A 
 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 d 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 o 
 
 4 
 
 = ^ 
 
 B5A9E
 
 
 i 
 
 m 
 
 Ui
 
 DAMAGED GOODS 
 
 [JLes u4 varies] 
 A Play in Three Acts 
 
 BY 
 
 BRIEUX 
 
 MEMBER OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 JOHN POLLOCK 
 
 WITH PREFACE BY 
 
 G. BERNARD SHAW 
 
 NEW YORK 
 BRENTANO'S 
 
 Printed for 
 
 THE CONNECTICUT SOCIETY OF SOCIAL HYGIENE 
 
 1912
 
 Copyright, 1907, by G. Bernard Shaw 
 Copyright, 1910, by O. Bernard Shaw 
 Copyright, 1911, by Charlotte Frances Shaw.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 By Bernard Shaw 
 
 In a volume of plays by Brieux recently published, Mr. 
 Bernard Shaw writes as foUows of " Damaged Goods " 
 (Les Avaries) : 
 
 In this play Brieux took for his theme the diseases that 
 are supposed to be the punishment of profligate men and 
 women. It was a diflicult and even dangerous enterprise, 
 because it brought him up against that curious tribal sur- 
 vival, the Taboo. Taboo is not morality, not decency, not 
 reason, justice, or anything agreeable; it is a traditionally 
 inculcated convention that certain things must not be men- 
 tioned, with the inevitable result that under this strange 
 protection of silence, they fall into hideous corruption and 
 abuse, and go from bad to worse whilst those who know 
 what is happening must look on, tonguetied, at the inno- 
 cents playing unwarned on the edge of a hidden precipice, 
 and being sacrificed to the Taboo in appalling numbers every 
 day. Now the diseases dealt with in "Damaged Goods" 
 are doubly taboo, because the sacrifices are ignorantly sup- 
 posed to be the salutary penalties of misconduct. Not only 
 must not the improper thing be mentioned, but the evil 
 must not be remedied, because it is a just retribution and 
 a wholesome deterrent. The last point may be dismissed 
 by simply inquiring how a disease can possibly act as a 
 deterrent when people are kept in ignorance of its exist- 
 ence. But the punishment theory is a hideous mistake. 
 It might as well be contended that fires should not be 
 put out because they are the just punishment of the in-
 
 iv Preface 
 
 cendiary. Most of the victims of these diseases are 
 entirely innocent persons : children who do not know 
 what vice means, and women to whom it is impossible to 
 explain what is the matter with them. Nor are their 
 fathers and husbands necessarily to blame. Even if 
 they were, it would be wicked to leave them unwarned 
 when the consequences can spread so widely beyond 
 themselves ; for there are dozens of indirect ways in 
 w^hich this contagion can take place exactly as any other 
 contagion can. The presence of one infected person 
 in a house may lead to the infection of everybody else 
 in it even if they have never seen one another. In fact 
 it is impossible to prove in any given case that the 
 sufferer is in any way culpable: every profligate excuses 
 himself or herself to the doctor on this ground ; and 
 though the excuse may not be believed, its truth is gen- 
 erally possible. Add to the chances of contagion the 
 hereditary transmission of the disease, and the fact that 
 an innocent person receiving it from a guilty partner 
 without other grounds for divorce has no legal redress ; 
 and it becomes at once apparent that every guilty case 
 may produce several innocent ones. Under such cir- 
 cumstances, even if it were possible in a civilized com- 
 munity to leave misconduct to be checked by its natural 
 or accidental consequences, or by private vengeance in- 
 stead of by carefully considered legal measures, such an 
 anarchical solution must be ruled out in the present 
 case, as the disease strikes blindly at everyone whom it 
 reaches, and there are as many innocent paths for its 
 venom as guilty ones. The taboo actually discriminates 
 heavily against the innocent, because, as taboos are not 
 respected in profligate society, systematic profligates 
 learn the danger in their loose conversations, and take 
 precautions, whereas the innocent expose themselves 
 recklessly in complete ignorance, handling possibly con- 
 taminated articles and entering possibly infected places
 
 Preface v 
 
 without the least suspicion that any such danger exists. 
 In Brieux's play the husband alone is culpable; but his 
 misconduct presently involves his wife, his child, and his 
 child's nurse. It requires very little imagination to see 
 that this by no means exhausts the possibilities. The 
 nurse, wholly guiltless of the original sin, is likely to 
 spread its consequences far more widely than the orig- 
 inal sinner. A grotesque result of this is that there is 
 always a demand, especially in France, for infected 
 nurses, because the doctor, when he knows the child to 
 be infected, feels that he is committing a crime in not 
 warning the nurse; and the only way out of the diffi- 
 culty is to find a nurse who is already infected and has 
 nothing more to fear. How little the conscience of the 
 family is to be depended on when the interests of a be- 
 loved child are in the scale against a mere cold duty to 
 a domestic servant, has been well shown by Brieux 
 in the second act of his play. But indeed anyone 
 who will take the trouble to read the treatise of Four- 
 nier, or the lectures of Duclaux, or, in English, the 
 chapters in which Havelock Ellis has dealt with this 
 subject, will need no further instruction to convince 
 him that no play ever written was more needed than 
 Les Avaries. 
 
 It must be added that a startling change in the ur- 
 gency of the question has been produced by recent ad- 
 vances in pathology. Briefly stated, the facts of the 
 change are as follows. In the boyhood of those of us 
 who are now of middle age, the diseases in question were 
 known as mainly of two kinds. One, admittedly very 
 common, was considered transient, easily curable, harm- 
 less to future generations, and, to everyone but the 
 sufferer, dismissible as a ludicrous incident. The other 
 was known to be one of the most formidable scourges of 
 mankind, capable at its worst of hideous disfigurement 
 and ruinous hereditary transmission, but not at all so
 
 VI 
 
 Preface 
 
 common as the more trifling ailment, and alleged by some 
 authorities to be dying out like typhus or plague. That is 
 the belief still entertained by the elderly section of the 
 medical profession and those whom it has instructed. 
 
 This easy-going estimate of the situation was alarm- 
 ingly upset in 1879 by Neisser's investigation of the sup- 
 posedly trivial disease, which he associated with a ma- 
 lignant micro-organism called the gonococcus. The 
 physicians who still ridicule its gravity are now con- 
 fronted by an agitation, led by medical women and pro- 
 fessional nurses, who cite a formidable array of author- 
 ities for their statements that it is the commonest cause 
 of blindness, and that it is transmitted from father to 
 mother, from mother to child, from child to nurse, pro- 
 ducing evils from which the individual attacked never 
 gets securely free. If half the scientific evidence be 
 true, a marriage contracted by a person actively affected 
 in either way is perhaps the worst crime that can be 
 committed with legal impunity in a civilized community. 
 The danger of becoming the victim of such a crime is 
 the worst danger that lurks in marriage for men and 
 women, and in domestic service for nurses. 
 
 Stupid people who are forced by these facts to admit 
 that the simple taboo which forbids the subject to be 
 mentioned at all is ruinous, still fall back on the plea 
 that though the public ought to be warned, the theatre 
 is not the proper place for the warning. When asked 
 " What, then, i* the proper place? " they plead that the 
 proper place is out of hearing of the general public: that 
 is, not in a school, not in a church, not in a newspaper, 
 not in a public meeting, but in medical text-books which 
 are read only by medical students. This, of course, is 
 the taboo over again, only sufficiently ashamed of itself 
 to resort to subterfuge. The commonsense of the matter 
 is that a public danger needs a public warning ; and the 
 more public the place the more effective the warning.
 
 Preface vii 
 
 Why the Unmentionable must be ^lentJoned 
 on the Stage 
 
 But beyond this general consideration there is a spe- 
 cial need for the warning in the theatre. The best 
 friends of the theatre cannot deny, and need not seek 
 to deny, that a considerable proportion of our theatrical 
 entertainments stimulate the sexual instincts of the spec- 
 tators. Indeed this is so commonly the case that a play 
 which contains no sexual appeal is quite openly and com- 
 monly written of, even by professional critics of high 
 standing, as being " undramatic," or " not a play at all." 
 This is the basis of the prejudice against the theatre 
 shown by that section of English society in which sex is 
 regarded as original sin, and the theatre, consequently, 
 as the gate of hell. The prejudice is thoughtless: sex is 
 a necessary and healthy instinct ; and its nurture and 
 education is one of the most important uses of all art; 
 and, for the present at all events, the chief use of the 
 theatre. 
 
 Now it may be an open question whether the theatre 
 has proved itself worthy of being entrusted with so 
 serious a function. I can conceive a community passing 
 a law forbidding dramatic authors to deal with sex as a 
 motive at all. Although such a law would consign the 
 great bulk of existing dramatic literature to the waste- 
 paper basket, it would neither destroy it wholly nor 
 paralyze all future playwrights. The bowdlerization of 
 Moliere and Shakespear on the basis of such a law 
 would leave a surprising quantity of their work intact. 
 The novels of Dickens and his contemporaries are before 
 us to prove how independent the imaginative writer is 
 of the theme so often assumed to be indispensable in 
 fiction. The works in which it is dragged in by the ears 
 on this false assumption are far more numerous than the 
 tales and plays — Manon Lescaut is an example — of
 
 VUl 
 
 Preface 
 
 which it forms the entire substance. Just as the Euro- 
 pean dramatist is able to write plays without introducing 
 an accouchement, which is regarded as indispensable in 
 all sympathetic Chinese plays, he can, if he is put to 
 it, dispense with any theme that law or custom could 
 conceivably forbid, and still find himself rich in dra- 
 matic material. Let us grant therefore that love might 
 be ruled out by a written law as effectually as cholera is 
 ruled out by an unwritten one without utterly ruining the 
 theatre. 
 
