The Frenchman's broad, pale lips smiled. He shrugged.
"Money? My friend, as a man of affairs, you must know that one cannot say 'Money' but that one is asked: ''Ow much?' Attend well: In your country and in England these savants—name of God!—want what they call the best; in my country they want what they call the many. Do they this reconcile? I should be well amused to know the way." Dr. Boussingault leaned across the table and tapped Jim's wrist with an impressive forefinger. "In all the world, all, the only people that desire the poor to produce families, they are the propriétaires and those lackeys of the propriétaires, the generals of the armies. The propriétaire wants much workers, and he wants workers so bound by family 'responsibilities'"—the Frenchman hissed the s's of this word—"that they dare not revolt; he wants competition for the workers, for she lowers the wage. For the generals, all they want is more men to feed to the monster, War."
"You must be a Socialist," smiled Stainton.
"Socialist?" thundered the physician. "Never in life! Me, I am I: Boussingault, médecin!"
"At any rate," said Stainton, "the world can't very well get along without children, you know."
He was amazed at the doctor's manner: Boussingault would wave his arms and shout his words and then, when he had leaped to silence, relapse into a calm that seemed never to have been dispelled.
Jim regarded the neighboring tables, but no one of the company there paid any attention to the commanding tones of the physician, probably because nearly all the guests of the restaurant were engaged in talk that was quite as violent as that of Paul Achille. Muriel might have been a thousand miles away.
Now the word "children" again loosed the storm.
"Children?" shouted the doctor. "Let us be reasonable! Let us regard with equanimity the children! They ask the poor for the children, these propriétaires; but what they would say is servants and filles de joie to work for them. They will not pay the man sufficient to make a marriage; they pretend not to like that the women bear children without marriage—and they run about and sob for more babies! Bien. In effect, then, what is it that the labourer to them replies? He replies: 'Give me the 'abitable houses, and then I will give you in'abitants—not before.'"
Dr. Boussingault produced a huge handkerchief, shook it, mopped his sparkling brow, and resumed absolute immobility.