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children - the. strong ones - go to the bad. With half the money and the fuss they wasted on the cripple, they could have made fine fellows of all the others.
Mme. Tupin. I have to add that all this is not my fault. My husband and I worked like beasts; we did without every kind of pleasure to try and bring up our children. If we had wanted to slave more, I declare to you we couldn't have done it. And now that we have given our lives, for them, the oldest is in hospital, ruined and done for because he worked in "a dangerous trade" as they call it. . . . There are too many people in the world. . . . My little girl had to choose between starvation and the street. . . . I'm only a poor woman, and I know what it means to have nothing to eat, so I forgave her.
Thus Mme. Tupin also understands that it is a crime to add one more victim to those who are born ill and for whom society has no place. Then Lucie faces the court,- Lucie who loved her sister too well, and who, driven by the same conditions that killed Innette, has also been compelled to undergo an abortion rather than have a fourth child by the man she did not love any more. Like the Schoolmistress and the Tupins, she is dragged before the bar of justice to explain her crime, while her husband, who had forced both Annette and Lucie out of the house, has meanwhile risen to a high position as a supporter
