“Go on,” commanded the other. “Tell me.”
“Well,” murmured the woman, “I know I ought not to put on airs, but you see I have not always been so poor. Before my husband’s misfortune, we were well fixed. So you see, I have a little pride. I have always managed to take care of myself. I am not a woman of the streets, and to stand around like that, with everybody else, to be obliged to tell all one’s miseries out loud before the world! I am wrong, I know it perfectly well; I argue with myself—but all the same, it’s hard, sir; I assure you, it is truly hard.”
“Poor woman!” said the doctor; and for a while there was a silence. Then he asked: “It was your husband who brought you the disease?”
“Yes, sir,” was the reply. “Everything which happened to us came from him. We were living in the country when he got the disease. He went half crazy. He no longer knew how to manage his affairs. He gave orders here and there for considerable sums. We were not able to find the money.”
“Why did he not undergo treatment?”
“He didn’t know then. We were sold out, and we came to Paris. But we hadn’t a penny. He decided to go to the hospital for treatment.”
“And then?”
“Why, they looked him over, but they refused him any medicine.”
“How was that?”
“Because we had been in Paris only three months. If one hasn’t been a resident six months, one has no right to free medicine.”