PRESIDENT. And it’s not your fault either that you’ve become a drunkard? TUPIN. I’ll tell you. You know the proverb: ‘When there’s no hay in the manger—.’ Well, when the pinch came at home, I and my wife began to quarrel over each new baby. Each of us accused the other of having made things worse for the first ones. Well, I’ll cut it short. If I went to the wineshop, why, it’s warm there, and you don’t hear the brats crying and their mother complaining. And the drink helps you to forget, so it does, to forget! MME. TUPIN. It’s good to forget, so it is! TUPIN. It’s my fault if you like, but that’s how we got poorer and poorer. PRESIDENT. And when you had your last child, didn’t that serve as a lesson to you? TUPIN. The last one didn’t cost anything. PRESIDENT [_absently_] Ah! TUPIN. He came into the world deformed and sickly. He was conceived in misery, in want—his mother was worn out. PRESIDENT. And his father a drunkard! TUPIN. If you like. Well, he came badly into the world—he could never have been anything but a cripple. But he didn’t want for anything! They took him in at the hospital and begged me to let him stay there. MME. TUPIN. He was a curiosity for the doctors. TUPIN. They looked after him, I tell you. They didn’t leave him for a minute. He was made to live in spite of himself, so to speak. The other children, who were strong, they let them perish of want. With half the care and the money that was spent on the sickly one they might have made fine fellows of all the rest. PRESIDENT. Then that is why you made away with the next? TUPIN. For all the good he’d have had in the world, if he could, he’d say, thank you. PRESIDENT. You ought not to have had him. TUPIN. That’s true. But we poor folk, we don’t know the dodges rich people have so as only to have the children they want, and take their fun all the same: worse luck! PRESIDENT. If everyone was of your opinion our country would be in a bad way. But your country, doubtless, is nothing to you? TUPIN. I’ve heard say: ‘A man’s country is where he is well off.’ I’m badly off everywhere. PRESIDENT. And you are equally lost to any interest in humanity. TUPIN. If humanity can’t get on without a set of wretches like me, let it go smash! PRESIDENT. Well, the jury can estimate your sense of morality. You may sit down. _Night has come. The ushers bring lamps._ MME. D’AMERGUEUX. I shouldn’t like to meet that man of an evening in a lonely place. M. DE FORGEAU. Nor I. Now for Madame Brignac—that was. My dear lady, what a dreadful thing! MME. D’AMERGUEUX. Dreadful! PRESIDENT. We have now only to examine the facts concerning Lucie and Annette Jarras. [_To the defendant Thomas_] Stand up. This girl, Annette Jarras, was your victim. What have you to say? MME. THOMAS. Nothing. PRESIDENT. You don’t trouble yourself about it? Well, we know your heart is not easy to move. MME. THOMAS. If I told you that I was led to do what I did by pity, you wouldn’t believe me.