"She has disgraced me—I will never forgive her!" said the woman. "Let her starve with her brat. It will be well when they are dead."
"She has disgraced you, you say? But has she disgraced Nature? I thought it was Nature who was responsible for her sex and its instincts. She has obeyed the one and fulfilled the other. And they have been paramount considerations with you also, I perceive."
"Did she owe no duty, then, to her parents? Was I to count in her life merely as the soil to the plant?"
"In the scales of justice, as I saw them adjusted in heaven, the claim against the parents weighed the heaviest," said the man. "You suckled her at your breasts; but you brought her there to suckle. In your bringing her there, lies the onus of her claim."
"I tell you, she has disgraced me, and I will never forgive her!"
"'Never' is a long day for a mortal. You will be judged yourself before you reach the end of it," said the man.
"Three months' imprisonment with hard labour," said the magistrate.
"For taking a loaf of bread when he was starving!" cried the man.
"Even so," said the magistrate, with his hands on his paunch.