BRIGNAC. Can’t you understand that she would suffer much more here, surrounded by people who know her, than she would there, where she would be unknown? Here she couldn’t so much as go down the street without exposing herself to insult. Why, if she even went to mass or to a concert after her condition became evident, it would be a kind of provocation; people would avoid her as if she had the plague. Mothers would sneer and tell their daughters not to look at her, and men would smile in a way that would be an outrage. LUCIE. If necessary she can stay at home. BRIGNAC. Stay at home! Rubbish! What would be the good of that? Servants would talk, and the scandal would be all the greater. And you haven’t reflected that the consequences would fall upon me. You haven’t troubled to consider me, or to remember the drawback this will be to me. I am not alluding to the imbecile jokes people are sure to make about the apostle of repopulation. But our respectability will be called in question. People will remark that there are families in which such things don’t happen. Political hatred and social prejudice will help them to invent all sorts of tales. And the allusions, the suggestions, the pretended pity! There would be nothing left for me but to send in my resignation! LUCIE. Send it in. BRIGNAC. Yes, and what should we live upon then? LUCIE [_after a silence_] Then _that_ is society’s welcome to the newborn child! BRIGNAC. To the child born outside marriage, yes. If it wasn’t for that there would soon be nothing but illegitimate births. It is to preserve the family that society condemns the natural child. LUCIE. If there is guilt two people are guilty. Why do you only punish the mother? BRIGNAC. What am I to say to you? Because it’s easier. LUCIE. And that’s your justice! The truth is, you all uphold the conventions of society. You do. And the proof is that if Annette stayed here in the town to have her baby, you’d all cry shame upon her; but if she goes to Paris and has it secretly and gets rid of it, nobody will blame her. Let’s be honest, and call things by their names: it is not immorality that is condemned, but motherhood. You say you want a larger number of births, and at the same time you say to women ‘No motherhood without marriage, and no marriage without money.’ As long as you’ve not changed _that_ all your circulars will be met with shouts of derision—half from hate, half from pity! BRIGNAC. Possibly. Good night. I’m going to work. LUCIE. Listen—Then you drive Annette from your house? BRIGNAC. I don’t drive her from my house. I beg her to go elsewhere. LUCIE. I shall go with her. BRIGNAC. You mean, leave me? LUCIE. Yes. BRIGNAC. Then you don’t love me. LUCIE. No. BRIGNAC. Ah! Here’s another story. Since when? LUCIE. I never loved you. BRIGNAC. You married me. LUCIE. Not for love. BRIGNAC. This is most interesting. Go on. LUCIE. You’re another victim of the state of society you are defending.