blue sea. The atmosphere was lighter and cooler.
The nurse was gasping. Her dress was open and her cheeks looked flabby and moist, and in an oppressed voice, she breathed:
“I have not nursed since yesterday; I feel as if I were going to faint.”
The man did not reply; he hardly knew what to say.
She continued: “When a woman has as much milk as I, she must nurse three times a day or she’ll feel uncomfortable. It feels like a weight on my heart, a weight that prevents my breathing and just exhausts me. It’s terrible to have so much milk.”
He replied: “Yes, it must be very annoying.”
She really seemed ill and almost ready to faint. She murmured: “I only have to press and the milk flows out like a fountain. It is really interesting to see. You wouldn’t believe it. In Casale, all the neighbours came to see it.”
He replied: “Ah! really.”
“Yes, really. I would show you, only it wouldn’t help me. You can’t make enough come out that way.”
And she paused.
The train stopped at a station. Leaning on a fence was a woman holding a crying infant in her arms. She was thin and in rags.
The nurse watched her. Then she said in a compassionate tone: “There’s a woman I could help. And the baby could help me, too. I’m not rich; am I not leaving my home, my people and my baby to take a place, but still, I’d give five francs to have that child and be able to nurse it for ten minutes. It would quiet him, and me too, I can tell you. I think I would feel as if I were being born again.”
She paused again. Then she passed her hot hand several times across her wet brow and moaned: “Oh! I can’t stand it any longer. I believe I shall die.” And with an unconscious motion, she completely opened her waist.
Her right breast appeared all swollen and stiff, with its brown teat, and the poor woman gasped: “Ah! mon Dieu! mon Dieu! What shall I do?”
The train had left the station and was continuing its route amid the flowers that gave forth their penetrating fragrance.
Once in a while a fishing smack glided over the blue sea with its motionless sail, which was reflected in the clear water as if another boat were turned upside down.
The young man, embarrassed, stammered: “But—madam—I—might perhaps be—be able to help you.”
In an exhausted whisper, she replied: “Yes, if you will be so kind, you’ll do me a great favour. I can’t stand it any longer, really I can’t.”
He got on his knees before her; and she leaned over to him with a motherly gesture as if he were a child. In the movement she made to draw near to the man, a drop of milk appeared on her breast. He absorbed it quickly, and, taking this heavy breast in his mouth like a fruit, he began to drink regularly and greedily.
He had passed his arms around the woman’s waist and pressed her close to him in order not to lose a drop of the nourishment. And he drank with slow gulps, like a baby.
All of a sudden she said: “That’s enough, now the other side!” And he obeyed her with alacrity.
She had placed both hands on his back and now was breathing happily, freely, enjoying the perfume of the flowers carried on the breeze that entered the open windows.
“It smells mighty good,” she said.
He made no reply and continued to drink at the living fountain of her breast, closing his eyes to better taste the mild fluid.
But she gently pushed him from her.
“That’s enough. I feel much better now. It has put life into me again.”
He rose and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
While she replaced her breasts inside her dress, she said:
“You did me a great favour. I thank you very much!”
And he replied in a grateful tone:
“It is I who thank you, for I hadn’t eaten a thing for two days!”
A Sale
The defendants, Brument (Césaire-Isidore) and Cornu (Prosper-Napoléon), appeared at the Seine-Inférieure Assizes, charged with attempting the murder, by drowning, of the woman Brument, lawful wife of the first of the said defendants.
The two accused are seated side by side in the dock. They are two peasants. The first is little and stout, with short arms, short legs and a round head; his red face, all bursting with pimples, squats without the least sign of a neck on top of a body equally round and equally short. He breeds pigs and lives at Cacheville-la-Goupil, in the district of Criquetot.
Cornu (Prosper-Napoléon) is thin, of medium height, with arms of disproportionate length. He has a crooked jaw and he squints. A blue blouse as long as a shirt falls to his knees, and his scant yellow hair, plastered down on his skull, gives his face a worn, dirty and hideously raddled air. He has been nicknamed “the priest” because he can give a perfect imitation of church hymns and even the sound of the church serpent. He keeps a public-house at Criquetot, and this talent of his attracts to the place a great many customers who prefer “Cornu’s Mass” to the good God’s.
Mme. Brument, seated on the witness stand, is a skinny peasant woman whose drowsy placidity is never shaken. She sits unmoving, hands crossed on knees, with an unwinking stare and an air of stupidity.
The president proceeds with the examination.
“Well, then, Mme. Brument, they entered your house and threw you into a barrel full of water. Tell us the facts in detail. Stand up.”
She stands up. She seems as tall as a mast, under the bonnet that covers her head with a white dome. She tells her tale in a drawling voice:
“I was shelling haricots. And then they came in. I thought to myself: ‘What’s up with them? They’re not themselves; they’re up to mischief.’ They kept looking at me out of the corners of their eyes, like
