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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1157 ***
+
+DAMAGED GOODS
+
+The Great Play “Les Avaries” of Eugene Brieux
+
+Novelized with the approval of the author
+
+by Upton Sinclair
+
+
+
+THE PRODUCTION OF EUGENE BRIEUX’S PLAY, “LES AVARIES,” OR, TO GIVE IT
+ITS ENGLISH TITLE, “DAMAGED GOODS,” HAS INITIATED A MOVEMENT IN THIS
+COUNTRY WHICH MUST BE REGARDED AS EPOCH-MAKING.--New York Times
+
+
+
++++Page 4 is a virtually unreadable letter in handwritten script from M.
+Brieux.+++
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+My endeavor has been to tell a simple story, preserving as closely as
+possible the spirit and feeling of the original. I have tried, as it
+were, to take the play to pieces, and build a novel out of the same
+material. I have not felt at liberty to embellish M. Brieux’s ideas, and
+I have used his dialogue word for word wherever possible. Unless I have
+mis-read the author, his sole purpose in writing LES AVARIES was to
+place a number of most important facts before the minds of the public,
+and to drive them home by means of intense emotion. If I have been able
+to assist him, this bit of literary carpentering will be worth while. I
+have to thank M. Brieux for his kind permission to make the attempt, and
+for the cordial spirit which he has manifested.
+
+Upton Sinclair
+
+
+
+
+PRESS COMMENTS ON THE PLAY
+
+DAMAGED GOODS was first presented in America at a Friday matinee on
+March 14th, 1913, in the Fulton Theater, New York, before members of
+the Sociological Fund. Immediately it was acclaimed by public press and
+pulpit as the greatest contribution ever made by the Stage to the cause
+of humanity. Mr. Richard Bennett, the producer, who had the courage to
+present the play, with the aid of his co-workers, in the face of most
+savage criticism from the ignorant, was overwhelmed with requests for a
+repetition of the performance.
+
+Before deciding whether of not to present DAMAGED GOODS before the
+general public, it was arranged that the highest officials in the United
+States should pass judgment upon the manner in which the play teaches
+its vital lesson. A special guest performance for members of the
+Cabinet, members of both houses of Congress, members of the United
+States Supreme Court, representatives of the Diplomatic corps and others
+prominent in national life was given in Washington, D.C.
+
+Although the performance was given on a Sunday afternoon (April 6,
+1913), the National Theater was crowded to the very doors with the most
+distinguished audience ever assembled in America, including exclusively
+the foremost men and women of the Capital. The most noted clergymen of
+Washington were among the spectators.
+
+The result of this remarkable performance was a tremendous endorsement
+of the play and of the manner in which Mr. Bennett and his co-workers
+were presenting it.
+
+This reception resulted in the continuance of the New York performances
+until mid-summer and is responsible for the decision on the part of Mr.
+Bennett to offer the play in every city in America where citizens feel
+that the ultimate welfare of the community is dependent upon a higher
+standard of morality and clearer understanding of the laws of health.
+
+
+The WASHINGTON POST, commenting on the Washington performance, said:
+
+The play was presented with all the impressiveness of a sermon; with all
+the vigor and dynamic force of a great drama; with all the earnestness
+and power of a vital truth.
+
+In many respects the presentation of this dramatization of a great
+social evil assumed the aspects of a religious service. Dr. Donald C.
+Macleod, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, mounted the rostrum
+usually occupied by the leader of the orchestra, and announced that the
+nature of the performance, the sacredness of the play, and the character
+of the audience gave to the play the significance of a tremendous sermon
+in behalf of mankind, and that as such it was eminently fitting that
+a divine blessing be invoked. Dr. Earle Wilfley, pastor of the Vermont
+Avenue Christian Church, asked all persons in the audience to bow
+their heads in a prayer for the proper reception of the message to be
+presented from the stage. Dr. MacLeod then read the Bernard Shaw preface
+to the play, and asked that there be no applause during the performance,
+a suggestion which was rigidly followed, thus adding greatly to the
+effectiveness and the seriousness of the dramatic portrayal.
+
+The impression made upon the audience by the remarkable play is
+reflected in such comments as the following expressions voiced after the
+performance:
+
+RABBI SIMON, OF THE WASHINGTON HEBREW CONGREGATION--If I could preach
+from my pulpit a sermon one tenth as powerful, as convincing, as
+far-reaching, and as helpful as this performance of DAMAGED GOODS must
+be, I would consider that I had achieved the triumph of my life.
+
+COMMISSIONER CUNO H. RUDOLPH--I was deeply impressed by what I saw, and
+I think that the drama should be repeated in every city, a matinee one
+day for father and son and the next day for mother and daughter.
+
+REV. EARLE WILFLEY--I am confirmed in the opinion that we must take up
+our cudgels in a crusade against the modern problems brought to the
+fore by DAMAGED GOODS. The report that these diseases are increasing is
+enough to make us get busy on a campaign against them.
+
+SURGEON GENERAL BLUE--It was a most striking and telling lesson. For
+years we have been fighting these condition in the navy. It is high time
+that civilians awakened to the dangers surrounding them and crusaded
+against them in a proper manner.
+
+MRS. ARCHIBALD HOPKINS--The play was a powerful presentation of a very
+important question and was handled in a most admirable manner. The
+drama is a fine entering wedge for this crusade and is bound to do
+considerable good in conveying information of a very serious nature.
+
+MINISTER PEZET, OF PERU--There can be no doubt but that the performance
+will have great uplifting power, and accomplish the good for which it
+was created. Fortunately, we do not have the prudery in South America
+that you of the north possess, and have open minds to consider these
+serious questions.
+
+JUSTICE DANIEL THEW WRIGHT--I feel quite sure that DAMAGED GOODS will
+have considerable effect in educating the people of the nature of the
+danger that surrounds them.
+
+SENATOR KERN, OF INDIANA--There can be no denial of the fact that it is
+time to look at the serious problems presented in the play with an open
+mind.
+
+
+Brieux has been hailed by Bernard Shaw as “incomparably the greatest
+writer France has produced since Moliere,” and perhaps no writer ever
+wielded his pen more earnestly in the service of the race. To quote from
+an article by Edwin E. Slosson in the INDEPENDENT:
+
+Brieux is not one who believes that social evils are to be cured by laws
+and yet more laws. He believes that most of the trouble is caused
+by ignorance and urges education, public enlightenment and franker
+recognition of existing conditions. All this may be needed, but still we
+may well doubt its effectiveness as a remedy. The drunken Helot argument
+is not a strong one, and those who lead a vicious life know more about
+its risks than any teacher or preacher could tell them. Brieux also
+urges the requirement of health certificates for marriage, such as many
+clergymen now insist upon and which doubtless will be made compulsory
+before long in many of our States.
+
+Brieux paints in black colors yet is no fanatic; in fact, he will
+be criticised by many as being too tolerant of human weakness. The
+conditions of society and the moral standards of France are so different
+from those of America that his point of view and his proposals for
+reform will not meet with general acceptance, but it is encouraging to
+find a dramatist who realizes the importance of being earnest and who
+uses his art in defense of virtue instead of its destruction.
+
+
+Other comments follow, showing the great interest manifested in the play
+and the belief in the highest seriousness of its purpose:
+
+There is no uncleanness in facts. The uncleanness is in the glamour, in
+the secret imagination. It is in hints, half-truths, and suggestions the
+threat to life lies.
+
+This play puts the horrible truth in so living a way, with such clean,
+artistic force, that the mind is impressed as it could possibly be
+impressed in no other manner.
+
+Best of all, it is the physician who dominates the action. There is no
+sentimentalizing. There is no weak and morbid handling of the theme.
+The doctor appears in his ideal function, as the modern high-priest of
+truth. Around him writhe the victims of ignorance and the criminals
+of conventional cruelty. Kind, stern, high-minded, clear-headed, yet
+human-hearted, he towers over all, as the master.
+
+This is as it should be. The man to say the word to save the world of
+ignorant wretches, cursed by the clouds and darkness a mistaken modesty
+has thrown around a life-and-death instinct, is the physician.
+
+The only question is this: Is this play decent? My answer is that it is
+the decentest play that has been in New York for a year. It is so decent
+that it is religious.--HEARST’S MAGAZINE.
+
+
+The play is, above all, a powerful plea for the tearing away of the veil
+of mystery that has so universally shrouded this subject of the penalty
+of sexual immorality. It is a plea for light on this hidden danger, that
+fathers and mothers, young men and young women, may know the terrible
+price that must be paid, not only by the generation that violates the
+law, but by the generations to come. It is a serious question just how
+the education of men and women, especially young men and young women, in
+the vital matters of sex relationship should be carried on. One thing is
+sure, however. The worst possible way is the one which has so often been
+followed in the past--not to carry it on at all but to ignore it.--THE
+OUTLOOK.
+
+
+It (DAMAGED GOODS) is, of course, a masterpiece of “thesis drama,”--an
+argument, dogmatic, insistent, inescapable, cumulative, between science
+and common sense, on one side, and love, of various types, on the other.
+It is what Mr. Bernard Shaw has called a “drama of discussion”; it
+has the splendid movement of the best Shaw plays, unrelieved--and
+undiluted--by Shavian paradox, wit, and irony. We imagine that many
+audiences at the Fulton Theater were astonished at the play’s showing
+of sheer strength as acted drama. Possibly it might not interest the
+general public; probably it would be inadvisable to present it to them.
+But no thinking person, with the most casual interest in current social
+evils, could listen to the version of Richard Bennett, Wilton Lackaye,
+and their associates, without being gripped by the power of Brieux’s
+message.--THE DIAL.
+
+
+It is a wonder that the world has been so long in getting hold of this
+play, which is one of France’s most valuable contributions to the drama.
+Its history is interesting. Brieux wrote it over ten years ago. Antoine
+produced it at his theater and Paris immediately censored it, but soon
+thought better of it and removed the ban. During the summer of 1910
+it was played in Brussels before crowded houses, for then the city was
+thronged with visitors to the exposition. Finally New York got it last
+spring and eugenic enthusiasts and doctors everywhere have welcomed it.
+--THE INDEPENDENT.
+
+
+A letter to Mr. Bennett from Dr. Hills, Pastor of Plymouth Church,
+Brooklyn.
+
+23 Monroe Street Bklyn. August 1, 1913.
+
+Mr. Richard Bennett, New York City, N.Y. My Dear Mr. Bennett:
+
+During the past twenty-one years since I entered public life, I have
+experienced many exciting hours under the influence of reformer, orator
+and actor, but, in this mood of retrospection, I do not know that I
+have ever passed through a more thrilling, terrible, and yet hopeful
+experience than last evening, while I listened to your interpretation of
+Eugene Brieux’ “DAMAGED GOODS.”
+
+I have been following your work with ever deepening interest. It is not
+too much to say that you have changed the thinking of the people of our
+country as to the social evil. At last, thank God, this conspiracy of
+silence is ended. No young man who sees “Damaged Goods” will ever be the
+same again. If I wanted to build around an innocent boy buttresses of
+fire and granite, and lend him triple armour against temptation and the
+assaults of evil, I would put him for one evening under your influence.
+That which the teacher, the preacher and the parent have failed to
+accomplish it has been given to you to achieve. You have done a work for
+which your generation owes you an immeasurable debt of gratitude.
+
+I shall be delighted to have you use my Study of Social Diseases and
+Heredity in connection with your great reform.
+
+With all good wishes, I am, my dear Mr. Bennett, Faithfully yours,
+
+Newell Dwight Hillis
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+It was four o’clock in the morning when George Dupont closed the door
+and came down the steps to the street. The first faint streaks of dawn
+were in the sky, and he noticed this with annoyance, because he knew
+that his hair was in disarray and his whole aspect disorderly; yet he
+dared not take a cab, because he feared to attract attention at home.
+When he reached the sidewalk, he glanced about him to make sure that no
+one had seen him leave the house, then started down the street, his eyes
+upon the sidewalk before him.
+
+George had the feeling of the morning after. There are few men in this
+world of abundant sin who will not know what the phrase means. The fumes
+of the night had evaporated; he was quite sober now, quite free from
+excitement. He saw what he had done, and it seemed to him something
+black and disgusting.
+
+Never had a walk seemed longer than the few blocks which he had to
+traverse to reach his home. He must get there before the maid was
+up, before the baker’s boy called with the rolls; otherwise, what
+explanation could he give?--he who had always been such a moral man, who
+had been pointed out by mothers as an example to their sons.
+
+George thought of his own mother, and what she would think if she could
+know about his night’s adventure. He thought again and again, with a
+pang of anguish, of Henriette. Could it be possible that a man who was
+engaged, whose marriage contract had actually been signed, who was soon
+to possess the love of a beautiful and noble girl--that such a man could
+have been weak enough and base enough to let himself be trapped into
+such a low action?
+
+He went back over the whole series of events, shuddering at them, trying
+to realize how they had happened, trying to excuse himself for them.
+He had not intended such a culmination; he had never meant to do such a
+thing in his life. He had not thought of any harm when he had accepted
+the invitation to the supper party with his old companions from the law
+school. Of course, he had known that several of these chums led “fast”
+ lives--but, then, surely a fellow could go to a friend’s rooms for a
+lark without harm!
+
+He remembered the girl who had sat by his side at the table. She had
+come with a friend who was a married woman, and so he had assumed that
+she was all right. George remembered how embarrassed he had been when
+first he had noticed her glances at him. But then the wine had begun
+to go to his head--he was one of those unfortunate wretches who cannot
+drink wine at all. He had offered to take the girl home in a cab, and on
+the way he had lost his head.
+
+Oh! What a wretched thing it was. He could hardly believe that it was he
+who had spoken those frenzied words; and yet he must have spoken them,
+because he remembered them. He remembered that it had taken a long
+time to persuade her. He had had to promise her a ring like the one her
+married friend wore. Before they entered her home she had made him take
+off his shoes, so that the porter might not hear them. This had struck
+George particularly, because, even flushed with excitement as he was,
+he had not forgotten the warnings his father had given him as to the
+dangers of contact with strange women. He had thought to himself, “This
+girl must be safe. It is probably the first time she has ever done such
+a thing.”
+
+But now George could get but little consolation out of that idea. He
+was suffering intensely--the emotion described by the poet in the bitter
+words about “Time’s moving finger having writ.” His mind, seeking some
+explanation, some justification, went back to the events before that
+night. With a sudden pang of yearning, he thought of Lizette. She was a
+decent girl, and had kept him decent, and he was lonely without her. He
+had been so afraid of being found out that he had given her up when he
+became engaged; but now for a while he felt that he would have to break
+his resolution, and pay his regular Sunday visit to the little flat in
+the working-class portion of Paris.
+
+It was while George was fitting himself for the same career as his
+father--that of notary--that he had made the acquaintance of the young
+working girl. It may not be easy to believe, but Lizette had really been
+a decent girl. She had a family to take care of, and was in need. There
+was a grandmother in poor health, a father not much better, and three
+little brothers; so Lizette did not very long resist George Dupont, and
+he felt quite virtuous in giving her sufficient money to take care of
+these unfortunate people. Among people of his class it was considered
+proper to take such things if one paid for them.
+
+All the family of this working girl were grateful to him. They adored
+him, and they called him Uncle Raoul (for of course he had not been so
+foolish as to give them his true name).
+
+Since George was paying for Lizette, he felt he had the right to control
+her life. He gave her fair warning concerning his attitude. If she
+deceived him he would leave her immediately. He told this to her
+relatives also, and so he had them all watching her. She was never
+trusted out alone. Every Sunday George went to spend the day with his
+little “family,” so that his coming became almost a matter of tradition.
+He interested her in church affairs--mass and vespers were her regular
+occasions for excursions. George rented two seats, and the grandmother
+went with her to the services. The simple people were proud to see their
+name engraved upon the brass plate of the pew.
+
+The reason for all these precautions was George’s terror of disease.
+He had been warned by his father as to the dangers which young men
+encounter in their amours. And these lessons had sunk deep into George’s
+heart; he had made up his mind that whatever his friends might do, he,
+for one, would protect himself.
+
+That did not mean, of course, that he intended to live a virtuous life;
+such was the custom among young men of his class, not had it probably
+ever occurred to his father that it was possible for a young man to do
+such a thing. The French have a phrase, “l’homme moyen sensuel”--the
+average sensual man. And George was such a man. He had no noble
+idealisms, no particular reverence for women. The basis of his attitude
+was a purely selfish one; he wanted to enjoy himself, and at the same
+time to keep out of trouble.
+
+He did not find any happiness in the renunciation which he imposed
+upon himself; he had no religious ideas about it. On the contrary,
+he suffered keenly, and was bitter because he had no share in the
+amusements of his friends. He stuck to his work and forced himself to
+keep regular hours, preparing for his law examinations. But all the
+time he was longing for adventures. And, of course, this could not go
+on forever, for the motive of fear alone is not sufficient to subdue the
+sexual urge in a full-blooded young man.
+
+The affair with Lizette might have continued much longer had it not been
+for the fact that his father died. He died quite suddenly, while George
+was away on a trip. The son came back to console his broken-hearted
+mother, and in the two week they spent in the country together the
+mother broached a plan to him. The last wish of the dying man had
+been that his son should be fixed in life. In the midst of his intense
+suffering he had been able to think about the matter, and had named the
+girl whom he wished George to marry. Naturally, George waited with some
+interest to learn who this might be. He was surprised when his mother
+told him that it was his cousin, Henriette Loches.
+
+He could not keep his emotion from revealing itself in his face. “It
+doesn’t please you?” asked his mother, with a tone disappointment.
+
+“Why no, mother,” he answered. “It’s not that. It just surprises me.”
+
+“But why?” asked the mother. “Henriette is a lovely girl and a good
+girl.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” said George; “but then she is my cousin, and--” He
+blushed a little with embarrassment. “I had never thought of her in that
+way.”
+
+Madame Dupont laid her hand upon her son’s. “Yes, George,” she said
+tenderly. “I know. You are such a good boy.”
+
+Now, of course, George did not feel that he was quite such a good boy;
+but his mother was a deeply religious woman, who had no idea of the
+truth about the majority of men. She would never have got over the shock
+if he had told her about himself, and so he had to pretend to be just
+what she thought him.
+
+“Tell me,” she continued, after a pause, “have you never felt the least
+bit in love?”
+
+“Why no--I don’t think so,” George stammered, becoming conscious of a
+sudden rise of temperature in his cheeks.
+
+“Because,” said his mother, “it is really time that you were settled in
+life. Your father said that we should have seen to it before, and now it
+is my duty to see to it. It is not good for you to live alone so long.”
+
+“But, mother, I have YOU,” said George generously.
+
+“Some day the Lord may take me away,” was the reply. “I am getting
+old. And, George, dear--” Here suddenly her voice began to tremble with
+feeling--“I would like to see my baby grandchildren before I go. You
+cannot imagine what it would mean to me.”
+
+Madame Dupont saw how much this subject distressed her son, so she went
+on to the more worldly aspects of the matter. Henriette’s father was
+well-to-do, and he would give her a good dowry. She was a charming and
+accomplished girl. Everybody would consider him most fortunate if the
+match could be arranged. Also, there was an elderly aunt to whom Madame
+Dupont had spoken, and who was much taken with the idea. She owned a
+great deal of property and would surely help the young couple.
+
+George did not see just how he could object to this proposition, even if
+he had wanted to. What reason could he give for such a course? He could
+not explain that he already had a family--with stepchildren, so to
+speak, who adored him. And what could he say to his mother’s obsession,
+to which she came back again and again--her longing to see her
+grandchildren before she died? Madame Dupont waited only long enough for
+George to stammer out a few protestations, and then in the next breath
+to take them back; after which she proceeded to go ahead with the match.
+The family lawyers conferred together, and the terms of the settlement
+were worked out and agreed upon. It happened that immediately afterwards
+George learned of an opportunity to purchase the practice of a notary,
+who was ready to retire from business in two months’ time. Henriette’s
+father consented to advance a portion of her dowry for this purpose.
+
+Thus George was safely started upon the same career as his father, and
+this was to him a source of satisfaction which he did not attempt to
+deny, either to himself of to any one else. George was a cautious young
+man, who came of a frugal and saving stock. He had always been taught
+that it was his primary duty to make certain of a reasonable amount of
+comfort. From his earliest days, he had been taught to regard material
+success as the greatest goal in life, and he would never have dreamed
+of engaging himself to a girl without money. But when he had the good
+fortune to meet one who possessed desirable personal qualities in
+addition to money, he was not in the least barred from appreciating
+those qualities. They were, so to speak, the sauce which went with the
+meat, and it seemed to him that in this case the sauce was of the very
+best.
