ACT III
The doctor’s room in the hospital where he is chief physician. The doctor enters with a medical student, both in their hospital clothes, and takes off his apron while talking.
DOCTOR. By the way, my dear fellow, is the gentleman we passed in the passage waiting for you?
STUDENT. No, not for me.
DOCTOR. Then it’s my deputy. Do you know this name? Where did I put his card? [He looks on his desk] Ah, here. ‘Loches, deputy for Sarthes’?
STUDENT. That’s the famous Loches.
DOCTOR. Ah, yes, deputy for Sarthes. A regular orator, isn’t he?
STUDENT. Tremendous, I believe.
DOCTOR. That’s the man we want then. He busies himself a great deal with social questions?
STUDENT. Just so.
DOCTOR. I suppose he wants to start an agitation in the Chamber in favor of the laws for which we have been clamoring so long. No doubt he means to post himself up first. This is what he writes: ‘Loches, deputy for Sarthes, presents his compliments’ etc.... would be much obliged if I would see him to-morrow, Sunday: not for a consultation.
STUDENT. It’s very likely he has some idea of the sort.
DOCTOR. Now that I have a deputy I will post him up, I can assure you. That’s why I have had the case from St. Charles’ ward and number 28 brought here.
STUDENT. Shall you want me?
DOCTOR. Not at all, my dear fellow. Good-bye.
STUDENT. Good-bye, sir.
DOCTOR [calling to the other as he goes out] Would you mind telling them to show in M. Loches? Thanks very much. Good-bye.
The student goes out.
Loches enters and bows. The doctor motions him to be seated.
LOCHES. I must thank you for being so kind as to receive me out of your regular hours. The business that brings me here is peculiarly distressing. I am the father-in-law of M. George Dupont. After the terrible revelation of yesterday, my daughter has returned to me with her child and I have come to ask you to be so good as to continue attending on the infant, but at my house.
DOCTOR. Very good.
LOCHES. Thank you. Now, as to the scoundrel who is the cause of all these misfortunes.
DOCTOR [very gently] You must excuse me, but that is a subject on which I cannot enter. My functions are only those of a physician.
LOCHES [in a thick voice] I ask your pardon, but I think when you have heard me for a moment, you will agree with me. I shall not trouble you with the plans of vengeance I formed yesterday, when my poor daughter fled to me with her child in her arms after the revelation that you know. You will excuse me if I speak to you in this state—oh, I can scarcely contain my indignation! I had intended to talk of this calmly: but when I think of that man and of his infamous conduct—the brutal, cowardly blow he has struck at me and mine—I cannot control myself—I, I—. It is abominable! My daughter! A girl of twenty-two! Twenty-two!
A silence.
DOCTOR. I understand and respect your feelings; but, believe me, you are not in a fit state to form any decision at this moment.
LOCHES [with an effort] Yes, yes: I will command myself. All last night I spent in profound reflection, and after rejecting the ideas I mentioned, this is the conclusion to which I have come in conjunction with my daughter: we desire to obtain a divorce as soon as possible. Consequently I have come to ask you for the certificate which will be the basis of our action.
DOCTOR. What certificate?
LOCHES. A certificate attesting the nature of the disease which this man has contracted.
DOCTOR. I regret that I am unable to furnish you with such a certificate.
LOCHES. How is that?
DOCTOR. The rule of professional secrecy is absolute.
LOCHES. It is impossible that it should be your duty to take sides with a criminal against his innocent victims.
DOCTOR. To avoid all discussion, I may add that even were I free, I should refuse your request.
LOCHES. May I ask why?
DOCTOR. I should regret having helped you to obtain a divorce.
LOCHES. Then just because you hold this or that theory, because your profession has rendered you sceptical or insensible to the sight of misery like ours, my daughter must bear this man’s name to the end of her life!
DOCTOR. It would be in your daughter’s own interest that I should refuse.
LOCHES. Indeed! You have a strange conception of her interest.
