my heart, for whom the disease is without
mercy; because during that time you will be dangerous to your wife and
to your children. 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. Those little old creatures who have the
appearance of having already lived, and who have kept the stigmata of
all out infirmities, of all our decay. They are the victims of fathers
who have married, being ignorant of what you know--things which I should
like to go and cry out in the public places."

The doctor paused, and then in a solemn voice continued: "I have told
you all, without exaggeration. Think it over. Consider the pros and
cons; sum up the possible misfortunes and the certain miseries. But
disregard yourself, and consider that there are in one side of the
scales the misfortunes of others, and in the other your own. Take care
that you are just."

George was at last overcome. "Very well," he said, "I give way. I
won't get married. I will invent some excuse; I will get a delay of six
months. More than that, I cannot do."

The