"And," continued the doctor, "it may all be summed up in this verity: 'It is a mother's duty to nurse her child.' And, besides, a mother, is she not the symbol of all grandeur, all strength, all beauty? She represents the eternity of life. She deserves a social culture, she should be religiously venerated. When we know how to worship motherhood, our country will be saved. And this is why, my friend, I should like a mother feeding her babe to be adopted as the highest expression of human beauty. Ah! how can one persuade our Parisiennes, all our French women, indeed, that woman's beauty lies in being a mother with an infant on her knees? Whenever that fashion prevails, we shall be the sovereign nation, the masters of the world!" He ended by laughing in a distressed way, in his despair at being unable to change manners and customs, aware as he was that the nation could be revolutionized only by a change in its ideal of true beauty. "To sum up, then, I believe in a child being nursed only by its own mother. Every mother who neglects that duty when she can perform it is a criminal. Of course, there are instances when she is physically incapable of accomplishing her duty, and in that case there is the feeding-bottle, which, if employed with care and extreme cleanliness, only sterilized milk being used, will yield a sufficiently good result. But to send a child away to be nursed means almost certain death; and as for the nurse in the house, that is a shameful transaction, a source of incalculable evil, for both the employer's child and the nurse's child frequently die from it." Just then the doctor's brougham drew up outside the nurse-agency in the Rue Roquépine. "I dare say you have never been in such a place, although you are the father of five children," said Boutan to Mathieu, gayly. "No, I haven't." "Well, then, come with me. One ought to know everything."