DOCTOR [very gently] In your present state of excitement you will probably begin to abuse me before five minutes are over. That will not disturb a man of my experience, but you see why I refused to discuss these subjects. However, since I have let myself in for it, I may as well explain my position. You ask me for a certificate in order to prove to the court that your son-in-law has contracted syphilis?
LOCHES. Yes.
DOCTOR. You do not consider that in doing so you will publicly acknowledge that your daughter has been exposed to the infection. The statement will be officially registered in the papers of the case. Do you suppose that after that your daughter is likely to find a second husband?
LOCHES. She will never marry again.
DOCTOR. She says so now. Can you be sure that she will say so in five or in ten years time? Besides, you will not obtain a divorce, because I shall not furnish you with the necessary proof.
LOCHES. I shall find other ways to establish it. I shall have the child examined by another doctor.
DOCTOR. Indeed! You think that this poor little thing has not been unlucky enough in her start in life? She has been blighted physically: you wish besides to stamp her indelibly with the legal proof of congenital syphilis?
LOCHES. So when the victims seek to defend themselves they are struck still lower! So the law provides no arms against the man who takes an innocent, confiding young girl in sound health, knowingly befouls her with the heritage of his debauchery, and makes her mother of a wretched mite whose future is such that those who love it most do not know whether they had better pray for its life or for its immediate deliverance! This man has inflicted on his wife the supreme insult, the most odious degradation. He has, as it were, thrust her into contact with the streetwalker with whose vice he is stained, and created between her and that common thing a bond of blood to poison herself and her child. Thanks to him, this abject creature, this prostitute, lives our life, makes one of our family, sits down with us at table. He has smirched my daughter’s imagination as he has tarnished her body, and bound up for ever in her mind the ideal of love that she placed so high with heaven knows what horrors of the hospital. He has struck her physically and morally, in her dignity and her modesty, in her love and in her child. He has hurled her into the depths of shame. And the state of law and opinion is such that this woman cannot be separated from this man save at the cost of a scandal which will overwhelm herself and her child. Very well, then, I shall not ask the aid of the law. Last night I wondered if it was not my duty to go and shoot down that brute like a mad dog. It was cowardice that prevented me. Weakly I proposed to invoke the law. Well, since the law will not do justice, I will take it into my own hands. Perhaps his death will serve as a warning to others.
DOCTOR [putting aside his hat] You will be tried for your life.
LOCHES. And I shall be acquitted.
DOCTOR. Yes; but after the public narration of all your troubles. The scandal and the misfortune will be so much the greater, that is all. And how do you know that the day after your acquittal you will not find yourself before another and less lenient judge? When your daughter, realizing that you have rendered her unhappiness irreparable, and seized with pity for your victim, demands by what right you have killed the father of her child, what will you say? What will you say when that child one day asks the same question?
LOCHES [speaking before the other has done] Then what can I do?
DOCTOR [immediately] Forgive.
A silence.
LOCHES [without energy] Never.
DOCTOR. Are you quite sure that you have the right to be so inflexible? Was it not within your power at a certain moment to spare your daughter the possibility of this misery?
LOCHES. Within my power! Do you imply that I am responsible?
DOCTOR. Yes; I do. When the marriage was proposed you doubtless made enquiries concerning your future son-in-law’s income; you investigated his securities; you satisfied yourself as to his character. You only omitted one point, but it was the most important of all: you made no enquiries concerning his health.
LOCHES. No.
DOCTOR. And why?
LOCHES. Because it is not the custom.
DOCTOR. Well, it ought to be made the custom. Before giving his daughter in marriage a father ought to take as much care with regard to her husband as a house of business takes in engaging an employee.
LOCHES. You are right, a law should be passed.
