"I should so much like to forget it, now that I'm with you. To put it briefly, it was about a block of unsanitary houses that has been a breeding-ground for cancer and tuberculosis ever since the time of Henry IV. The finished product: eighty per cent infected during the last twenty years. I had brought the matter before the sanitary board and demanded radical measures, that the buildings should be expropriated and torn down. They seemed to agree with me and asked me to draw up a report. I drew up the report, went back and found that the oracles had changed their minds. . . . An impressive report, dear and eminent colleague, a fine document. We must think it over. We must look into this. There is no doubt that these people have died, but were their deaths really due to the houses they lived in? . . . One of them brings me some certificates (manufactured how?) proving, with the complicity of various families who had been bribed by the owner, that one man had already bought his ticket to the cemetery when he came and settled in the waiting-room, that in another case the cancer was the result of an accident. Another contests the idea that old houses are less sanitary than new ones and says they are larger and more airy; he gives his own as an example. . . . We must make things sanitary, not destroy. Moderation in all things. A good cleaning will be enough; the owner promises to have them disinfected. . . . Besides, we are poor, our pockets are empty, we haven't the money to expropriate them. . . . Ah! if it were a question of making a new gun! . . . But, after all, cancer kills more surely than a gun. . . . To finish the farce, one of the augurs ended by talking about beauty. It seems that since these buildings belonged to the period of Henry IV, they ought to be preserved for the sake of history and art. . . . I am fond of art myself, and I can show you some pictures in my own house, ancient and modern both; but age (unless we are talking about beautiful Madame So-and-So) is not the mark of beauty; and, beautiful or not, I shall never admit that the past should poison the present. Of all hypocrisies, the aesthetic hypocrisy revolts me the most, for it tries to create nobility out of its own barrenness. So I said some pretty stiff things on that score. . . . In the middle of the discussion a colleague motioned to me, drew me aside and said, 'Don't you know that old beetle who feeds on the corpses of his tenants is an intimate friend of the president of that great committee of commerce and food-supply which brings about elections and coalitions, one of those grizzled dignitaries who rule over our democratic banquets and conventions, the invisible man out of whom the rabble constructs the tottering masonry—freemasonry—of our Republic? This friend of the people doesn't want to have the people turned out of their tomb . . . because, and this is the best of all . . . because of his philanthropy. . . .' At the end they hand me a petition from the tenants, drawn up in fine style, protesting against this desire to turn them out of their quarters! What do you expect me to do against all these people? The augurs laugh, they say. So I laughed. But I added that one shouldn't keep a good joke to oneself, that I was not an egoist, and that I intended to share it to-morrow with the readers of the Matin. They cried out at this, but I shall do as I said. I know what to expect; every knife will be raised against me. . . . The disciples of Hippocrates, to whom I've just given a good drubbing, will miss no chance. They have their own way of getting back at me. But, as you say, 'War,' my Lady Warrior! How about the other evening at Solange's? All this seems to amuse you?"
"Yes, it's splendid. I like this, fighting against injustice. I should have liked to be a man."
"There is no need to be a man. You have done your share. . . ."
"I have never complained of my share in the struggle. It's only the suffocation. Our lot is to fight in a cave, but you fight in the open air, on a mountain-top."
"Ah! that quivering of the nostrils! A horse sniffing the powder. I've seen that already. I noticed it the other evening."
"You laughed at me the other evening."
"Not at all. It was too much like myself for me to laugh."
"You harassed me; you started me off."
"Yes, I saw it at once. . . . I wasn't mistaken. . . ." "Just the same, you were contemptuous enough in the beginning."
"How the devil could I have expected to find you, to find you at Solange's house?"