“She was a large, healthy-looking woman, and, as I rushed into her presence, was working at her spinning-wheel, singing meanwhile. When she saw me suddenly appear, scarcely half clothed, and soaking wet, she was seized with a fit of anger, and before in my trouble I could manage to explain myself, boxed me vigorously on both ears. “It was the first time in my life I had received such treatment. Furious at this proceeding, I threw myself on her, calling her every name I could think of, and holding her by the skirt, I cried to her that out among the cabbages there lay a little boy who might be dead. “The good woman, astonished, began to imagine from the little I was able to tell her, that she had been too quick; she concluded to follow me. I feared I was taking her to a dead child, all was so quiet over in the cabbage garden. But I was wrong. The little fellow I had pulled out of the water was in better condition than I. We found him sitting tranquilly in his wet garments, his arm resting carelessly on a fine large cabbage. Without saying a word, he was staring straight in front of him. But at the sight of his mother he suddenly recovered his voice, and commenced bellowing even louder than he had done when he was paddling in the river. Why should he cry? I thought it stupid to cry just when help had arrived. He was, however, not so far wrong, poor, fat little fellow: he was a little man who had already experienced many things in life; he knew well what awaited him. To tell the truth, he knew that his mother’s first action, in moments of excitement, was at once quick and varied. [Illustration] “Seeing him in good condition, but wet from head to foot, mother Brazon lifted him up by one arm, and pulling up his frock, administered a spanking which considerably augmented the loudness of the little boy’s shrieks. I was indignant. It appears that I was wrong. I have since heard it said that, medicinally, the maternal treatment was admirably suited to the occasion. Is that true, doctor?” “Quite true,” answered the doctor, laughing. “With all this going on, I was scarcely contented; on the one hand, I was beginning to shiver with cold, and on the other, for the first time in my life, I found myself with strangers far away from the remainder of my clothes, and I had a terrible fear lest Madame Brazon should profit by the occasion to administer to me (otherwise than on my ears) the same treatment she had so recently applied to her own son, and which the doctor, no doubt, would have approved. But these two exercises had been sufficient to calm the good woman. “We had no sooner entered the house than she proved herself a loving mother to little Auguste, and very kind to me. Quick as a wink she undressed us both entirely, and bundled us both, in spite of our resistance, between the white sheets of her big bed.