 Still, it is none the less beyond all question by any 
 reasonable and thoughtful person that if we tolerate any 
 subject on the stage we must not tolerate it by halves. 
 It may be questioned whether we should allow war on 
 the stage; but it cannot sanely be questioned that, if we 
 do, we must allow its horrors to be represented as well 
 as its glories. Destruction and murder, pestilence and 
 famine, demoralization and cruelty, robbery and job- 
 bery, must be allowed to contend with patriotism and 
 military heroism on the boards as they do in actual war: 
 otherwise the stage might inflame national hatreds and 
 lead to their gratification with a recklessness that would 
 make a cockpit of Europe. Again, if unscrupulous 
 authors are to be allowed to make the stage a parade of 
 champagne bottles, syphons, and tantaluses, scrupulous 
 ones must be allowed to write such plays as L'Assommoir, 
 which has, as a matter of simple fact, effectively deterred 
 many young men from drunkenness. Nobody disputes 
 the reasonableness of this freedom to present both sides.' 
 But when we corns to sex, the taboo steps in, with the 
 result that all the allurements of sex may be exhibited 
 on the stage heightened by every artifice that the imag- 
 ination of the voluptuary can devise, but not one of its 
 dangers and penalties. You may exhibit seduction or 
 the stage ; but you must not even mention illegitimate 
 conception and criminal abortion. We may^and do,
 
 Preface ix 
 
 parade prostitution to the point of intoxicating every 
 young person in the theatre; yet no young person may 
 hear a word as to the diseases that follow prostitution 
 and avenge the prostitute to the third and fourth genera- 
 tion of them that buy her. Our shops and business 
 offices are full of young men living in lonely lodgings, 
 whose only artistic recreation is the theatre. In the 
 theatre we practise upon them every art that can make 
 their loneliness intolerable and heighten the charm of the 
 bait in the snares of the street as they go home. But 
 when a dramatist is enlightened enough to understand 
 the danger, and sympathetic enough to come to the rescue 
 with a play to expose the snare and warn the victim, 
 we forbid the manager to perform it on pain of ruin, and 
 denounce the author as a corrupter of morals. One 
 hardly knows whether to laugh or cry at such perverse 
 stupidity. 
 
 Brieux and Voltaire 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact that when Brieux wrote Les 
 Avaries (Damaged Goods) his experience with it re- 
 called in one particular that of Voltaire. 
 
 It will be remembered that Voltaire, whose religious 
 opinions were almost exactly those of most English Non- 
 conformists to-day, took refuge from the Established 
 Church of France near Geneva, the city of Calvin, where 
 he established himself as the first and the greatest of 
 modern Nonconformist philanthropists. The Genevese 
 ministers found his theology so much to their taste that 
 they were prevented from becoming open Voltaireans 
 only by the scandal he gave by his ridicule of the current 
 Genevese idolatry of the Bible, from which he was as 
 free as any of our prominent Baptists and Congrega- 
 tionalists. In the same way, when Brieux, having had 
 his Les Avaries condemned by the now extinct French 
 censorship, paid a visit to Switzerland, he was invited
 
 X Preface 
 
 by a Swiss minister to read the play from the pulpit; 
 and though the reading actually took place in a secular 
 building, it was at the invitation and under the auspices 
 of the minister. The minister knew what the Censor did 
 not know: that what Brieux says in Les Avaries needs 
 saying. The minister believed that when a thing needs 
 saying, a man is in due course inspired to say it, and that 
 such inspiration gives him a divine right to be heard. 
 And this appears to be the simple truth of the matter 
 in terms of the minister's divinity. P'or most certainly 
 Brieux had every worldly inducement to refrain from 
 writing this play, and no motive for disregarding these 
 inducements except the motive that made Luther tear up 
 the Pope's Bull, and Mahomet tell the idolatrous Arabs 
 of Mecca that they were worshipping stones.
 
 DAMAGED GOODS 
 
 [Les Avaries] 
 
 Translated by 
 JOHN POLLOCK
 
 Before the play begins the manager appears upon the 
 stage and says: — 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, 
 
 I beg leave to inform you, on behalf of the author and 
 of the management, that the object of this play is a study 
 of the disease of syphilis in its bearing on marriage. 
 
 It contains no scene to provoke scandal or arouse dis- 
 gust, nor is there in it any obscene word ; and it may be 
 "witnessed by everyone, unless we must believe that folly 
 and ignorance are necessary conditions of female virtue.
 
 DAMAGED GOODS 
 
 [Les Avaries] 
 
 ACT I 
 
 The doctor's consulting room. To the right a large 
 stained-glass window representing a religious subject. 
 In front of this, on pedestals, bronzes and statues. Par- 
 allel to it a large Louis XIV writing-table littered with 
 papers and statuettes. Between the desk and the win- 
 dow the doctor's chair. On the other side an arm-chair 
 nearly facing the footlights and a stool. To the left the 
 entrance door, which, xchen opened, reveals a corridor 
 lined with tapestries, statues, and paintings. Beyond 
 the door a large glass bookcase, above which hang por- 
 traits of Wallace, Dupuytren, and Ricord. Busts of cel- 
 ebrated physicians. A small table and two chairs. At 
 the back a small door. The room is sumptuously fur- 
 nished and literally encumbered with works of art. 
 
 George Dupont, in great distress and ill at ease, enters 
 by the door at the back, takes his stick, gloves, and hat 
 from the stool, and sits down on the sofa before the 
 "writing-table. He is a big fellow of twenty-six, with 
 
 13
 
 14 Damaged Goods Act I 
 
 large, round eyes, and simple, hut not ludicrous appear- 
 ance. A heavy sigh escapes him. The doctor, a man of 
 forty, with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in the 
 buttonhole of his frock-coat, follows and takes his seat. 
 He gives the impression of a man of strength and 
 intellect. 
 
 George. Well, doctor? 
 
 Doctor. Well ! There is no doubt about your case. 
 
 George [wiping his forehead] No doubt — How do 
 you mean no doubt.'' 
 
 Doctor. I mean it in the bad sense. [He writes. 
 George turns pale, and stays silent for a moment in 
 terror. He sighs again] Come, come ! You must have 
 thought as much. 
 
 George. No, no. 
 
 Doctor. All the same ! 
 
 George [^utterly prostrated] Good God! 
 
 Doctor \^stops writing and observes him] Don't be 
 frightened. Out of every seven men you meet in the 
 street, or in society, or at the theatre, there is at least 
 one who is or has been in your condition. One in seven, 
 fifteen per cent. 
 
 George [quietly, as if to himself] Anyhow, I know 
 what to do. 
 
 Doctor. Certainly. Here is your prescription. You 
 will take it to the chemist's and have it made up. 
 
 George [taking the prescription] No. 
 
 Doctor. Yes: you will do just what everyone else 
 does. 
 
 George. Everyone else is not in my position. I 
 know what to do. [He raises his hand to his temple]. 
 
 Doctor. Five times out of ten the men who sit in 
 that chair before me do that, perfectly sincerely. Every- 
 one thinks himself more unfortunate than the rest. On 
 second thoughts, and after I have talked to them, they
 
 Act I Damaged Goods 15 
 
 realize that this disease is a companion with which one 
 can live; only, as in all households, domestic peace is to 
 be had at the price of mutual concessions. Come now, 
 I repeat, there is nothing in all this beyond the ordinary. 
 It is simply an accident that might happen to anybody. 
 I assure you it is far too common to merit the name 
 " French disease," There is, in fact, none that is more 
 universal. If you wanted to find a motto for the crea- 
 tures who make a trade of selling their love, you could 
 almost take the famous lines, " There is your master. 
 ... It is, it was, or it must be." 
 
 George [putting the prescription in the outer 
 pocket of his coat] But I at least ought to have been 
 spared. 
 
 Doctor. Why? Because you are a man of good posi- 
 tion? Because you are rich? Look round you. Look 
 at these works of art; five are copies of John of Bo- 
 logna's Mercury, six of Pigallo's, three are reproduc- 
 tions — in wax, to be sure — of the lost Wounded Love 
 by Paccini; do you think that all these have been pre- 
 sented to me by beggars ? 
 
 George [groaning] I 'm not a rake, doctor. My life 
 might be held up as an example to all young men. I 
 assure you, no one could possibly have been more pru- 
 dent, no one. See here ; supposing I told you that in all 
 my life I have only had two mistresses, what would you 
 say to that? 
 
 Doctor. That one would have been enough to bring 
 you here. 
 
 George. No, doctor, not one of those two. No one 
 in the world has dreaded this so much as I have; no one 
 has ever taken such infinite precautions to avoid it. My 
 first mistress was the wife of my best friend. I chose 
 her on account of him; and him, not because I cared 
 most for him, but because I knew he was a man of the 
 most rigid morals, who watched his wife jealously and
 
 16 Damaged Goods Act I 
 
 did n't let her go about forming imprudent connections. 
 As for her, I kept her in absolute terror of this disease. 
 I told her that almost all men were taken with it, so that 
 she might n't dream of being false to me. My friend died 
 in my arms : that was the only thing that could have 
 separated me from her. Then I took up with a young 
 seamstress. 
 
 Doctor. None of your other friends had sufficiently 
 reassuring morals ? 
 
 George. No. You know what morals are nowadays. 
 
 Doctor. Better than anyone. 
 
 George. Well, this was a decent girl with a family 
 in needy circumstances to support. Her grandmother 
 was an invalid, and there was an ailing father and three 
 little brothers. It was by my means that they all lived. 
 They used to call me Uncle Raoul — I was not so green 
 as to give my real name, you see. 
 
 Doctor. Oh! Your Christian name, well — besides, 
 it is always safer. 
 
 George. Why, of course. I told her and I let the 
 others know that if she played me false I should leave 
 her at once. So then they all watched her for me. It 
 became a regular thing that I should spend Sunday with 
 tliem, and in that sort of way I was able to give her a 
 lift up. Church-going was a respectable kind of outing 
 for her. I rented a pew for them and her mother used 
 to go with her to church; they liked seeing their name 
 engraved on the card. She never left the house alone. 
 Three months ago, when the question of my marriage 
 came up, I had to leave her. They all cried over my 
 going. I 'm not inventing or exaggerating: they all 
 cried. You see, I 'm not a bad sort. People do re- 
 gret me. 
 
 Doctor. You were very happy. Why did you want 
 to change? 
 
