“Why don’t you ask the doctor?” he inquired.
“The doctor? There was no use us asking him, Thyrsis.”
“Why not?”
“Because—he doesn’t understand. He likes babies. That’s his business.”
They argued this. But in the end Thyrsis resolved that he must see the doctor himself. He must see him if it was only to pour out his anguish. It was the doctor’s fault that this fearful accident had befallen them!
But the boy soon saw that it was as Corydon had said, there was nothing to be gained in that quarter. Babies were indeed the doctor’s business; they were the business of the whole world, from his point of view. People got married to have babies; they were in the world to have babies, and anything else was just nonsense. Nowadays babies were the only excuse that people had for living—their morality began and ended with them. Moreover, babies were fine in themselves; they were beautiful and fat and jolly. The pagan old gentleman sang a very paean in praise of babies—the more of them there were, the more laughter upon earth.
Also, having them was the business of women—that, and not reading German poetry and playing the piano. They all made a little fuss at the outset, but then they submitted, and they soon found that Nature knew more than they. Babies completed women’s lives, they settled their nerves; they gave them something to think about, and saved them from hysteria and extravagance and sentimentalism, and all the rest of the ills of the hour.
Then the doctor fixed his keen eyes upon him. “Are you and Corydon thinking about an abortion?” he demanded.
“I—I don’t know,” stammered Thyrsis. The word sounded ugly.
“I got that impression from her,” said the other. “And now let me tell you—if you do that, it’ll be something you’ll never forgive yourself for as long as you live. In the first place, you may lose your wife. It’s a very dangerous thing, and a woman is seldom the same after it. You might make it impossible for her ever to have a child again, and so blast her whole life. You’ll have to trust her in the hands of some vile scoundrel—you understand, of course, that it’s a crime?”