+
+George--a big fellow of twenty-six, with large, round eyes and a
+good-natured countenance--was full blooded, well fed, with a hearty
+laugh which spoke of unimpaired contentment, a soul untroubled in its
+deeps. He seemed to himself the luckiest fellow in the whole round
+world; he could not think what he had done to deserve the good fortune
+of possessing such a girl as Henriette. He was ordinarily of a somewhat
+sentimental turn--easily influenced by women and sensitive to their
+charms. Moreover, his relationship with Lizette had softened him. He had
+learned to love the young working girl, and now Henriette, it seemed,
+was to reap the benefit of his experience with her.
+
+In fact, he found himself always with memories of Lizette in his
+relationships with the girl who was to be his wife. When the engagement
+was announced, and he claimed his first kiss from his bride-to-be, as
+he placed a ring upon her finger, he remembered the first time he had
+kissed Lizette, and a double blush suffused his round countenance. When
+he walked arm and arm with Henriette in the garden he remembered how he
+had walked just so with the other girl, and he was interested to compare
+the words of the two. He remembered what a good time had had when he
+had taken Lizette and her little family for a picnic upon one of the
+excursion steamers which run down the River Seine. Immediately he
+decided that he would like to take Henriette on such a picnic, and he
+persuaded an aunt of Henriette’s to go with her as a chaperon. George
+took his bride-to-be to the same little inn where he had lunch before.
+
+Thus he was always haunted by memories, some of which made him cheerful
+and some of which made him mildly sad. He soon got used to the idea, and
+did not find it awkward, except when he had to suppress the impulse to
+tell Henriette something which Lizette had said, or some funny incident
+which had happened in the home of the little family. Sometimes he found
+himself thinking that it was a shame to have to suppress these impulses.
+There must be something wrong, he thought, with a social system which
+made it necessary for him to hide a thing which was so obvious and so
+sensible. Here he was, a man twenty-six years of age; he could not
+have afforded to marry earlier, nor could he, as he thought, have been
+expected to lead a continent life. And he had really loved Lizette; she
+was really a good girl. Yet, if Henriette had got any idea of it, she
+would have been horrified and indignant--she might even have broken off
+the engagement.
+
+And then, too, there was Henriette’s father, a personage of great
+dignity and importance. M. Loches was a deputy of the French Parliament,
+from a district in the provinces. He was a man of upright life, and a
+man who made a great deal of that upright life--keeping it on a pedestal
+where everyone might observe it. It was impossible to imagine M. Loches
+in an undignified or compromising situation--such as the younger man
+found himself facing in the matter of Lizette.
+
+The more he thought about it the more nervous and anxious George became.
+Then it was decided it would be necessary for him to break with
+the girl, and be “good” until the time of his marriage. Dear little
+soft-eyed Lizette--he did not dare to face her personally; he could
+never bear to say good-by, he felt. Instead, he went to the father,
+who as a man could be expected to understand the situation. George was
+embarrassed and not a little nervous about it; for although he had never
+misrepresented his attitude to the family, one could never feel entirely
+free from the possibility of blackmail in such cases. However, Lizette’s
+father behaved decently, and was duly grateful for the moderate sum of
+money which George handed him in parting. He promised to break the news
+gently to Lizette, and George went away with his mind made up that he
+would never see her again.
+
+This resolution he kept, and he considered himself very virtuous in
+doing it. But the truth was that he had grown used to intimacy with a
+woman, and was restless without it. And that, he told himself, was why
+he yielded to the shameful temptation the night of that fatal supper
+party.
+
+He paid for the misadventure liberally in remorse. He felt that he had
+been a wretch, that he had disgraced himself forever, that he had proved
+himself unworthy of the pure girl he was to marry. So keen was his
+feeling that it was several days before he could bring himself to see
+Henriette again; and when he went, it was with a mind filled with a
+brand-new set of resolutions. It was the last time that he would ever
+fall into error. He would be a new man from then on. He thanked God
+that there was no chance of his sin being known, that he might have an
+opportunity to prove his new determination.
+
+So intense were his feelings that he could not help betraying a part of
+them to Henriette. They sat in the garden one soft summer evening, with
+Henriette’s mother occupied with her crocheting at a decorous distance.
+George, in reverent and humble mood, began to drop vague hints that he
+was really unworthy of his bride-to-be. He said that he had not always
+been as good as he should have been; he said that her purity and
+sweetness had awakened in him new ideals; so that he felt his old life
+had been full of blunders. Henriette, of course, had but the vaguest of
+ideas as to what the blunders of a tender and generous young man like
+George might be. So she only loved him the more for his humility, and
+was flattered to have such a fine effect upon him, to awaken in him such
+moods of exaltation. When he told her that all men were bad, and that
+no man was worthy of such a beautiful love, she was quite ravished, and
+wiped away tears from her eyes.
+
+It would have been a shame to spoil such a heavenly mood by telling the
+real truth. Instead, George contented himself with telling of the new
+resolutions he had formed. After all, they were the things which really
+mattered; for Henriette was going to live with his future, not with his
+past.
+
+It seemed to George a most wonderful thing, this innocence of a young
+girl, which enabled her to move through a world of wickedness with
+unpolluted mind. It was a touching thing; and also, as a prudent young
+man could not help realizing, a most convenient thing. He realized the
+importance of preserving it, and thought that if he ever had a daughter,
+he would protect her as rigidly as Henriette had been protected. He
+made haste to shy off from the subject of his “badness” and to turn the
+conversation with what seemed a clever jest.
+
+“If I am going to be so good,” he said, “don’t forget that you will have
+to be good also!”
+
+“I will try,” said Henriette, who was still serious.
+
+“You will have to try hard,” he persisted. “You will find that you have
+a very jealous husband.”
+
+“Will I?” said Henriette, beaming with happiness--for when a woman is
+very much in love she doesn’t in the least object to the man’s being
+jealous.
+
+“Yes, indeed,” smiled George. “I’ll always be watching you.”
+
+“Watching me?” echoed the girl with a surprised look.
+
+And immediately he felt ashamed of himself for his jest. There could be
+no need to watch Henriette, and it was bad taste even to joke about it
+at such a time. That was one of the ideas which he had brought with him
+from his world of evil.
+
+The truth was, however, that George would always be a suspicious
+husband; nothing could ever change that fact, for there was something in
+his own conscience which he could not get out, and which would make it
+impossible for him to be at ease as a married man. It was the memory of
+something which had happened earlier in his life before he met Lizette.
+There had been one earlier experience, with the wife of his dearest
+friend. She had been much younger than her husband, and had betrayed an
+interest in George, who had yielded to the temptation. For several years
+the intrigue continued, and George considered it a good solution of a
+young man’s problem. There had been no danger of contamination, for he
+knew that his friend was a man of pure and rigid morals, a jealous
+man who watched his wife, and did not permit her to contract those new
+relations which are always dangerous. As for George, he helped in this
+worthy work, keeping the woman in terror of some disease. He told her
+that almost all men were infected, for he hoped by this means to keep
+her from deceiving him.
+
+I am aware that this may seem a dreadful story. As I do not want anyone
+to think too ill of George Dupont, I ought, perhaps, to point out that
+people feel differently about these matters in France. In judging the
+unfortunate young man, we must judge him by the customs of his own
+country, and not by ours. In France, they are accustomed to what is
+called the MARIAGE DE CONVENANCE. The young girl is not permitted to go
+about and make her own friends and decide which one of them she prefers
+for her husband; on the contrary, she is strictly guarded, her training
+often is of a religious nature, and her marriage is a matter of
+business, to be considered and decided by her parents and those of the
+young man. Now, whatever we may think right, it is humanly certain that
+where marriages are made in that way, the need of men and women for
+sympathy and for passionate interest will often lead to the forming of
+irregular relationships after marriage. It is not possible to present
+statistics as to the number of such irregular relationships in Parisian
+society; but in the books which he read and in the plays which he saw,
+George found everything to encourage him to think that it was a romantic
+and delightful thing to keep up a secret intrigue with the wife of his
+best friend.
+
+It should also, perhaps, be pointed out that we are here telling the
+truth, and the whole truth, about George Dupont; and that it is not
+customary to tell this about men, either in real life or in novels.
+There is a great deal of concealment in the world about matters of sex;
+and in such matters the truth-telling man is apt to suffer in reputation
+in comparison with the truth-concealing one.
+
+Nor had George really been altogether callous about the thing. It had
+happened that his best friend had died in his arms; and this had so
+affected the guilty pair that they had felt their relationship was no
+longer possible. She had withdrawn to nurse her grief alone, and
+George had been so deeply affected that he had avoided affairs and
+entanglements with women until his meeting with Lizette.
+
+All this was now in the far distant past, but it had made a deeper
+impression upon George than he perhaps realized, and it was now working
+in his mind and marring his happiness. Here was a girl who loved him
+with a noble and unselfish and whole-hearted love--and yet he would
+never be able to trust her as she deserved, but would always have
+suspicions lurking in the back of his mind. He would be unable to have
+his friends intimate in his home, because of the memory of what he had
+once done to a friend. It was a subtle kind of punishment. But so it
+is that Nature often finds ways of punishing us, without our even being
+aware of it.
+
+That was all for the future, however. At present, George was happy. He
+put his black sin behind him, feeling that he had obtained absolution
+by his confession to Henriette. Day by day, as he realized his good
+fortune, his round face beamed with more and yet more joy.
+
+He went for a little trip to Henriette’s home in the country. It was
+a simple village, and they took walks in the country, and stopped to
+refresh themselves at a farmhouse occupied by one of M. Loches’ tenants.
+Here was a rosy and buxom peasant woman, with a nursing child in her
+arms. She was destined a couple of years later to be the foster-mother
+of Henriette’s little girl and to play an important part in her life.
+But the pair had no idea of that at present. They simply saw a proud
+and happy mother, and Henriette played with the baby, giving vent to
+childish delight. Then suddenly she looked up and saw that George was
+watching her, and as she read his thoughts a beautiful blush suffused
+her cheeks.
+
+As for George, he turned away and went out under the blue sky in a kind
+of ecstasy. Life seemed very wonderful to him just then; he had found
+its supreme happiness, which was love. He was really getting quite mad
+about Henriette, he told himself. He could hardly believe that the day
+was coming when he would be able to clasp her in his arms.
+
+But in the blue sky of George’s happiness there was one little cloud of
+storm. As often happens with storm-clouds, it was so small that at first
+he paid no attention to it at all.
+
+He noted upon his body one day a tiny ulcer. At first he treated it with
+salve purchased from an apothecary. Then after a week or two, when this
+had no effect, he began to feel uncomfortable. He remembered suddenly he
+had heard about the symptoms of an unmentionable, dreadful disease, and
+a vague terror took possession of him.
+
+For days he tried to put it to one side. The idea was nonsense, it was
+absurd in connection with a woman so respectable! But the thought would
+not be put away, and finally he went to a school friend, who was a man
+of the world, and got him to talk on the subject. Of course, George had
+to be careful, so that his friend should not suspect that he had any
+special purpose in mind.
+
+The friend was willing to talk. It was a vile disease, he said; but one
+was foolish to bother about it, because it was so rare. There were other
+diseases which fellows got, which nearly every fellow had, and to which
+none of them paid any attention. But one seldom met anyone who had the
+red plague that George dreaded.
+
+“And yet,” he added, “according to the books, it isn’t so uncommon.
+I suppose the truth is that people hide it. A chap naturally wouldn’t
+tell, when he knew it would damn him for life.”
+
+George had a sick sensation inside of him. “Is it as bad as that?” he
+asked.
+
+“Of course,” said the other, “Should you want to have anything to do
+with a person who had it? Should you be willing to room with him or
+travel with him? You wouldn’t even want to shake hands with him!”
+
+“No, I suppose not,” said George, feebly.
+
+“I remember,” continued the other, “an old fellow who used to live out
+in the country near me. He was not so very old, either, but he looked
+it. He had to be pushed around in a wheel-chair. People said he had
+locomotor ataxia, but that really meant syphilis. We boys used to poke
+all kinds of fun at him because one windy day his hat and his wig were
+blown off together, and we discovered that he was as bald as an egg.
+We used to make jokes about his automobile, as we called it. It had a
+little handle in front, instead of a steering-wheel, and a man behind to
+push, instead of an engine.”
+
+“How horrible!” remarked George with genuine feeling.
+
+“I remember the poor devil had a paralysis soon after,” continued the
+friend, quite carelessly. “He could not steer any more, and also he lost
+his voice. When you met him he would look at you as it he thought he was
+talking, but all he could say was ‘Ga-ga-ga’.”
+
+George went away from this conversation in a cold sweat. He told himself
+over and over again that he was a fool, but still he could not get the
+hellish idea out of his mind. He found himself brooding over it all day
+and lying awake at night, haunted by images of himself in a wheel-chair,
+and without any hair on his head. He realized that the sensible thing
+would be for him to go to a doctor and make certain about his condition;
+but he could not bring himself to face the ordeal--he was ashamed to
+admit to a doctor that he had laid himself open to such a taint.
+
+He began to lose the radiant expression from his round and rosy face. He
+had less appetite, and his moods of depression became so frequent that
+he could not hide then even from Henriette. She asked him once or twice
+if there were not something the matter with him, and he laughed--a
+forced and hurried laugh--and told her that he had sat up too late the
+night before, worrying over the matter of his examinations. Oh, what a
+cruel thing it was that a man who stood in the very gateway of such
+a garden of delight should be tormented and made miserable by this
+loathsome idea!
+
+The disturbing symptom still continued, and so at last George purchased
+a medical book, dealing with the subject of the disease. Then, indeed,
+he opened up a chamber of horrors; he made up his mind an abiding place
+of ghastly images. In the book there were pictures of things so awful
+that he turned white, and trembled like a leaf, and had to close the
+volume and hide it in the bottom of his trunk. But he could not banish
+the pictures from his mind. Worst of all, he could not forget the
+description of the first symptom of the disease, which seemed to
+correspond exactly with his own. So at last he made up his mind he must
+ascertain definitely the truth about his condition.
+
+He began to think over plans for seeing a doctor. He had heard somewhere
+a story about a young fellow who had fallen into the hands of a quack,
+and been ruined forever. So he decided that he would consult only the
+best authority.
+
+He got the names of the best-known works on the subject from a
+bookstore, and found that the author of one of these books was
+practicing in Paris as a specialist. Two or three days elapsed before he
+was able to get up the courage to call on this doctor. And oh, the shame
+and horror of sitting in his waiting-room with the other people, none of
+whom dared to look each other in the eyes! They must all be afflicted,
+George thought, and he glanced at them furtively, looking for the
+various symptoms of which he had read. Or were there, perhaps, some like
+himself--merely victims of a foolish error, coming to have the hag of
+dread pulled from off their backs?
+
+And then suddenly, while he was speculating, there stood the doctor,
+signaling to him. His turn had come!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The doctor was a man about forty years of age, robust, with every
+appearance of a strong character. In the buttonhole of the frock coat
+he wore was a red rosette, the decoration of some order. Confused and
+nervous as George was, he got a vague impression of the physician’s
+richly furnished office, with its bronzes, marbles and tapestries.
+
+The doctor signaled to the young man to be seated in the chair before
+his desk. George complied, and then, as he wiped away the perspiration
+from his forehead, stammered out a few words, explaining his errand. Of
+course, he said, it could not be true, but it was a man’s duty not
+to take any chances in such a matter. “I have not been a man of loose
+life,” he added; “I have not taken so many chances as other men.”
+
+The doctor cut him short with the brief remark that one chance was all
+that was necessary. Instead of discussing such questions, he would make
+an examination. “We do not say positively in these cases until we have
+made a blood test. That is the one way to avoid the possibility of
+mistake.”
+
+A drop of blood was squeezed out of George’s finger on to a little glass
+plate. The doctor retired to an adjoining room, and the victim sat
+alone in the office, deriving no enjoyment from the works of art which
+surrounded him, but feeling like a prisoner who sits in the dock with
+his life at stake while the jury deliberates.
+
+The doctor returned, calm and impassive, and seated himself in his
+office-chair.
+
+“Well, doctor?” asked George. He was trembling with terror.
+
+“Well,” was the reply, “there is no doubt whatever.”
+
+George wiped his forehead. He could not credit the words. “No doubt
+whatever? In what sense?”
+
+“In the bad sense,” said the other.
+
+He began to write a prescription, without seeming to notice how George
+turned page with terror. “Come,” he said, after a silence, “you must
+have known the truth pretty well.”
+
+“No, no, sir!” exclaimed George.
+
+“Well,” said the other, “you have syphilis.”
+
+George was utterly stunned. “My God!” he exclaimed.
+
+The doctor, having finished his prescription, looked up and observed his
+condition. “Don’t trouble yourself, sir. Out of every seven men you meet
+upon the street, in society, or at the theater, there is at least one
+who has been in your condition. One out of seven--fifteen per cent!”
+
+George was staring before him. He spoke low, as if to himself. “I know
+what I am going to do.”
+
+“And I know also,” said the doctor, with a smile. “There is your
+prescription. You are going to take it to the drugstore and have it put
+up.”
+
+George took the prescription, mechanically, but whispered, “No, sir.”
+
+“Yes, sir, you are going to do as everybody else does.”
+
+“No, because my situation is not that of everybody else. I know what I
+am going to do.”
+
+Said the doctor: “Five times out of ten, in the chair where you are
+sitting, people talk like that, perfectly sincerely. Each one believes
+himself more unhappy than all the others; but after thinking it over,
+and listening to me, they understand that this disease is a companion
+with whom one can live. Just as in every household, one gets along at
+the cost of mutual concessions, that’s all. Come, sir, I tell you again,
+there is nothing about it that is not perfectly ordinary, perfectly
+natural, perfectly common; it is an accident which can happen to any
+one. It is a great mistake that people speak if this as the ‘French
+Disease,’ for there is none which is more universal. Under the picture
+of this disease, addressing myself to those who follow the oldest
+profession in the world, I would write the famous phrase: ‘Here is your
+master. It is, it was, or it must be.’”
+
+George was putting the prescription into the outside pocket of his
+coat, stupidly, as if he did not know what he was doing. “But, sir,” he
+exclaimed, “I should have been spared!”
+
+“Why?” inquired the other. “Because you are a man of position, because
+you are rich? Look around you, sir. See these works of art in my
+room. Do you imagine that such things have been presented to me by
+chimney-sweeps?”
+
+“But, Doctor,” cried George, with a moan, “I have never been a
+libertine. There was never any one, you understand me, never any one
+could have been more careful in his pleasures. If I were to tell you
+that in all my life I have only had two mistresses, what would you
+answer to that?”
+
+“I would answer, that a single one would have been sufficient to bring
+you to me.”
+
+“No, sir!” cried George. “It could not have been either of those women.”
+ He went on to tell the doctor about his first mistress, and then about
+Lizette. Finally he told about Henriette, how much he adored her. He
+could really use such a word--he loved her most tenderly. She was so
+good--and he had thought himself so lucky!
+
+As he went on, he could hardly keep from going to pieces. “I had
+everything,” he exclaimed, “everything a man needed! All who knew me
+envied me. And then I had to let those fellows drag me off to that
+miserable supper-party! And now here I am! My future is ruined, my whole
+existence poisoned! What is to become of me? Everybody will avoid me--I
+shall be a pariah, a leper!”
+
+He paused, and then in sudden wild grief exclaimed, “Come, now! Would
+it not be better that I should take myself out of the way? At least, I
+should not suffer any more. You see that there could not be any one
+more unhappy than myself--not any one, I tell you, sir, not any one!”
+ Completely overcome, he began to weep in his handkerchief.
+
+The doctor got up, and went to him. “You must be a man,” he said, “and
+not cry like a child.”
+
+“But sir,” cried the young man, with tears running down his cheeks,
+“if I had led a wild life, if I had passed my time in dissipation with
+chorus girls, then I could understand it. Then I would say that I had
+deserved it.”
+
+The doctor exclaimed with emphasis, “No, no! You would not say it.
+However, it is of no matter--go on.”
+
+“I tell you that I would say it. I am honest, and I would say that I
+had deserved it. But no, I have worked, I have been a regular grind. And
+now, when I think of the shame that is in store for me, the disgusting
+things, the frightful catastrophes to which I am condemned--”
+
+“What is all this you are telling me?” asked the doctor, laughing.
