TUPIN. What I say is that a workman’s family, however hard they work and screw, can’t get along when there are five children.
PRES. If that is true there are—and this society you despise may be proud of it—there are, I say, many charities on the watch, so to speak, for the destitute; and they make it a point of honor to leave none without relief.
TUPIN [indignant] Oh, and that seems all right to you, does it? You say it’s a workman’s duty to work and to have a lot of children, and when he does it, fair and square, and it makes a beggar of him, it seems to you all right!
PRES. Ah, ha! Here’s the orator of the public house parlor. In the first place, we have only your assertion that a workman’s family cannot live when there are five children. But, thank God, there are more than one or two in that condition who have recourse neither to charity nor to an abortionist.
MME. TUPIN. That’s not true.
TUPIN. Shall I prove to you that you’re wrong?
PRES. That has nothing to do with the charge against you.
MME. TUPIN. Yes, it has.
TUPIN. I beg your pardon. If I prove it that will explain how I came to do what I did.