DOCTOR. Certainly. Here is your prescription. You will take it to the chemist’s and have it made up.
GEORGE [taking the prescription] No.
DOCTOR. Yes: you will do just what everyone else does.
GEORGE. Everyone else is not in my position. I know what to do. [He raises his hand to his temple].
DOCTOR. Five times out of six the men who sit in that chair before me do that, perfectly sincerely. Everyone thinks himself more unfortunate than the rest. On second thoughts, and after I have talked to them, they realize that this disease is a companion with which one can live; only, as in all households, domestic peace is to be had at the price of mutual concessions. Come now, I repeat, there is nothing in all this beyond the ordinary. It is simply an accident that might happen to anybody. I assure you it is far too common to merit the name ‘French disease.’ There is, in fact, none that is more universal. If you wanted to find a motto for the creatures who make a trade of selling their love, you could almost take the famous lines, ‘There is your master.... It is, it was, or it must be.’
GEORGE [putting the prescription in the outer pocket of his coat] But I at least ought to have been spared.
DOCTOR. Why? Because you are a man of good position? Because you are rich? Look round you. Look at these works of art; five are copies of John of Bologna’s Mercury, six of Pigallo’s, three are reproductions—in wax, to be sure—of the lost Wounded Love by Paccini; do you think that all these have been presented to me by beggars?
GEORGE [groaning] I’m not a rake, doctor. My life might be held up as an example to all young men. I assure you, no one could possibly have been more prudent, no one. See here; supposing I told you that in all my life I have only had two mistresses, what would you say to that?
DOCTOR. That one would have been enough to bring you here.