+
+“Oh, I know, I know!” cried the other, and repeated what his friend
+had told him about the man in a wheel-chair. “And they used to call me
+handsome Raoul! That was my name--handsome Raoul!”
+
+“Now, my dear sir,” said the doctor, cheerfully, “wipe your eyes one
+last time, blow your nose, put your handkerchief into your pocket, and
+hear me dry-eyed.”
+
+George obeyed mechanically. “But I give you fair warning,” he said, “you
+are wasting your time.”
+
+“I tell you--” began the other.
+
+“I know exactly what you are going to tell me!” cried George.
+
+“Well, in that case, there is nothing more for you to do here--run
+along.”
+
+“Since I am here,” said the patient submissively, “I will hear you.”
+
+“Very well, then. I tell you that if you have the will and the
+perseverance, none of the things you fear will happen to you.”
+
+“Of course, it is your duty to tell me that.”
+
+“I will tell you that there are one hundred thousand like you in
+Paris, alert, and seemingly well. Come, take what you were just
+saying--wheel-chairs. One doesn’t see so many of them.”
+
+“No, that’s true,” said George.
+
+“And besides,” added the doctor, “a good many people who ride in them
+are not there for the cause you think. There is no more reason why
+you should be the victim of a catastrophe than any of the one hundred
+thousand. The disease is serious, nothing more.”
+
+“You admit that it is a serious disease?” argued George.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“One of the most serious?”
+
+“Yes, but you have the good fortune--”
+
+“The GOOD fortune?”
+
+“Relatively, if you please. You have the good fortune to be infected
+with one of the diseases over which we have the most certain control.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” exclaimed George, “but the remedies are worse than the
+disease.”
+
+“You deceive yourself,” replied the other.
+
+“You are trying to make me believe that I can be cured?”
+
+“You can be.”
+
+“And that I am not condemned?”
+
+“I swear it to you.”
+
+“You are not deceiving yourself, you are not deceiving me? Why, I was
+told--”
+
+The doctor laughed, contemptuously. “You were told, you were told! I’ll
+wager that you know the laws of the Chinese concerning party-walls.”
+
+“Yes, naturally,” said George. “But I don’t see what they have to do
+with it.”
+
+“Instead of teaching you such things,” was the reply, “it would have
+been a great deal better to have taught you about the nature and cause
+of diseases of this sort. Then you would have known how to avoid the
+contagion. Such knowledge should be spread abroad, for it is the
+most important knowledge in the world. It should be found in every
+newspaper.”
+
+This remark gave George something of a shock, for his father had owned
+a little paper in the provinces, and he had a sudden vision of the way
+subscribers would have fallen off, if he had printed even so much as the
+name of this vile disease.
+
+“And yet,” pursued the doctor, “you publish romances about adultery!”
+
+“Yes,” said George, “that’s what the readers want.”
+
+“They don’t want the truth about venereal diseases,” exclaimed the
+other. “If they knew the full truth, they would no longer think that
+adultery was romantic and interesting.”
+
+He went on to give his advice as to the means of avoiding such diseases.
+There was really but one rule. It was: To love but one woman, to take
+her as a virgin, and to love her so much that she would never deceive
+you. “Take that from me,” added the doctor, “and teach it to your son,
+when you have one.”
+
+George’s attention was caught by this last sentence.
+
+“You mean that I shall be able to have children?” he cried.
+
+“Certainly,” was the reply.
+
+“Healthy children?”
+
+“I repeat it to you; if you take care of yourself properly for a long
+time, conscientiously, you have little to fear.”
+
+“That’s certain?”
+
+“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”
+
+George felt as if he had suddenly emerged from a dungeon. “Why, then,”
+ he exclaimed, “I shall be able to marry!”
+
+“You will be able to marry,” was the reply.
+
+“You are not deceiving me? You would not give me that hope, you would
+not expose me? How soon will I be able to marry?”
+
+“In three or four years,” said the doctor.
+
+“What!” cried George in consternation. “In three or four years? Not
+before?”
+
+“Not before.”
+
+“How is that? Am I going to be sick all that time? Why, you told me just
+now--”
+
+Said the doctor: “The disease will no longer be dangerous to you,
+yourself--but you will be dangerous to others.”
+
+“But,” the young man cried, in despair, “I am to be married a month from
+now.”
+
+“That is impossible.”
+
+“But I cannot do any differently. The contract is ready! The banns have
+been published! I have given my word!”
+
+“Well, you are a great one!” the doctor laughed. “Just now you were
+looking for your revolver! Now you want to be married within the month.”
+
+“But, Doctor, it is necessary!”
+
+“But I forbid it.”
+
+“As soon as I knew that the disease is not what I imagined, and that I
+could be cured, naturally I didn’t want to commit suicide. And as soon
+as I make up my mind not to commit suicide, I have to take up my regular
+life. I have to keep my engagements; I have to get married.”
+
+“No,” said the doctor.
+
+“Yes, yes!” persisted George, with blind obstinacy. “Why, Doctor, if I
+didn’t marry it would be a disaster. You are talking about something
+you don’t understand. I, for my part--it is not that I am anxious to be
+married. As I told you, I had almost a second family. Lizette’s little
+brothers adored me. But it is my aunt, an old maid; and, also, my mother
+is crazy about the idea. If I were to back out now, she would die of
+chagrin. My aunt would disinherit me, and she is the one who has the
+family fortune. Then, too, there is my father-in-law, a regular dragoon
+for his principles--severe, violent. He never makes a joke of serious
+things, and I tell you it would cost me dear, terribly dear. And,
+besides, I have given my word.”
+
+“You must take back your word.”
+
+“You still insist?” exclaimed George, in despair. “But then, suppose
+that it were possible, how could I take back my signature which I put at
+the bottom of the deed? I have pledged myself to pay in two months for
+the attorney’s practice I have purchased!”
+
+“Sir,” said the doctor, “all these things--”
+
+“You are going to tell me that I was lacking in prudence, that I should
+never have disposed of my wife’s dowry until after the honeymoon!”
+
+“Sir,” said the doctor, again, “all these considerations are foreign to
+me. I am a physician, and nothing but a physician, and I can only
+tell you this: If you marry before three or four years, you will be a
+criminal.”
+
+George broke out with a wild exclamation. “No sir, you are not merely a
+physician! You are also a confessor! You are not merely a scientist; and
+it is not enough for you that you observe me as you would some lifeless
+thing in your laboratory, and say, ‘You have this; science says that;
+now go along with you.’ All my existence depends upon you. It is
+your duty to listen to me, because when you know everything you will
+understand me, and you will find some way to cure me within a month.”
+
+“But,” protested the doctor, “I wear myself out telling you that such
+means do not exist. I shall not be certain of your cure, as much as any
+one can be certain, in less than three or four years.”
+
+George was almost beside himself. “I tell you you must find some means!
+Listen to me, sir--if I don’t get married I don’t get the dowry! And
+will you tell me how I can pay the notes I have signed?”
+
+“Oh,” said the doctor, dryly, “if that is the question, it is very
+simple--I will give you a plan to get out of the affair. You will go
+and get acquainted with some rich man; you will do everything you can to
+gain his confidence; and when you have succeeded, you will plunder him.”
+
+George shook his head. “I am not in any mood for joking.”
+
+“I am not joking,” replied his adviser. “Rob that man, assassinate him
+even--that would be no worse crime than you would commit in taking a
+young girl in good health in order to get a portion of her dowry,
+when at the same time you would have to expose her to the frightful
+consequences of the disease which you would give her.”
+
+“Frightful consequences?” echoed George.
+
+“Consequences of which death would not be the most frightful.”
+
+“But, sir, you were saying to me just now--”
+
+“Just now I did not tell you everything. Even reduced, suppressed a
+little by our remedies, the disease remains mysterious, menacing, and
+in its sum, sufficiently grave. So it would be an infamy to expose your
+fiancee in order to avoid an inconvenience, however great that might
+be.”
+
+But George was still not to be convinced. Was it certain that this
+misfortune would befall Henriette, even with the best attention?
+
+Said the other: “I do not wish to lie to you. No, it is not absolutely
+certain, it is probable. And there is another truth which I wish to
+tell you now: our remedies are not infallible. In a certain number of
+cases--a very small number, scarcely five per cent--they have remained
+without effect. You might be one of those exceptions, your wife might be
+one. What then?”
+
+“I will employ a word you used just now, yourself. We should have to
+expect the worst catastrophes.”
+
+George sat in a state of complete despair.
+
+“Tell me what to do, then,” he said.
+
+“I can tell you only one thing: don’t marry. You have a most serious
+blemish. It is as if you owed a debt. Perhaps no one will ever come to
+claim it; on the other hand, perhaps a pitiless creditor will come all
+at once, presenting a brutal demand for immediate payment. Come now--you
+are a business man. Marriage is a contract; to marry without saying
+anything--that means to enter into a bargain by means of passive
+dissimulation. That’s the term, is it not? It is dishonesty, and it
+ought to come under the law.”
+
+George, being a lawyer, could appreciate the argument, and could think
+of nothing to say to it.
+
+“What shall I do?” he asked.
+
+The other answered, “Go to your father-in-law and tell him frankly the
+truth.”
+
+“But,” cried the young man, wildly, “there will be no question then of
+three or four years’ delay. He will refuse his consent altogether.”
+
+“If that is the case,” said the doctor, “don’t tell him anything.”
+
+“But I have to give him a reason, or I don’t know what he will do. He
+is the sort of man to give himself to the worst violence, and again my
+fiancee would be lost to me. Listen, doctor. From everything I have said
+to you, you may perhaps think I am a mercenary man. It is true that I
+want to get along in the world, that is only natural. But Henriette has
+such qualities; she is so much better than I, that I love her, really,
+as people love in novels. My greatest grief--it is not to give up the
+practice I have bought--although, indeed, it would be a bitter blow to
+me; my greatest grief would be to lose Henriette. If you could only see
+her, if you only knew her--then you would understand. I have her picture
+here--”
+
+The young fellow took out his card-case. And offered a photograph to the
+doctor, who gently refused it. The other blushed with embarrassment.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I am ridiculous. That happens to me,
+sometimes. Only, put yourself in my place--I love her so!” His voice
+broke.
+
+“My dear boy,” said the doctor, feelingly, “that is exactly why you
+ought not to marry her.”
+
+“But,” he cried, “if I back out without saying anything they will guess
+the truth, and I shall be dishonored.”
+
+“One is not dishonored because one is ill.”
+
+“But with such a disease! People are so stupid. I myself, yesterday--I
+should have laughed at anyone who had got into such a plight; I should
+have avoided him, I should have despised him!” And suddenly George
+broke down again. “Oh!” he cried, “if I were the only one to suffer; but
+she--she is in love with me. I swear it to you! She is so good; and she
+will be so unhappy!”
+
+The doctor answered, “She would be unhappier later on.”
+
+“It will be a scandal!” George exclaimed.
+
+“You will avoid one far greater,” the other replied.
+
+Suddenly George set his lips with resolution. He rose from his seat. He
+took several twenty-franc pieces from his pocket and laid them quietly
+upon the doctor’s desk--paying the fee in cash, so that he would not
+have to give his name and address. He took up his gloves, his cane and
+his hat, and rose.
+
+“I will think it over,” he said. “I thank you, Doctor. I will come back
+next week as you have told me. That is--probably I will.”
+
+He was about to leave.
+
+The doctor rose, and he spoke in a voice of furious anger. “No,” he
+said, “I shan’t see you next week, and you won’t even think it over. You
+came here knowing what you had; you came to ask advice of me, with the
+intention of paying no heed to it, unless it conformed to your wishes.
+A superficial honesty has driven you to take that chance in order to
+satisfy your conscience. You wanted to have somebody upon whom you could
+put off, bye and bye, the consequences of an act whose culpability you
+understand! No, don’t protest! Many of those who come here think and act
+as you think, and as you wish to act; but the marriage made against
+my will has generally been the source of such calamities that now I am
+always afraid of not having been persuasive enough, and it even seems to
+me that I am a little to blame for these misfortunes. I should have been
+able to prevent them; they would not have happened if those who are the
+authors of them knew what I know and had seen what I have seen. Swear to
+me, sir, that you are going to break off that marriage!”
+
+George was greatly embarrassed, and unwilling to reply. “I cannot swear
+to you at all, Doctor; I can only tell you again that I will think it
+over.”
+
+“That WHAT over?”
+
+“What you have told me.”
+
+“What I have told you is true! You cannot bring any new objections; and
+I have answered those which you have presented to me; therefore, your
+mind ought to be made up.”
+
+Groping for a reply, George hesitated. He could not deny that he had
+made inquiry about these matters before he had come to the doctor. But
+he said that he was not al all certain that he had this disease. The
+doctor declared it, and perhaps it was true, but the most learned
+physicians were sometimes deceived.
+
+He remembered something he had read in one of the medical books. “Dr.
+Ricord maintains that after a certain period the disease is no longer
+contagious. He has proven his contentions by examples. Today you produce
+new examples to show that he is wrong! Now, I want to do what’s right,
+but surely I have the right to think it over. And when I think it
+over, I realize that all the evils with which you threaten me are only
+probable evils. In spite of your desire to terrify me, you have been
+forced to admit that possibly my marriage would not have any troublesome
+consequence for my wife.”
+
+The doctor found difficulty in restraining himself. But he said, “Go on.
+I will answer you afterwards.”
+
+And George blundered ahead in his desperation. “Your remedies are
+powerful, you tell me; and for the calamities of which you speak to
+befall me, I would have to be among the rare exceptions--also my
+wife would have to be among the number of those rare exceptions. If a
+mathematician were to apply the law of chance to these facts, the result
+of his operation would show but slight chance of a catastrophe, as
+compared with the absolute certainty of a series of misfortunes,
+sufferings, troubles, tears, and perhaps tragic accidents which
+the breaking of my engagement would cause. So I say that the
+mathematician--who is, even more than you, a man of science, a man of
+a more infallible science--the mathematician would conclude that wisdom
+was not with you doctors, but with me.”
+
+“You believe it, sir!” exclaimed the other. “But you deceive yourself.”
+ And he continued, driving home his point with a finger which seemed to
+George to pierce his very soul. “Twenty cases identical with your own
+have been patiently observed, from the beginning to the end. Nineteen
+times the woman was infected by her husband; you hear me, sir, nineteen
+times out of twenty! You believe that the disease is without danger, and
+you take to yourself the right to expose your wife to what you call the
+chance of your being one of those exceptions, for whom our remedies
+are without effect. Very well; it is necessary that you should know the
+disease which your wife, without being consulted, will run a chance of
+contracting. Take that book, sir; it is the work of my teacher. Read it
+yourself. Here, I have marked the passage.”
+
+He held out the open book; but George could not lift a hand to take it.
+
+“You do not wish to read it?” the other continued. “Listen to me.”
+ And in a voice trembling with passion, he read: “‘I have watched the
+spectacle of an unfortunate young woman, turned into a veritable monster
+by means of a syphilitic infection. Her face, or rather let me say
+what was left of her face, was nothing but a flat surface seamed with
+scars.’”
+
+George covered his face, exclaiming, “Enough, sir! Have mercy!”
+
+But the other cried, “No, no! I will go to the very end. I have a
+duty to perform, and I will not be stopped by the sensibility of your
+nerves.”
+
+He went on reading: “‘Of the upper lip not a trace was left; the ridge
+of the upper gums appeared perfectly bare.’” But then at the young man’s
+protests, his resolution failed him. “Come,” he said, “I will stop. I am
+sorry for you--you who accept for another person, for the woman you say
+you love, the chance of a disease which you cannot even endure to hear
+described. Now, from whom did that woman get syphilis? It is not I who
+am speaking, it is the book. ‘From a miserable scoundrel who was not
+afraid to enter into matrimony when he had a secondary eruption.’ All
+that was established later on--‘and who, moreover, had thought it best
+not to let his wife be treated for fear of awakening her suspicions!’”
+
+The doctor closed the book with a bang. “What that man has done, sir, is
+what you want to do.”
+
+George was edging toward the door; he could no longer look the doctor in
+the eye. “I should deserve all those epithets and still more brutal ones
+if I should marry, knowing that my marriage would cause such horrors.
+But that I do not believe. You and your teachers--you are specialists,
+and consequently you are driven to attribute everything to the disease
+you make the subject of your studies. A tragic case, an exceptional
+case, holds a kind of fascination for you; you think it can never be
+talked about enough.”
+
+“I have heard that argument before,” said the doctor, with an effort at
+patience.
+
+“Let me go on, I beg you,” pleaded George. “You have told me that out of
+every seven men there is one syphilitic. You have told me that there are
+one hundred thousand in Paris, coming and going, alert, and apparently
+well.”
+
+“It is true,” said the doctor, “that there are one hundred thousand
+who are actually at this moment not visibly under the influence of the
+disease. But many thousands have passed into our hospitals, victims of
+the most frightful ravages that our poor bodies can support. These--you
+do not see them, and they do not count for you. But again, if it
+concerned no one but yourself, you might be able to argue thus. What I
+declare to you, what I affirm with all the violence of my conviction,
+is that you have not the right to expose a human creature to such
+chances--rare, as I know, but terrible, as I know still better. What
+have you to answer to that?”
+
+“Nothing,” stammered George, brought to his knees at last. “You are
+right about that. I don’t know what to think.”
+
+“And in forbidding you marriage,” continued the doctor, “is it the same
+as if I forbade it forever? Is it the same as if I told you that you
+could never be cured? On the contrary, I hold out to you every hope; but
+I demand of you a delay of three or four years, because it will take me
+that time to find out if you are among the number of those unfortunate
+ones whom I pity with all my heart, for whom the disease is without
+mercy; because during that time you will be dangerous to your wife and
+to your children. The children I have not yet mentioned to you.”
+
+Here the doctor’s voice trembled slightly. He spoke with moving
+eloquence. “Come, sir, you are an honest man; you are too young for such
+things not to move you; you are not insensible to duty. It is impossible
+that I shan’t be able to find a way to your heart, that I shan’t be
+able to make you obey me. My emotion in speaking to you proves that I
+appreciate your suffering, that I suffer with you. It is in the name of
+my sincerity that I implore you. You have admitted it--that you have not
+the right to expose your wife to such miseries. But it is not only your
+wife that you strike; you may attack in her your own children. I exclude
+you for a moment from my thought--you and her. It is in the name of
+these innocents that I implore you; it is the future, it is the race
+that I defend. Listen to me, listen to me! Out of the twenty households
+of which I spoke, only fifteen had children; these fifteen had
+twenty-eight. Do you know how many out of these twenty-eight survived?
+Three, sir! Three out of twenty-eight! Syphilis is above everything a
+murderer of children. Herod reigns in France, and over all the earth,
+and begins each year his massacre of the innocents; and if it be not
+blasphemy against the sacredness of life, I say that the most happy are
+those who have disappeared. Visit our children’s hospitals! We know too
+well the child of syphilitic parents; the type is classical; the doctors
+can pick it out anywhere. Those little old creatures who have the
+appearance of having already lived, and who have kept the stigmata of
+all out infirmities, of all our decay. They are the victims of fathers
+who have married, being ignorant of what you know--things which I should
+like to go and cry out in the public places.”
+
+The doctor paused, and then in a solemn voice continued: “I have told
+you all, without exaggeration. Think it over. Consider the pros and
+cons; sum up the possible misfortunes and the certain miseries. But
+disregard yourself, and consider that there are in one side of the
+scales the misfortunes of others, and in the other your own. Take care
+that you are just.”
+
+George was at last overcome. “Very well,” he said, “I give way. I
+won’t get married. I will invent some excuse; I will get a delay of six
+months. More than that, I cannot do.”
+
+The doctor exclaimed, “I need three years--I need four years!”
+
+“No, Doctor!” persisted George. “You can cure me in less time than
+that.”
+
+The other answered, “No! No! No!”
+
+George caught him by the hand, imploringly. “Yes! Science in all
+powerful!”
+
+“Science is not God,” was the reply. “There are no longer any miracles.”
+
+“If only you wanted to do it!” cried the young man, hysterically. “You
+are a learned man; seek, invent, find something! Try some new plan with
+me; give me double the dose, ten times the does; make me suffer. I give
+myself up to you; I will endure everything--I swear it! There ought to
+be some way to cure me within six months. Listen to me! I tell you I
+can’t answer for myself with that delay. Come; it is in the name of my
+wife, in the name of my children, that I implore you. Do something for
+them!”
