good _pasteur_ says what is according to nature. It would have
gone hard with me if any one had wished to part me from Robin or
Sara; but these fine ladies, and, for that matter, BOURGEOISES too,
always do put out their babes; and it seemed to me that Madame
would find it hard to contrive for herself--let alone the little
one.'

'Ah! but what would be the use of contriving for myself, without
her?' said Eustacie.

If all had gone well and prosperously with Madame de Ribaumont,
probably she would have surrendered an infant born in purple and in
pall to the ordinary lot of its contemporaries; but the exertions
and suffering she had undergone on behalf of her child, its
orphanhood, her own loneliness, and even the general disappointment
in its sex, had given it a hold on her vehement, determined heart,
that intensified to the utmost the instincts of motherhood; and she
listened as if to an angle's voice as Maitre Gardon replied to
Nanon--

'I say not that it is not the custom; nay, that my blessed wife and
myself have not followed it; but we have so oft had cause to repent
the necessity, that far be it from me ever to bid a woman forsake
her sucking child.'

'Is that Scripture?' asked Eustacie. 'Ah! sir, sir, tell me more!
You are giving me all--all--my child! I will be--I am--a Huguenot
like her father! and, when my vassals come, I will make them ride
with you to La Rochelle, and fight in your cause!'