PRESIDENT. That was not a reason to take your sister and her child to their deaths. [Lucie is seized by a nervous shudder and does not answer] Answer me.
COUNSEL. Let her take a minute, President.
LUCIE [pulling herself together] I wanted to get her into a hospital, but they only take you in at the end of pregnancy. At Paris there are institutions, it seems, but not in the provinces.
PRESIDENT. You might have asked for relief.
LUCIE. We had not been the requisite six months in the town. And afterwards, what could we have done with the child?
PRESIDENT. If she was unable to bring it up, your sister could have taken it to the ‘Enfants Assistés.’
LUCIE. Yes, abandoned it. We did think of that. We made inquiries.
COUNSEL. A certificate is required that the applicant to the society is without means. An inquiry is made and the application may be accepted or refused. In the meantime the child may die.
LUCIE. They only take in children on condition that the mother shall not know where the child is, that she shall never see it or have news of it. Once a month only she is told if it is alive or dead; nothing more.