+
+The doctor had reached the limit of his patience. “Enough, sir!” he
+cried. “Enough!”
+
+But nothing could stop the wretched man. “On my knees!” he cried. “I
+put myself on my knees before you! Oh! If only you would do it! I would
+bless you; I would adore you, as one adores a god! All my gratitude, all
+my life--half my fortune! For mercy’s sake, Doctor, do something; invent
+something; make some discovery--have pity!”
+
+The doctor answered gravely, “Do you wish me to do more for you than for
+the others?”
+
+George answered, unblushingly, ‘answered, unblushingly, “Yes!” He was
+beside himself with terror and distress.
+
+The other’s reply was delivered in a solemn tone. “Understand, sir,
+for every one of out patients we do all that we can, whether it be the
+greatest personage, or the last comer to out hospital clinic. We have no
+secrets in reserve for those who are more fortunate, or less fortunate
+than the others, and who are in a hurry to be cured.”
+
+George gazed at him for a moment in bewilderment and despair, and then
+suddenly bowed his head. “Good-by, Doctor,” he answered.
+
+“Au revoir, sir,” the other corrected--with what proved to be prophetic
+understanding. For George was destined to see him again--even though he
+had made up his mind to the contrary!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+George Dupont had the most important decision of his life to make; but
+there was never very much doubt what his decision would be. One the one
+hand was the definite certainty that if he took the doctor’s advice, he
+would wreck his business prospects, and perhaps also lose the woman he
+loved. On the other hand were vague and uncertain possibilities which it
+was difficult for him to make real to himself. It was all very well to
+wait a while to be cured of the dread disease; but to wait three or four
+years--that was simply preposterous!
+
+He decided to consult another physician. He would find one this time who
+would not be so particular, who would be willing to take some trouble
+to cure him quickly. He began to notice the advertisements which
+were scattered over the pages of the newspapers he read. There were
+apparently plenty of doctors in Paris who could cure him, who were
+willing to guarantee to cure him. After much hesitation, he picked out
+one whose advertisement sounded the most convincing.
+
+The office was located in a cheap quarter. It was a dingy place, not
+encumbered with works of art, but with a few books covered with dust.
+The doctor himself was stout and greasy, and he rubbed his hands with
+anticipation at the sight of so prosperous-looking a patient. But he was
+evidently a man of experience, for he knew exactly what was the matter
+with George, almost without the formality of an examination. Yes,
+he could cure him, quickly, he said. There had recently been great
+discoveries made--new methods which had not reached the bulk of the
+profession. He laughed at the idea of three or four years. That was
+the way with those specialists! When one got forty francs for a
+consultation, naturally, one was glad to drag out the case. There were
+tricks in the medical trade, as in all others. A doctor had to live;
+when he had a big name, he had to live expensively.
+
+The new physician wrote out two prescriptions, and patted George on the
+shoulder as he went away. There was no need for him to worry; he would
+surely be well in three months. If he would put off his marriage for six
+months, he would be doing everything within reason. And meantime, there
+was no need for him to worry himself--things would come out all right.
+So George went away, feeling as if a mountain had been lifted from his
+shoulders.
+
+He went to see Henriette that same evening, to get the matter
+settled. “Henriette,” he said, “I have to tell you something very
+important--something rather painful. I hope you won’t let it disturb you
+too much.”
+
+She was gazing at him in alarm. “What is it?”
+
+“Why,” he said, blushing in spite of himself, and regretting that he had
+begun the matter so precipitately, “for some time I’ve not been feeling
+quite well. I’ve been having a slight cough. Have you noticed it?”
+
+“Why no!” exclaimed Henriette, anxiously.
+
+“Well, today I went to see a doctor, and he says that there is a
+possibility--you understand it is nothing very serious--but it might
+be--I might possibly have lung trouble.”
+
+“George!” cried the girl in horror.
+
+He put his hand upon hers. “Don’t be frightened,” he said. “It will be
+all right, only I have to take care of myself.” How very dear of her, he
+thought--to be so much worried!
+
+“George, you ought to go away to the country!” she cried. “You have
+been working too hard. I always told you that if you shut yourself up so
+much--”
+
+“I am going to take care of myself,” he said. “I realize that it is
+necessary. I shall be all right--the doctor assured me there was no
+doubt of it, so you are not to distress yourself. But meantime, here is
+the trouble: I don’t think it would be right for me to marry until I am
+perfectly well.”
+
+Henriette gave an exclamation of dismay.
+
+“I am sure we should put it off,” he went on, “it would be only fair to
+you.”
+
+“But, George!” she protested. “Surely it can’t be that serious!”
+
+“We ought to wait,” he said. “You ought not to take the chance of being
+married to a consumptive.”
+
+The other protested in consternation. He did not look like a
+consumptive; she did not believe that he WAS a consumptive. She was
+willing to take her chances. She loved him, and she was not afraid. But
+George insisted--he was sure that he ought not to marry for six months.
+
+“Did the doctor advise that?” asked Henriette.
+
+“No,” he replied, “but I made up my mind after talking to him that I
+must do the fair and honorable thing. I beg you to forgive me, and to
+believe that I know best.”
+
+George stood firmly by this position, and so in the end she had to give
+way. It did not seem quite modest in her to continue persisting.
+
+George volunteered to write a letter to her father; and he hoped this
+would settle the matter without further discussion. But in this he was
+disappointed. There had to be a long correspondence with long arguments
+and protestations from Henriette’s father and from his own mother.
+It seemed such a singular whim. Everybody persisted in diagnosing his
+symptoms, in questioning him about what the doctor had said, who the
+doctor was, how he had come to consult him--all of which, of course, was
+very embarrassing to George, who could not see why they had to make such
+a fuss. He took to cultivating a consumptive look, as well as he could
+imagine it; he took to coughing as he went about the house--and it was
+all he could do to keep from laughing, as he saw the look of dismay on
+his poor mother’s face. After all, however, he told himself that he
+was not deceiving her, for the disease he had was quite as serious as
+tuberculosis.
+
+It was very painful and very trying. But there was nothing that could be
+done about it; the marriage had been put off for six months, and in the
+meantime he and Henriette had to control their impatience and make the
+best of their situation. Six months was a long time; but what if it had
+been three or four years, as the other doctor had demanded? That would
+have been a veritable sentence of death.
+
+George, as we have seen, was conscientious, and regular and careful in
+his habits. He took the medicine which the new doctor prescribed
+for him; and day by day he watched, and to his great relief saw the
+troublesome symptoms gradually disappearing. He began to take heart,
+and to look forward to life with his former buoyancy. He had had a bad
+scare, but now everything was going to be all right.
+
+Three or four months passed, and the doctor told him he was cured. He
+really was cured, so far as he could see. He was sorry, now, that he
+had asked for so long a delay from Henriette; but the new date for the
+wedding had been announced, and it would be awkward to change it again.
+George told himself that he was being “extra careful,” and he was repaid
+for the inconvenience by the feeling of virtue derived from the delay.
+He was relieved that he did not have to cough any more, or to invent
+any more tales of his interviews with the imaginary lung-specialist.
+Sometimes he had guilty feelings because of all the lying he had had to
+do; but he told himself that it was for Henriette’s sake. She loved him
+as much as he loved her. She would have suffered needless agonies had
+she known the truth; she would never have got over it--so it would have
+been a crime to tell her.
+
+He really loved her devotedly, thoroughly. From the beginning he had
+thought as much of her mental sufferings as he had of any physical harm
+that the dread disease might do to him. How could he possibly persuade
+himself to give her up, when he knew that the separation would break her
+heart and ruin her whole life? No; obviously, in such a dilemma, it was
+his duty to use his own best judgment, and get himself cured as quickly
+as possible. After that he would be true to her, he would take no more
+chances of a loathsome disease.
+
+The secret he was hiding made him feel humble--made him unusually gentle
+in his attitude towards the girl. He was a perfect lover, and she
+was ravished with happiness. She thought that all his sufferings were
+because of his love for her, and the delay which he had imposed out of
+his excess of conscientiousness. So she loved him more and more, and
+never was there a happier bride than Henriette Loches, when at last the
+great day arrived.
+
+They went to the Riveria for their honeymoon, and then returned to live
+in the home which had belonged to George’s father. The investment in
+the notary’s practice had proven a good one, and so life held out every
+promise for the young couple. They were divinely happy.
+
+After a while, the bride communicated to her husband the tidings that
+she was expecting a child. Then it seemed to George that the cup of his
+earthly bliss was full. His ailment had slipped far into the background
+of his thoughts, like an evil dream which he had forgotten. He put away
+the medicines in the bottom of his trunk and dismissed the whole matter
+from his mind. Henriette was well--a very picture of health, as every
+one agreed. The doctor had never seen a more promising young mother, he
+declared, and Madame Dupont, the elder, bloomed with fresh life and joy
+as she attended her daughter-in-law.
+
+Henriette went for the summer to her father’s place in the provinces,
+which she and George had visited before their marriage. They drove out
+one day to the farm where they had stopped. The farmer’s wife had a
+week-old baby, the sight of which made Henriette’s heart leap with
+delight. He was such a very healthy baby that George conceived the idea
+that this would be the woman to nurse his own child, in case Henriette
+herself should not be able to do it.
+
+They came back to the city, and there the baby was born. As George paced
+the floor, waiting for the news, the memory of his evil dreams came back
+to him. He remembered all the dreadful monstrosities of which he had
+read--infants that were born of syphilitic parents. His heart stood
+still when the nurse came into the room to tell him the tidings.
+
+But it was all right; of course it was all right! He had been a fool,
+he told himself, as he stood in the darkened room and gazed at the
+wonderful little mite of life which was the fruit of his love. It was a
+perfect child, the doctor said--a little small, to be sure, but that was
+a defect which would soon be remedied. George kneeled by the bedside and
+kissed the hand of his wife, and went out of the room feeling as if he
+had escaped from a tomb.
+
+All went well, and after a couple of weeks Henriette was about the house
+again, laughing all day and singing with joy. But the baby did not gain
+quite as rapidly as the doctor had hoped, and it was decided that the
+country air would be better for her. So George and his mother paid a
+visit to the farm in the country, and arranged that the country woman
+should put her own child to nurse elsewhere and should become the
+foster-mother of little Gervaise.
+
+George paid a good price for the service, far more than would have been
+necessary, for the simple country woman was delighted with the idea of
+taking care of the grandchild of the deputy of her district. George came
+home and told his wife about this and had a merry time as he pictured
+the woman boasting about it to the travelers who stopped at her door.
+“Yes, ma’am, a great piece of luck I’ve got, ma’am. I’ve got the
+daughter of the daughter of our deputy--at your service ma’am. My!
+But she is as fat as out little calf--and so clever! She understands
+everything. A great piece of luck for me, ma’am. She’s the daughter
+of the daughter of our deputy!” Henriette was vastly entertained,
+discovering in her husband a new talent, that of an actor.
+
+As for George’s mother, she was hardly to be persuaded from staying in
+the country with the child. She went twice a week, to make sure that all
+went well. Henriette and she lived with the child’s picture before them;
+they spent their time sewing on caps and underwear--all covered with
+laces and frills and pink and blue ribbons. Every day, when George
+came home from his work, he found some new article completed, and was
+ravished by the scent of some new kind of sachet powder. What a lucky
+man he was!
+
+You would think he must have been the happiest man in the whole city
+of Paris. But George, alas, had to pay the penalty for his early sins.
+There was, for instance, the deception he had practiced upon his friend,
+away back in the early days. Now he had friends of his own, and he could
+not keep these friends from visiting him; and so he was unquiet with the
+fear that some one of them might play upon him the same vile trick. Even
+in the midst of his radiant happiness, when he knew that Henriette was
+hanging upon his every word, trembling with delight when she heard his
+latchkey in the door--still he could not drive away the horrible thought
+that perhaps all this might be deception.
+
+There was his friend, Gustave, for example. He had been a friend of
+Henriette’s before her marriage; he had even been in love with her at
+one time. And now he came sometimes to the house--once or twice when
+George was away! What did that mean? George wondered. He brooded over
+it all day, but dared not drop any hint to Henriette. But he took to
+setting little traps to catch her; for instance, he would call her up on
+the telephone, disguising his voice. “Hello! Hello! Is that you, Madame
+Dupont?” And when she answered, “It is I, sir,” all unsuspecting, he
+would inquire, “Is George there?”
+
+“No, sir,” she replied. “Who is this speaking?”
+
+He answered, “It is I, Gustave. How are you this morning?” He wanted to
+see what she would answer. Would she perhaps say, “Very well, Gustave.
+How are you?”--in a tone which would betray too great intimacy!
+
+But Henriette was a sharp young person. The tone did not sound like
+Gustave’s. She asked in bewilderment, “What?” and then again, “What?”
+
+So, at last, George, afraid that his trick might be suspected, had to
+burst out laughing, and turn it into a joke. But when he came home and
+teased his wife about it, the laugh was not all on his side. Henriette
+had guessed the real meaning of his joke! She did not really mind--she
+took his jealousy as a sign of love, and was pleased with it. It is
+not until a third party come upon the scene that jealousy begins to be
+annoying.
+
+So she had a merry time teasing George. “You are a great fellow!
+You have no idea how well I understand you--and after only a year of
+marriage!”
+
+“You know me?” said the husband, curiously. (It is always so fascinating
+when anybody thinks she know us better than we know ourselves!) “Tell
+me, what do you think about me?”
+
+“You are restless,” said Henriette. “You are suspicious. You pass your
+time putting flies in your milk, and inventing wise schemes to get them
+out.”
+
+“Oh, you think that, do you?” said George, pleased to be talked about.
+
+“I am not annoyed,” she answered. “You have always been that way--and I
+know that it’s because at bottom you are timid and disposed to suffer.
+And then, too, perhaps you have reasons for not having confidence in a
+wife’s intimate friends--lady-killer that you are!”
+
+George found this rather embarrassing; but he dared not show it, so he
+laughed gayly. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said--“upon my word I
+don’t. But it is a trick I would not advise everybody to try.”
+
+There were other embarrassing moments, caused by George’s having things
+to conceal. There was, for instance, the matter of the six months’ delay
+in the marriage--about which Henriette would never stop talking. She
+begrudged the time, because she had got the idea that little Gervaise
+was six months younger than she otherwise would have been. “That shows
+your timidity again,” she would say. “The idea of your having imagined
+yourself a consumptive!”
+
+Poor George had to defend himself. “I didn’t tell you half the truth,
+because I was afraid of upsetting you. It seemed I had the beginning of
+chronic bronchitis. I felt it quite keenly whenever I took a breath, a
+deep breath--look, like this. Yes--I felt--here and there, on each side
+of the chest, a heaviness--a difficulty--”
+
+“The idea of taking six months to cure you of a thing like that!”
+ exclaimed Henriette. “And making our baby six months younger than she
+ought to be!”
+
+“But,” laughed George, “that means that we shall have her so much the
+longer! She will get married six months later!”
+
+“Oh, dear me,” responded the other, “let us not talk about such things!
+I am already worried, thinking she will get married some day.”
+
+“For my part,” said George, “I see myself mounting with her on my arm
+the staircase of the Madeleine.”
+
+“Why the Madeleine?” exclaimed his wife. “Such a very magnificent
+church!”
+
+“I don’t know--I see her under her white veil, and myself all dressed
+up, and with an order.”
+
+“With an order!” laughed Henriette. “What do you expect to do to win an
+order?”
+
+“I don’t know that--but I see myself with it. Explain it as you will, I
+see myself with an order. I see it all, exactly as if I were there--the
+Swiss guard with his white stockings and the halbard, and the little
+milliner’s assistants and the scullion lined up staring.”
+
+“It is far off--all that,” said Henriette. “I don’t like to talk of it.
+I prefer her as a baby. I want her to grow up--but then I change my
+mind and think I don’t. I know your mother doesn’t. Do you know, I don’t
+believe she ever thinks about anything but her little Gervaise.”
+
+“I believe you,” said the father. “The child can certainly boast of
+having a grandmother who loves her.”
+
+“Also, I adore your mother,” declared Henriette. “She makes me forget my
+misfortune in not having my own mother. She is so good!”
+
+“We are all like that in our family,” put in George.
+
+“Really,” laughed the wife. “Well, anyhow--the last time that we went
+down in the country with her--you had gone out, I don’t know where you
+had gone--”
+
+“To see the sixteenth-century chest,” suggested the other.
+
+“Oh, yes,” laughed Henriette; “your famous chest!” (You must excuse this
+little family chatter of theirs--they were so much in love with each
+other!)
+
+“Don’t let’s talk about that,” objected George. “You were saying--?”
+
+“You were not there. The nurse was out at mass, I think--”
+
+“Or at the wine merchant’s! Go on, go on.”
+
+“Well, I was in the little room, and mother dear thought she was all
+alone with Gervaise. I was listening; she was talking to the baby--all
+sorts of nonsense, pretty little words--stupid, if you like, but tender.
+I wanted to laugh, and at the same time I wanted to weep.”
+
+“Perhaps she called her ‘my dear little Savior’?”
+
+“Exactly! Did you hear her?”
+
+“No--but that is what she used to call me when I was little.”
+
+“It was that day she swore that the little one had recognized her, and
+laughed!”
+
+“Oh, yes!”
+
+“And then another time, when I went into her room--mother’s room--she
+didn’t hear me because the door was open, but I saw her. She was in
+ecstasy before the little boots which the baby wore at baptism--you
+know?”
+
+“Yes, yes.”
+
+“Listen, then. She had taken them and she was embracing them!”
+
+“And what did you say then?”
+
+“Nothing; I stole out very softly, and I sent across the threshold a
+great kiss to the dear grandmother!”
+
+Henriette sat for a moment in thought. “It didn’t take her very long,”
+ she remarked, “today when she got the letter from the nurse. I imagine
+she caught the eight-fifty-nine train!”
+
+“Any yet,” laughed George, “it was really nothing at all.”
+
+“Oh no,” said his wife. “Yet after all, perhaps she was right--and
+perhaps I ought to have gone with her.”
+
+“How charming you are, my poor Henriette! You believe everything you are
+told. I, for my part, divined right away the truth. The nurse was simply
+playing a game on us; she wanted a raise. Will you bet? Come, I’ll bet
+you something. What would you like to bet? You don’t want to? Come, I’ll
+bet you a lovely necklace--you know, with a big pearl.”
+
+“No,” said Henriette, who had suddenly lost her mood of gayety. “I
+should be too much afraid of winning.”
+
+“Stop!” laughed her husband. “Don’t you believe I love her as much as
+you love her--my little duck? Do you know how old she is? I mean her
+EXACT age?”
+
+Henriette sat knitting her brows, trying to figure.
+
+“Ah!” he exploded. “You see you don’t know! She is ninety-one days and
+eight hours! Ha, ha! Imagine when she will be able to walk all alone.
+Then we will take her back with us; we must wait at least six months.”
+ Then, too late, poor George realized that he had spoken the fatal phrase
+again.
+
+“If only you hadn’t put off our marriage, she would be able to walk
+now,” said Henriette.
+
+He rose suddenly. “Come,” he said, “didn’t you say you had to dress and
+pay some calls?”
+
+Henriette laughed, but took the hint.
+
+“Run along, little wife,” he said. “I have a lot of work to do in the
+meantime. You won’t be down-stairs before I shall have my nose buried in
+my papers. Bye-bye.”
+
+“Bye-bye,” said Henriette. But they paused to exchange a dozen or so
+kisses before she went away to dress.
+
+Then George lighted a cigarette and stretched himself out in the big
+armchair. He seemed restless; he seemed to be disturbed about something.
+Could it be that he had not been so much at ease as he had pretended to
+be, since the letter had come from the baby’s nurse? Madame Dupont had
+gone by the earliest train that morning. She had promised to telegraph
+at once--but she had not done so, and now it was late afternoon.
+
+George got up and wandered about. He looked at himself in the glass for
+a moment; then he went back to the chair and pulled up another to put
+his geet upon. He puffed away at his cigarette until he was calmer. But
+then suddenly he heard the rustle of a dress behind him, and glanced
+about, and started up with an exclamation, “Mother!”
+
+Madame Dupont stood in the doorway. She did not speak. Her veil was
+thrown back and George noted instantly the look of agitation upon her
+countenance.
