TUPIN [excited] They weren’t then. If they’ve fallen to that, it’s because with so many other children besides, I couldn’t look after my son as rich people look after theirs, and because my daughter was seduced and abandoned—because she was hungry! No, but you must have a heart of stone to bring that up against me!
PRESIDENT. And it’s not your fault either that you’ve become a drunkard?
TUPIN. I’ll tell you. You know the proverb: ‘When there’s no hay in the manger—.’ Well, when the pinch came at home, I and my wife began to quarrel over each new baby. Each of us accused the other of having made things worse for the first ones. Well, I’ll cut it short. If I went to the wineshop, why, it’s warm there, and you don’t hear the brats crying and their mother complaining. And the drink helps you to forget, so it does, to forget!
MME. TUPIN. It’s good to forget, so it is!
TUPIN. It’s my fault if you like, but that’s how we got poorer and poorer.
PRESIDENT. And when you had your last child, didn’t that serve as a lesson to you?
TUPIN. The last one didn’t cost anything.
PRESIDENT [absently] Ah!
TUPIN. He came into the world deformed and sickly. He was conceived in misery, in want—his mother was worn out.