The coming of the nursling placed the Frimousset household upon its feet once more. Nicole had asked for thirty francs a month, but the marquis had said to her:
“Just let my son get well, let him recover his health, and I will give you twice that!”
And Jacquinot, who had more time than ever to idle away and to spend in the wine-shop, because his wife, being occupied with her nursling, could not keep an eye upon him, exclaimed every day:
“My eye, Nicole, that was a mighty good idea of yours to be a nurse! If you only had three or four little brats like this, we should be mighty well off, I tell you!”
And Chérubin’s little foster-brothers, who did nothing but eat sweetmeats and gingerbread, were also delighted that their mother had a nursling who provided them with so many good things, thanks to which they were constantly ill.
Chérubin had been at his nurse’s house only six weeks, when, on a fine day in autumn, a fashionable carriage stopped on the public square of Gagny, which square is not absolutely beautiful, although the guardhouse has been built there.
A vehicle which does not resemble a cart is always an object of wonderment in a village. Five or six women, several old men, several peasants, and a multitude of children assembled about the carriage, and were gazing at it with curiosity, when a window was lowered and a man’s head appeared.
Instantly a low murmur and a sneering laugh or two were heard among the bystanders, together with such remarks as these, not all of which were uttered in undertones:
“Oh! how ugly he is!”—”Oh! what a face!”—”Is it legal to be as ugly as that, when you have a carriage?”—”Upon my word! I’d rather go afoot!”—”That fellow hasn’t been vaccinated!”
There were other reflections of the same sort, which might have reached the ears of him who suggested them, and which it would have been more polite to make in a low tone; but politeness is not the favorite virtue of the peasants of the suburbs of Paris.