 George [stirprised at the question} I wanted to settle
 
 Act I Damaged Goods 17 
 
 down. My father was a notary, and before his death 
 he expressed the wish that I should marry my cousin. It 
 was a good match ; her dowry will help to get me a prac- 
 tice. Besides, I simply adore her. She 's fond of me, 
 too. I had everything one could want to make life happy. 
 My acquaintances all envied me. [Miserably] And 
 then a lot of idiots must give me a farewell dinner and 
 make me gad about with them. See what has come of 
 it ! I have n't any luck, I 've never had any luck ! I 
 know fellows who lead the most racketty lives : nothing 
 happens to them, the beasts ! But I — for a wretched 
 lark — What is there left for a leper like me ? My 
 future is ruined, my whole life poisoned. Well then, 
 is n't it better for me to clear out of it ? Anyway, I shan't 
 suffer any more. You see now, no one could be more 
 wretched than I am. [Crying] No one, doctor, I tell 
 you, no one ! [He buries his face in his handkerchief] 
 Oh, oh, oh ! 
 
 Doctor [rising and going to him icith a smile] You 
 must be a man, and not cry like a child. 
 
 George [still in tears] If I had led a wild life and 
 spent my time in bars and going about with women, I 
 should understand: I should say I deserved it. 
 
 Doctor. No. 
 
 George. No.^" 
 
 Doctor. No. You would not say so: but it doesn't 
 matter. Go on. 
 
 George. Yes, I know I should. I should say I de- 
 served it. But for nothing ! nothing ! I have cut myself 
 off from all pleasures. I have resisted attractions as you 
 would the devil. I would n't go with my friends to 
 places of amusement: ladies I knew actually pointed me 
 out to their boys as an example. I stuck to my Avork: I 
 forced myself to be more regular in my habits. Why, my 
 two friends helped me to prepare for my law exams. 
 I taught them to make me cram, and it 's thanks to them
 
 18' Damaged Goods Act I 
 
 that I got through. Oh, I should have liked lo come 
 home at four o'clock in the morning with my coat-collar 
 turned up, smoking a cigar lit in some ballet-girl's rooms ! 
 I 've longed as much as anyone for the taste of rouged 
 lips and the glitter of blacked eyes and pale faces ! I 
 should have hked larks and jolly suppers and cham- 
 pagne and the rustle of lace and all the rest of it ! I 've 
 sacrificed all that to my healthy and see what I 've got 
 for it. Ah, if I had known! If I had only known! 
 Then I should have let myself go; yes, altogether! 
 That would have been something to the good, anyway! 
 When T think of it ! When I think of the beastliness, the 
 frightful horrors in store for me ! 
 
 Doctor. What's all that nonsense? 
 
 George. Yes, yes, I know — hair falling out, camo- 
 mile for a cocktail, and a bath chair for a motor car, with 
 a little handle for the steering wheel and a fellow shov- 
 ing behind instead of the engine ; and I shall go, Gug, 
 gug, gug, gug! [Crying] That's what will be left of 
 handsome Raoul — that 's what they called me, hand- 
 some Raoul ! 
 
 Doctor. My dear sir, kindly dry your eyes for the 
 last time, blow your nose, put your handkerchief in your 
 pocket, and listen to me without blubbering. 
 
 George [doing so] Yes, doctor; but I warn you, 
 you are wasting your time. 
 
 Doctor. I assure you — 
 
 George. I know what you are going to tell me. 
 
 Doctor. In that case you have no business here. Be 
 off with you ! 
 
 George. As I am here, I '11 listen, doctor. It 's 
 awfuUy good of you. 
 
 Doctor. If yon have the will and the perseverance, 
 none of the things you are dreading will happen to you. 
 
 George. Of course. You are bound to tell me that. 
 
 Doctor. I tell vou that there are a hundred thousand
 
 Act I Damaged Goods 19 
 
 men in Paris like you, sound and in good health, I give 
 you my word. Come, now ! Bath chairs ! You don't see 
 quite so many as that. 
 
 George [struck] Nor do you. 
 
 Doctor. Besides, those who are in them are not all 
 there for the reason you think. Come, come ! You will 
 not be the victim of a catastrophe any more than the 
 other hundred thousand. The thing is serious: nothing 
 more. 
 
 George. There, you see. It is a serious disease. 
 
 Doctor. Yes. 
 
 George. One of the most serious. 
 
 Doctor. Yes ; but you have the good luck — 
 
 George. Good luck? 
 
 Doctor. Relatively, if you like; but you have the 
 good luck to have contracted just that one among serious 
 diseases which we have the most effective means of 
 combating. 
 
 George. I know: remedies worse than the disease. 
 
 Doctor. You are mistaken. 
 
 George. You 're not going to tell me that it can be 
 cured ? 
 
 Doctor. It can. 
 
 George. And that I am not condemned to — 
 
 Doctor. I give you my word on it. 
 
 George. You 're not — you 're not making some mis- 
 take ? I have been told — 
 
 Doctor [shrugging his shoulders] You have been 
 told ! You have been told ! No doubt you know all the 
 ins and outs of the law of property. 
 
 George. Yes, certainly; but I don't see what 
 connection — 
 
 Doctor. Instead of being taught that, it would have 
 been much better if you had been told the nature of the 
 disease from which you are suffering. Then, perhaps, 
 you would have been sufficiently afraid to avoid con- 
 tracting it.
 
 20 Damaged Goods Act I 
 
 George. But this woman was so — well, who could 
 have thought such, a thing of her? I didn't take a 
 woman off the streets, you know. She lives in the Rue 
 de Berne — not exactly a low part of the town, is it? 
 
 Doctor. The part of the town has nothing to do with 
 it. This disease differs from many others ; it has no 
 preference for the unfortunate. 
 
 George. But this woman lives almost straight. One 
 of my chums has a mistress who 's a married woman. 
 Well, it was a friend of hers. Her mother — she lives 
 with her mother — was abroad at the time. At first she 
 would n't listen to me : then, finally, after I had spent 
 a whole half-hour persuading her I had to promise her a 
 ring like one of her friend's before she would give way. 
 She even made me take off my boots before going up- 
 stairs so that the porter might n't hear. 
 
 Doctor. Well, if you had been taught, you would 
 have known that these circumstances are no guarantee. 
 
 George. That 's true ; we ought to be taught. 
 
 Doctor. Yes. 
 
 George. At the same time it 's not a subject that can 
 be broached in the papers. 
 
 Doctor. Why not? 
 
 George. I can speak of my own knowledge, for my 
 father used to own a small provincial paper. If we had 
 ever printed that word, the circulation would have 
 dropped like a stone. 
 
 Doctor. Yet you would publish novels about adultery. 
 
 George. Of course. That 's what the public wants. 
 
 Doctor. You are right. It is the public that needs 
 to be educated. A respectable man will take his wife 
 and daughters to a music-hall, where they hear things 
 to make a doctor blush. His modesty is only alarmed 
 by serious words. 
 
 George. And then, after all, what would one gain 
 by being posted up about this disease ?
 
 Act I Damaged Goods 21 
 
 Doctor. If it were better understood it would be 
 more often avoided. 
 
 George. What one wants is some means of avoiding 
 it altogether. 
 
 Doctor. Oh ! That is quite simple. 
 
 George. Tell me. 
 
 Doctor. It is no longer any concern of yours ; but 
 when you have a son you will be able to tell him what 
 to do. 
 
 George. What 's that .'* 
 
 Doctor. To love only one woman, to be her first lover, 
 and to love her so well that she will never be false to you. 
 
 George. But do you mean that I can have children.'* 
 
 Doctor. Certainly. 
 
 George. Healthy ones? 
 
 Doctor. Perfectly healthy. I repeat: if you take 
 proper and reasonable care of yourself for the necessary 
 length of time, you have little to fear. 
 
 George. Is that certain? 
 
 Doctor. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred. 
 
 George. Then I shall be able to marry? 
 
 Doctor. You will be able to marry. 
 
 George. You 're not deceiving me, are you ? You 
 would n't give me false hopes ? You would n't — 
 How soon shall I be able to marry? 
 
 Doctor. In three or four years. 
 
 George. What! three or four years? Not before? 
 
 Doctor. Not before. 
 
 George. Why? Am I going to be ill all that time? 
 You said just now — 
 
 Doctor. The disease will no longer be dangerous to 
 you yourself, but you will be dangerous to others. 
 
 George. But, doctor, I am going to be married in a 
 month ! 
 
 Doctor. Impossible.
 
 22 Damaged Goods Act I 
 
 George. I can't help it. The contract is all ready: 
 the banns have been published. I have given my word. 
 
 Doctor. Here 's a pretty patient ! A moment ago 
 you were feeling for your pistol; now you want to be 
 married in a month ! 
 
 George, But I must ! 
 
 Doctor. I forbid you. 
 
 George. You can't mean that seriously. If this 
 disease is not what I imagined, and if I can be cured, 
 I shan't commit suicide. If I don't kill myself, I must 
 take up the ordinary course of my life. I must fulfill my 
 engagements : I must be married. 
 
 Doctor. No. 
 
 George. If my engagement were broken off it would 
 be absolutely disastrous. You talk of it like that be- 
 cause you don't know. I did n't want to get married. 
 I have told you — I had almost a second family ; the 
 children adored me. It is my old aunt, who owns all the 
 property, who has pushed on the match. Then my 
 mother wants to see me " settled " as she says. The only 
 thing in the world she wants is to see her baby grand- 
 children, and she wonders twenty times a day whether 
 she will live long enough. Since the question first came 
 up she simply has n't thought of anything else ; it 's 
 the dream of her life. And then I tell you I have begim 
 to adore Henriette. If I draw back now my mother 
 would die of grief, and I should be disinherited by my 
 aunt. Even that is n't all. You don't know my father- 
 in-law's character. He is a man of regular high old 
 principles ; and he has a temper like the devil. What 's 
 more, he simply worships his daughter. It would cost 
 me dear, I can assure you. He would call me to ac- 
 count — I don't know what would happen. So there 
 are my mother's health, my aunt's fortune, my future, 
 my honor, perhaps my life, all at stake. Besides, I tell 
 you I have given my word.
 
