PRES [_consulting his notes_] When you were arrested you were both completely destitute. What remained of your furniture had been sold, and you were entering upon a state of complete vagabondage. No doubt you also will accuse society. You are an unruly person. You frequent Socialist clubs; and when you don’t affect a cynical carelessness in your language, as you are doing now, you like to repeat the empty phrases you have picked up from the propagandist pamphlets which are poisoning the minds of the working classes. But we know all about you; and if you are a victim, you are the victim of your vices. You drink. TUPIN. I have taken to it lately. That’s true. PRES. You confess it. Most extraordinary. MME. TUPIN. What does that prove? PRES. Your eldest daughter is on the streets and one of your sons has been sent to prison for a year for theft. Is that true? TUPIN. Possibly. PRES. Not quite so insolent now. I congratulate you. We will proceed. You took your wife to an abortionist. Why? TUPIN. Because I considered that bringing seven miserable little devils into the world was enough. PRES. If you had continued to be the honest and laborious workman that you once were you might have had another child, without that child being necessarily a miserable little devil. MME. TUPIN. That isn’t true. TUPIN. No, monsieur. After four it’s impossible. PRES. I don’t understand you. TUPIN. What I say is that a workman’s family, however hard they work and screw, can’t get along when there are five children. PRES. If that is true there are—and this society you despise may be proud of it—there are, I say, many charities on the watch, so to speak, for the destitute; and they make it a point of honor to leave none without relief. TUPIN [_indignant_] Oh, and that seems all right to you, does it? You say it’s a workman’s duty to work and to have a lot of children, and when he does it, fair and square, and it makes a beggar of him, it seems to you all right! PRES. Ah, ha! Here’s the orator of the public house parlor. In the first place, we have only your assertion that a workman’s family cannot live when there are five children. But, thank God, there are more than one or two in that condition who have recourse neither to charity nor to an abortionist. MME. TUPIN. That’s not true. TUPIN. Shall I prove to you that you’re wrong? PRES. That has nothing to do with the charge against you. MME. TUPIN. Yes, it has. TUPIN. I beg your pardon. If I prove it that will explain how I came to do what I did. MME. TUPIN. I should think so! PRES. Very well, but cut it short. TUPIN. I gave my lawyer the month’s account. Please let him read it to you. PRES. Very well. _The counsel for the defence rises._ COUN. Here it is. PRES. Stop. You’re not Tupin’s counsel.