TUPIN. I want to explain about that. When we began to get short in the house my wife and I started to quarrel. Every time a child came we were mad at making it worse for the others. And so—I needn’t make a long story of it—I ended up in the pub. It’s warm there, and you can’t hear the children crying nor the mother complaining. And besides, when you’ve drink in you forget. MME. TUPIN. It’s the sort of thing that it’s good to forget. TUPIN. And that’s how we got poorer and poorer. My fault if you like. PRES. And the last child, what about that? MME. TUPIN. Oh, the last. TUPIN. The last? _He_ cost us nothing. PRES [_carelessly_] Eh? MME. TUPIN. No. TUPIN. No, he was a cripple. He was born in starvation, and his mother was worn out. PRES. And his father was a drunkard. TUPIN. Maybe. Anyway that one, the sickly fellow, wanted for nothing. They took him into the hospital. They wouldn’t let me take him away. MME. TUPIN. He was a curiosity for the doctors. TUPIN. And they nursed him and they nursed him and they nursed him. They didn’t leave him a minute. They made him live in spite of himself. And they let the other children—the strong ones—go to the bad. With half the money and the fuss they wasted on the cripple they could have made fine fellows of all the others. PRES. And was that the reason you did away with the next? MME. TUPIN. For all the good he’d have got out of this world he might thank me for not letting him come into it. PRES. He should never have been created. TUPIN. That’s true. PRES. If everyone was like you the country would soon go to the dogs. But you don’t trouble yourself much about the country, I expect. TUPIN. Someone said ‘A man’s country is the place where he’s well off.’ I’m badly off everywhere. PRES. You are perfectly indifferent to the good of humanity. TUPIN. Humanity had better come to an end if it can’t get on without a set of miserable wretches like me. PRES. The jury thoroughly appreciate your moral sense. You can sit down. _Evening has come. The ushers bring lamps._ PRES [_to Madame Tupin_] Have you anything more to say? MME. TUPIN. I have to say that all this is not my fault. My husband and I worked like beasts; we did without every kind of pleasure to try and bring up our children. If we had wanted to slave more I declare to you we couldn’t have done it. And now that we’ve given our lives for them, the oldest is in hospital ruined and done for because he worked in a ‘dangerous trade’ as they call it! PRES. Why didn’t you put him into something else? MME. TUPIN. Because there’s no work anywhere else. They’re full up everywhere else. There are too many people in the world. My little girl is a woman now like lots of others in Paris. She had to choose between that and starving. She chose that. I’m only a poor woman, and I know what it means to have nothing to eat, so I forgave her. The worst of it is that sometimes she’s hungry all the same. TUPIN. And they say God blesses large families!