+
+“What’s the matter?” he cried. “We didn’t get any telegram from you; we
+were not expecting you till tomorrow.”
+
+Still his mother did not speak.
+
+“Henriette was just going out,” he exclaimed nervously; “I had better
+call her.”
+
+“No!” said his mother quickly. Her voice was low and trembling. “I did
+not want Henriette to be here when I arrived.”
+
+“But what’s the matter?” cried George.
+
+Again there was a silence before the reply came. He read something
+terrible in the mother’s manner, and he found himself trembling
+violently.
+
+“I have brought back the child and the nurse,” said Madame Dupont.
+
+“What! Is the little one sick?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What’s the matter with her?”
+
+“Nothing dangerous--for the moment, at least.”
+
+“We must send and get the doctor!” cried George.
+
+“I have just come from the doctor’s,” was the reply. “He said it was
+necessary to take our child from the nurse and bring her up on the
+bottle.”
+
+Again there was a pause. George could hardly bring himself to ask
+the next question. Try as he would, he could not keep his voice from
+weakening. “Well, now, what is her trouble?”
+
+The mother did not answer. She stood staring before her. At last she
+said, faintly, “I don’t know.”
+
+“You didn’t ask?”
+
+“I asked. But it was not to our own doctor that I went.”
+
+“Ah!” whispered George. For nearly a minute neither one of them spoke.
+“Why?” he inquired at last.
+
+“Because--he--the nurse’s doctor--had frightened me so--”
+
+“Truly?”
+
+“Yes. It is a disease--” again she stopped.
+
+George cried, in a voice of agony, “and then?”
+
+“Then I asked him if the matter was so grave that I could not be
+satisfied with our ordinary doctor.”
+
+“And what did he answer?”
+
+“He said that if we had the means it would really be better to consult a
+specialist.”
+
+George looked at his mother again. He was able to do it, because she
+was not looking at him. He clenched his hands and got himself together.
+“And--where did he send you?”
+
+His mother fumbled in her hand bag and drew out a visiting card. “Here,”
+ she said.
+
+And George looked at the card. It was all he could do to keep himself
+from tottering. It was the card of the doctor whom he had first
+consulted about his trouble! The specialist in venereal diseases!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It was all George could do to control his voice. “You--you went to see
+him?” he stammered.
+
+“Yes,” said his mother. “You know him?”
+
+“No, no,” he answered. “Or--that is--I have met him, I think. I don’t
+know.” And then to himself, “My God!”
+
+There was a silence. “He is coming to talk to you,” said the mother, at
+last.
+
+George was hardly able to speak. “Then he is very much disturbed?”
+
+“No, but he wants to talk to you.”
+
+“To me?”
+
+“Yes. When the doctor saw the nurse, he said, ‘Madame, it is impossible
+for me to continue to attend this child unless I have had this very day
+a conversation with the father.’ So I said ‘Very well,’ and he said he
+would come at once.”
+
+George turned away, and put his hands to his forehead. “My poor little
+daughter!” he whispered to himself.
+
+“Yes,” said the mother, her voice breaking, “she is, indeed, a poor
+little daughter!”
+
+A silence fell; for what could words avail in such a situation? Hearing
+the door open, Madame Dupont started, for her nerves were all a-quiver
+with the strain she had been under. A servant came in and spoke to her,
+and she said to George, “It is the doctor. If you need me, I shall be in
+the next room.”
+
+Her son stood trembling, as if he were waiting the approach of an
+executioner. The other came into the room without seeing him and he
+stood for a minute, clasping and unclasping his hands, almost overcome
+with emotion. Then he said, “Good-day, doctor.” As the man stared at
+him, surprised and puzzled, he added, “You don’t recognize me?”
+
+The doctor looked again, more closely. George was expecting him to break
+out in rage; but instead his voice fell low. “You!” he exclaimed. “It is
+you!”
+
+At last, in a voice of discouragement than of anger, he went on, “You
+got married, and you have a child! After all that I told you! You are a
+wretch!”
+
+“Sir,” cried George, “let me explain to you!”
+
+“Not a word!” exclaimed the other. “There can be no explanation for what
+you have done.”
+
+A silence followed. The young man did not know what to say. Finally,
+stretching out his arms, he pleaded, “You will take care of my little
+daughter all the same, will you not?”
+
+The other turned away with disgust. “Imbecile!” he said.
+
+George did not hear the word. “I was able to wait only six months,” he
+murmured.
+
+The doctor answered in a voice of cold self-repression, “That is enough,
+sir! All that does not concern me. I have done wrong even to let you see
+my indignation. I should have left you to judge yourself. I have nothing
+to do here but with the present and with the future--with the infant and
+with the nurse.”
+
+“She isn’t in danger?” cried George.
+
+“The nurse is in danger of being contaminated.”
+
+But George had not been thinking about the nurse. “I mean my child,” he
+said.
+
+“Just at present the symptoms are not disturbing.”
+
+George waited; after a while he began, “You were saying about the nurse.
+Will you consent that I call my mother? She knows better than I.”
+
+“As you wish,” was the reply.
+
+The young man started to the door, but came back, in terrible distress.
+“I have one prayer to offer you sir; arrange it so that my wife--so that
+no one will know. If my wife learned that it is I who am the cause--! It
+is for her that I implore you! She--she isn’t to blame.”
+
+Said the doctor: “I will do everything in my power that she may be kept
+ignorant of the true nature of the disease.”
+
+“Oh, how I thank you!” murmured George. “How I thank you!”
+
+“Do not thank me; it is for her, and not for you, that I will consent to
+lie.”
+
+“And my mother?”
+
+“Your mother knows the truth.”
+
+“But--”
+
+“I pray you, sir--we have enough to talk about, and very serious
+matters.”
+
+So George went to the door and called his mother. She entered and
+greeted the doctor, holding herself erect, and striving to keep the
+signs of grief and terror from her face. She signed to the doctor to
+take a seat, and then seated herself by a little table near him.
+
+“Madame Dupont,” he began, “I have prescribed a course of treatment for
+the child. I hope to be able to improve its condition, and to prevent
+any new developments. But my duty and yours does not stop there; if
+there is still time, it is necessary to protect the health of the
+nurse.”
+
+“Tell us what it is necessary to do, Doctor?” said she.
+
+“The woman must stop nursing the child.”
+
+“You mean we have to change the nurse?”
+
+“Madame, the child can no longer be brought up at the breast, either by
+that nurse or by any other nurse.”
+
+“But why, sir?”
+
+“Because the child would give her disease to the woman who gave her
+milk.”
+
+“But, Doctor, if we put her on the bottle--our little one--she will
+die!”
+
+And suddenly George burst out into sobs. “Oh, my poor little daughter!
+My God, my God!”
+
+Said the doctor, “If the feeding is well attended to, with sterilized
+milk--”
+
+“That can do very well for healthy infants,” broke in Madame Dupont.
+“But at the age of three months one cannot take from the breast a baby
+like ours, frail and ill. More than any other such an infant has need of
+a nurse--is that not true?”
+
+“Yes,” the doctor admitted, “that is true. But--”
+
+“In that case, between the life of the child, and the health of the
+nurse, you understand perfectly well that my choice is made.”
+
+Between her words the doctor heard the sobbing of George, whose head was
+buried in his arms. “Madame,” he said, “your love for that baby has just
+caused you to utter something ferocious! It is not for you to choose. It
+is not for you to choose. I forbid the nursing. The health of that woman
+does not belong to you.”
+
+“No,” cried the grandmother, wildly, “nor does the health of out child
+belong to you! If there is a hope of saving it, that hope is in giving
+it more care than any other child; and you would wish that I put it
+upon a mode of nourishment which the doctors condemn, even for vigorous
+infants! You expect that I will let myself be taken in like that? I
+answer you: she shall have the milk which she needs, my poor little one!
+If there was a single thing that one could do to save her--I should be
+a criminal to neglect it!” And Madame Dupont broke out, with furious
+scorn, “The nurse! The nurse! We shall know how to do our duty--we
+shall take care of her, repay her. But our child before all! No sir,
+no! Everything that can be done to save our baby I shall do, let it cost
+what it will. To do what you say--you don’t realize it--it would be as
+if I should kill the child!” In the end the agonized woman burst into
+tears. “Oh, my poor little angel! My little savior!”
+
+George had never ceased sobbing while his mother spoke; at these last
+words his sobs became loud cries. He struck the floor with his foot, he
+tore his hair, as if he were suffering from violent physical pain. “Oh,
+oh, oh!” he cried. “My little child! My little child!” And then, in a
+horrified whisper to himself, “I am a wretch! A criminal!”
+
+“Madame,” said the doctor, “you must calm yourself; you must both calm
+yourselves. You will not help out the situation by lamentations. You
+must learn to take it with calmness.”
+
+Madame Dupont set her lips together, and with a painful effort recovered
+her self-control. “You are right, sir,” she said, in a low voice. “I ask
+your pardon; but if you only knew what that child means to me! I lost
+one at that age. I am an old woman, I am a widow--I had hardly hoped to
+live long enough to be a grandmother. But, as you say--we must be calm.”
+ She turned to the young man, “Calm yourself, my son. It is a poor way to
+show our love for the child, to abandon ourselves to tears. Let us talk,
+Doctor, and seriously--coldly. But I declare to you that nothing will
+ever induce me to put the child on the bottle, when I know that it might
+kill her. That is all I can say.”
+
+The doctor replied: “This isn’t the first time that I find myself in
+the present situation. Madame, I declare to you that always--ALWAYS,
+you understand--persons who have rejected my advice have had reason to
+repent it cruelly.”
+
+“The only thing of which I should repent--” began the other.
+
+“You simply do not know,” interrupted the doctor, “what such a nurse is
+capable of. You cannot imagine what bitterness--legitimate
+bitterness, you understand--joined to the rapacity, the cupidity, the
+mischief-making impulse--might inspire these people to do. For them the
+BOURGEOIS is always somewhat of an enemy; and when they find themselves
+in position to avenge their inferiority, they are ferocious.”
+
+“But what could the woman do?”
+
+“What could she do? She could bring legal proceedings against you.”
+
+“But she is much too stupid to have that idea.”
+
+“Others will put it into her mind.”
+
+“She is too poor to pay the preliminary expenses.”
+
+“And do you propose then to profit by her ignorance and stupidity?
+Besides, she could obtain judicial assistance.”
+
+“Why, surely,” exclaimed Madame Dupont, “such a thing was never heard
+of! Do you mean that?”
+
+“I know a dozen prosecutions of that sort; and always when there has
+been certainty, the parents have lost their case.”
+
+“But surely, Doctor, you must be mistaken! Not in a case like ours--not
+when it is a question of saving the life of a poor little innocent!”
+
+“Oftentimes exactly such facts have been presented.”
+
+Here George broke in. “I can give you the dates of the decisions.” He
+rose from his chair, glad of an opportunity to be useful. “I have
+the books,” he said, and took one from the case and brought it to the
+doctor.
+
+“All of that is no use--” interposed the mother.
+
+But the doctor said to George, “You will be able to convince yourself.
+The parents have been forced once or twice to pay the nurse a regular
+income, and at other times they have had to pay her an indemnity, of
+which the figure has varied between three and eight thousand francs.”
+
+Madame Dupont was ready with a reply to this. “Never fear, sir! If there
+should be a suit, we should have a good lawyer. We shall be able to pay
+and choose the best--and he would demand, without doubt, which of the
+two, the nurse or the child, has given the disease to the other.”
+
+The doctor was staring at her in horror. “Do you not perceive that would
+be a monstrous thing to do?”
+
+“Oh, I would not have to say it,” was the reply. “The lawyer would see
+to it--is not that his profession? My point is this: by one means or
+another he would make us win our case.”
+
+“And the scandal that would result,” replied the other. “Have you
+thought of that?”
+
+Here George, who had been looking over his law-books, broke in. “Doctor,
+permit me to give you a little information. In cases of this sort, the
+names are never printed.”
+
+“Yes, but they are spoken at the hearings.”
+
+“That’s true.”
+
+“And are you certain that there will not be any newspaper to print the
+judgment?”
+
+“What won’t they stoop to,” exclaimed Madame Dupont--“those filthy
+journals!”
+
+“Ah,” said the other, “and see what a scandal? What a shame it would be
+to you!”
+
+“The doctor is right, mother,” exclaimed the young man.
+
+But Madame Dupont was not yet convinced. “We will prevent the woman from
+taking any steps; we will give her what she demands from us.”
+
+“But then,” said the other, “you will give yourselves up to the risk of
+blackmail. I know a family which has been thus held up for over twelve
+years.”
+
+“If you will permit me, Doctor,” said George, timidly, “she could be
+made to sign a receipt.”
+
+“For payment in full?” asked the doctor, scornfully.
+
+“Even so.”
+
+“And then,” added his mother, “she would be more than delighted to go
+back to her country with a full purse. She would be able to buy a little
+house and a bit of ground--in that country one doesn’t need so much in
+order to live.”
+
+At this moment there was a tap upon the door, and the nurse entered. She
+was a country woman, robust, rosy-cheeked, fairly bursting with health.
+When she spoke one got the impression that her voice was more than she
+could contain. It did not belong in a drawing-room, but under the open
+sky of her country home. “Sir,” she said, addressing the doctor, “the
+baby is awake.”
+
+“I will go and see her,” was the reply; and then to Madame Dupont, “We
+will take up this conversation later on.”
+
+“Certainly,” said the mother. “Will you have need of the nurse?”
+
+“No, Madame,” the doctor answered.
+
+“Nurse,” said the mother, “sit down and rest. Wait a minute, I wish to
+speak to you.” As the doctor went out, she took her son to one side and
+whispered to him, “I know the way to arrange everything. If we let
+her know what is the matter, and if she accepts, the doctor will have
+nothing more to say. Isn’t that so?”
+
+“Obviously,” replied the son.
+
+“I am going to promise that we will give her two thousand francs when
+she goes away, if she will consent to continue nursing the child.”
+
+“Two thousand francs?” said the other. “Is that enough?”
+
+“I will see,” was the reply. “If she hesitates, I will go further. Let
+me attend to it.”
+
+George nodded his assent, and Madame Dupont returned to the nurse. “You
+know,” she said, “that our child is a little sick?”
+
+The other looked at her in surprise. “Why no, ma’am!”
+
+“Yes,” said the grandmother.
+
+“But, ma’am, I have taken the best of care of her; I have always kept
+her proper.”
+
+“I am not saying anything to the contrary,” said Madame Dupont, “but the
+child is sick, the doctors have said it.”
+
+The nurse was not to be persuaded; she thought they were getting ready
+to scold her. “Humph,” she said, “that’s a fine thing--the doctors! If
+they couldn’t always find something wrong you’d say they didn’t know
+their business.”
+
+“But our doctor is a great doctor; and you have seen yourself that our
+child has some little pimples.”
+
+“Ah, ma’am,” said the nurse, “that’s the heat--it’s nothing but the heat
+of the blood breaking out. You don’t need to bother yourself; I tell you
+it’s only the child’s blood. It’s not my fault; I swear to you that she
+had not lacked anything, and that I have always kept her proper.”
+
+“I am not reproaching you--”
+
+“What is there to reproach me for? Oh, what bad luck! She’s tiny--the
+little one--she’s a bit feeble; but Lord save us, she’s a city child!
+And she’s getting along all right, I tell you.”
+
+“No,” persisted Madame Dupont, “I tell you--she has got a cold in her
+head, and she has an eruption at the back of the throat.”
+
+“Well,” cried the nurse, angrily, “if she has, it’s because the doctor
+scratched her with that spoon he put into her mouth wrong end first! A
+cold in the head? Yes, that’s true; but if she has caught cold, I can’t
+say when, I don’t know anything about it--nothing, nothing at all. I
+have always kept her well covered; she’s always had as much as three
+covers on her. The truth is, it was when you came, the time before last;
+you were all the time insisting upon opening the windows in the house!”
+
+“But once more I tell you,” cried Madame Dupont, “we are not putting any
+blame on you.”
+
+“Yes,” cried the woman, more vehemently. “I know what that kind of talk
+means. It’s no use--when you’re a poor country woman.”
+
+“What are you imagining now?” demanded the other.
+
+“Oh, that’s all right. It’s no use when you’re a poor country woman.”
+
+“I repeat to you once more,” cried Madame Dupont, with difficulty
+controlling her impatience, “we have nothing whatever to blame you for.”
+
+But the nurse began to weep. “If I had known that anything like this was
+coming to me--”
+
+“We have nothing to blame you for,” declared the other. “We only wish to
+warn you that you might possibly catch the disease of the child.”
+
+The woman pouted. “A cold in the head!” she exclaimed. “Well, if I catch
+it, it won’t be the first time. I know how to blow my nose.”
+
+“But you might also get the pimples.”
+
+At this the nurse burst into laughter so loud that the bric-a-brac
+rattled. “Oh, oh, oh! Dear lady, let me tell you, we ain’t city folks,
+we ain’t; we don’t have such soft skins. What sort of talk is that?
+Pimples--what difference would that make to poor folks like us? We don’t
+have a white complexion like the ladies of Paris. We are out all day in
+the fields, in the sun and the rain, instead of rubbing cold cream
+on our muzzles! No offense, ma’am--but I say if you’re looking for an
+excuse to get rid of me, you must get a better one than that.”
+
+“Excuse!” exclaimed the other. “What in the world do you mean?”
+
+“Oh, I know!” said the nurse, nodding her head.
+
+“But speak!”
+
+“It’s no use, when you’re only a poor country woman.”
+
+“I don’t understand you! I swear to you that I don’t understand you!”
+
+“Well,” sneered the other, “I understand.”
+
+“But then--explain yourself.”
+
+“No, I don’t want to say it.”
+
+“But you must; I wish it.”
+
+“Well--”
+
+“Go ahead.”
+
+“I’m only a poor country woman, but I am no more stupid than the others,
+for all that. I know perfectly well what your tricks mean. Mr. George
+here has been grumbling because you promised me thirty francs more a
+month, if I came to Paris.” And then, turning upon the other, she went
+on--“But, sir, isn’t it only natural? Don’t I have to put my own child
+away somewheres else? And then, can my husband live on his appetite?
+We’re nothing but poor country people, we are.”
+
+“You are making a mistake, nurse,” broke in George. “It is nothing at
+all of that sort; mother is quite right. I am so far from wanting
+to reproach you, that, on the contrary, I think she had not promised
+enough, and I want to make you, for my part, another promise. When you
+go away, when baby is old enough to be weaned, by way of thanking you,
+we wish to give you--”
+
+Madame Dupont broke in, hurriedly, “We wish to give you,--over and above
+your wages, you understand--we wish to give you five hundred francs, and
+perhaps a thousand, if the little one is altogether in good health. You
+understand?”
+
+The nurse stared at her, stupefied. “You will give me five hundred
+francs--for myself?” She sought to comprehend the words. “But that was
+not agreed, you don’t have to do that at all.”
+
+“No,” admitted Madame Dupont.
+
+“But then,” whispered the nurse, half to herself, “that’s not natural.”
+
+“Yes,” the other hurried on, “it is because the baby will have need of
+extra care. You will have to take more trouble; you will have to give
+it medicines; your task will be a little more delicate, a little more
+difficult.”
+
+“Oh, yes; then it’s so that I will be sure to take care of her? I
+understand.”
+
+“Then it’s agreed?” exclaimed Madame Dupont, with relief.
+
+“Yes ma’am,” said the nurse.
+
+“And you won’t come later on to make reproaches to us? We understand one
+another clearly? We have warned you that the child is sick and that you
+could catch the disease. Because of that, because of the special need of
+care which she has, we promise you five hundred francs at the end of the
+nursing. That’s all right, is it?
+
+“But, my lady,” cried the nurse, all her cupidity awakened, “you spoke
+just now of a thousand francs.”
+
+“Very well, then, a thousand francs.”
+
+George passed behind the nurse and got his mother by the arm, drawing
+her to one side. “It would be a mistake,” he whispered, “if we did not
+make her sign an agreement to all that.”
+
+His mother turned to the nurse. “In order that there may be no
+misunderstanding about the sum--you see how it is, I had forgotten
+already that I had spoken of a thousand francs--we will draw up a little
+paper, and you, on your part, will write one for us.”
+
+“Very good, ma’am,” said the nurse, delighted with the idea of so
+important a transaction. “Why, it’s just as you do when you rent a
+house!”
+
+“Here comes the doctor,” said the other. “Come, nurse, it is agreed?”