DOCTOR. No, no. We want no new laws: there are too many already. All that is needed is for people to understand the nature of this disease rather better. It would soon become the custom for a man who proposed for a girl’s hand to add to the other things for which he is asked a medical statement of bodily fitness, which would make it certain that he did not bring this plague into the family with him. It would be perfectly simple. Once it was the custom, the man would go to his doctor for a certificate of health before he could sign the register, just as now, before he can be married in church, he goes to his priest for a certificate that he has confessed. As things are, before a marriage is concluded the family lawyers meet to discuss matters: a meeting between the two doctors would be at least as useful and would prevent many misfortunes. Your enquiry, you see, was incomplete. Your daughter might well ask you, who are a man and a father, and ought to know these things, why you did not take as much trouble about her health as about her fortune. I tell you that you must forgive.
LOCHES. Never.
DOCTOR. Well: there is one last argument which, since I must, I will put to you. Are you yourself without sin, that you are so relentless to others?
LOCHES. I have never had any shameful disease, sir!
DOCTOR. I was not asking you that. I was asking you if you had never exposed yourself to catching one. [He pauses. Loches does not reply] Ah, you see! Then it is not virtue that has saved you: it is luck. Few things exasperate me more than that term ‘shameful disease,’ which you used just now. This disease is like all other diseases: it is one of our afflictions. There is no shame in being wretched—even if one deserves to be so. [Hotly] Come, come: let us have a little plain speaking! I should like to know how many of these rigid moralists, who are so choked with their middle-class prudery that they dare not mention the name syphilis, or when they bring themselves to speak of it do so with expressions of every sort of disgust, and treat its victims as criminals, have never run the risk of contracting it themselves. It is those alone who have the right to talk. How many do you think there are? Four out of a thousand? Well, leave those four aside; between all the rest and those who catch the disease there is no difference but chance. [Bursting out] And by heavens, those who escape won’t get much sympathy from me: the others at least have paid their fine of suffering and remorse, while they have gone scot-free! [Recovering himself] Let’s have done, if you please, once for all with this sort of hypocrisy. Your son-in-law, like yourself and like the immense majority of men, has had mistresses before he married. He has had the ill-luck to catch syphilis, and married supposing that the disease was no longer dangerous when in fact it still was. It is a misfortune that we must do our best to remedy, and not to aggravate. Perhaps in your youth you deserved what he has got even more than he; at any rate your position towards him is as that of the culprit who has escaped punishment towards his less fortunate comrade. That is a reflection that should, I think, touch you.
LOCHES. You put it in such a way—
DOCTOR. Am I not right?
LOCHES. Perhaps: but I can’t tell my daughter all this to persuade her to return to her husband.
DOCTOR. There are other arguments that you can use.
LOCHES. What, then, good heavens?
DOCTOR. Any number. You can tell her that a separation will be a calamity for all parties and that her husband is the only person interested in helping her at any price to save her child. You can tell her that out of the ruins of her first happiness she can construct a life of solid affection that will have every chance of being lasting and most sincerely enviable. There is much truth in the saying that reformed rakes make the best husbands. Take your son-in-law. If your daughter consents to forgive and forget, he will not only respect her; he will be eternally grateful. You can tell her all this and you will find much else to say besides. As for the future, we will make sure that when they are re-united their next child shall be healthy and vigorous.
LOCHES. Is that possible?
DOCTOR. Yes, yes! A thousand times yes. I have one thing that I always tell my patients: if I could I would paste it up at every street corner. ‘Syphilis is like a woman whose temper is roused by the feeling that her power is disdained. It is terrible only to those who think it insignificant, not to those who know its dangers.’ Repeat that to your daughter. Give her back to her husband—she has nothing more to fear from him—and in two years time I guarantee that you will be a happy grand-father.
LOCHES. Thank you, doctor. I do not know if I can ever forget. But you have made me so uneasy on the score of these responsibilities that I have ignored and given me back so much hope, that I will promise you to do nothing rash. If my poor child can, after a time bring herself to forgive her husband, I shall not stand in the way.
DOCTOR. Good! But if you have another daughter, take care not to make the same mistake that you made over the marriage of your first.
LOCHES. How was I to know?
