BRIGNAC. We shall make laws against you and your like, M. le sous-intendant. We shall make it impossible for you to receive money by will, as the Romans did. We shall make you pay fines, as the Greeks did. And we’ll invent something new, if necessary.
SOUS-IN. Compulsory paternity!
COL. One may fairly ask whether people have the right to shirk these obligations.
SOUS-IN. Some people think it is their duty.
BRIGNAC. Their duty!
SOUS-IN. Are you sure that all men who don’t marry are bachelors from pure selfishness?
COL. Of course, we’re not speaking of you personally.
SOUS-IN. Do so, by all means. It was not out of mere lightness of heart that I deprived myself of the tenderness of a wife and the caresses of a child. When I was young I was poor and sickly. I did not choose to bring children into the world when I had nothing to leave them but my bad constitution. I said, in the words of a great poet:
Remain
In the elusive realm of might-have-been,