TUPIN. Electrician. PRESIDENT. You were once. It’s a long time since you worked regularly. TUPIN. There’s no work to be had. PRESIDENT. Because you look for it at the wineshop. The police give the worst account of you. TUPIN. I am not surprised they don’t like me: I never liked them. [_Laughter_]. PRESIDENT. Silence there: or I shall have the court cleared. [_To Tupin_] The name of your wife has been found among the papers of the defendant Thomas. Catherine Tupin, maiden name Bidois. Where is Catherine Tupin? Stand up. Very well, sit down again. [_To Tupin_] You tried to conceal your wife from the police. TUPIN. I didn’t think they were good company for her. PRESIDENT [_pretending not to hear_] You then gave yourself up on your own confession that it was you who took her to this abominable woman’s house. TUPIN. You speak like a book. PRESIDENT. You persisted in the confession of your guilt. Did you want to go to prison? TUPIN. Why, that’s an idea! You get fed and sheltered there anyway. PRESIDENT. The prison conditions are certainly better than those you are accustomed to. TUPIN. Now you’re talking. PRESIDENT. When you were arrested you were completely destitute. The remains of your furniture had been sold, and you were on the eve of finding yourself without a roof over your head. Doubtless you will blame Society, too. Your insubordinate character leads you to frequent Socialist clubs; and when you do not affect, as you do now, a cynical carelessness in your speech, you are used to repeat the empty phrases you have learnt from the propagandist pamphlets that poison the minds of the working classes. But we know you. If you are a victim, it is to your own vices. You are a hardened drinker. TUPIN. Lately, that’s true. PRESIDENT. You admit it. Extraordinary! TUPIN. What’s that prove? PRESIDENT. Your eldest daughter is known to the police of Paris as a prostitute. One of your sons has been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for theft. Is that true? TUPIN. Possibly. PRESIDENT. A little less proud now? That’s right. Well, now, you took your wife to this woman. Why? TUPIN. Because I thought it was enough to have brought seven wretched creatures into the world. PRESIDENT. If you had continued to be the honest and industrious workman you were once, you might have had another child without its necessarily growing up wretched. TUPIN. No, sir. Not with five. It’s impossible. PRESIDENT. I don’t understand. TUPIN. I say that a working man’s family, however much they work and economize, can’t support itself when there are five children. PRESIDENT. If that is true, there are—and it is to the credit of the Society that you despise—there are, I say, numerous charitable organizations which are, so to speak, on the watch for the victims of misfortune and make it a point of honor to leave none without succor.