HOURTIN [_laughing_] I can’t diagnose at such an interval. But it is easy to imagine the man trying to drag the woman into his den. She refuses. He raises his fist—a blow to stun her, only he hits rather too hard. LUCIE. How terrible! HOURTIN. Those were the manners of our ancestor, the cave man. BRIGNAC. The world has changed. MADELEINE. Yes. Since the cave man hypocrisy has been invented. HOURTIN. And we can imagine further. A rival springs on the ravisher, strangles him, and leaves the two corpses in the midst of the flint weapons and the kitchen utensils of polished stone. LUCIE. It’s enough to give one a nightmare. HOURTIN [_rising, to Lucie_] Forgive me. [_To Brignac_] I should have begun instead of ended by congratulating you on the success of your meeting. _Josephine enters with a bottle and glasses on a tray._ BRIGNAC. You must not go without drinking to it, then. Aha, I’m not from Chartres! Montpellier is my native town; close by Montpellier, at least. Palavas—Palavas-les-Flots. In my part of the country an honest man isn’t afraid of a glass of wine. Alicante, you know! HOURTIN. No, thank you, really. BRIGNAC [_filling his glass_] I see. You’re afraid that my Alicante comes from the grocer’s? No, no. My dear sir, I am the son of a wine grower and I can answer for my cellar, I assure you. HOURTIN. I only drink water. BRIGNAC. Ah! You belong to that school of doctors to whom wine is anathema. Let me tell you you’re ruining at one stroke the stomach of the north and the purse of the south. Pessimists, that’s what you are. It’s nothing short of treason to slander the good wine of France. Here’s to your health, and to mine, and to France! [_He drinks_]. HOURTIN [_laughing_] Allow me to point out that it’s Spanish wine you are drinking. BRIGNAC [_laughing too_] Yes; but I only drink this in a small glass. Look here, I’ll prove to you that you’re wrong. My father—you see, I don’t need to go far—died at seventy five, as strong as an oak. He kept his vines and his vines kept him. I can promise you he didn’t only drink water. I don’t say that now and then—market day and so on—he didn’t get a bit lively, a bit too lively, perhaps. Well, did he suffer for it? On the contrary, it gave him strength to support life and made him charitable to other people’s little failings. A good glass of wine never hurt anybody—there’s my witness you see—and my dear father didn’t drink by the thimbleful, I can tell you. But nowadays you think you see drunkards everywhere. HOURTIN. With good reason. BRIGNAC. Well, take me. Do I look healthy? Fit? HOURTIN. I don’t judge people by their looks.