TUPIN [excitedly] Oh, and that seems all right to you, that a working man, who hasn’t any vice and does his duty, which is to work and—we’re told, too—have plenty of children, it seems all right to you that that should simply lead to beggary.
PRESIDENT. Yes, yes; I recognize the wineshop orator. So you say that a household can’t exist with five children. Thank God, there is more than one in that condition which goes neither to ask for charity nor to an abortionist.
MME. TUPIN. You’re wrong.
TUPIN. Shall I prove that you’re wrong?
PRESIDENT. That doesn’t seem to me to have much to do with the case.
MME. TUPIN. Yes, it has.
TUPIN. Pardon me. If I prove it, people will understand how I came to do what I did.
PRESIDENT. Very well. But be short.
TUPIN. I’ve given my counsel my accounts for a month. Let him read it to you.
PRESIDENT. Very well. [The counsel rises].