PRESIDENT. Very good. I will answer you.
LUCIE. One of the doctors is famous—Dr. Hourtin.
PRESIDENT. A specialist who sees alcoholism everywhere!
LUCIE [more vigorously] Those doctors told me that if my husband did not change his mode of life, any further children I had by him would, perhaps, be worse than the first, nervous degenerates. The very evening that Professor Hourtin came to see me, my husband came back from some festivity in a state of excitement—[She stops].
PRESIDENT. Well? Is that all?
LUCIE. No; I’ll have the courage to say everything. I have nothing to lose now.
PRESIDENT. Please take note that it is not I who make you go on.
LUCIE. No; you would probably prefer if I didn’t. [Controlling her voice] During the day something had happened—something serious—that revealed to me all the hideousness of his moral character. I determined no longer to be his wife. He came in, gay with drinking. In spite of my prayers and resistance, my cries of hatred and disgust, he chose that evening to exercise his rights—his rights! He took me by force; he outraged me.
PRESIDENT. He was your husband?
LUCIE. Yes.