DOCTOR. Ah, there it is. You didn’t know! You are a father and you didn’t know! You are a deputy and have the honor and the burden of making laws for us, and you didn’t know! You didn’t know about syphilis, just as you probably do not know about alcoholism and tuberculosis.
LOCHES. Really, I—
DOCTOR. Well, if you like I will except you. But there are five hundred others, are there not, who sit in the Chamber and style themselves Representatives of the people? Here are the three unspeakable gods to whom every day thousands of human sacrifices are offered up. What single hour do your colleagues find for the organization of our forces against these insatiable monsters? Take alcoholism. The manufacture of poisonous liquors should be prohibited and the number of licences cut down. But we are afraid of the power of the great distillers and of the voting strength of the trade: consequently we deplore the immorality of the working classes and quiet our conscience by writing pamphlets and preaching sermons. Pah! Then take tuberculosis: everyone knows that the real remedy is to pay sufficient wages and have insanitary workmen’s dwellings knocked down. But no one will do it, although the working class is the most useful we have as well as the worst rewarded. Instead, workmen are recommended not to spit. Admirable, isn’t it? Finally, syphilis. Why do you not concern yourselves with that? You create offices of state for all sorts of things: why do you not one day set about creating an office of public health?
LOCHES. My dear doctor, you are falling into the common French mistake of attributing all the ills in the world to the government. In this case it is for you to shew us the way. These are matters for scientific experts. You must begin by pointing out the necessary measures, and then—
DOCTOR. And then,—what? Ha! It is fifteen years since a scheme of this kind, worked out and approved unanimously by the Academy of Medicine, was submitted to the proper authorities. Since that day it has never been heard of again.
LOCHES. Then you think that there really are measures to be taken?
DOCTOR. You shall answer that question yourself. I must tell you that when I received your card yesterday I imagined that it was in your public capacity that you were about to interest yourself in these matters. Consequently, after naming the hour of your visit, I told off two of my hospital patients to show to you. You need not be alarmed, I shall not shock your nerves. To outward appearance they have nothing the matter with them. They are not bad cases; they are simply the damaged goods of our great human cargo. I merely wished to give you food for reflection, not a lesson in pathology. You came on another matter. So much the worse for you. I have you and I shall not let you go. [A slight pause]. I will ask you, therefore, to raise your mind above your personal sorrow and to conceive in the mass the thousands of beings who suffer from similar causes. Thousands, mark you, from every rank of society. The disease jumps from the hovel into the home, frequently with few intermediate steps; so that to cleanse the gutter, where preventive measures can be taken, means practically to safeguard the family life. Our greatest enemy of all, as you shall see for yourself, is ignorance. Ignorance, I repeat. The refrain is always the same: ‘I didn’t know.’ Patients, whom we might have saved had they come in time, come too late, in a desperate condition, and after having spread the evil far and wide. And why? ‘I didn’t know.’ [Going towards the door] What can we do? We can’t hunt them out from the highways and hedges. [To a woman in the passage] Come in, please. [The woman enters. She is of the working class. The doctor turns again to Loches] Here is a case. This woman is very seriously ill. I have told her so, and I told her to come here once a week. [To the woman] Is that so?
WOMAN. Yes, sir.
DOCTOR [angrily] And how long is it since you came last?
WOMAN. Three months.
DOCTOR. Three months! How do you suppose I can cure you like that? It is hopeless, do you hear, hopeless! Well, why didn’t you come? Don’t you know that you have a very serious disease?
WOMAN. Oh yes, sir. I know it is. My husband died of it.
DOCTOR [more gently] Your husband died of it?
WOMAN. Yes, sir.
DOCTOR. Did he not go to the doctor?
WOMAN. No, sir.
DOCTOR. And isn’t that a warning to you?
WOMAN. Oh sir, I’d come as often as you told me to, only I can’t afford it.
DOCTOR. How do you mean, you can’t afford it?
LOCHES. The consultations are gratis, are they not?
WOMAN. Yes, sir. But they’re during working hours, and then, it’s a long way to come. One has to wait one’s turn with all the others and sometimes it takes the best part of the day, and I’m afraid of losing my place if I stop away so much. So I wait till I can’t help coming again. And then—
DOCTOR. Well?