 Act I Damaged Goods 23 
 
 Doctor. You must take it back. 
 
 George. Well, since you stick to it, even if that were 
 possible, I could not take back my signature to the con- 
 tract for the purchase of a notary's practice in two 
 months' time. 
 
 Doctor. All these — 
 
 George. You won't tell me that I have been impru- 
 dent because I have not disposed of my wife's dowry 
 till after the honeymoon — 
 
 Doctor. All these considerations are foreign to me. 
 I am a physician, nothing but a physician. I can only 
 tell you this: if you marry before three or four years 
 have elapsed you will be a criminal. 
 
 George. No, no ! You are more than a physician: you 
 are a confessor as well. You are not only a man of 
 science. You can't observe me as you would something 
 in your laboratory and then simply say: " You have this, 
 science says that. Now be off with you ! " My whole 
 life depends upon you. You must listen to me; because 
 when you know everything you will understand the situ- 
 ation and will find the means to cure me in a month. 
 
 Doctor. I can only tell you over and over again that 
 no such means exist. It is impossible to be certain of 
 your cure — as far as one can be certain — under 
 three or four years. 
 
 George. I tell you that you must find one. Listen 
 to me: if I am not married, I shall not get the dowry. 
 Will you kindly tell me how I am to carry out the con- 
 tract I have signed? 
 
 Doctor. Oh, if that is the question, it is very simple. 
 I can easily show you the way out of the difficulty. Get 
 into touch with some rich man, do everything you can 
 to gain his confidence, and when you have succeeded, 
 rook him of all he has. 
 
 George. I 'm not in the mood for joking. 
 
 Doctor. I am not joking. To rob that man, or even
 
 24 Damaged Goods Act I 
 
 to murder him, would not be a greater crime than you 
 would commit in marrying a young girl in good health 
 to get hold of her dowry, if to do so you exposed her to 
 the terrible consequences of the disease you would give 
 her. 
 
 George. Terrible? 
 
 Doctor. Terrible; and death is not the worst of 
 them. 
 
 George. But you told me just now — 
 
 Doctor. Just now I did not tell you everything. This 
 disease, even when it is all but suppressed, still lies below 
 the surface ready to break out again. Taken all round, 
 it is serious enough to make it an infamy to expose a 
 woman to it in order to avoid even the greatest incon- 
 venience. 
 
 George. But is it certain that she would catch it? 
 
 Doctor. Even with the best intentions, I won't tell 
 you lies. No; it is not absolutely certain. It is prob- 
 able. And there is something else I will tell you. Our 
 remedies are not infallible. In a certain number' of 
 cases — a very small number, scarcely five per cent. — 
 they have no effect. You may be one of these exceptions 
 or your wife may be. In that case — I will use an ex- 
 pression you used just now — in that case the result 
 would be the most frightful horrors. 
 
 George. Give me your advice. 
 
 Doctor. The only advice I can give you is not to 
 marry. To put it in this way, you owe a debt. Perhaps 
 its repayment will not be exacted; but at the same time 
 your creditor may come down on you suddenly, after a 
 long interval, with the most pitiless brutality. Come, 
 come ! You are a man of business. Marriage is a con- 
 tract. If you marry without saying anything, you will 
 be giving an implied warranty for goods which you know 
 to be bad. That is the term, is n't it? It would be a 
 fraud which ought to be punishable by law.
 
 Act I Damaged Goods 25 
 
 George. But what can I do? 
 
 Doctor. Go to your father-in-law and tell him the un- 
 varnished truth. 
 
 George. If I do that, it will not be a delay of three 
 or four years that he will impose on me. He will refuse 
 his consent for good. 
 
 Doctor. In that case, tell him nothing. 
 
 George. If I don't give him a reason, I don't know 
 what he won't do. He is a man of the most violent tem- 
 per. Besides, it will be still worse for Henriette than 
 for me. Look here, doctor; from what I have said to 
 you, no doubt you think I simply care for the money. 
 Well, I do think it is one's primary duty to make certain 
 of a reasonable amount of comfort. From my youth 
 upwards I have always been taught that. Nowadays 
 one must think of it, and I should never have engaged 
 myself to a girl without money. It 's perfectly natural. 
 [With emotion] But she is so splendid, she is so much 
 better than I am that I love her — as people love one 
 another in books. Of course it Avould be a frightful dis- 
 appointment not to have the practice that I have bought, 
 but that would not be the worst for me. The worst 
 would be losing her. If you could see her, if you knew 
 her, you would understand. [Taking out his pocket- 
 book] Look here; here 's her photograph. Just look at 
 it. [The doctor gently refuses it] Oh, my darling, to 
 think that I must lose you or else — Ah ! [He kisses 
 the photograph, then puts it back in his pocket] I beg 
 your pardon. I am being ridiculous. I know I am some- 
 times. Only put yourself in my place. I love her 
 so. 
 
 Doctor. It is on that account that you must not marry 
 her. 
 
 George. But how can I get out of it? If I draw 
 back without saying anything the truth wiU leak out and 
 I shall be dishonored.
 
 2G Damaged Goods Act I 
 
 Doctor. There is nothing dishonorable about being 
 ill. 
 
 George. Ah, yes ! But people are such idiots. Even 
 yesterday I myself should have laughed at anyone I 
 knew who was in the position that I am in now. Why, 
 I should have avoided him as if he had the plague. Oh, 
 if I were the only one to suffer ! But she — she loves 
 me, I swear she does, she is so good. It will be dreadful 
 for her. 
 
 Doctor. Less so than it would be later. 
 
 George. There '11 be a scandal. 
 
 Doctor. You will avoid a bigger one. 
 
 George quietly puts two twenty-franc pieces on the 
 desk, takes his gloves, hat, and stick, and gets up. 
 
 George. I will think it over. Thank you, doctor. I 
 shall come back next week as you told me to — proba- 
 bly. [He goes toward the door]. 
 
 Doctor [rising] No: I shall not see you next week, 
 and what is more you will not think it over. You came 
 here knowing what you had, with the express intention 
 of not acting by my advice unless it agreed with your 
 wishes. A flimsy honesty made you take this chance of 
 pacifying your conscience. You wanted to have someone 
 on whom you could afterwards throw the responsibility 
 of an act you knew to be culpable. Don't protest. Many 
 who come here think as you think and do what you 
 want to do. But when they have married in opposition 
 to my advice the results have been for the most part so 
 calamitous that now I am almost afraid of not having 
 been persuasive enough. I feel as though in spite of 
 everything I were in some sort the cause of their misery. 
 I ought to be able to prevent such misery. If only the 
 people who are the cause of it knew what I know and had 
 seen what I have seen, it would be impossible. Give me 
 your word that you will break off your engagement. 
 
 George. I can't give you my word. I can only repeat: 
 I will think it over.
 
 Act I Damaged Goods 27 
 
 Doctor. Think over what? 
 
 Geo"Rge. What you have told me. 
 
 Doctor. But what I have told you is true. You can- 
 not make any fresh objections. I have answered those 
 you have made. You must be convinced. 
 
 George. Well, of course you are right in thinking that 
 I posted myself up a bit before coming to see you. In 
 the first place, is it certain that I have the disease you 
 think.'' You say so, and perhaps it is true. But even the 
 greatest doctors are sometimes deceived. Have n't I 
 heard that Ricord, your master, used to maintain that this 
 disease was not always contagious.'' He produced cases 
 to prove his point. Now you produce fresh cases to 
 disprove it. Very well. But I have the right to think it 
 over. And when I think it over, I realize the results you 
 threaten me with are only probable. In spite of your 
 desire to frighten me, you have been compelled to admit 
 that my marriage will quite possibly produce no ill results 
 for my wife. 
 
 Doctor [restraining himself with difficulty^ Go on. 
 I will answer you. 
 
 George. You tell me that your drugs are powerful, 
 and that for the catastrophes you speak of to happen I 
 must be one of the five exceptions per cent, you allow, 
 and that my wife must be an exception too. Now, if a 
 mathematician calculated the probabilities of the case, 
 tlie chance of a catastrophe would prove so small that, 
 when the slight probability of a disaster was set against 
 the certainty of all the disappointments and the un- 
 happiness and perhaps the tragedies which my break- 
 ing off the match would cause, he would undoubtedly 
 come to the conclusion that I was right and you were 
 wrong. After all, mathematics is more scientific than 
 medicine. 
 
 Doctor. Ah, you think so! Well, you are wrong. 
 Twenty cases identical with yours have been carefully
 
 28 Damaged Goods Act I 
 
 observed — from the beginning to the end. Nineteen 
 times — you hear, nineteen times in twenty — the woman 
 was contaminated by her husband. You think that the 
 danger is negligible: you think you have the right to 
 make your wife take her chance, as you said, of being 
 one of the exceptions for which we can do nothing ! 
 Very well: then you shall know what you are doing. 
 You shall know what sort of disease it is that your wife 
 will have five chances per cent, of contracting without 
 so much as having her leave asked. Take this book — 
 it is my master's work — here, read for yourself, I 
 have marked the passage. You won't read it.'' Then I 
 will. [He reads passionately] " I have seen an un- 
 fortunate young woman changed by this disease into the 
 likeness of a beast. The face, or I should rather say, 
 what remained of it, was nothing but a flat surface 
 seamed with scars." 
 
 George. Stop, for pity's sake, stop ! 
 
 Doctor. I shall not stop. I shall read to the end. 
 I shall not refrain from doing right merely for fear 
 of upsetting your nerves. [He goes on] " Of the 
 upper lip, which had been completely eaten away, not 
 a trace remained." There, that will do. And you are 
 willing to run the risk of inflicting that disease on a 
 woman whom you say you love, though you cannot sup- 
 port even the description of it yourself? And pray, from 
 whom did that woman catch syphilis? It is not I who 
 say all this: it is this book, " From a man whose crimi- 
 nal folly was such that he was not afraid to enter into 
 marriage in an eruption, as was afterwards established, 
 of marked secondary symptoms, and who had further 
 thought fit not to have his wife treated for fear of 
 arousing suspicion." What that man did is what you 
 want to do. 
 
