That was her problem. Maupassant does not ask why she didn't think of an orphanage or fight for her babies' lives. Her acquittal by the bourgeois jurors can be taken as symbolic. There are always those who will regard the baby as an imposition too heavy to place on the life of the mother. Sentimentality has generally been opposed to rationality.
Feelings substitute for principles.
What happens to me is more important than what happens to others. The subjective reigns supreme, and thus murderers become victims. As tragic as situations are, as much as God's mercy waits for people who do awful things, there will be no forgiveness where there is no contrition. The stupendous hypocrisy of President Clinton about partial-birth abortion is the epitome of this attitude. The ancient Greeks had a horrible myth about the way a woman could exact revenge on her husband by means of her children.