+
+“Yes, ma’am,” was the answer. But all the same, as she went out she
+hesitated and looked sharply first at the doctor, and then at George
+and his mother. She suspected that something was wrong, and she meant to
+find out if she could.
+
+The doctor seated himself in George’s office chair, as if to write
+a prescription. “The child’s condition remains the same,” he said;
+“nothing disturbing.”
+
+“Doctor,” said Madame Dupont, gravely, “from now on, you will be able
+to devote your attention to the baby and the nurse without any scruple.
+During your absence we have arranged matters nicely. The nurse has been
+informed about the situation, and she does not mind. She has agreed to
+accept an indemnity, and the amount has been stated.”
+
+But the doctor did not take these tidings as the other had hoped he
+might. He replied: “The malady which the nurse will almost inevitably
+contract in feeding the child is too grave in its consequences. Such
+consequences might go as far as complete helplessness, even as far as
+death. So I say that the indemnity, whatever it might be, would not pay
+the damage.”
+
+“But,” exclaimed the other, “she accepts it! She is mistress of herself,
+and she has the right--”
+
+“I am not at all certain that she has the right to sell her own health.
+And I am certain that she has not the right to sell the health of her
+husband and her children. If she becomes infected, it is nearly certain
+that she will communicate the disease to them; the health and the life
+of the children she might have later on would be greatly compromised.
+Such things she cannot possibly sell. Come, madame, you must see that a
+bargain of this sort isn’t possible. If the evil has not been done, you
+must do everything to avoid it.”
+
+“Sir,” protested the mother, wildly, “you do not defend our interests!”
+
+“Madame,” was the reply, “I defend those who are weakest.”
+
+“If we had called in our own physician, who knows us,” she protested,
+“he would have taken sides with us.”
+
+The doctor rose, with a severe look on his face. “I doubt it,” he said,
+“but there is still time to call him.”
+
+George broke in with a cry of distress. “Sir, I implore you!”
+
+And the mother in turn cried. “Don’t abandon us, sir! You ought to make
+allowances! If you knew what that child is to me! I tell you it seems to
+me as if I had waited for her coming in order to die. Have pity upon us!
+Have pity upon her! You speak of the weakest--it is not she who is the
+weakest? You have seen her, you have seen that poor little baby, so
+emaciated! You have seen what a heap of suffering she is already; and
+cannot that inspire in you any sympathy? I pray you, sir--I pray you!”
+
+“I pity her,” said the doctor, “I would like to save her--and I will do
+everything for her. But do not ask me to sacrifice to a feeble infant,
+with an uncertain and probably unhappy life, the health of a sound and
+robust woman. It is useless for us to continue such a discussion as
+that.”
+
+Whereupon Madame Dupont leaped up in sudden frenzy. “Very Well!” she
+exclaimed. “I will not follow your counsels, I will not listen to you!”
+
+Said the doctor in a solemn voice: “There is already some one here who
+regrets that he did not listen to me.”
+
+“Yes,” moaned George, “to my misfortune, to the misfortune of all of
+us.”
+
+But Madame Dupont was quite beside herself. “Very well!” she cried. “If
+it is a fault, if it is a crime, if I shall have to suffer remorse for
+it in this life, and all the punishments in the life to come--I accept
+it all for myself alone! Myself alone, I take that responsibility! It is
+frightfully heavy, but I accept it. I am profoundly a Christian sir; I
+believe in eternal damnation; but to save my little child I consent to
+lose my soul forever. Yes, my mind is made up--I will do everything to
+save that life! Let God judge me; and if he condemns me, so much the
+worse for me!”
+
+The doctor answered: “That responsibility is one which I cannot let
+you take, for it will be necessary that I should accept my part, and I
+refuse it.”
+
+“What will you do?”
+
+“I shall warn the nurse. I shall inform her exactly,
+completely--something which you have not done, I feel sure.”
+
+“What?” cried Madame Dupont, wildly. “You, a doctor, called into a
+family which gives you its entire confidence, which hands over to you
+its most terrible secrets, its most horrible miseries--you would betray
+them?”
+
+“It is not a betrayal,” replied the man, sternly. “It is something which
+the law commands; and even if the law were silent, I would not permit a
+family of worthy people to go astray so far as to commit a crime. Either
+I give up the case, or you have the nursing of the child stopped.”
+
+“You threaten! You threaten!” cried the woman, almost frantic. “You
+abuse the power which your knowledge gives you! You know that it is you
+whose attention we need by that little cradle; you know that we believe
+in you, and you threaten to abandon us! Your abandonment means the death
+of the child, perhaps! And if I listen to you, if we stop the nursing of
+the child--that also means her death!”
+
+She flung up her hands like a mad creature. “And yet there is no other
+means! Ah, my God! Why do you not let it be possible for me to sacrifice
+myself? I would wish nothing more than to be able to do it--if only
+you might take my old body, my old flesh, my old bones--if only I might
+serve for something! How quickly would I consent that it should infect
+me--this atrocious malady! How I would offer myself to it--with what
+joys, with what delights--however disgusting, however frightful it
+might be, however much to be dreaded! Yes, I would take it without fear,
+without regret, if my poor old empty breasts might still give to the
+child the milk which would preserve its life!”
+
+She stopped; and George sprang suddenly from his seat, and fled to her
+and flung himself down upon his knees before her, mingling his sobs and
+tears with hers.
+
+The doctor rose and moved about the room, unable any longer to control
+his distress. “Oh, the poor people!” he murmured to himself. “The poor,
+poor people!”
+
+The storm passed, and Madame Dupont, who was a woman of strong
+character, got herself together. Facing the doctor again, she said,
+“Come, sir, tell us what we have to do.”
+
+“You must stop the nursing, and keep the woman here as a dry nurse, in
+order that she may not go away to carry the disease elsewhere. Do not
+exaggerate to yourself the danger which will result to the child. I am,
+in truth, extremely moved by your suffering, and I will do everything--I
+swear it to you--that your baby may recover as quickly as possible its
+perfect health. I hope to succeed, and that soon. And now I must leave
+you until tomorrow.”
+
+“Thank you, Doctor, thank you,” said Madame Dupont, faintly.
+
+The young man rose and accompanied the doctor to the door. He could not
+bring himself to speak, but stood hanging his head until the other was
+gone. Then he came to his mother. He sought to embrace her, but she
+repelled him--without violence, but firmly.
+
+Her son stepped back and put his hands over his face. “Forgive me!” he
+said, in a broken voice. “Are we not unhappy enough, without hating each
+other?”
+
+His mother answered: “God has punished you for your debauch by striking
+at your child.”
+
+But, grief-stricken as the young man was, he could not believe that.
+“Impossible!” he said. “There is not even a man sufficiently wicked or
+unjust to commit the act which you attribute to your God!”
+
+“Yes,” said his mother, sadly, “you believe in nothing.”
+
+“I believe in no such God as that,” he answered.
+
+A silence followed. When it was broken, it was by the entrance of the
+nurse. She had opened the door of the room and had been standing there
+for some moments, unheeded. Finally she stepped forward. “Madame,” she
+said, “I have thought it over; I would rather go back to my home at
+once, and have only the five hundred francs.”
+
+Madame Dupont stared at her in consternation. “What is that you are
+saying? You want to return to your home?”
+
+“Yes, ma’am,” was the answer.
+
+“But,” cried George, “only ten minutes ago you were not thinking of it.”
+
+“What has happened since then?” demanded Madame Dupont.
+
+“I have thought it over.”
+
+“Thought it over?”
+
+“Well, I am getting lonesome for my little one and for my husband.”
+
+“In the last ten minutes?” exclaimed George.
+
+“There must be something else,” his mother added. “Evidently there must
+be something else.”
+
+“No!” insisted the nurse.
+
+“But I say yes!”
+
+“Well, I’m afraid the air of Paris might not be good for me.”
+
+“You had better wait and try it.”
+
+“I would rather go back at once to my home.”
+
+“Come, now,” cried Madame Dupont, “tell us why?”
+
+“I have told you. I have thought it over.”
+
+“Thought what over?”
+
+“Well, I have thought.”
+
+“Oh,” cried the mother, “what a stupid reply! ‘I have thought it over! I
+have thought it over!’ Thought WHAT over, I want to know!”
+
+“Well, everything.”
+
+“Don’t you know how to tell us what?”
+
+“I tell you, everything.”
+
+“Why,” exclaimed Madame Dupont, “you are an imbecile!”
+
+George stepped between his mother and the nurse. “Let me talk to her,”
+ he said.
+
+The woman came back to her old formula: “I know that we’re only poor
+country people.”
+
+“Listen to me, nurse,” said the young man. “Only a little while ago you
+were afraid that we would send you away. You were satisfied with the
+wages which my mother had fixed. In addition to those wages we had
+promised you a good sum when you returned to your home. Now you tell
+us that you want to go away. You see? All at once. There must be some
+reason; let us understand it. There must certainly be a reason. Has
+anybody done anything to you?”
+
+“No, sir,” said the woman, dropping her eyes.
+
+“Well, then?”
+
+“I have thought it over.”
+
+George burst out, “Don’t go on repeating always the same thing--‘I have
+thought it over!’ That’s not telling us anything.” Controlling himself,
+he added, gently, “Come, tell me why you want to go away?”
+
+There was a silence. “Well?” he demanded.
+
+“I tell you, I have thought--”
+
+George exclaimed in despair, “It’s as if one were talking to a block of
+wood!”
+
+His mother took up the conversation again. “You must realize, you have
+not the right to go away.”
+
+The woman answered, “I WANT to go.”
+
+“But I will not let you leave us.”
+
+“No,” interrupted George angrily, “let her go; we cannot fasten her
+here.”
+
+“Very well, then,” cried the exasperated mother, “since you want to go,
+go! But I have certainly the right to say to you that you are as stupid
+as the animals on your farm!”
+
+“I don’t say that I am not,” answered the woman.
+
+“I will not pay you the month which has just begun, and you will pay
+your railroad fare for yourself.”
+
+The other drew back with a look of anger. “Oho!” she cried. “We’ll see
+about that!”
+
+“Yes, we’ll see about it!” cried George. “And you will get out of here
+at once. Take yourself off--I will have no more to do with you. Good
+evening.”
+
+“No, George,” protested his mother, “don’t lose control of yourself.”
+ And then, with a great effort at calmness, “That cannot be serious,
+nurse! Answer me.”
+
+“I would rather go off right away to my home, and only have my five
+hundred francs.”
+
+“WHAT?” cried George, in consternation.
+
+“What’s that you are telling me?” exclaimed Madame Dupont.
+
+“Five hundred francs?” repeated her son.
+
+“What five hundred francs?” echoed the mother.
+
+“The five hundred francs you promised me,” said the nurse.
+
+“We have promised you five hundred francs? WE?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“When the child should be weaned, and if we should be satisfied with
+you! That was our promise.”
+
+“No. You said you would give them to me when I was leaving. Now I am
+leaving, and I want them.”
+
+Madame Dupont drew herself up, haughtily. “In the first place,” she
+said, “kindly oblige me by speaking to me in another tone; do you
+understand?”
+
+The woman answered, “You have nothing to do but give me my money, and I
+will say nothing more.”
+
+George went almost beside himself with rage at this. “Oh, it’s like
+that?” he shouted. “Very well; I’ll show you!” And he sprang to the door
+and opened it.
+
+But the nurse never budged. “Give me my five hundred francs!” she said.
+
+George seized her by the arm and shoved her toward the door. “You clear
+out of here, do you understand me? And as quickly as you can!”
+
+The woman shook her arm loose, and sneered into his face. “Come now,
+you--you can talk to me a little more politely, eh?”
+
+“Will you go?” shouted George, completely beside himself. “Will you go,
+or must I go out and look for a policeman?”
+
+“A policeman!” demanded the woman. “For what?”
+
+“To put you outside! You are behaving yourself like a thief.”
+
+“A thief? I? What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that you are demanding money which doesn’t belong to you.”
+
+“More than that,” broke in Madame Dupont, “you are destroying that poor
+little baby! You are a wicked woman!”
+
+“I will put you out myself!” shouted George, and seized her by the arm
+again.
+
+“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” retorted the nurse. “Then you really want
+me to tell you why I am going away?”
+
+“Yes, tell me!” cried he.
+
+His mother added, “Yes, yes!”
+
+She would have spoken differently had she chanced to look behind her and
+seen Henriette, who at that moment appeared in the doorway. She had been
+about to go out, when her attention had been caught by the loud voices.
+She stood now, amazed, clasping her hands together, while the nurse,
+shaking her fist first at Madame Dupont and then at her son, cried
+loudly, “Very well! I’m going away because I don’t want to catch a
+filthy disease here!”
+
+“HUSH!” cried Madame Dupont, and sprang toward her, her hands clenched
+as if she would choke her.
+
+“Be silent!” cried George, wild with terror.
+
+But the woman rushed on without dropping her voice, “Oh, you need not
+be troubling yourselves for fear anyone should overhear! All the world
+knows it! Your other servants were listening with me at your door! They
+heard every word your doctor said!”
+
+“Shut up!” screamed George.
+
+Her mother seized the woman fiercely by the arm. “Hold your tongue!” she
+hissed.
+
+But again the other shook herself loose. She was powerful, and now her
+rage was not to be controlled. She waved her hands in the air, shouting,
+“Let me be, let me be! I know all about your brat--that you will never
+be able to raise it--that it’s rotten because it’s father has a filthy
+disease he got from a woman of the street!”
+
+She got no farther. She was interrupted by a frenzied shriek from
+Henriette. The three turned, horrified, just in time to see her fall
+forward upon the floor, convulsed.
+
+“My God!” cried George. He sprang toward her, and tried to lift her, but
+she shrank from him, repelling him with a gesture of disgust, of hatred,
+of the most profound terror. “Don’t touch me!” she screamed, like a
+maniac. “Don’t touch me!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+It was in vain that Madame Dupont sought to control her daughter-in-law.
+Henriette was beside herself, frantic, she could not be brought to
+listen to any one. She rushed into the other room, and when the older
+woman followed her, shrieked out to be left alone. Afterwards, she fled
+to her own room and barred herself in, and George and his mother waited
+distractedly for hours until she should give some sign.
+
+Would she kill herself, perhaps? Madame Dupont hovered on guard about
+the door of the nursery for fear that the mother in her fit of insanity
+might attempt some harm to her child.
+
+The nurse had slunk away abashed when she saw the consequences of
+her outburst. By the time she had got her belongings packed, she had
+recovered her assurance. She wanted her five hundred; also she wanted
+her wages and her railroad fare home. She wanted them at once, and she
+would not leave until she got them. George and his mother, in the midst
+of all their anguish of mind, had to go through a disgusting scene with
+this coarse and angry woman.
+
+They had no such sum of money in the house, and the nurse refused to
+accept a check. She knew nothing about a check. It was so much paper,
+and might be some trick that they were playing on her. She kept
+repeating her old formula, “I am nothing but a poor country woman.” Nor
+would she be contented with the promise that she would receive the money
+the next day. She seemed to be afraid that if she left the house she
+would be surrendering her claim. So at last the distracted George to
+sally forth and obtain the cash from some tradesmen in the neighborhood.
+
+The woman took her departure. They made her sign a receipt in full for
+all claims and they strove to persuade themselves that this made them
+safe; but in their hearts they had no real conviction of safety. What
+was the woman’s signature, or her pledged word, against the cupidity of
+her husband and relatives. Always she would have the dreadful secret
+to hold over them, and so they would live under the shadow of possible
+blackmail.
+
+Later in the day Henriette sent for her mother-in-law. She was white,
+her eyes were swollen with weeping, and she spoke in a voice choked with
+sobs. She wished to return at once to her father’s home, and to take
+little Gervaise with her. Madame Dupont cried out in horror at this
+proposition, and argued and pleaded and wept--but all to no purpose. The
+girl was immovable. She would not stay under her husband’s roof, and she
+would take her child with her. It was her right, and no one could refuse
+her.
+
+The infant had been crying for hours, but that made no difference.
+Henriette insisted that a cab should be called at once.
+
+So she went back to the home of Monsieur Loches and told him the hideous
+story. Never before in her life had she discussed such subjects with
+any one, but now in her agitation she told her father all. As George had
+declared to the doctor, Monsieur Loches was a person of violent temper;
+at this revelation, at the sight of his daughter’s agony, he was almost
+beside himself. His face turned purple, the veins stood out on his
+forehead; a trembling seized him. He declared that he would kill
+George--there was nothing else to do. Such a scoundrel should not be
+permitted to live.
+
+The effort which Henriette had to make to restrain him had a calming
+effect upon herself. Bitter and indignant as she was, she did not want
+George to be killed. She clung to her father, beseeching him to promise
+her that he would not do such a thing; and all that day and evening she
+watched him, unwilling to let him out of her sight.
+
+There was a matter which claimed her immediate attention, and which
+helped to withdraw them from the contemplation of their own sufferings.
+The infant must be fed and cared for--the unhappy victim of other
+people’s sins, whose life was now imperiled. A dry nurse must be found
+at once, a nurse competent to take every precaution and give the
+child every chance. This nurse must be informed of the nature of the
+trouble--another matter which required a great deal of anxious thought.
+
+That evening came Madame Dupont, tormented by anxiety about the child’s
+welfare, and beseeching permission to help take care of it. It was
+impossible to refuse such a request. Henriette could not endure to
+see her, but the poor grandmother would come and sit for hours in the
+nursery, watching the child and the nurse, in silent agony.
+
+This continued for days, while poor George wandered about at home,
+suffering such torment of mind as can hardly be imagined. Truly, in
+these days he paid for his sins; he paid a thousand-fold in agonized and
+impotent regret. He looked back upon the course of his life, and traced
+one by one the acts which had led him and those he loved into this
+nightmare of torment. He would have been willing to give his life if he
+could have undone those acts. But avenging nature offered him no such
+easy deliverance as that. We shudder as we read the grim words of the
+Jehovah of the ancient Hebrews; and yet not all the learning of modern
+times has availed to deliver us from the cruel decree, that the sins of
+the fathers shall be visited upon the children.
+
+George wrote notes to his wife, imploring her forgiveness. He poured
+out all his agony and shame to her, begging her to see him just once, to
+give him a chance to plead his defense. It was not much of a defense, to
+be sure; it was only that he had done no worse than the others did--only
+that he was a wretched victim of ignorance. But he loved her, he had
+proven that he loved her, and he pleaded that for the sake of their
+child she would forgive him.
+
+When all this availed nothing, he went to see the doctor, whose advice
+he had so shamefully neglected. He besought this man to intercede for
+him--which the doctor, of course, refused to do. It was an extra-medical
+matter, he said, and George was absurd to expect him to meddle in it.
+
+But, as a matter of fact, the doctor had already been interceding--he
+had gone farther in pleading George’s cause than he was willing to have
+George know. For Monsieur Loches had paid him a visit--his purpose being
+to ask the doctor to continue attendance upon the infant, and also
+to give Henriette a certificate which she could use in her suit for a
+divorce from her husband.
+
+So inevitably there had been a discussion of the whole question between
+the two men. The doctor had granted the first request, but refused the
+second. In the first place, he said, there was a rule of professional
+secrecy which would prevent him. And when the father-in-law requested
+to know if the rule of professional secrecy compelled him to protect
+a criminal against honest people, the doctor answered that even if
+his ethics permitted it, he would still refuse the request. “I would
+reproach myself forever,” he said, “if I had aided you to obtain such a
+divorce.”
+
+“Then,” cried the old man, vehemently, “because you profess such and
+such theories, because the exercise of your profession makes you the
+constant witness of such miseries--therefore it is necessary that my
+daughter should continue to bear that man’s name all her life!”
+
+The doctor answered, gently, “Sir, I understand and respect your grief.
+But believe me, you are not in a state of mind to decide about these
+matters now.”
+
+“You are mistaken,” declared the other, controlling himself with an
+effort. “I have been thinking about nothing else for days. I have
+discussed it with my daughter, and she agrees with me. Surely, sir, you
+cannot desire that my daughter should continue to live with a man who
+has struck her so brutal, so cowardly, a blow.”
+
+“If I refuse your request,” the doctor answered, “it is in the interest
+of your daughter.” Then, seeing the other’s excitement returning, he
+continued, “In your state of mind, Monsieur Loches, I know that you will
+probably be abusing me before five minutes has passed. But that will not
+trouble me. I have seen many cases. And since I have made the mistake
+of letting myself be trapped into this discussion, I must explain to you
+the reason for my attitude. You ask of me a certificate so that you may
+prove in court that your son-in-law is afflicted with syphilis.”
