DOCTOR. Yes; but after the public narration of all your troubles. The scandal and the misfortune will be so much the greater, that is all. And how do you know that the day after your acquittal you will not find yourself before another and less lenient judge? When your daughter, realizing that you have rendered her unhappiness irreparable, and seized with pity for your victim, demands by what right you have killed the father of her child, what will you say? What will you say when that child one day asks the same question? LOCHES [_speaking before the other has done_] Then what can I do? DOCTOR [_immediately_] Forgive. _A silence._ LOCHES [_without energy_] Never. DOCTOR. Are you quite sure that you have the right to be so inflexible? Was it not within your power at a certain moment to spare your daughter the possibility of this misery? LOCHES. Within my power! Do you imply that I am responsible? DOCTOR. Yes; I do. When the marriage was proposed you doubtless made enquiries concerning your future son-in-law’s income; you investigated his securities; you satisfied yourself as to his character. You only omitted one point, but it was the most important of all: you made no enquiries concerning his health. LOCHES. No. DOCTOR. And why? LOCHES. Because it is not the custom. DOCTOR. Well, it ought to be made the custom. Before giving his daughter in marriage a father ought to take as much care with regard to her husband as a house of business takes in engaging an employee. LOCHES. You are right, a law should be passed. DOCTOR. No, no. We want no new laws: there are too many already. All that is needed is for people to understand the nature of this disease rather better. It would soon become the custom for a man who proposed for a girl’s hand to add to the other things for which he is asked a medical statement of bodily fitness, which would make it certain that he did not bring this plague into the family with him. It would be perfectly simple. Once it was the custom, the man would go to his doctor for a certificate of health before he could sign the register, just as now, before he can be married in church, he goes to his priest for a certificate that he has confessed. As things are, before a marriage is concluded the family lawyers meet to discuss matters: a meeting between the two doctors would be at least as useful and would prevent many misfortunes. Your enquiry, you see, was incomplete. Your daughter might well ask you, who are a man and a father, and ought to know these things, why you did not take as much trouble about her health as about her fortune. I tell you that you must forgive. LOCHES. Never. DOCTOR. Well: there is one last argument which, since I must, I will put to you. Are you yourself without sin, that you are so relentless to others? LOCHES. I have never had any shameful disease, sir!