“_Comment?_--ah! you would say the demoiselles who passed just now. Yes, not amiss. We do not find fault with them,” said Madame Dupré, with a slight shrug of the shoulders; “but speaking of Paris, mademoiselle. Ah! if I could but have sent my Baptiste there, what a happiness! He might have been clerk in one of the best _magasins_ on the Boulevard. But boys are obstinate beyond all things, beyond the very mules. He prefers his village, and the woods, and the _chasse_. He gives me a great deal of inquietude, my boy. Should he draw a bad number it will be an evil day for the Lion d’Or. There is always that hanging over us. When a poor woman has several sons, instead of being a help to her it is but opening the gates to evil. She who has only one may keep him safe. And what does it matter, when they are helpless children, how many sons you have, mademoiselle? Till the _tirage_ is over, I shall never know a day’s ease. Sometimes I think it is better to have no children at all, as old M. Goudron says.” “Is that old M. Goudron?” said Helen, pointing to the old man who still stood at his door and watched, with his red and yellow handkerchief tied round his head. “He is what we call a _richard_, mademoiselle, the most rich person in the village. He has so much that he thinks it is a crime to be poor; he thinks it is your fault, not circumstances. His poor little granddaughter lives with him in that big house, and he leads her a life! Fancy, mademoiselle, the poor girl loves my Baptiste! they have always had a fancy for each other; and if the old man would give her a _dot_ as he promised, and Baptiste drew a good number----” “What is a good number?” said Helen, in her ignorance. She did not know what it meant. That the young man’s fate should depend on the very insignificant fact whether he drew five or fifty, was incomprehensible to Helen. Madame Dupré on her side was equally incapable of understanding how any one could be ignorant on the subject of the conscription. It did not require a very strong inducement to make her talk. And she launched forthwith into an eloquent denunciation of the evils of the system. “A low number is a good number,” she said; “but figure to yourself, mademoiselle, what will happen to me if it comes otherwise. Either my Baptiste marched away to the life of the _caserne_,--such a life, such a life, _mon Dieu!_ and though he is a good son, he is idle, I do not deny it--he loves to wander; it would be his destruction,--or all that we have taken from us to buy a substitute. Often it is a thousand francs, no less. Think of that, mademoiselle, a thousand francs! and I but a poor widow with four children. When I think of it in the night my sleep goes from me. Certainly M. Goudron has reason. Children are the chief pleasures in our existence, but it is true that they are at the same time our torment--they are our cross that we must bear.”