+
+“Precisely,” said the other.
+
+“And have you not reflected upon this--that at the same time you will be
+publicly attesting that your daughter has been exposed to the contagion?
+With such an admission, an admission officially registered in the public
+records, do you believe that she will find it easy to re-marry later
+on?”
+
+“She will never re-marry,” said the father.
+
+“She says that today, but can you affirm that she will say the same
+thing five years from now, ten years from now? I tell you you will
+not obtain that divorce, because I will most certainly refuse you the
+necessary certificate.”
+
+“Then,” cried the other, “I will find other means of establishing
+proofs. I will have the child examined by another doctor!”
+
+The other answered. “Then you do not find that that poor little one has
+been already sufficiently handicapped at the outset of its life? Your
+granddaughter has a physical defect. Do you wish to add to that a
+certificate of hereditary syphilis, which will follow her all her life?”
+
+Monsieur Loches sprang from his chair. “You mean that if the victims
+seek to defend themselves, they will be struck the harder! You mean that
+the law gives me no weapon against a man who, knowing his condition,
+takes a young girl, sound, trusting, innocent, and befouls her with the
+result of his debauches--makes her the mother of a poor little creature,
+whose future is such that those who love her the most do not know
+whether they ought to pray for her life, or for her immediate
+deliverance? Sir,” he continued, in his orator’s voice, “that man has
+inflicted upon the woman he has married a supreme insult. He has made
+her the victim of the most odious assault. He has degraded her--he has
+brought her, so to speak, into contact with the woman of the streets. He
+has created between her and that common woman I know not what mysterious
+relationship. It is the poisoned blood of the prostitute which poisons
+my daughter and her child; that abject creature, she lives, she lives in
+us! She belongs to our family--he has given her a seat at our hearth! He
+has soiled the imagination and the thoughts of my poor child, as he
+has soiled her body. He has united forever in her soul the idea of
+love which she has placed so high, with I know not what horrors of the
+hospitals. He has tainted her in her dignity and her modesty, in her
+love as well as in her baby. He has struck her down with physical and
+moral decay, he has overwhelmed her with vileness. And yet the law is
+such, the customs of society are such, that the woman cannot separate
+herself from that man save by the aid of legal proceedings whose scandal
+will fall upon herself and upon her child!”
+
+Monsieur Loches had been pacing up and down the room as he spoke, and
+now he clenched his fists in sudden fury.
+
+“Very well! I will not address myself to the law. Since I learned the
+truth I have been asking myself if it was not my duty to find that
+monster and to put a bullet into his head, as one does to a mad dog. I
+don’t know what weakness, what cowardice, has held me back, and decided
+me to appeal to the law. Since the law will not protect me, I will seek
+justice for myself. Perhaps his death will be a good warning for the
+others!”
+
+The doctor shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that this was no affair
+of his and that he would not try to interfere. But he remarked, quietly:
+“You will be tried for your life.”
+
+“I shall be acquitted!” cried the other.
+
+“Yes, but after a public revelation of all your miseries. You will make
+the scandal greater, the miseries greater--that is all. And how do you
+know but that on the morrow of your acquittal, you will find yourself
+confronting another court, a higher and more severe one? How do you
+know but that your daughter, seized at last by pity for the man you have
+killed, will not demand to know by what right you have acted so, by what
+right you have made an orphan of her child? How can you know but that
+her child also may some day demand an accounting of you?”
+
+Monsieur Loches let his hands fall, and stood, a picture of crushed
+despair. “Tell me then,” he said, in a faint voice, “what ought I to
+do?”
+
+“Forgive!”
+
+For a while the doctor sat looking at him. “Sir,” he said, at last,
+“tell me one thing. You are inflexible; you feel you have the right to
+be inflexible. But are you really so certain that it was not your duty,
+once upon a time, to save your daughter from the possibility of such
+misfortune?”
+
+“What?” cried the other. “My duty? What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean this, sir. When that marriage was being discussed, you certainly
+took precautions to inform yourself about the financial condition of
+your future son-in-law. You demanded that he should prove to you that
+his stocks and bonds were actual value, listed on the exchange. Also,
+you obtained some information about his character. In fact, you forgot
+only one point, the most important of all--that was, to inquire if he
+was in good health. You never did that.”
+
+The father-in-law’s voice had become faint. “No,” he said.
+
+“But why not?”
+
+“Because that is not the custom.”
+
+“Very well, but that ought to be the custom. Surely the father of a
+family, before he gives his daughter to a man, should take as much
+precaution as a business concern which accepts an employee.”
+
+“You are right,” was the reply, “there should be a law.” The man spoke
+as a deputy, having authority in these matters.
+
+But the doctor cried, “No, no, sir! Do not make a new law. We have
+too many already. There is no need of it. It would suffice that people
+should know a little better what syphilis is. The custom would establish
+itself very quickly for a suitor to add to all the other documents
+which he presents, a certificate of a doctor, as proof that he could
+be received into a family without bringing a pestilence with him. That
+would be very simple. Once let the custom be established, then the
+suitor would go to the doctor for a certificate of health, just as he
+goes to the priest for a certificate that he has confessed; and by that
+means you would prevent a great deal of suffering in the world. Or let
+me put it another way, sir. Nowadays, before you conclude a marriage,
+you get the lawyers of the two families together. It would be of at
+least equal importance to get their two doctors together. You see, sir,
+your inquiry concerning your son-in-law was far from complete. So your
+daughter may fairly ask you, why you, being a man, being a father who
+ought to know these things, did not take as much care of her health as
+you took of her fortune. So it is, sir, that I say to you, forgive!”
+
+But Monsieur Loches said again, “Never!”
+
+And again the doctor sat and watched him for a minute. “Come, sir,” he
+began, finally, “since it is necessary to employ the last argument, I
+will do so. To be so severe and so pitiless--are you yourself without
+sin?”
+
+The other answered, “I have never had a shameful disease.”
+
+“I do not ask you that,” interrupted the doctor. “I ask you if you have
+never exposed yourself to the chance of having it.” And then, reading
+the other’s face, he went on, in a tone of quiet certainty. “Yes, you
+have exposed yourself. Then, sir, it was not virtue that you had; it
+was good fortune. That is one of the things which exasperate me the
+most--that term ‘shameful disease’ which you have just used. Like all
+other diseases, that is one of our misfortunes, and it is never shameful
+to be unfortunate--even if one has deserved it.” The doctor paused,
+and then with some excitement he went on: “Come, sir, come, we must
+understand each other. Among men the most exacting, among those who with
+their middle-class prudery dare not pronounce the name of syphilis,
+or who make the most terrifying faces, the most disgusted, when they
+consent to speak of it--who regard the syphilitic as sinners--I should
+wish to know how many there are who have never exposed themselves to a
+similar misadventure. They and they alone have the right to speak. How
+many are there? Among a thousand men, are there four? Very well, then.
+Excepting those four, between all the rest and the syphilitic there is
+nothing but the difference of chance.”
+
+There came into the doctor’s voice at this moment a note of intense
+feeling; for these were matters of which evidence came to him every day.
+“I tell you, sir, that such people are deserving of sympathy, because
+they are suffering. If they have committed a fault, they have at least
+the plea that they are expiating it. No, sir, let me hear no more of
+that hypocrisy. Recall your own youth, sir. That which afflicts your
+son-in-law, you have deserved it just as much as he--more than he,
+perhaps. Therefore, have pity on him; have for him the toleration which
+the unpunished criminal ought to have for the criminal less fortunate
+than himself upon whom the penalty has fallen. Is that not so?”
+
+Monsieur Loches had been listening to this discourse with the feeling of
+a thief before the bar. There was nothing that he could answer. “Sir,”
+ he stammered, “as you present this thing to me--”
+
+“But am I not right?” insisted the doctor.
+
+“Perhaps you are,” the other admitted. “But--I cannot say all that to my
+daughter, to persuade her to go back to her husband.”
+
+“You can give her other arguments,” was the answer.
+
+“What arguments, in God’s name?”
+
+“There is no lack of them. You will say to her that a separation would
+be a misfortune for all; that her husband is the only one in the world
+who would be devoted enough to help her save her child. You will say to
+her that out of the ruins of her first happiness she can build herself
+another structure, far stronger. And, sir, you will add to that whatever
+your good heart may suggest--and we will arrange so that the next child
+of the pair shall be sound and vigorous.”
+
+Monsieur Loches received this announcement with the same surprise that
+George himself had manifested. “Is that possible?” he asked.
+
+The doctor cried: “Yes, yes, yes--a thousand times yes! There is a
+phrase which I repeat on every occasion, and which I would wish to post
+upon the walls. It is that syphilis is an imperious mistress, who only
+demands that one should recognize her power. She is terrible for
+those who think her insignificant, and gentle with those who know how
+dangerous she is. You know that kind of mistress--who is only vexed when
+she is neglected. You may tell this to your daughter--you will restore
+her to the arms of her husband, from whom she has no longer anything
+to fear, and I will guarantee that you will be a happy grandfather two
+years from now.”
+
+Monsieur Loches at last showed that he was weakened in his resolution.
+
+“Doctor,” he said, “I do not know that I can ever go so far as
+forgiveness, but I promise you that I will do no irreparable act, and
+that I will not oppose a reconciliation if after the lapse of some
+time--I cannot venture to say how long--my poor child should make up her
+mind to a reconciliation.”
+
+“Very good,” said the other. “But let me add this: If you have another
+daughter, take care to avoid the fault which you committed when you
+married off the first.”
+
+“But,” said the old man, “I did not know.”
+
+“Ah, surely!” cried the other. “You did not know! You are a father, and
+you did not know! You are a deputy, you have assumed the responsibility
+and the honor of making our laws--and you did not know! You are ignorant
+about syphilis, just as you probably are ignorant about alcoholism and
+tuberculosis.”
+
+“No,” exclaimed the other, quickly.
+
+“Very well,” said the doctor, “I will leave you out, if you wish. I am
+talking of the others, the five hundred, and I don’t know how many
+more, who are there in the Chamber of Deputies, and who call themselves
+representatives of the people. They are not able to find a single hour
+to discuss these three cruel gods, to which egotism and indifference
+make every day such frightful human sacrifices. They have not sufficient
+leisure to combat this ferocious trinity, which destroys every day
+thousands of lives. Alcoholism! It would be necessary to forbid the
+manufacture of poisons, and to restrict the number of licenses; but as
+one has fear of the great distillers, who are rich and powerful, and of
+the little dealers, who are the masters of universal suffrage, one
+puts one’s conscience to sleep by lamenting the immorality of
+the working-class, and publishing little pamphlets and sermons.
+Imbeciles!...Tuberculosis! Everybody knows the true remedy, which would
+be the paying of sufficient wages, and the tearing down of the filthy
+tenements into which the laborers are packed--those who are the most
+useful and the most unfortunate among our population! But needless to
+say, no one wants that remedy, so we go round begging the workingmen not
+to spit on the sidewalks. Wonderful! But syphilis--why do you not occupy
+yourself with that? Why, since you have ministers whose duty it is to
+attend to all sorts of things, do you not have a minister to attend to
+the public health?”
+
+“My dear Doctor,” responded Monsieur Loches, “you fall into the French
+habit of considering the government as the cause of all evils. Show us
+the way, you learned gentlemen! Since that is a matter about which you
+are informed, and we are ignorant, begin by telling us what measures you
+believe to be necessary.”
+
+“Ah, ah!” exclaimed the other. “That’s fine, indeed! It was about
+eighteen years ago that a project of that nature, worked out by the
+Academy of Medicine, and approved by it UNANIMOUSLY, was sent to the
+proper minister. We have not yet heard his reply.”
+
+“You really believe,” inquired Monsieur Loches, in some bewilderment,
+“you believe that there are some measures--”
+
+“Sir,” broke in the doctor, “before we get though, you are going to
+suggest some measures yourself. Let me tell you what happened today.
+When I received your card I did not know that you were the father-in-law
+of George Dupont. I say that you were a deputy, and I thought that you
+wanted to get some information about these matters. There was a woman
+patient waiting to see me, and I kept her in my waiting-room--saying to
+myself, This is just the sort of person that our deputies ought to talk
+to.”
+
+The doctor paused for a moment, then continued: “Be reassured, I will
+take care of your nerves. This patient has no trouble that is apparent
+to the eye. She is simply an illustration of the argument I have been
+advancing--that our worst enemy is ignorance. Ignorance--you understand
+me? Since I have got you here, sir, I am going to hold you until I have
+managed to cure a little of your ignorance! For I tell you, sir, it is
+a thing which drives me to distraction--we MUST do something about these
+conditions! Take this case, for example. Here is a woman who is very
+seriously infected. I told her--well, wait; you shall see for yourself.”
+
+The doctor went to the door and summoned into the room a woman whom
+Monsieur Loches had noticed waiting there. She was verging on old age,
+small, frail, and ill-nourished in appearance, poorly dressed, and yet
+with a suggestion of refinement about her. She stood near the door,
+twisting her hands together nervously, and shrinking from the gaze of
+the strange gentleman. The doctor began in an angry voice. “Did I not
+tell you to come and see me once every eight days? Is that not true?”
+
+The woman answered, in a faint voice, “Yes, sir.”
+
+“Well,” he exclaimed, “and how long has it been since you were here?”
+
+“Three months, sir.”
+
+“Three months! And you believe that I can take care of you under such
+conditions? I give you up! Do you understand? You discourage me, you
+discourage me.” There was a pause. Then, seeing the woman’s suffering,
+he began, in a gentler tone, “Come now, what is the reason that you
+have not come? Didn’t you know that you have a serious disease--most
+serious?”
+
+“Oh, yes, sir,” replied the woman, “I know that very well--since my
+husband died of it.”
+
+The doctor’s voice bore once again its note of pity. “Your husband died
+of it?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“He took no care of himself?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“And was not that a warning to you?”
+
+“Doctor,” the woman replied, “I would ask nothing better than to come as
+often as you told me, but the cost is too great.”
+
+“How--what cost? You were coming to my free clinic.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied the woman, “but that’s during working hours, and
+then it is a long way from home. There are so many sick people, and I
+have to wait my turn, It is in the morning--sometimes I lose a whole
+day--and then my employer is annoyed, and he threatens to turn me off.
+It is things like that that keep people from coming, until they dare not
+put it off any longer. Then, too, sir--” the woman stopped, hesitating.
+
+“Well,” demanded the doctor.
+
+“Oh, nothing, sir,” she stammered. “You have been too good to me
+already.”
+
+“Go on,” commanded the other. “Tell me.”
+
+“Well,” murmured the woman, “I know I ought not to put on airs, but you
+see I have not always been so poor. Before my husband’s misfortune,
+we were well fixed. So you see, I have a little pride. I have always
+managed to take care of myself. I am not a woman of the streets, and to
+stand around like that, with everybody else, to be obliged to tell
+all one’s miseries out loud before the world! I am wrong, I know it
+perfectly well; I argue with myself--but all the same, it’s hard, sir; I
+assure you, it is truly hard.”
+
+“Poor woman!” said the doctor; and for a while there was a silence. Then
+he asked: “It was your husband who brought you the disease?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” was the reply. “Everything which happened to us came from
+him. We were living in the country when he got the disease. He went half
+crazy. He no longer knew how to manage his affairs. He gave orders here
+and there for considerable sums. We were not able to find the money.”
+
+“Why did he not undergo treatment?”
+
+“He didn’t know then. We were sold out, and we came to Paris. But we
+hadn’t a penny. He decided to go to the hospital for treatment.”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“Why, they looked him over, but they refused him any medicine.”
+
+“How was that?”
+
+“Because we had been in Paris only three months. If one hasn’t been a
+resident six months, one has no right to free medicine.”
+
+“Is that true?” broke in Monsieur Loches quickly.
+
+“Yes,” said the doctor, “that’s the rule.”
+
+“So you see,” said the woman, “it was not our fault.”
+
+“You never had children?” inquired the doctor.
+
+“I was never able to bring one to birth,” was the answer. “My husband
+was taken just at the beginning of our marriage--it was while he
+was serving in the army. You know, sir--there are women about the
+garrisons--” She stopped, and there was a long silence.
+
+“Come,” said the doctor, “that’s all right. I will arrange it with you.
+You can come here to my office, and you can come on Sunday mornings.”
+ And as the poor creature started to express her gratitude, he slipped a
+coin into her hand. “Come, come; take it,” he said gruffly. “You are not
+going to play proud with me. No, no, I have no time to listen to you.
+Hush!” And he pushed her out of the door.
+
+Then he turned to the deputy. “You heard her story, sir,” he said. “Her
+husband was serving his time in the army; it was you law-makers who
+compelled him to do that. And there are women about the garrisons--you
+heard how her voice trembled as she said that? Take my advice, sir, and
+look up the statistics as to the prevalence of this disease among our
+soldiers. Come to some of my clinics, and let me introduce you to other
+social types. You don’t care very much about soldiers, perhaps--they
+belong to the lower classes, and you think of them as rough men. But let
+me show you what is going on among our college students--among the men
+our daughters are some day to marry. Let me show you the women who prey
+upon them! Perhaps, who knows--I can show you the very woman who was the
+cause of all the misery in your own family!”
+
+And as Monsieur Loches rose from his chair, the doctor came to him and
+took him by the hand. “Promise me, sir,” he said, earnestly, “that you
+will come back and let me teach you more about these matters. It is a
+chance that I must not let go--the first time in my life that I ever got
+hold of a real live deputy! Come and make a study of this subject, and
+let us try to work out some sensible plan, and get seriously to work to
+remedy these frightful evils!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+George lived with his mother after Henriette had left his home. He was
+wretchedly unhappy and lonely. He could find no interest in any of the
+things which had pleased him before. He was ashamed to meet any of his
+friends, because he imagined that everyone must have heard the dreadful
+story--or because he was not equal to making up explanations for his
+mournful state. He no longer cared much about his work. What was the
+use of making a reputation or earning large fees when one had nothing to
+spend them for?
+
+All his thoughts were fixed upon the wife and child he had lost. He was
+reminded of Henriette in a thousand ways, and each way brought him a
+separate pang of grief. He had never realized how much he had come to
+depend upon her in every little thing--until now, when her companionship
+was withdrawn from him, and everything seemed to be a blank. He would
+come home at night, and opposite to him at the dinner-table would be his
+mother, silent and spectral. How different from the days when Henriette
+was there, radiant and merry, eager to be told everything that had
+happened to him through the day!
+
+There was also his worry about little Gervaise. He might no longer hear
+how she was doing, for he could not get up courage to ask his mother
+the news. Thus poor George was paying for his sins. He could make no
+complaints against the price, however high--only sometimes he
+wondered whether he would be able to pay it. There were times of such
+discouragement that he thought of different ways of killing himself.
+
+A curious adventure befell him during this period. He was walking one
+day in the park, when he saw approaching a girl whose face struck him as
+familiar. At first he could not recollect where he had seen her. It was
+only when she was nearly opposite him that he realized--it was the girl
+who had been the cause of all his misery!
+
+He tried to look away, but he was too late. Her eyes had caught his, and
+she nodded and then stopped, exclaiming, “Why, how do you do?”
+
+George had to face her. “How do you do?” he responded, weakly.
+
+She held out her hand and he had to take it, but there was not much
+welcome in his clasp. “Where have you been keeping yourself?” she asked.
+Then, as he hesitated, she laughed good-naturedly, “What’s the matter?
+You don’t seem glad to see me.”
+
+The girl--Therese was her name--had a little package under her arm, as
+if she had been shopping. She was not well dressed, as when George had
+met her before, and doubtless she thought that was the reason for his
+lack of cordiality. This made him rather ashamed, and so, only half
+realizing what he was doing, he began to stroll along with her.
+
+“Why did you never come to see me again?” she asked.
+
+George hesitated. “I--I--” he stammered--“I’ve been married since then.”
+
+She laughed. “Oh! So that’s it!” And then, as they came to a bench under
+some trees, “Won’t you sit down a while?” There was allurement in her
+glance, but it made George shudder. It was incredible to him that he
+had ever been attracted by this crude girl. The spell was now broken
+completely.
+
+She quickly saw that something was wrong. “You don’t seem very
+cheerful,” she said. “What’s the matter?”
+
+And the man, staring at her, suddenly blurted out, “Don’t you know what
+you did to me?”