 George. I should deserve all those names and worse 
 still, if I were to be married with the knowledge that
 
 Act I Damaged Goods 29 
 
 my marriage would bring about such horrors. But I 
 do not believe that it would. You and your masters 
 are specialists. Consequently you fix the whole of your 
 attention on the subject of your studies, and you think 
 that these dreadful, exceptional cases never have enough 
 light thrown on them. They exercise a sort of fascina- 
 tion over you. 
 
 Doctor. I know that argument. 
 
 George. Let me go on, I beg. You have told me 
 that one man in every seven is a syphilitic, and further 
 that there are a hundred thousand such men going about 
 the streets of Paris in perfect health. 
 
 Doctor. It is the fact that there are a hundred thou- 
 sand who are not for the moment visibly affected by 
 their complaint. But thousands have passed through 
 our hospitals, victims to the most frightful ravages 
 that our poor bodies can endure. You do not see 
 them: they do not exist for you. Again, if it were 
 only yourself who was in question, you might take that 
 line well enough. But what I affirm, and repeat with all 
 the strength of my conviction, is that you have no right 
 to expose a human being to this appalling chance. The 
 chance is rare, I know: I know still better how terrible 
 it is. What have you to say now.'' 
 
 George. Nothing. I suppose you are right. I 
 don't know what to think. 
 
 Doctor. Is it as if I were forbidding you ever to 
 marry when I forbid you to marry now? Is it as if I 
 were telling you that you will never be cured? On the 
 contrar}^, I give you every hope. Only I ask a delay 
 of three or four years, because in that time I shall be 
 able to ascertain whether you are one of those unhappy 
 wretches for whom there is no hope, and because during 
 that time you will be a source of danger to your wife 
 and children. The children: I have not spoken to you 
 about them. ^Very gently and persuasively] Come,
 
 30 Damaged Goods Act I 
 
 my dear sir, you are too young and too generous to be 
 insensible to pity. There are things that cannot fail to 
 move you: it is incredible that I should not be able 
 to touch or to convince you. Indeed, I feel most deeply 
 for you ; but on that account I implore you all the more 
 earnestly to consider what I say. You have admitted 
 you have no right to expose your wife to such torture: 
 but there is not only your wife — there are her children, 
 your children, whom you may contaminate, too. For 
 the moment I will not think of you or of her: it is in 
 the name of those innocent little ones that I appeal to 
 you; it is the future of the race that I am defending. 
 Listen to me. Of the twenty marriages I spoke of only 
 fifteen produced children. They produced twenty-eight. 
 Do you know how many of them survived ? Three : three 
 out of twenty-eight. Above all else syphilis is a child- 
 murderer. Ah, yes ! Every year produces a fresh massa- 
 cre of the innocents. Herod still reigns in France and 
 all the world over. And though it is my business to 
 preserve life, I tell you that those who die are the 
 lucky ones. If you want to see the children of syphilitic 
 parents, go round the children's hospitals. We know 
 the type: it has become classical. Any doctor can 
 pick them out from the rest; little creatures old from 
 their birth, stamped with the marks of every human 
 infirmity and decay. You will find children with every 
 kind of affliction: hump-backed, deformed, club-footed, 
 hare-lipped, ricketty, with heads too big and bodies too 
 small, with congenital hip-disease. A large proportion 
 of all these are the victims of parents who were married 
 in ignorance of what you now know. If I could, I 
 would cry it aloud from the house-tops. [A slight 
 pause^ I have told you all this without the slightest 
 exaggeration. Think it over. Weigh the pro and the 
 con: tot up the sum of possible suffering and certain 
 misery. But remember that on the one side is your
 
 Act I Damaged Goods 31 
 
 own suffering — and on the other the suffering of other 
 people. Remember that. Distrust yourself. 
 
 George. Very well. I give in. I will not be mar- 
 ried. I will invent some excuse. I will get it put off 
 for six months. More than that is impossible. 
 
 Doctor. I must have three years at least, if not four. 
 
 George. No, no ! For pity's sake ! You can cure me 
 before that. 
 
 Doctor. No, no, no ! 
 
 George. Yes, you can. I implore you. Science 
 can do everything. 
 
 Doctor. Science is not God Almighty. The day of 
 miracles is past. 
 
 George. Oh, you could if you wanted to. I know 
 you could. Invent something, discover something ! Try 
 some new treatment on me. Double the doses ! Give 
 me ten times the ordinary ones, if you like ! I '11 stand 
 anything, absolutely ! Only there must be some way of 
 curing me in six months. Look here, I can't be respon- 
 sible for myself after that. For the sake of my wife 
 and her children, do something. 
 
 Doctor. Nonsense ! 
 
 George. If only you '11 cure me, I don't know what 
 I won't do for you. I '11 be grateful to you all my life. 
 I '11 give you half my fortune. For God's sake, do some- 
 thing for me ! 
 
 Doctor. You want me to do more for you than for 
 all the rest.'' 
 
 George. Yes. 
 
 Doctor. Let me tell you, sir, that everyone of our 
 patients, whether he is the richest man in the land or 
 the poorest, has everything done for him that we can 
 do. We have no secrets in reserve for the rich or for 
 people who are in a hurry to be cured. 
 
 George. Good-bye, doctor. 
 
 Doctor. Good-day.
 
 ACT II 
 
 George's study. To the left a window. In front of 
 the window a desk of moderate size, facing away from 
 the audience, and a writing-chair. On the desk a tele- 
 phone. To the right of the desk an arm-chair, a small 
 table with a work-box and embroidery, and between the 
 window and the footlights a deep easy-chair. At the 
 back a dainty bookcase, and in front of it a pretty table 
 with flowers. At the back, to the right, a door, and, 
 nearer, a piano and a music-stool. To the left another 
 door. Two small chairs. 
 
 Henriette is sitting by the small table and working 
 at a baby's cap. After a moment she holds it up on her 
 hand. 
 
 Henriette. Another little cap to send to nurse. 
 How sweet my little Germaine will look in it ! Come, 
 sweetheart, laugh at mother ! Oh, my love ! \_She 
 kisses the cap and goes on working^. 
 
 George enters at the back. 
 
 George [opening the door and taking off his coat in 
 the hall] Hullo! Are you there? Are you there? Ha, 
 ha, ha ! 
 
 Henriette [rising gaily] Oh, you know I recog- 
 nized your voice. 
 
 George. What a story ! [Kissing her] Poor little 
 darling ! — was she taken in ? — poor little woman ! Ha, 
 ha, ha ! 
 
 Henriette [laughing too] Don't laugh like that ! 
 
 George. " Hullo ! Hullo ! Madame George Du- 
 32
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 33 
 
 pont? " [Imitating a woman's timid voice'] " Yes, yes; 
 I am here ! " I could feel you blushing at the end of the 
 wire. 
 
 Henriette [laughingl I did n't say " I am here " in 
 that voice. I simply answered " Yes." 
 
 George. " Hullo ! Madame George Dupont. Is 
 George there ? [Laughing] You were taken in ! You 
 can't say you weren't! [In the ■woman's voice] 
 "George is out. Who is it speaking to me?" I could 
 hardly keep it up. " Me — Gustave." You thought it 
 was, too. 
 
 Henriette. What is there astonishing in your friend 
 Gustave telephoning? 
 
 George. And when I added [imitating Gustave's 
 voice] " How are you this morning, dearest? " you gave 
 a "What?" all flustered, like that: "What?" 
 
 Henriette. Yes; but then I guessed it was you. 
 
 George. I went into fits. What a lark ! [He sits 
 down in front of her on the arm of the chair close to 
 the fireplace and watches her happily]. 
 
 Henriette [sitting down and returning his glance] 
 What a funny little fellow you are ! 
 
 George. Me ? 
 
 Henriette [gaily] Do you think I don't under- 
 stand you, after knowing you for fifteen years and being 
 married to you a twelvemonth? 
 
 George [curious] Ah, well ! go on. Say what you 
 think of me. 
 
 Henriette. To begin with, you 're anxious. Then 
 you're jealous. And suspicious. You spend all your 
 time in making a tangle of things and then inventing 
 ingenious ways of getting out of it. 
 
 George [happy to hear himself talked about] So that 's 
 what you think of me? Go on, let us have some 
 more. 
 
 Henriette. Isn't it true?
 
 34) Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 George [admitting it with a laugh] Well? 
 
 Henriette. Was n't it a trap that you set for me 
 this morning? 
 
 George [in the same tone] No. 
 
 Henriette. Yes; you wanted to be sure that I had 
 not gone out. You asked me not to go to the Louvre 
 to-day. 
 
 George [innocently] So I did. 
 
 Henriette. See how suspicious you are, even of 
 me. 
 
 George. No; not of you. 
 
 Henriette. Yes, you are. But you have always 
 been, so I don't mind. And then I know at the bottom 
 you feel things so keenly that it makes you rather 
 afraid. 
 
 George [seriously] I was laughed at so much when 
 I was a boy. 
 
 Henriette [gaily] Besides, perhaps you have rea- 
 sons for not having too much confidence in men's friend- 
 ships with their friends' wives. Gay deceiver ! 
 
 George [laughing] I should like to know what you 
 mean bj' that. 
 
 Henriette. Suppose I had thought it was Gustave 
 and answered: " Very well, thanks. How are you, 
 darling? " 
 
 George [laughing] Well, it is a trick that I should n't 
 like to try on everyone. [Changing the conversation^ 
 By the way, as I came in, Justin spoke to me. 
 
 Henriette. Well? 
 
 George. He says he wants a rise. 
 
 Henriette. He has chosen a likely moment. 
 
 George. Has n't he ? I asked him if the sale of my 
 cigars was not enough for him. 
 
 Henriette. How did he take that? 
 
 George. He lost his temper and gave warning. 
 This time I took him at his word. He 's simply furious.
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 35 
 
 Henriette. Good. 
 
