They and they alone have the right to speak. How many are there?
Among a thousand men, are there four? Very well, then.
Excepting those four, between all the rest and the syphilitic
there is nothing but the difference of chance."
There came into the doctor's voice at this moment a note of
intense feeling; for these were matters of which evidence came to
him every day. "I tell you, sir, that such people are deserving
of sympathy, because they are suffering. If they have committed
a fault, they have at least the plea that they are expiating it.
No, sir, let me hear no more of that hypocrisy. Recall your own
youth, sir. That which afflicts your son-in-law, you have
deserved it just as much as he--more than he, perhaps.
Therefore, have pity on him; have for him the toleration which
the unpunished criminal ought to have for the criminal less
fortunate than himself upon whom the penalty has fallen. Is that
not so?"
Monsieur Loches had been listening to this discourse with the
feeling of a thief before the bar. There was nothing that he
could answer. "Sir," he stammered, "as you present this thing to
me--"
"But am I not right?" insisted the doctor.
"Perhaps you are," the other admitted. "But--I cannot say all
that to my daughter, to persuade her to go back to her husband."
"You can give her other arguments," was the answer.
"What arguments, in God's name?"
"There is no lack of them. You will say to her that a separation
would be a misfortune for all; that her husband is the only one
in the world who would be devoted enough to help her save her
child.
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