PRESIDENT. And his father a drunkard!
TUPIN. If you like. Well, he came badly into the world—he could never have been anything but a cripple. But he didn’t want for anything! They took him in at the hospital and begged me to let him stay there.
MME. TUPIN. He was a curiosity for the doctors.
TUPIN. They looked after him, I tell you. They didn’t leave him for a minute. He was made to live in spite of himself, so to speak. The other children, who were strong, they let them perish of want. With half the care and the money that was spent on the sickly one they might have made fine fellows of all the rest.
PRESIDENT. Then that is why you made away with the next?
TUPIN. For all the good he’d have had in the world, if he could, he’d say, thank you.
PRESIDENT. You ought not to have had him.
TUPIN. That’s true. But we poor folk, we don’t know the dodges rich people have so as only to have the children they want, and take their fun all the same: worse luck!
PRESIDENT. If everyone was of your opinion our country would be in a bad way. But your country, doubtless, is nothing to you?
TUPIN. I’ve heard say: ‘A man’s country is where he is well off.’ I’m badly off everywhere.