WOMAN. Oh, it’s nothing, sir. You’re too kind to me.
DOCTOR. Go on, go on.
WOMAN. I know I oughtn’t to mind, but I haven’t always been so poor. We were well off before my husband fell ill, and I’ve always lived by my own work. It’s not as it is for a woman who hasn’t any self-respect. I know it’s wrong, but having to wait like that with everyone else and to tell all about myself before everyone—I know I’m wrong, but it’s hard all the same, it’s very hard.
DOCTOR. Poor woman. [A pause. Then very gently] So it was from your husband that you caught this disease?
WOMAN. Yes, sir. We used to live in the country and then my husband caught it and went half mad. He didn’t know what he was doing, and used to order all kinds of things we couldn’t pay for.
DOCTOR. Why did he not get himself looked after?
WOMAN. He didn’t know. We were sold up and came to Paris: we hadn’t any more money. Then he went to the hospital.
DOCTOR. Well?
WOMAN. He got looked after there, but they wouldn’t give him any medicines.
DOCTOR. How was that?
WOMAN. Because we had only been three months in Paris. They only give you the medicines free if you have lived here six months.
LOCHES. Is that so?
DOCTOR. Yes, that is the rule.
WOMAN. You see it isn’t our fault.
DOCTOR. You have no children, have you?
WOMAN. I couldn’t ever bring one to birth, sir. My husband was taken at the very beginning of our marriage, while he was doing his time as a reservist. There are women that hang about the barracks.
A silence.
DOCTOR. Ah! Well, this is my private address; you come to see me there every Sunday morning. [At the door he slips a piece of money into her hand. Roughly] There, just take that and run along. What’s that? Tut, tut! Nonsense! Nonsense! I haven’t time to listen to you. Run along, now. [He pushes her out. To someone who is invisible to the audience] What can I do for you?
MAN [outside] I am the father of the young man you saw this morning. I asked leave to speak to you after the consultation was over.
DOCTOR. Ah yes, just so, I recognize you. Your son is at college, isn’t he?
MAN [in the doorway] Yes, sir.
DOCTOR. Come in, come in. You can talk before this gentleman.
MAN [entering] You know, sir, the disaster that has befallen us. My son is eighteen; as the result of this disease he is half paralyzed. We are small tradespeople; we have regularly bled ourselves in order to send him to college, and now—! I only wish the same thing mayn’t happen to others. It was at the very college gates that my poor boy was got hold of by one of these women. Is it right, sir, that that should be allowed? Aren’t there enough police to prevent children of fifteen from being seduced like that? I ask, is it right?
DOCTOR. No.
MAN. Why don’t they stop it, then?
DOCTOR. I don’t know.
MAN. Look at my son. He’d be better in his grave. He was such a fine, good looking chap. We were that proud of him.
DOCTOR. Never despair. We’ll do our best to cure him. [Sadly] But why did you wait so long before bringing him to me?
MAN. How was I to know what he had? He was afraid to tell me, so he let the thing go on. Then when he felt he was really bad with it, he went, without letting me know, to quacks, who robbed him without curing him. Ah, that, too, is that right? What’s the government about that it allows that? Isn’t that more important than what they spend their time over?
DOCTOR. You are right. Their only excuse is that they do not know. You must take courage. We have cured worse cases than your son’s. As for the others, perhaps some day they will have a little attention paid them. [He goes with the man to the door. Turning to Loches] You see, the true remedy lies in a change of our ways. Syphilis must cease to be treated like a mysterious evil the very name of which cannot be pronounced. The ignorance in which the public is kept of the real nature and of the consequences of this disease helps to aggravate and to spread it. Generally it is contracted because ‘I didn’t know’; it becomes dangerous for want of proper care because ’I didn’t know’; it is passed on from person to person because ‘I didn’t know.’ People ought to know. Young men ought to be taught the responsibilities they assume and the misfortunes they may bring on themselves.
