he began to drink so greedily that the woman, surprised by his abnormal appetite, leaned over him and exclaimed, with a laugh;
"Ah! the scamp, what a mischievous trick! it's his thumb he's sucking instead of the goat."
He had thought of that expedient, the angel, to induce them to leave him in peace. The incident produced no ill effect; on the contrary, M. de La Perrière was much amused at the nurse's idea that the child had tried to play a trick on them. He left the Nursery highly delighted. "Positively de-de-delighted," he repeated as they ascended the grand echoing staircase, decorated with stags' antlers, which led to the dormitory.
Very light and airy was that great room, occupying the whole of one side of the house, with numerous windows, cradles at equal intervals, with curtains as white and fleecy as clouds. Women were passing to and fro in the broad passage-way in the centre, with piles of linen in their arms, keys in their hands, overseers or "movers." Here they had tried to do too much, and the first impression of the visitors was unfavorable. All that white muslin, that waxed floor, in which the light shone without blending, the clean window-panes reflecting the sky, which wore a gloomy look at sight of such things, brought out more distinctly the thinness, the sickly pallor of those little shroud-colored, moribund creatures. Alas! the oldest were but six months, the youngest barely a fortnight, and already, upon all those faces, those embryotic faces, there was an expression of disgust, an oldish, dogged look, a precocity born of suffering, visible in the numberless wrinkles on those little bald heads, confined in linen caps edged with tawdry hospital lace. From what did they suffer? What disease had they? They had everything, everything that one can have; diseases of children and diseases of adults. Offspring of poverty and vice, they brought into the world when they were born ghastly phenomena of heredity. One had a cleft palate, another great copper-colored blotches on his forehead, and all were covered with humor. And then they were starving to death. Notwithstanding the spoonfuls of milk and sugared water that were forced into their mouths, and the sucking-bottle that was used more or less in spite of the prohibition, they were dying of inanition. Those poor creatures, exhausted before they were born, needed the freshest, the most strengthening food; the goats might perhaps have supplied it, but they had sworn not to suck the goats. And that was what made the dormitory lugubrious and silent, without any of the little outbursts of anger emphasized by clenched fists, without any of the shrieks that show the even red gums, whereby the child makes trial of his strength and of his lungs; only an occasional plaintive groan, as if the soul were tossing and turning restlessly in a little diseased body, unable to find a place to rest.
Jenkins and the manager, noticing the unfavorable impression produced upon their guests by the visit to the dormitory, tried to enliven the situation by talking very loud, with a good-humored, frank, well-satisfied manner. Jenkins shook hands warmly with the overseer.
"Well, Madame Polge, are our little pupils getting on?"
"As you see, Monsieur le Docteur," she replied, pointing to the beds.
Very funereal in her green dress was tall Madame Polge, the ideal of dry nurses; she completed the picture.