The children I have not yet mentioned to you."
Here the doctor's voice trembled slightly. He spoke with moving
eloquence. "Come, sir, you are an honest man; you are too young
for such things not to move you; you are not insensible to duty.
It is impossible that I shan't be able to find a way to your
heart, that I shan't be able to make you obey me. My emotion in
speaking to you proves that I appreciate your suffering, that I
suffer with you. It is in the name of my sincerity that I
implore you. You have admitted it--that you have not the right
to expose your wife to such miseries. But it is not only your
wife that you strike; you may attack in her your own children. I
exclude you for a moment from my thought--you and her. It is in
the name of these innocents that I implore you; it is the future,
it is the race that I defend. Listen to me, listen to me! Out
of the twenty households of which I spoke, only fifteen had
children; these fifteen had twenty-eight. Do you know how many
out of these twenty-eight survived? Three, sir! Three out of
twenty-eight! Syphilis is above everything a murderer of
children. Herod reigns in France, and over all the earth, and
begins each year his massacre of the innocents; and if it be not
blasphemy against the sacredness of life, I say that the most
happy are those who have disappeared. Visit our children's
hospitals! We know too well the child of syphilitic parents; the
type is classical; the doctors can pick it out anywhere.
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