But the baby continued to lose flesh and to scream. It screamed night and day. There was no doubt it suffered from colic. A new cow was procured and a fresh analysis made. The milk was mixed with Karlsbad water, genuine Sprudel, but the baby went on screaming.
“There’s no remedy but to engage a foster mother,” said the doctor.
“Oh! anything but that! One did not want to rob other children, it was against nature, and, moreover, what about heredity?”
When the Baron began to talk of things natural and unnatural, the doctor explained to him that if nature were allowed her own way, all noble families would die out and their estates fall to the crown. This was the wisdom of nature, and human civilization was nothing but a foolish struggle against nature, in which man was bound to be beaten. The Baron’s race was doomed; this was proved by the fact that his wife was unable to feed the fruit of her womb; in order to live they were bound to buy or steal the milk of other women. Consequently the race lived on robbery, down to the smallest detail.
“Could the purchase of the milk be called robbery? The purchase of it!”
“Yes, because the money with which it was bought was produced by labour. Whose labour? The people’s! For the aristocracy didn’t work.”
“The doctor was a socialist!”
“No, a follower of Darwin. However, he didn’t care in the least if they called him a socialist. It made no difference to him.”
“But surely, purchase was not robbery! That was too strong a word!”
“Well, but if one paid with money one hadn’t earned!”