Fruitfulness - Fecondite | Page 7

had as yet never been the faintest
suggestion of scandal in connection with him and the women in his
employ.
"Well, now, Mademoiselle Euphrasie!" he exclaimed; "do you intend to
be quiet? This is quite improper. You are fined twenty sous, and if I
hear you again you will be locked out for a week."
The girl had turned round in consternation. Then, stifling her rage, she
cast a terrible glance at her sister, thinking that she might at least have
warned her. But the other, with the discreet air of a pretty wench
conscious of her attractiveness, continued smiling, looking her
employer full in the face, as if certain that she had nothing to fear from
him. Their eyes met, and for a couple of seconds their glances mingled.
Then he, with flushed cheeks and an angry air, resumed, addressing one
and all: "As soon as the superintendent turns her back you chatter away
like so many magpies. Just be careful, or you will have to deal with
me!"
Moineaud, the father, had witnessed the scene unmoved, as if the two
girls--she whom the master had scolded, and she who slyly gazed at
him--were not his own daughters. And now the round was resumed and
the three men quitted the women's workshop amidst profound silence,
which only the whir of the little grinders disturbed.
When the fitting difficulty had been overcome downstairs and
Moineaud had received his orders, Beauchene returned to his residence
accompanied by Mathieu, who wished to convey Marianne's invitation

to Constance. A gallery connected the black factory buildings with the
luxurious private house on the quay. And they found Constance in a
little drawing-room hung with yellow satin, a room to which she was
very partial. She was seated near a sofa, on which lay little Maurice,
her fondly prized and only child, who had just completed his seventh
year.
"Is he ill?" inquired Mathieu.
The child seemed sturdily built, and he greatly resembled his father,
though he had a more massive jaw. But he was pale and there was a
faint ring round his heavy eyelids. His mother, that "bag of bones," a
little dark woman, yellow and withered at six-and-twenty, looked at
him with an expression of egotistical pride.
"Oh, no! he's never ill," she answered. "Only he has been complaining
of his legs. And so I made him lie down, and I wrote last night to ask
Dr. Boutan to call this morning."
"Pooh!" exclaimed Beauchene with a hearty laugh, "women are all the
same! A child who is as strong as a Turk! I should just like anybody to
tell me that he isn't strong."
Precisely at that moment in walked Dr. Boutan, a short, stout man of
forty, with very keen eyes set in a clean-shaven, heavy, but extremely
good-natured face. He at once examined the child, felt and sounded him;
then with his kindly yet serious air he said: "No, no, there's nothing. It
is the mere effect of growth. The lad has become rather pale through
spending the winter in Paris, but a few months in the open air, in the
country, will set him right again."
"I told you so!" cried Beauchene.
Constance had kept her son's little hand in her own. He had again
stretched himself out and closed his eyes in a weary way, whilst she, in
her happiness, continued smiling. Whenever she chose she could
appear quite pleasant-looking, however unprepossessing might be her
features. The doctor had seated himself, for he was fond of lingering
and chatting in the houses of friends. A general practitioner, and one
who more particularly tended the ailments of women and children, he
was naturally a confessor, knew all sorts of secrets, and was quite at
home in family circles. It was he who had attended Constance at the
birth of that much-spoiled only son, and Marianne at the advent of the
four children she already had.

Mathieu had remained standing, awaiting an opportunity to deliver his
invitation. "Well," said he, "if you are soon leaving for the country, you
must come one Sunday to Janville. My wife would be so delighted to
see you there, to show you our encampment."
Then he jested respecting the bareness of the lonely pavilion which
they occupied, recounting that as yet they possessed only a dozen plates
and five egg-cups. But Beauchene knew the pavilion, for he went
shooting in the neighborhood every winter, having a share in the
tenancy of some extensive woods, the shooting-rights over which had
been parcelled out by the owner.
"Seguin," said he, "is a friend of mine. I have lunched at your pavilion.
It's a perfect hovel!"
Then Constance, contemptuous at the idea of such poverty, recalled
what Madame Seguin--to whom she referred as Valentine--had told her
of the