While Chérubin was enjoying himself in Paris, making merry and thinking of nothing but pleasure, at Gagny his friends were dismal and bored, and shed frequent tears. It is often so in life: the happiness of one is acquired only at the expense of others’ misery. Is it not too high a price to pay? If we always reflected upon causes and effects, we should sometimes regret being happy. On returning from Montfermeil, where, it will be remembered, she was sent by Monsieur Gérondif, Louise, who had discovered that he had had no other object than to get her out of the way, asked anxiously where Chérubin was; and Nicole, weeping bitterly, told her that the youth whom she still delighted to call her fieu had gone to Paris with several gentlemen, and some charming ladies, evidently foreigners, judging from their costumes, who had danced in her house in a style utterly unlike any village dance. Louise wept a long while; her heart was torn. There was one pang more cruel than all the rest in her suffering; at fourteen and a half a girl may well know what it is to love; and with love jealousy had made its appearance. “You let him go!” said Louise, sobbing; “but he promised never to leave me; those people must have taken him by force.” “No, my child, Chérubin went away of his own free will, in high spirits, in fact, and almost dancing with those little hussies, who twirled round and round longer than the tops my boys used to spin when they were little.” Louise wept more bitterly still. “Why did you let those horrid women come into your house?” she cried. “Oh! I detest them!” “Bless my soul, child, it was one of the gentlemen who brought ‘em; they drank milk just like cats; and then they danced like kids.” “And Chérubin went away with them!--But he’ll come back to-morrow, won’t he, mother dear?” “Let us hope so, my child.” But the morrow and several more days passed without bringing Chérubin back to the village. Louise was so depressed that Nicole forgot her own grief to comfort her. “But something must have happened to him!” the girl constantly exclaimed. “Probably they are keeping him in Paris against his will; for, if not, he would have come back. Let’s go after him, mother, let’s go after him.” Nicole tried to make Louise listen to reason. “Listen, my dear,” she would say, “it’s a long, long while since Monsieur Jasmin began to tell me: ‘My young master will have to go to Paris some time; he can’t pass his whole life out at nurse! If it was known that he’s still with you, I should be scolded.’ And a lot of things like that. The fact is, my child, that they usually take children away from a wet-nurse when they begin to talk, unless--unless----” And the good woman stopped, for she was on the point of saying: “Unless they do like your mother, and don’t take ‘em away at all.”