 George. He '11 go at the end of the month, and we 
 shall be well rid of him. Mother will be delighted. I 
 say, she has n't wired, has she .'' 
 
 Henriette. No. 
 
 George. Then she 's not coming back till to-morrow. 
 
 Henriette. If she had her way, she would never 
 leave our little girl. 
 
 George. You 're not going to be jealous, are you? 
 
 Henriette. I 'm a little anxious. Still, if there had 
 been anything the matter, I know your mother would 
 have telegraphed to us. 
 
 George. We agreed that she should, if there was 
 anything since yesterday. 
 
 Henriette. Perhaps after all we should have done 
 better to keep baby with us. 
 
 George. Oh, are you going to begin again? 
 
 Henriette. No, no. Don't scold. I know the air of 
 Paris did n't suit her. 
 
 George. You still think that the dust of my papers 
 was better for her than the air of the country? 
 
 Henriette [latighing] No; I don't. 
 
 George. Of course, there is the square, with the smell 
 of fried fish and all the soldiers. 
 
 Henriette. Don't tease. I know you are right. 
 
 George. Aha ! I 'm glad you admit that for once at 
 least. 
 
 Henriette. Besides, nurse takes good care of her. 
 She is a good girl. 
 
 George. And how proud she is to nurse the grand- 
 daughter of her deputy. 
 
 Henriette. Father is not deputy for that district. 
 All the same — 
 
 George. All the same he is deputy for the department. 
 
 Henriette. Yes ; he is. 
 
 George. Can't you hear her talking to her friends?
 
 36 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 [Imitating the nurse's voice] " Have n't I had a bit of 
 luck, neither? Yes, ma'am; she's our deputy's daugh- 
 ter's daughter, she is. She 's as fat as a calf, the little 
 duck; and that clever with it, she understands every- 
 thing. That 's not a bit of luck, neither, is n't it? " 
 
 Henriette [laughing] You great silly ! She does n't 
 talk like that at all. 
 
 George. Why not say at once that I can't do imita- 
 tions ? 
 
 Henriette. Now I did n't say that. 
 
 George. As if mother would have engaged nurse for 
 us if she had not been absolutely certain that baby would 
 be well looked after. Besides, she goes down to see her 
 every week, and she would have brought her back 
 already — 
 
 Henriette. Twice a week, sometimes. 
 
 George. Yes. 
 
 Henriette. Ah, our little Germaine knows what it is 
 to have a granny who dotes on her. 
 
 George. Doesn't she, though? 
 
 Henriette. Your mother is so good. You know I 
 adore her, too. 
 
 George. Runs in the family ! 
 
 Henriette. Do you know, the last time we went 
 down there with her — you had gone out somewhere or 
 other — 
 
 George. To see that old sixteenth century chest. 
 
 Henriette [laughing] Of course, your wonderful 
 chest. 
 
 George. Well, what were you going to say? 
 
 Henriette. You were out, and nurse had gone to 
 mass, I think. 
 
 George. Or to have a drink. Go on. 
 
 Henriette. I was in the little room, and your mother 
 thought she was alone with Germaine. But I could hear 
 her: she was telling baby all sorts of sweet little things
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 37 
 
 — silly little things, but so sweet that I felt like laugh- 
 ing and crying at the same moment. 
 
 George. Did n't she call her " my own little 
 Saviour " .'' 
 
 Henriette. Why, were you listening.'' 
 
 George. No; but that's what she used to call me 
 once on a time. 
 
 Henriette. It was that day she said she was sure 
 baby had recognized her and laughed at her. 
 
 George. One day, too, I went into mother's room 
 here. The door was ajar, so that she didn't hear me 
 come in; and I found her looking at one of the little 
 christening slippers she wanted baby to have. You 
 know. 
 
 Henriette. Oh, yes. 
 
 George. And then she took it up and kissed it. 
 
 Henriette. What did you say to her.'' 
 
 George. Nothing. I went out as softly as I could 
 and blew a kiss to her from the other side of the door. 
 
 Henriette. When nurse's letter came the other day, 
 it did n't take her long to get ready and catch the 8.59. 
 
 George. However, there was n't anything the matter. 
 
 Henriette. No; but still perhaps she was right. 
 Perhaps I should have gone with her. 
 
 George. Poor innocent little Henriette ! You believe 
 everything you are told. Now I saw at once what was 
 up. The nurse simply wanted to humbug us into raising 
 her screw. I bet she did. Look here. Will you bet me 
 she didn't? Come, what will you have.'' Look here. 
 I bet you that lovely necklace — you know, the one with 
 the big jaearl. 
 
 Henriette. No; I should be too much afraid of 
 winning. 
 
 George [laughing] Silly! I believe you think I 
 don't care for baby as much as you do. Why, you don't 
 even know how old she is ! No, no, — exactly ! Let 's see.
 
 38 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 Aha! Ninety-one days and eight hours, there! [He 
 laughs]. Ah, when she can get on by herself, then we '11 
 have her back with us. Six months more to wait. 
 
 Henriette. Six months is a long time to wait. When 
 I think that if you had not put off our marriage for six 
 months, we should have her back now ! 
 
 George. I have told you over and over again that 
 I only did what was right. Just consider, how could 
 I marry when the doctor told me I had traces of 
 consumption } 
 
 Henriette. Your doctor is a donkey. As if you 
 looked like a consumptive ! 
 
 George. Generally speaking, doctors are a bit that 
 way, I grant. 
 
 Henriette. And you actually wanted to wait three 
 or four years. 
 
 George. Yes ; to be quite certain I had nothing 
 wrong with my lungs. 
 
 Henriette. You call me innocent, me ! And here 
 were you, just because a doctor — 
 
 George. But you know it seems that I really had the 
 beginning of some bronchial trouble. I used to feel 
 something when I breathed rather hard — like that, only 
 a little harder. There, that 's it. There was a sort of 
 heaviness each side of my chest. 
 
 Henriette. It was n't anything to put off our mar- 
 riage for. 
 
 George [getting up] Yes, yes; I assure you I was 
 right. I should have been wrong to expose you to the 
 chance of having a consumptive husband. No; I 'm not 
 at all sorry we waited. Still, those specialists — I can 
 afford to laugh at them now. If I knew someone now 
 who was ill, I should tell him: "My dear chap, those 
 bigwigs at forty francs a consultation — well, just don't 
 you consult them, you know ! " 
 
 Henriette. That one wanted four years to cure you!
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 39 
 
 George. Hang it, doctors are only men. After all, 
 they must live; and when their consultations are forty 
 francs apiece, why, the more the merrier. 
 
 Henriette. And some quite unknown little doctor 
 cured you in three months ! 
 
 George. Yes ; he was quite unknown. The odd thing 
 is I have absolutely forgotten his address. I found it in 
 the paper, I remember. I know vaguely that it was 
 somewhere near the Halles ; but if I was to have ray 
 head chopped off for it, I could n't find it again. Idi- 
 otic, is n't it ? 
 
 Henriette. Consequently, Germaine is six months 
 less old than she ought to be. 
 
 George. What of that? We shall keep her so much 
 the longer. She will be married six months later, that 's 
 all. 
 
 Henriette. Oh, don't speak of it. It 's odious to 
 think even now that we shall lose her some day. 
 
 George. Ah ! I can see myself going up the steps of 
 the Madeleine with her on my arm. 
 
 Henriette. Why the Madeleine? 
 
 George. I don't know. She '11 have on a great white 
 veil and I shall have an order in my buttonhole. 
 
 Henriette. Indeed ! Pray what will you have done 
 to get an order? 
 
 George. I don't know, but I shall have one. Say 
 what you like, I shall. What a glorious crowd there '11 
 be! 
 
 Henriette. That 's all in the dim, distant future. 
 
 George. Ah, yes. 
 
 Henriette. Yes, happily. [Getting up] Well, do 
 you mind if I go and pay my visits now? 
 
 George. Run along, run along. I shall work hard 
 while you are out. Look at all these papers ! I shall be 
 up to my eyes in them before you 're downstairs. Good- 
 bye.
 
 40 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 Henriette. Good-bye. [She kisses him and goes 
 out at the back by the right~\. 
 
 George lights a cigarette, looks at himself in the 
 glass, and throws himself into the easy-chair to the 
 left, humming a tune. By way of being more com- 
 fortable, he moves away the writing-chair and puts 
 his feet on the desk, smoking and humming in perfect 
 contentment. Madame Dupont comes in by the door on 
 the left. 
 
 George [getting up] Hullo! Why, mother! We 
 had no wire, so we did n't expect you till to-morrow. 
 Henriette has just gone out. I can call her back. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. No; I did not want Henriette to be 
 here when I came. 
 
 George. What's the matter? 
 
 The conversation that follows is broken by long 
 silences. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I have brought back the child and 
 the nurse. 
 
 George. Is baby ill.'' 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Yes. 
 
 George. What's wrong with her? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Nothing serious; at least for the 
 moment. 
 
 George. We must send for the doctor. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I have just come from the doctor's. 
 
 George. Good. I 'm not going out. I '11 wait for 
 him. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I have seen him. 
 
 George. Ah, you found him in? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I telegraphed to him from the 
 country. I took the child to see him. 
 
 George. It was so urgent as that? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. After what the nurse's doctor had 
 told me, I wished to be reassured immediately. 
 
 George. And after all there is nothing serious?
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 41 
 
 Mme. Dupont. For the moment. 
 
 George. When you got down there, how did you find 
 baby? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Fairly well, but I sent for the doctor 
 at once. 
 
 George. What did he say.'' 
 
 Mme. Dupont. That you must make a change; that 
 the child must be brought up on the bottle. 
 
 George. What an extraordinary idea. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. He told me that what she was suffer- 
 ing from might become very serious. So without saying 
 anything to nurse, I made her come with me and we took 
 the train back. 
 
 George. Well, what is the matter with the child.'' 
 
 Mme. Dupont [after a thoughtful pause] I do not 
 know. 
 
 George. Didn't you ask him? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Yes. 
 
 George [beginning to he anxious] Well? 
 A silence. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. He replied evasively. 
 
