GEORGE. Yes, I know I should. I should say I deserved it. But for nothing! nothing! I have cut myself off from all pleasures. I have resisted attractions as you would the devil. I wouldn’t go with my friends to places of amusement: ladies I knew actually pointed me out to their boys as an example. I stuck to my work: I forced myself to be more regular in my habits. Why, my two friends helped me to prepare for my law exams. I taught them to make me cram, and it’s thanks to them that I got through. Oh, I should have liked to come home at four o’clock in the morning with my coat-collar turned up, smoking a cigar lit in some ballet-girl’s rooms! I’ve longed as much as anyone for the taste of rouged lips and the glitter of blacked eyes and pale faces! I should have liked larks and jolly suppers and champagne and the rustle of lace and all the rest of it! I’ve sacrificed all that to my health, and see what I’ve got for it. Ah, if I had known! If I had only known! Then I should have let myself go; yes, altogether! That would have been something to the good, anyway! When I think of it! When I think of the beastliness, the frightful horrors in store for me! DOCTOR. What’s all that nonsense? GEORGE. Yes, yes, I know—hair falling out, camomile for a cocktail, and a bath chair for a motor car with a little handle for the steering wheel and a fellow shoving behind instead of the engine; and I shall go, Gug, gug, gug, gug! [_Crying_] That’s what will be left of handsome Raoul—that’s what they called me, handsome Raoul! DOCTOR. My dear sir, kindly dry your eyes for the last time, blow your nose, put your handkerchief in your pocket, and listen to me without blubbering. GEORGE [_doing so_] Yes, doctor; but I warn you, you are wasting your time. DOCTOR. I assure you— GEORGE. I know what you are going to tell me. DOCTOR. In that case you have no business here. Be off with you! GEORGE. As I am here, I’ll listen, doctor. It’s awfully good of you. DOCTOR. If you have the will and the perseverance, none of the things you are dreading will happen to you. GEORGE. Of course. You are bound to tell me that. DOCTOR. I tell you that there are a hundred thousand men in Paris like you, sound and in good health, I give you my word. Come now. Bath chairs! You don’t see quite so many as that. GEORGE [_struck_] Nor you do. DOCTOR. Besides, those who are in them are not all there for the reason you think. Come, come! You will not be the victim of a catastrophe any more than the other hundred thousand. The thing is serious: nothing more. GEORGE. There, you see. It is a serious disease. DOCTOR. Yes. GEORGE. One of the most serious. DOCTOR. Yes; but you have the good luck— GEORGE. Good luck? DOCTOR. Relatively, if you like; but you have the good luck to have contracted just that one among serious diseases which we have the most effective means of combating. GEORGE. I know; remedies worse than the disease. DOCTOR. You are mistaken.