o his breast,
exclaiming that he was a liberal, a democrat, ready to demand all
really progressive measures. He willingly recognized that children were
necessary, that the army required soldiers, and the factories workmen.
Only he also invoked the prudential duties of the higher classes, and
reasoned after the fashion of a man of wealth, a conservative clinging
to the fortune he has acquired.

Mathieu meanwhile ended by understanding the brutal truth: Capital
is compelled to favor the multiplication of lives foredoomed to
wretchedness; in spite of everything it must stimulate the prolificness
of the wage-earning classes, in order that its profits may continue.
The law is that there must always be an excess of children in order that
there may be enough cheap workers. Then also speculation on the wages'
ratio wrests all nobility from labor, which is regarded as the worst
misfortune a man can be condemned to, when in reality it is the most
precious of boons. Such, then, is the cancer preying upon mankind. In
countries of political equality and economical inequality the capitalist
regime, the faulty distribution of wealth, at once restrains and
precipitates the birth-rate by perpetually increasing the wrongful
apportionment of means. On one side are the rich folk with "only" sons,
who continually increase their fortunes; on the other, the poor folk,
who, by reason of their unrestrained prolificness, see the little they
possess crumble yet more and more. If labor be honored to-morrow, if
a just apportionment of wealth be arrived at, equilibrium will be
restored. Otherwise social revolution lies at the end of the road.

But Beauchene, in his triumphant manner, tried to show that he possessed
great breadth of mind; he admitted the disquieting strides of a decrease
of population, and denounced the causes of it--alcoholism, militarism,
excessive mortality among infants, and other numerous matters. Then he
indicated remedies; first, reductions in taxation, fiscal means in which
he had little faith; then freedom to will one's estate as one pleased,
which seemed to him more efficacious; a change, too, in the marriage
laws, without forgetting the granting of affiliation rights.

However, Boutan ended by interrupting him. "All the legislative measures
in the world will do nothing," said the doctor. "Manners and customs,
our notions of what is moral and what is not, our very conceptions
of the beautiful in life--all must be changed.