 George [tonelessly] He probably did not know him- 
 self. 
 
 Mme. Dupont [after a silence] Probably. 
 
 During xvhat follows they avoid looking at one another. 
 
 George. But our own doctor, didn't he say — ? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. It was not to him that I went. 
 
 George. Ah ! [A very long silence. Then lower] 
 Why? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. The nurse's doctor had so terrified 
 me. 
 
 George. Seriously ? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Yes; it is a disease — [Silence] 
 
 George [in anguish] Well? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I asked him if the matter was too 
 serious for our own doctor to deal with.
 
 42 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 George. What did he answer? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. That if we had the means it would 
 be preferable to see a specialist. 
 
 George [trying to pull himself together^ And — 
 where did he send you .'' 
 
 Mme. Dupont [handing him a visiting card] There. 
 
 George. He sent you to that doctor.'' 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Yes. Do you know him? 
 
 George. No — yes — I think I have met him — I 
 don't know. [Very lorv] My God! 
 
 Mme. Dupont [after a silence] He is coming to 
 speak to you. 
 
 George [scarcely daring to pronounce the words] 
 Then is he anxious ? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. No. He wants to speak to you. 
 
 George. He wants to speak to me? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Yes. 
 
 George [resigning himself] Very well. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. When he saw the nurse^ whom I had 
 left in the waiting room, he called me back and said: 
 " It is impossible for me to continue attending on this 
 child unless I can see its father and speak to him at 
 once." I answered " Very well," and gave him your 
 address. He will not be long. 
 
 George [to himself in a low voice] My poor little 
 child ! 
 
 Mme. Dupont [looking at him] Yes; she is a poor 
 little child. 
 
 George [after a long silence] Mother — 
 
 Mme. Dupont [hearing the door opened] Hush! 
 [A maid comes in and speaks to her. To George] It is 
 he! [To the maid] Show him in. [To George] I 
 shall be there if you want me. 
 
 She goes out by the left. The doctor enters by the right. 
 
 Doctor [to the maid] You will let me know here 
 when the child wakes up, will you not ?
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 43 
 
 Maid. Yes, sir. 
 
 She goes out. 
 
 George [leith the greatest emotion^ Good-day, doc- 
 tor: you don't recognize me? 
 
 Doctor [simply : more discouraged than angry^ You! 
 — it is you ! You married and had a child after all I 
 said to you? [Almost to himself] Scoundrel! 
 
 George. Let me explain. 
 
 Doctor. I can listen to no explanation of what you 
 have done. 
 
 A silence. 
 
 George [imploring him] You will look after my little 
 girl all the same, won't you? 
 
 Doctor [shrugging his shoulders. Low] Fool ! 
 
 George [not hearing] I could only get my marriage 
 put off six months. 
 
 Doctor. Enough, enough ! That is not my business. 
 I was wrong even to show you my indignation. I should 
 have left you to judge yourself. I am here only con- 
 cerned with the present and the future, with the child 
 and with the nurse. 
 
 George. She is not in danger? 
 
 Doctor. The nurse is in danger of being contami- 
 nated. 
 
 George. No; but — my child? 
 
 Doctor. For the moment the symptoms are not dis- 
 quieting. 
 
 George. Thank you. [More easily] About the 
 nurse — you were saying — Do you mind if I call my 
 mother? She knows more about these things than I do. 
 
 Doctor. As you please. 
 
 George [going to the door and coming back m,uch 
 moved] There is one thing I should like to ask you. 
 Could you contrive that no one — my wife — should 
 know what has happened? If my poor wife knew that 
 it was I who was the cause — It is for her sake that I 
 beg you. She is not to blame.
 
 44 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 Doctor. I promise jou that I will do everything in 
 my power to save her from learning the real nature of 
 the child's illness. 
 
 George. Oh, thank you ! Thank you ! 
 
 Doctor. You need not. If I tell lies, it will be for 
 her sake and not for yours. 
 
 George. And my mother? 
 
 Doctor. Your mother knows the truth. 
 
 George. But — 
 
 Doctor. Please, please. We have many very serious 
 matters to discuss. 
 
 George goes to the door and brings in his mother. 
 She bows to the doctor, makes a sign to him to be seated 
 in the arm-chair near the fireplace, and sits down herself 
 on the chair near the little table. George takes a seat 
 to the left in front of the desk. 
 
 Doctor. I have written a prescription for the child 
 which will, I hope, improve its condition and prevent 
 any fresh disorders. But my duty, and yours, does not 
 stop there. If it is not too late, the health of the nurse 
 must be protected. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Tell us what we must do. 
 
 Doctor. She must stop giving milk to the child. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. You mean that we must change the 
 nurse .'' 
 
 Doctor. No. I mean that the child cannot continue 
 to be fed at the breast either by this nurse or by any 
 healthy nurse. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Why? 
 
 Doctor. Because the child would communicate its 
 complaint to the person who gave it milk. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. But, doctor, if the baby is brought up 
 on the bottle it will die. 
 
 George [breaking into sobs] Oh, my poor little girl! 
 Oh, my God ! it 's me ! Oh ! oh ! 
 
 Doctor. Careful treatment, with sterilized milk —
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 45 
 
 Mme. Dupont. That may succeed with healthy chil- 
 dren, but at the age of three months a sickly child such 
 as ours cannot be fed by hand. Such a child has all the 
 more need of being fed at the breast. That is true.'' 
 
 Doctor. Yes; but — 
 
 Mme. Dupont. In that case you will realize that 
 between the life of the child and the health of a nurse 
 I have no choice. 
 
 George [sobbing] Oh ! oh ! oh ! 
 
 Doctor. Your affection leads you to express an in- 
 credible sentiment. But it is not for you to choose. I 
 shall forbid the child to be brought up at the breast. The 
 health of this woman does not belong to you. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Nor the life of our child to you. If 
 there is one way to save its life, it is to give it every pos- 
 sible attention, and you want me to treat it in a way that 
 you doctors condemn even for healthy children. My little 
 one ! You think I will let her die like that ! Oh, I shall 
 take good care she does not ! Neglect the one single thing 
 that can save her ! It would be criminal ! As for the 
 nurse, we will indemnify her. We will do everything in 
 our power, everything but that. No, no, no ! Whatever 
 can be done for our baby shall be done, cost what it may. 
 But that — You don't consider what you are asking. 
 It would be as if I killed my child. [Bursting into 
 tears] Oh, my little angel, my own little Saviour ! 
 
 George has not stopped sobbing since he first began. 
 At his mother's last words his sobs become almost cries. 
 His anguish is pitiable to see. 
 
 George. Oh, oh, oh! My little child! My little 
 child ! Oh, oh ! [In an undertone] Oh, what a scoun- 
 drel I am ! What a criminal ! 
 
 Doctor. Calm yourself, madam, I beg. You will not 
 improve matters in this way. Try to consider them 
 coolly. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. You are right. I beg your pardon.
 
 46 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 But if you knew how much this child is to me. I lost one 
 at the same age. I am old and widowed — I did not 
 expect to live to see my grandchildren. You are right. 
 George, be calm — we will show our love by being calm. 
 Now then, we will talk seriously and coldly. But I warn 
 you that you will not succeed in making me consent to 
 any but the very best conditions for the child. I shall 
 not let her be killed by being taken from the breast. 
 
 Doctor. This is not the first time I have found my- 
 self in this situation, and I must begin by telling you 
 that parents who have refused to be guided by my 
 advice have invariably repented of it most bitterly. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. The only thing of which I shall 
 repent — 
 
 Doctor. You are evidently unaware of what the ra- 
 pacity and malice of peasants such as this nurse are 
 capable, especially against those of superior station. In 
 this case, moreover, her enmity would be legitimate. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Oh! What can she do? 
 
 Doctor. She can bring an action against you. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. She is far too stupid to think of such 
 a thing. 
 
 Doctor. Others will put it into her head. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. She is too poor to pay the expenses 
 of going to law. 
 
 Doctor. Then you propose to profit by her ignorance 
 and her poverty .f* Besides, she could obtain the assist- 
 ance of the court. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Never ! Surely, never ! 
 
 Doctor. Indeed.'' For my part I know at least ten 
 such cases. In every case where the fact was proved, 
 judgment was given against the parents. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Not in a case like this ! Not where 
 the life of a poor innocent little child was at stake! You 
 must be mistaken !
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 47 
 
 Doctor. Many of the facts have been identical. I 
 can give you the dates. 
 
 George [rising] I have the law reports here. [He 
 takes a volume and hands it to the doctor], 
 
 Mme. Dupont. It is needless. 
 
 Doctor [to George] You can convince yourself. In 
 one or two cases the parents have been ordered to pay 
 a yearly pension to the nurse; in the others sums of 
 money varying from three to eight thousand francs. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. If we had to fight an action, we 
 should retain the very best lawyer on our side. Thank 
 heaven we are rich enough. No doubt he would make it 
 appear doubtful whether the child had not caught this 
 disease from the nurse, rather than the nurse from the 
 child. 
 
 Doctor. Allow me to point out that such conduct 
 would be atrocious. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Oh, it is a lawyer's business to do 
 such things. I should not have to say anything. In any 
 case you may be sure that he would win our suit. 
 
 Doctor. And have you considered the scandal that 
 would ensue. 
 
 George [turning to a page in the reports] Here is 
 the judgment you were speaking of — six thousand 
 francs. 
 
 Doctor. You can make Madame Dupont read it 
 afterwards. Since you have the reports there, kindly 
 give me the volume before this. [George goes again to 
 the bookcase. To Madame Dupont] Have you thought 
 of the scandal? 
 
 George [coming hack] But, doctor, allow me to point 
 out, in reports of this kind the names are suppressed. 
 
 Doctor. They are not suppressed in court. 
 
 George. True. 
 
 Doctor. Are you sure that no paper would publish 
 a full account of the case?
 
 48 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 M ME. DuPONT. Oh^ how infamous ! 
 
 Doctor. You see what a horrible scandal it would be 
 for you. [George nods] A catastrophe, absolutely. 
 
