PUBLIC ASSISTANCE DOES NOT PREVENT LITTLE ONES FROM DYING
The Massacre of the Innocents

(From our special correspondent)
Château-Chinon, November 8.

- Those two, brothers, nine and twelve years old, that little one too. That big chubby one again, with the clothes. My mixed school has as many students as the one in the village, where there are two teachers. Just as many.. Over there, you see, the classes have emptied since the land has been so profitable... They only have thirty schoolchildren left instead of one hundred and fifty... But, in the hamlet, half of them come from the Assistance..
- They are all superb!
- Oh! they are well looked after, at home! The mentality is high, around here: we read the newspapers...
- But they are all big?
- Women don't take little ones any more.
Pensive, the young student at the École Normale Supérieure watches the sun melt the red-bronze hillsides on the edge of the Nièvre, where the poplars raise their clear golden plumes straight up under the grey sky. A dog, near her, chases a flock of turkeys promised for the next New Year's Eve. She thought about it.
"We've seen them grow up," she said. "We've grown attached to them. They don't give any more trouble than the others, and they play as well as them. Many won't be hired out until they're fourteen or fifteen."
"No sick people?"
"Just a latecomer."
She calls him. He arrives and lowers his nose. He has a hernia. It bothers him, that little guy. What, Biban?
"The doctor treats him, I suppose?"
"The one in town, yes, when necessary: ​​he's a good man. We can disturb him even at night, if necessary. He has his bicycle."
"And the one at the Assistance?" Why would she hesitate? She doesn't hesitate:
- We see him once a year, with the inspector, to prepare "the rented one". The wet nurse only "touches" until she is thirteen...
Biban looks up. He is twelve.
- And what do you do, my dear, at home?
- I look after the cows, says Biban.
- He gets up at six o'clock.
- Doesn't that bother you?
- No, sir.
- What do you want to do later?
- Look after the cows...
- Go play... He takes you for an inspector...
- I salute you, miss, and thank you: the Assistance is condemned! Her pure eyes become troubled:
- I didn't say anything...
- Certainly! But, I see it! Your fifteen pupils "of the Seine" - is that how one expresses oneself? finally, "children of love", as they say, dirty seed, are magnificent. Why wouldn't you have double that?
- Because they don't send them to me!
- No, they die before. There is the placement of human material, so fragile, with the least experienced breeders. Don't say anything. Don't move: I know. In this canton, nine children came from Paris three weeks ago. There are three left alive.
- Oh!
I'm going to be indiscreet to the end: it's like that everywhere. The administrative breath dries up 40,000 children born viable, in twenty years. That's the strength of an army corps, or, if you prefer, the population of a city like Cherbourg. And do you know, miss the teacher, what such childcare is called?
- I was never told...
- We don't tell anyone. We invoke congenital defects, we invoke professional secrecy. We oust repentant mothers who want to see their child again. This is called the massacre of the innocents.

Emmanuel Bourcier,