Blonde, short and thin, Madame Menoux, who was the daughter of a poor clerk, had a slender pale face, and a pleasant, but somewhat sad, expression. From her own slightness of build probably sprang her passionate admiration for her big, handsome husband, who could have crushed her between his fingers. If she was slight, however, she was endowed with unconquerable tenacity and courage, and she would have killed herself with hard work to provide him with the coffee and cognac which he liked to sip after each repast. "Ah! it's hard," she continued, "to have had to send our Pierre so far away. As it is, I don't see my husband all day, and now I've a child whom I never see at all. But the misfortune is that one has to live, and how could I have kept the little fellow in that tiny shop of mine, where from morning till night I never have a moment to spare! Yet, I can't help crying at the thought that I wasn't able to keep and nurse him. When my husband comes home from the museum every evening, we do nothing but talk about him, like a pair of fools. And so, according to you, mademoiselle, that place Rougemont is very healthy, and there are never any nasty illnesses about there?" But at this moment she was interrupted by the arrival of another early visitor, whose advent she hailed with a cry of delight. "Oh! how happy I am to see you, Madame Couteau! What a good idea it was of mine to call here!" Amid exclamations of joyous surprise, the nurse-agent explained that she had arrived by the night train with a batch of nurses, and had started on her round of visits as soon as she had deposited them in the Rue Roquépine. "After bidding Céleste good-day in passing," said she, "I intended to call on you, my dear lady. But since you are here, we can settle our accounts here, if you are agreeable." Madame Menoux, however, was looking at her very anxiously. "And how is my little Pierre?" she asked. "Why, not so bad, not so bad. He is not, you know, one of the strongest; one can't say that he's a big child. Only he's so pretty and nice-looking with his rather pale face. And it's quite certain that if there are bigger babies than he is, there are smaller ones too." She spoke more slowly as she proceeded, and carefully sought words which might render the mother anxious, without driving her to despair. These were her usual tactics in order to disturb her customers' hearts, and then extract as much money from them as possible. On this occasion she must have guessed that she might carry things so far as to ascribe a slight illness to the child. "However, I must really tell you, because I don't know how to lie; and besides, after all, it's my duty--Well, the poor little darling has been ill, and he's not quite well again yet." Madame Menoux turned very pale and clasped her puny little hands: "_Mon Dieu_! he will die of it."