PRESIDENT. Your levity astounds me. You are a schoolmistress, and you do not understand that the sacred mission entrusted to you of preparing men and women for the glory and responsibility of the future entails on you the duty of giving an example yourself! It is your business to conduct the course of elementary instruction in civic morality, and this is how you practise it! Have you nothing to answer? According to my notes you undertook the nursing of your two children yourself. Do you love them?
SCHOOLMISTRESS. It was just because I loved them.
PRESIDENT. But you decided that two were enough. You made up your mind to limit the work of the Almighty.
SCHOOLMISTRESS. I should have asked nothing better than to have four or five children.
PRESIDENT. Indeed! Then let me tell you that you did not take the best means to arrive at that result. [He laughs and looks at his assessor on the right, then at Madame d’Amergueux. She signals her congratulations to him].
SCHOOLMISTRESS. You have to be able to feed your children.
PRESIDENT. Ah, there! No! At a pinch I could understand that excuse—a very bad one—being employed in the case of other women; but not in yours, who enjoy the incomparable advantage of being protected by the State. You are never out of work.
SCHOOLMISTRESS. I earn eighty-three francs a month. My husband, who is a teacher, too, gets as much. That makes a hundred and sixty-six francs a month to live on and bring up two children. When there were four of us, we could almost do it; with five it would have been impossible.
PRESIDENT. You omit to say that during your confinement you have the right to a month’s leave with full salary.
SCHOOLMISTRESS. That used to be true, President. It is so no longer. A departmental circular of 1900 informed us that the funds were insufficient for more than half salaries to be paid, as a rule, at such times. To obtain the whole salary, a detailed report from the inspector is required, and you must petition for it.