Tears appeared in her eyes. It was the oft-recurring story of the girl-mother who is prevailed upon to nurse her child for a few days, in the hope that she will grow attached to the babe and be unable to part from it. The chief object in view is to save the child, because its best nurse is its natural nurse, the mother. And Norine, instinctively divining the trap set for her, had struggled to escape it, and repeated, sensibly enough, that one ought not to begin such a task when one meant to throw it up in a few days' time. As soon as she yielded she was certain to be caught; her egotism was bound to be vanquished by the wave of pity, love, and hope that would sweep through her heart. The poor, pale, puny infant had weighed but little the first time he took the breast. But every morning afterwards he had been weighed afresh, and on the wall at the foot of the bed had been hung the diagram indicating the daily difference of weight. At first Norine had taken little interest in the matter, but as the line gradually ascended, plainly indicating how much the child was profiting, she gave it more and more attention. All at once, as the result of an indisposition, the line had dipped down; and since then she had always feverishly awaited the weighing, eager to see if the line would once more ascend. Then, a continuous rise having set in, she laughed with delight. That little line, which ever ascended, told her that her child was saved, and that all the weight and strength he acquired was derived from her--from her milk, her blood, her flesh. She was completing the appointed work; and motherliness, at last awakened within her, was blossoming in a florescence of love. "If you want to kill him," continued Mathieu, "you need only take him from your breast. See how eagerly the poor little fellow is nursing!" This was indeed true. And Norine burst into big sobs: "_Mon Dieu_! you are beginning to torture me again. Do you think that I shall take any pleasure in getting rid of him now? You force me to say things which make me weep at night when I think of them. I shall feel as if my very vitals were being torn out when this child is taken from me! There, are you both pleased that you have made me say it? But what good does it do to put me in such a state, since nobody can remedy things, and he must needs go to the foundlings, while I return to the gutter, to wait for the broom that's to sweep me away?"