+
+“What I did to you?” Therese repeated wonderingly.
+
+“You must know!” he insisted.
+
+And then she tried to meet his gaze and could not. “Why--” she
+stammered.
+
+There was silence between them. When George spoke again his voice was
+low and trembling. “You ruined my whole life,” he said--“not only mine,
+but my family’s. How could you do it?”
+
+She strove to laugh it off. “A cheerful topic for an afternoon stroll!”
+
+For a long while George did not answer. Then, almost in a whisper, he
+repeated, “How could you do it?”
+
+“Some one did it to me first,” was the response. “A man!”
+
+“Yes,” said George, “but he didn’t know.”
+
+“How can you tell whether he knew or not?”
+
+“You knew?” he inquired, wonderingly.
+
+Therese hesitated. “Yes, I knew,” she said at last, defiantly. “I have
+known for years.”
+
+“And I’m not the only man.”
+
+She laughed. “I guess not!”
+
+There followed a long pause. At last he resumed, “I don’t want to blame
+you; there’s nothing to be gained by that; it’s done, and can’t
+be undone. But sometimes I wonder about it. I should like to
+understand--why did you do it?”
+
+“Why? That’s easy enough. I did it because I have to live.”
+
+“You live that way?” he exclaimed.
+
+“Why of course. What did you think?”
+
+“I thought you were a--a--” He hesitated.
+
+“You thought I was respectable,” laughed Therese. “Well, that’s just a
+little game I was playing on you.”
+
+“But I didn’t give you any money!” he argued.
+
+“Not that time,” she said, “but I thought you would come back.”
+
+He sat gazing at her. “And you earn your living that way still?” he
+asked. “When you know what’s the matter with you! When you know--”
+
+“What can I do? I have to live, don’t I?”
+
+“But don’t you even take care of yourself? Surely there must be some
+way, some place--”
+
+“The reformatory, perhaps,” she sneered. “No, thanks! I’ll go there
+when the police catch me, not before. I know some girls that have tried
+that.”
+
+“But aren’t you afraid?” cried the man. “And the things that will happen
+to you! Have you ever talked to a doctor--or read a book?”
+
+“I know,” she said. “I’ve seen it all. If it comes to me, I’ll go over
+the side of one of the bridges some dark night.”
+
+George sat lost in thought. A strange adventure it seemed to him--to
+meet this girl under such different circumstances! It was as if he were
+watching a play from behind the scenes instead of in front. If only he
+had had this new view in time--how different would have been his life!
+And how terrible it was to think of the others who didn’t know--the
+audience who were still sitting out in front, watching the spectacle,
+interested in it!
+
+His thoughts came back to Therese. He was curious about her and the life
+she lived. “Tell me a little about it,” he said. “How you came to be
+doing this.” And he added, “Don’t think I want to preach; I’d really
+like to understand.”
+
+“Oh, it’s a common story,” she said--“nothing especially romantic.
+I came to Paris when I was a girl. My parents had died, and I had no
+friends, and I didn’t know what to do. I got a place as a nursemaid.
+I was seventeen years old then, and I didn’t know anything. I believed
+what I was told, and I believed my employer. His wife was ill in a
+hospital, and he said he wanted to marry me when she died. Well, I liked
+him, and I was sorry for him--and then the first thing I knew I had a
+baby. And then the wife came back, and I was turned off. I had been a
+fool, of course. If I had been in her place should have done just what
+she did.”
+
+The girl was speaking in a cold, matter-of-fact voice, as of things
+about which she was no longer able to suffer. “So, there I was--on the
+street,” she went on. “You have always had money, a comfortable home,
+education, friends to help you--all that. You can’t imagine how it is
+to be in the world without any of these things. I lived on my savings as
+long as I could; then I had to leave my baby in a foundling’s home, and
+I went out to do my five hours on the boulevards. You know the game, I
+have no doubt.”
+
+Yes, George knew the game. Somehow or other he no longer felt bitter
+towards this poor creature. She was part of the system of which he was
+a victim also. There was nothing to be gained by hating each other.
+Just as the doctor said, what was needed was enlightenment. “Listen,” he
+said, “why don’t you try to get cured?”
+
+“I haven’t got the price,” was the answer.
+
+“Well,” he said, hesitatingly, “I know a doctor--one of the really good
+men. He has a free clinic, and I’ve no doubt he would take you in if I
+asked him to.”
+
+“YOU ask him?” echoed the other, looking at George in surprise.
+
+The young man felt somewhat uncomfortable. He was not used to playing
+the role of the good Samaritan. “I--I need not tell him about us,” he
+stammered. “I could just say that I met you. I have had such a wretched
+time myself, I feel sorry for anybody that’s in the same plight. I
+should like to help you if I could.”
+
+The girl sat staring before her, lost in thought. “I have treated you
+badly, I guess,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m ashamed of myself.”
+
+George took a pencil and paper from his pocket and wrote the doctor’s
+address. “Here it is,” he said, in a business-like way, because he felt
+that otherwise he could become sentimental. He was half tempted to tell
+the woman what had happened to him, and all about Henriette and the
+sick child; but he realized that that would not do. So he rose and shook
+hands with her and left.
+
+The next time he saw the doctor he told him about this girl. He decided
+to tell him the truth--having already made so many mistakes trying
+to conceal things. The doctor agreed to treat the woman, making the
+condition that George promise not to see her again.
+
+The young man was rather shocked at this. “Doctor,” he exclaimed, “I
+assure you you are mistaken. The thing you have in mind would be utterly
+impossible.”
+
+“I know,” said the other, “you think so. But I think, young man, that
+I know more about life than you do. When a man and a woman have once
+committed such a sin, it is easy for them to slip back. The less time
+they spend talking about their misfortunes, and being generous and
+forbearing to each other, the better for them both.”
+
+“But, Doctor,” cried George. “I love Henriette! I could not possibly
+love anyone else. It would be horrible to me!”
+
+“Yes,” said the doctor. “But you are not living with Henriette. You are
+wandering round, not knowing what to do with yourself next.”
+
+There was no need for anybody to tell George that. “What do you think?”
+ he asked abruptly. “Is there any hope for me?”
+
+“I think there is,” said the other, who, in spite of his resolution, had
+become a sort of ambassador for the unhappy husband. He had to go to
+the Loches house to attend the child, and so he could not help seeing
+Henriette, and talking to her about the child’s health and her own
+future. He considered that George had had his lesson, and urged upon the
+young wife that he would be wiser in future, and safe to trust.
+
+George had indeed learned much. He got new lessons every time he went to
+call at the physician’s office--he could read them in the faces of the
+people he saw there. One day when he was alone in the waiting-room, the
+doctor came out of his inner office, talking to an elderly gentleman,
+whom George recognized as the father of one of his classmates at
+college. The father was a little shopkeeper, and the young man
+remembered how pathetically proud he had been of his son. Could it be,
+thought George, that this old man was a victim of syphilis?
+
+But it was the son, and not the father, who was the subject of the
+consultation. The old man was speaking in a deeply moved voice, and he
+stood so that George could not help hearing what he said. “Perhaps you
+can’t understand,” he said, “just what it means to us--the hopes we had
+of that boy! Such a fine fellow he was, and a good fellow, too, sir! We
+were so proud of him; we had bled our veins to keep him in college--and
+now just see!”
+
+“Don’t despair, sir,” said the doctor, “we’ll try to cure him.” And he
+added with that same note of sorrow in his voice which George had heard,
+“Why did you wait so long before you brought the boy to me?”
+
+“How was I to know what he had?” cried the other. “He didn’t dare tell
+me, sir--he was afraid of my scolding him. And in the meantime the
+disease was running its course. When he realized that he had it, he went
+secretly to one of the quacks, who robbed him, and didn’t cure him. You
+know how it is, sir.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” said the doctor.
+
+“Such things ought not to be permitted,” cried the old man. “What is
+our government about that it allows such things to go on? Take the
+conditions there at the college where my poor boy was ruined. At the
+very gates of the building these women are waiting for the lads! Ought
+they to be permitted to debauch young boys only fifteen years old?
+Haven’t we got police enough to prevent a thing like that? Tell me,
+sir!”
+
+“One would think so,” said the doctor, patiently.
+
+“But is it that the police don’t want to?”
+
+“No doubt they have the same excuse as all the rest--they don’t know.
+Take courage, sir; we have cured worse cases than your son’s. And some
+day, perhaps, we shall be able to change these conditions.”
+
+So he went on with the man, leaving George with something to think
+about. How much he could have told them about what had happened to that
+young fellow when only fifteen years old! It had not been altogether the
+fault of the women who were lurking outside of the college gates; it was
+a fact that the boy’s classmates had teased him and ridiculed him, had
+literally made his life a torment, until he had yielded to temptation.
+
+It was the old, old story of ignorant and unguided schoolboys all over
+the world! They thought that to be chaste was to be weak and foolish;
+that a fellow was not a man unless he led a life of debauchery like the
+rest. And what did they know about these dreadful diseases? They had the
+most horrible superstitions--ideas of cures so loathsome that they could
+not be set down in print; ideas as ignorant and destructive as those
+of savages in the heart of Africa. And you might hear them laughing
+and jesting about one another’s condition. They might be afflicted with
+diseases which would have the most terrible after-effects upon their
+whole lives and upon their families--diseases which cause tens of
+thousands of surgical operations upon women, and a large percentage of
+blindness and idiocy in children--and you might hear them confidently
+express the opinion that these diseases were no worse than a bad cold!
+
+And all this mass of misery and ignorance covered over and clamped
+down by a taboo of silence, imposed by the horrible superstition of
+sex-prudery! George went out from the doctor’s office trembling with
+excitement over this situation. Oh, why had not some one warned him in
+time? Why didn’t the doctors and the teachers lift up their voices and
+tell young men about these frightful dangers? He wanted to go out in
+the highways and preach it himself--except that he dared not, because he
+could not explain to the world his own sudden interest in this forbidden
+topic.
+
+These was only one person he dared to talk to: that was his mother--to
+whom he ought to have talked many, many years before. He was moved to
+mention to her the interview he had overheard in the doctor’s office. In
+a sudden burst of grief he told her of his struggles and temptations; he
+pleaded with her to go to Henriette once more--to tell her these things,
+and try to make her realize that he alone was not to blame for them,
+that they were a condition which prevailed everywhere, that the only
+difference between her husband and other men was that he had had the
+misfortune to be caught.
+
+There was pressure being applied to Henriette from several sides. After
+all, what could she do? She was comfortable in her father’s home, so far
+as the physical side of things went; but she knew that all her friends
+were gossiping and speculating about her separation from her husband,
+and sooner or later she would have to make up her mind, either to
+separate permanently from George or to return to him. There was not much
+happiness for her in the thought of getting a divorce from a man whom
+deep in her heart she loved. She would be practically a widow the rest
+of her life, and the home in which poor little Gervaise would be brought
+up would not be a cheerful one.
+
+George was ready to offer any terms, if only she would come back to his
+home. They might live separate lives for as long as Henriette wished.
+They would have no more children until the doctor declared it was quite
+safe; and in the meantime he would be humble and patient, and would try
+his best to atone for the wrong that he had done her.
+
+To these arguments Madame Dupont added others of her own. She told the
+girl some things which through bitter experience she had learned about
+the nature and habits of men; things that should be told to every girl
+before marriage, but which almost all of them are left to find out
+afterwards, with terrible suffering and disillusionment. Whatever
+George’s sins may have been, he was a man who had been chastened by
+suffering, and would know how to value a woman’s love for the rest of
+his life. Not all men knew that--not even those who had been fortunate
+in escaping from the so-called “shameful disease.”
+
+Henriette was also hearing arguments from her father, who by this time
+had had time to think things over, and had come to the conclusion
+that the doctor was right. He had noted his son-in-law’s patience and
+penitence, and had also made sure that in spite of everything Henriette
+still loved him. The baby apparently was doing well; and the Frenchman,
+with his strong sense of family ties, felt it a serious matter to
+separate a child permanently from its father. So in the end he cast
+the weight of his influence in favor of a reconciliation, and Henriette
+returned to her husband, upon terms which the doctor laid down.
+
+The doctor played in these negotiations the part which he had not been
+allowed to play in the marriage. For the deputy was now thoroughly awake
+to the importance of the duty he owed his daughter. In fact, he had
+become somewhat of a “crank” upon the whole subject. He had attended
+several of the doctor’s clinics, and had read books and pamphlets on the
+subject of syphilis, and was now determined that there should be some
+practical steps towards reform.
+
+At the outset, he had taken the attitude of the average legislator, that
+the thing to do was to strengthen the laws against prostitution, and to
+enforce them more strictly. He echoed the cry of the old man whom George
+had heard in the doctor’s office: “Are there not enough police?”
+
+“We must go to the source,” he declared. “We must proceed against these
+miserable women--veritable poisoners that they are!”
+
+He really thought this was going to the source! But the doctor was quick
+to answer his arguments. “Poisoners?” he said. “You forget that they
+have first been poisoned. Every one of these women who communicates the
+disease has first received it from some man.”
+
+Monsieur Loches advanced to his second idea, to punish the men. But the
+doctor had little interest in this idea either. He had seen it tried so
+many times--such a law could never be enforced. What must come first was
+education, and by this means a modification of morals. People must cease
+to treat syphilis as a mysterious evil, of which not even the name could
+be pronounced.
+
+“But,” objected the other, “one cannot lay it bare to children in our
+educational institutions!”
+
+“Why not?” asked the doctor.
+
+“Because, sir, there are curiosities which it would be imprudent to
+awaken.”
+
+The doctor became much excited whenever he heard this argument. “You
+believe that you are preventing these curiosities from awakening?”
+ he demanded. “I appeal to those--both men and women--who have passed
+through colleges and boarding schools! Such curiosities cannot be
+smothered, and they satisfy themselves as best they can, basely,
+vilely. I tell you, sir, there is nothing immoral about the act which
+perpetuates life by means of love. But we organize around it, so far as
+concerns our children, a gigantic and rigorous conspiracy of silence.
+The worthy citizen takes his daughter and his son to popular musical
+comedies, where they listen to things which would make a monkey blush;
+but it is forbidden to discuss seriously before the young that act
+of love which people seem to think they should only know of through
+blasphemies and profanations! Either that act is a thing of which
+people can speak without blushing--or else, sir, it is a matter for
+the innuendoes of the cabaret and the witticisms of the messroom!
+Pornography is admitted, but science is not! I tell you, sir, that is
+the thing which must be changed! We must elevate the soul of the young
+man by taking these facts out of the realm of mystery and of slang. We
+must awaken in him a pride in that creative power with which each one of
+us is endowed. We must make him understand that he is a sort of temple
+in which is prepared the future of the race, and we must teach him that
+he must transmit, intact, the heritage entrusted to him--the precious
+heritage which has been built out of the tears and miseries and
+sufferings of an interminable line of ancestors!”
+
+So the doctor argued. He brought forth case after case to prove that the
+prostitute was what she was, not because of innate vileness, but because
+of economic conditions. It happened that the deputy came to one of the
+clinics where he met Therese. The doctor brought her into his consulting
+room, after telling her that the imposing-looking gentleman was a friend
+of the director of the opera, and might be able to recommend her for
+a position on the stage to which she aspired. “Tell him all about
+yourself,” he said, “how you live, and what you do, and what you would
+like to do. You will get him interested in you.”
+
+So the poor girl retold the story of her life. She spoke in a
+matter-of-fact voice, and when she came to tell how she had been obliged
+to leave her baby in the foundling asylum, she was surprised that
+Monsieur Loches showed horror. “What could I do?” she demanded. “How
+could I have taken care of it?”
+
+“Didn’t you ever miss it?” he asked.
+
+“Of course I missed it. But what difference did that make? It would have
+died of hunger with me.”
+
+“Still,” he said, “it was your child--”
+
+“It was the father’s child, too, wasn’t it? Much attention he paid to
+it! If I had been sure of getting money enough, I would have put it out
+to nurse. But with the twenty-five or thirty francs a month I could have
+earned as a servant, could I have paid for a baby? That’s the situation
+a girl faces--so long as I wanted to remain honest, it was impossible
+for me to keep my child. You answer, perhaps, ‘You didn’t stay honest
+anyway.’ That’s true. But then--when you are hungry, and a nice young
+fellow offers you dinner, you’d have to be made of wood to refuse him.
+Of course, if I had had a trade--but I didn’t have any. So I went on the
+street--You know how it is.”
+
+“Tell us about it,” said the doctor. “This gentleman is from the
+country.”
+
+“Is that so?” said the girl. “I never supposed there was anyone who
+didn’t know about such things. Well, I took the part of a little
+working-girl. A very simple dress--things I had made especially for
+that--a little bundle in a black napkin carried in my hand--so I walked
+along where the shops are. It’s tiresome, because to do it right, you
+have to patter along fast. Then I stop before a shop, and nine times out
+of ten, there you are! A funny thing is that the men--you’d imagine
+they had agreed on the words to approach you with. They have only two
+phrases; they never vary them. It’s either, ‘You are going fast, little
+one.’ Or it’s, ‘Aren’t you afraid all alone?’ One thing or the other.
+One knows pretty well what they mean. Isn’t it so?” The girl paused,
+then went on. “Again, I would get myself up as a young widow. There,
+too, one has to walk fast: I don’t know why that should be so, but it
+is. After a minute or two of conversation, they generally find out that
+I am not a young widow, but that doesn’t make any difference--they go on
+just the same.”
+
+“Who are the men?” asked the deputy. “Clerks? Traveling salesmen?”
+
+“Not much,” she responded. “I keep a lookout for gentlemen--like
+yourself.”
+
+“They SAY they are gentlemen,” he suggested.
+
+“Sometimes I can see it,” was the response. “Sometimes they wear orders.
+It’s funny--if they have on a ribbon when you first notice them, they
+follow you, and presto--the ribbon is gone! I always laugh over that.
+I’ve watched them in the glass of the shop windows. They try to look
+unconcerned, but as they walk along they snap out the ribbon with their
+thumb--as one shells little peas, you know.”
+
+She paused; then, as no one joined in her laugh, she continued, “Well,
+at last the police got after me, That’s a story that I’ve never been
+able to understand. Those filthy men gave me a nasty disease, and then I
+was to be shut in prison for it! That was a little too much, it seems to
+me.”
+
+“Well,” said the doctor, grimly, “you revenged yourself on them--from
+what you have told me.”
+
+The other laughed. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I had my innings.” She turned
+to Monsieur Loches. “You want me to tell you that? Well, just on the
+very day I learned that the police were after me, I was coming home
+furious, naturally. It was on the Boulevard St. Denis, if you know the
+place--and whom do you think I met? My old master--the one who got me
+into trouble, you know. There it was, God’s own will! I said to myself,
+‘Now, my good fellow, here’s the time where you pay me what you owe me,
+and with interest, too!’ I put on a little smile--oh, it didn’t take
+very long, you may be sure!”
+
+The woman paused; her face darkened, and she went on, in a voice
+trembling with agitation: “When I had left him, I was seized with a
+rage. A sort of madness got into my blood. I took on all the men who
+offered themselves, for whatever they offered me, for nothing, if they
+didn’t offer me anything. I took as many as I could, the youngest ones
+and the handsomest ones. Just so! I only gave them back what they had
+given to me. And since that time I haven’t really cared about anyone any
+more. I just turned it all into a joke.” She paused, and then looking
+at the deputy, and reading in his face the horror with which he was
+regarding her, “Oh, I am not the only one!” she exclaimed. “There
+are lots of other women who do the same. To be sure, it is not for
+vengeance--it is because they must have something to eat. For even if
+you have syphilis, you have to eat, don’t you? Eh?”
+
+She had turned to the doctor, but he did not answer. There was a long
+silence; and then thinking that his friend, the deputy, had heard enough
+for one session, the doctor rose. He dismissed the woman, the cause of
+all George Dupont’s misfortunes, and turning to Monsieur Loches, said:
+“It was on purpose that I brought that wretched prostitute before
+you. In her the whole story is summed up--not merely the story of your
+son-in-law, but that of all the victims of the red plague. That woman
+herself is a victim, and she is a symbol of the evil which we have
+created and which falls upon our own heads again. I could add nothing to
+her story, I only ask you, Monsieur Loches--when next you are proposing
+new laws in the Chamber of Deputies, not to forget the horrors which
+that poor woman has exposed to you!”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s Damaged Goods, by Upton Sinclair and Eugene Brieux
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1157 ***