“‘Come, make haste, Comtois! I don’t know what to do with the child! It has been crying until it has burst the drum of my ear, but I can’t nurse it. Have you brought a nurse at last?’
“‘Yes, monsieur, here’s one who will take charge of the little girl.’
“‘Ah! that is very lucky!’
“And with that the gentleman, without even looking at me to see how I was built and whether I had much milk, motioned to me to go with him into another room, where I saw a little girl, just come into the world, wriggling on a sofa with cushions; they didn’t even have a cradle for her. The gentleman says to me:
“‘Take this child and carry it away at once, for it cries enough to split one’s head.’
“To that I answers:
“‘It will be twenty francs a month, without counting sugar and soap!’
“‘All right, that’s understood,’ he says; and he puts a hundred francs in my hand, saying: ‘This is for the first expenses; don’t you be afraid, I’ll send you money, you shall have plenty of it.’
“At that I makes another reverence and says:
“‘I am a Picarde, monsieur, from the village of Coulange, near Abbeville; my name is Marguerite Thomasseau; my husband raises donkeys, and we’ve had four nurslings already.’