LOCHES. At the same time these things cannot be taught to children at school.
DOCTOR. Why not, pray?
LOCHES. There are curiosities which it would be imprudent to arouse.
DOCTOR [hotly] So you think that by ignoring those curiosities you stifle them? Why, every boy and girl who who has been to a boarding school or through college knows you do not! So far from stifling them, you drive them to satisfy themselves in secret by any vile means they can. There is nothing immoral in the act that reproduces life by the means of love. But for the benefit of our children we organize round about it a gigantic conspiracy of silence. A respectable man will take his son and daughter to one of these grand music halls, where they will hear things of the most loathsome description; but he won’t let them hear a word spoken seriously on the subject of the great act of love. No, no! Not a word about that without blushing: only, as many barrack room jokes, as many of the foulest music hall suggestions as you like! Pornography, as much as you please: science, never! That is what we ought to change. The mystery and humbug in which physical facts are enveloped ought to be swept away and young men be given some pride in the creative power with which each one of us is endowed. They ought to be made to understand that the future of the race is in their hands and to be taught to transmit the great heritage they have received from their ancestors intact with all its possibilities to their descendants.
LOCHES. Ah, but we should go beyond that! I realize now that what is needed is to attack this evil at its source and to suppress prostitution. We ought to hound out these vile women who poison the very life of society.
DOCTOR. You forget that they themselves have first been poisoned. I am going to show you one of them. I warn you, not that it matters much, that she won’t express herself like a duchess. I can make her talk by playing on her vanity; she wants to be a ballet-dancer.
He opens the door and admits a pretty girl of some twenty years: she is very gay and cheerful.
DOCTOR. Getting on all right? [Without waiting for an answer] You still want to go on the stage, don’t you?
GIRL. Rather.
DOCTOR. Well, this gentleman’s a friend of the manager of the opera. He can give you a line to him, will that do?
GIRL. Why, of course. But if they want a character, I’m done, you know.
DOCTOR. They won’t. You just tell the gentleman about yourself, what you want to do and what you’ve done. Talk to him a bit.
GIRL. My parents were people of good position. They sent me to a boarding school—
DOCTOR [interrupting] You needn’t tell him all that; he won’t believe a word of it.
GIRL. Eh? Well, but if I tell him the truth, it’s all up with me.
DOCTOR. No, no; he won’t mind. Now then, you came to Paris—
GIRL. Yes.
DOCTOR. You got a place as maid-servant?
GIRL. Well, yes.
DOCTOR. How old were you then?
GIRL. Why, I was turned seventeen.
DOCTOR. And then you had a baby?
GIRL [astonished at the question] Of course I did, next year.
DOCTOR. Well, who was its father?
GIRL [treating it as a matter of course] Why, it was my master, of course.
DOCTOR. Go on, go on. Tell us about it. Your mistress found out. What happened then?
GIRL [in the same tone] She sent me packing. I’d have done the same, if I’d been her.
DOCTOR. Go on, what are you stopping for? Talk away. The gentleman’s from the country; he doesn’t understand about these things.
GIRL [gaily] Right oh! I’ll tell you all about it. One night the boss comes up to my room in his socks and says: ’If you shriek out, off you go!’ Then—
DOCTOR. No, no. Begin after you lost your place.
GIRL. All right, if you think he’ll think it funny.
DOCTOR. Never mind that. Say what you’re doing now.
GIRL. Why, I come here every day.
DOCTOR. But before you come here?
GIRL. Oh, I do my five hours on the streets.
DOCTOR. Well, how’s that? The gentleman’s from the country, I tell you. He wants to know. Go on.
GIRL. There now, I wouldn’t have thought there was anyone didn’t know that. Why, I rig myself out as a work-girl, with a little bag on my arm—they make togs special for that, y’ know—and then I trot along by the shop windows. Pretty hard work, too, ‘cause to do it real well you have to walk fast. Then I stops in front of some shop or other. Nine times out of ten that does the trick. It just makes me laugh, I tell you, but you’d think all the men had learnt what to say out of a book. There’s only two things they say, that’s all. It’s either: ‘You walk very fast’ or else: ‘Aren’t you afraid, all alone?’ One knows what that means, eh? Or else I do the ‘young widow’ fake. You’ve got to go a bit fast like that, too. I don’t know why, but it makes ’em catch on. They find out precious soon I’m not a young widow, but that doesn’t make any odds. [Seriously] There’re things like that I don’t understand.
DOCTOR. What sort are they, then? Shopwalkers, commercial travellers?
GIRL. I like that! Why, I only take real gentlemen.
DOCTOR. They say that’s what they are.
GIRL. Oh, I can see well enough. Besides, a whole lot of ’em have orders on. That makes me laugh, too. When they meet you, they’ve got their little bits of ribbon stuck in their buttonhole. Then they follow you and they haven’t anything. I wanted to find out, so I looked over my shoulder in a glass and saw my man snap the ribbon out with his finger and thumb just as you do when you’re shelling peas. You know?
DOCTOR. Yes, I know. Tell us about your child. What became of it?
GIRL. Oh, I left it at that place in the Rue Denfer.
DOCTOR [to Loches] The foundlings’ hospital.
LOCHES. Did you not mind doing that?
GIRL. It was better than dragging it about with me to starve.
LOCHES. Still, it was your child.
GIRL. Well, what about its father? It was his child, too, wasn’t it? See here, I’m not going to talk about that again. Anyway, just tell me what I could have done, you two there. Put it out to nurse? Well, of course, I would have, if I’d been sure of having the money for it. But then I wanted to get another place; and how was I to pay for nursing it with the twentyfive or thirty francs a month I should have got, eh? If I wanted to keep straight, I couldn’t keep the kid. See?
LOCHES. It’s too horrible.
The doctor stops him with a gesture.
GIRL [angrily] It’s just as I tell you. What else could I have done, eh? If you’d been in my place you’d have done just the same. [Quieting down] See here, what’s the good of making a fuss about it? You’ll say: ‘But you haven’t been living straight.’ No more I have, but how could I help it? I couldn’t stay in my places; and then, when you’re hungry and a jolly young chap offers you a dinner, my word, I’d like to see the girl who’d say no. I never learnt any trade, you see. So that the end of it all is that I found myself in St. Lazare because I was ill. That’s pretty low down, too. These beastly men give you their foul diseases and it’s me they stick in prison. It’s a bit thick, that is.
DOCTOR. You gave them as good as you got, didn’t you, though?
GIRL [gaily] Oh, I had my tit for tat! [To Loches] I suppose you’d like to have that too? Before they carted me off there, the day I found out I was in for it, I was going home in a pretty temper when who do you think I met in the street but my old boss! I was that glad to see him! Now, thinks I to myself, you’re going to pay me what you owe me—with interest too! I just winked at him: oh, it didn’t take long, I can tell you. [Tragically] Then when I left him, I don’t know what came over me—I felt half mad. I took on everyone I could, for anything or for nothing! As many as I could, all the youngest and the best looking—well, I only gave ’em back what they gave me! Now somehow I don’t care any more: where’s the use in pulling long faces about things? It only makes me laugh. Other women, they do just the same; but then they do it for their bread and butter, d’you see. A girl must live even if she is ill, eh? [A pause] Well, you’ll give my name to the chap at the theatre, won’t you? The doc here’ll tell you my address.
LOCHES. I promise you I will.
GIRL. Thank ye, sir.
She goes out.
DOCTOR. Was I not right to keep that confession for the end? This poor girl is typical. The whole problem is summed up in her: she is at once the product and the cause. We set the ball rolling, others keep it up, and it runs back to bruise our own shins. I have nothing more to say. [He shakes hands with Loches as he conducts him to the door, and adds in a lighter tone] But if you give a thought or two to what you have just seen when you are sitting in the Chamber, we shall not have wasted our time.