 George. Particularly for a notary like me. [He 
 goes to get the other volume]. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. We will prevent her from bringing 
 an action. We will give her what she wants. 
 
 Doctor. Then you will expose yourself to be in- 
 definitely blackmailed. I know one family which has 
 paid hush-money of this kind for twelve years. 
 
 George. We could make her sign a receipt. 
 
 Doctor. In full settlement of all claims.'' 
 
 George, Exactly so. Here is the volume. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. She would be only too glad to go 
 back to her people with enough money to buy a little 
 house and a plot of land. To a woman of her position 
 it would be wealth. 
 
 The nurse comes in. 
 
 Nurse. Baby 's waked up, sir. 
 
 Doctor. I will come and see her. [To Madame Du- 
 pont] We will finish what we were saying presently. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Very well. Do you want the nurse? 
 
 Doctor. No, thank you. 
 
 The doctor goes out. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Nurse, just wait a minute. I want to 
 speak to you. [In an undertone to her son] I know 
 how we can manage. If we warn her and she agrees to 
 stay, the doctor will have nothing more to say; will he? 
 
 George. I suppose not. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I will promise her two thousand 
 francs when she goes if she consents to stay on as wet- 
 nurse. 
 
 George. Is that enough, do you think? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. At any rate I will try. If she hesi- 
 tates I will make it more. 
 
 George. All right.
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 49 
 
 Mme. Dupont [turning to the nurse^ Nurse, you 
 know that baby is a little ill? 
 
 Nurse. Oh, no, ma'am. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Indeed she is. 
 
 Nurse. I 've looked after her as well as possible ; I 
 know I have, ma'am. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I do not say you have not. But she 
 is ill: the doctors say so. 
 
 Nurse, That 's a fine story ! As if doctors were n't 
 always finding something, so that you may n't think they 
 don't know their business ! 
 
 Mme. Dupont. But our doctor is a great doctor; and 
 you have seen yourself that baby has little pimples. 
 
 Nurse. Oh, ma'am, that 's nothing but the heat of her 
 blood. Don't you worry about it, I tell you it 's only the 
 strength of her blood. It is n't my fault. I 've always 
 done everything for her and kept her that clean and 
 proper. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. No one says that it is your fault. 
 
 Nurse. Then what are you finding fault with me 
 about .'' Ah, there is n't anything the matter with her. 
 The pretty little darling, she 's a regular town baby she 
 is, just a bit poorly; but she 's all right, I promise you. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I tell you she is ill: she has a cold 
 in her head and there are sores at the back of her throat. 
 
 Nurse. Then that 's because the doctor scratched her 
 with the spoon he put into her mouth by the wrong end. 
 And if she has a little cold, I don't know when she caught 
 it, I 'm sure I don't: I always keep her that well 
 wrapped up, she has three thicknesses of things on. It 
 must have been when you came the time before last and 
 opened all the windows in the house. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. But I tell you that nobody is finding 
 fault with you at all. 
 
 Nurse. Oh, yes, I know. That 's all very well. I 'm 
 only a poor country girl.
 
 50 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 Mme. Dupont. What do you mean? 
 
 Nurse. Oh, that 's all very well, it is ! 
 
 Mme. Dupont. But I have told you over and over 
 again that we have no fault to find. 
 
 Nurse [sticking to her idea] I never expected any 
 unpleasantness when I came here. [She begins to 
 whimper], 
 
 Mme. Dupont. We have no fault to find with you. 
 Only we want to warn you, you may catch the baby's 
 illness — 
 
 Nurse [sulkily'] Well, if I do catch a cold, it won't 
 be the first time I 've had to blow my nose, I suppose. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Perhaps you may get her pimples. 
 
 Nurse [sneering] Oh, ma'am, we country folks 
 have n't got nice, delicate, white skins like Paris ladies 
 have. When you have to work in the fields all day, 
 rain or shine, you don't need to plaster your face all 
 over with cream, I can tell you. No offence meant, 
 but if you want to find an excuse, that is n't much of 
 a one. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. What do you mean.'' What excuse? 
 
 Nurse. Oh, yes, I know. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. What do you know? 
 
 Nurse. I 'm only a poor country girl, I am. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I have not the slightest idea what 
 you mean. 
 
 Nurse. Oh, I know what I mean. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Then tell me what you mean. 
 
 Nurse. Oh, what's the good? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Tell me, please. I insist! 
 
 Nurse. Oh, very well — 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Go on. 
 
 Nurse. Oh, all right. I may be only a poor coun- 
 try girl, but I 'm not quite so stupid as that. I know 
 what it is you want. Just because master 's cross at 
 your having promised me thirty francs a month more
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 51 
 
 if I came to Paris. [Turning to George] Well, and 
 what do you expect? Mustn't I have my own little 
 boy looked after? And hasn't his father got to eat 
 and drink? We're only poor coxmtry folks, we are. 
 
 George. You 're making a mistake, nurse. There' s 
 nothing at all the matter. My mother was quite right 
 to promise you the thirty francs extra, and the only 
 thing in my mind is that she did not promise you 
 enough. Now I have decided when baby is old enough 
 to have a dry nurse and you leave us, just to show how 
 grateful we are, to give you, er — 
 
 Mme. Dupont. We shall make you a present, you 
 understand, over and above your wages. We shall give 
 you five hundred francs, or perhaps a thousand. That 
 is, of course, if baby is in perfectly good health. 
 
 Nurse [stupefied] You '11 give me five hundred 
 francs — for myself — [Struggling to understand] 
 But you have n't got to. We did n't agree to that. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. No. 
 
 Nurse [to herself] What's up, then? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. It is simply because baby will re- 
 quire more attention. You will have rather more 
 trouble with her. You will have to give her her medi- 
 cine and so on. It may be a little difficult for you. 
 
 Nurse. Ah, I see. So that you may be sure I shall 
 look after her well. You say to yourself: " Nurse has 
 an interest in her." I see. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. That is understood, then? 
 
 Nurse. Yes, ma'am. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Very good. You will not come 
 afterwards and complain of the way we have treated 
 you. We have warned you that the child is ill and 
 that you may catch her illness. To make up for that, 
 and because you will have more trouble with her, we 
 will give you five hundred francs when your time here 
 is over. That is understood?
 
 52 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 Nurse. But you said a thousand francs, ma'am. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Very well; a thousand francs, then. 
 
 George [passing to the right behind the other two 
 and drawing his mother aside'\ It 's a pity that we 
 can't get her to sign that. 
 
 Mme. Dupont [to the nurse'] So that there may be 
 no misunderstanding about the sum — you see I forgot 
 just now that I said a thousand francs — we will 
 draw up a little paper which we shall sign on our 
 side and you will sign on your side. 
 
 Nurse. Very good, ma'am; I understand. 
 The doctor comes bacJc. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Here is the doctor. You may go, 
 nurse; that is all right. 
 
 Nurse. Yes, ma'am. [T'o herself] What's up, 
 then ? A thousand francs ? What 's the matter with 
 the baby.'' Has she got something bad, I wonder.'' 
 [She passes to the left, between the desk and window, 
 and goes out]. 
 
 Doctor. The condition is unchanged. There is 
 no need for anxiety. [He sits down at the desk to 
 'write a prescription]. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I am glad to tell you, doctor, that 
 you can now devote yourself to the baby and the nurse 
 without misgiving. While you have been away we 
 have informed the nurse of the circumstances, and 
 agreed with her that she shall stay with us in return 
 for a certain sum of money. 
 
 Doctor, The disease which the nurse will almost 
 infallibly contract in giving her milk to the child is, I 
 fear, too serious to be made the subject of a bargain, 
 however large the sum of money. She might be com- 
 pletely crippled, even if she did not die of it. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. But she accepts ! 
 
 Doctor. It is not only that she would be rendered 
 incapable of serving in future as wet nurse without
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 53 
 
 danger to the infants she suckled. The results of the 
 disease to herself might be inconsiderable ; but at the 
 same time, I repeat, they might, in spite of everything 
 we could do, cast a terrible blight upon her life. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. But I tell you she accepts ! She has 
 the right to do what she pleases. 
 
 Doctor. I am not sure that she has the right to 
 sell her own health, but I am sure that she has not the 
 right to sell the health of her husband and of her chil- 
 dren. If she contracts this disease, she will almost 
 certainly communicate it to both of them; and, further, 
 the life and health of any children she might after- 
 wards have would be gravely endangered. You under- 
 stand now that it is impossible for her to make a 
 bargain of this kind. If the mischief is not already 
 done, every effort must be made to prevent it. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. You say: " If the mischief is not 
 done." Can you not be certain? 
 
 Doctor. Not as yet. There is a period of five or 
 six weeks between the moment of contracting the 
 disease and the appearance of its first symptoms. 
 
 JNIme. Dupont. You think of nothing but the nurse. 
 You do not think of our poor little baby. What can 
 we do ? We cannot let her die ! 
 
 George. We can't, we can't ! 
 
 Doctor. Neither can you endanger the life of this 
 woman. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. You are not defending our interests ! 
 
 Doctor. I am defending those of the weakest. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. If we had called in our own doctor, 
 he would have taken our side. 
 
 Doctor. I doubt it. [Rising^ But there is still 
 time to send for him. 
 
 George. Mother ! I beg you not to go, doctor. 
 
 Mme. Dupont [stipplicating him] Oh, don't aban- 
 don us ! You can make allowances — If you only knew
 
 54 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 what this child was to me ! I feel as if I had staved off 
 death to wait for it. Have pity on us ! Our poor little 
 girl ! — she is the weakest, surely. Have pity on her ! 
 When you saw her tiny, suffering body, did you not 
 feel any pity for her ? Oh, I beseech you ! 
 
 George. Doctor, we implore you ! 
 
 Doctor. Indeed I pity her and I will do everything 
 in my power to save her. But you must not ask me to 
 sacrifice the health of a young and strong woman to 
 that of a sickly infant. I will be no party to giving this 
 woman a disease that would embitter the lives of her 
 whole family, and almost certainly render her sterile. 
 
 Mme. Dupont [in a stifled voice] Oh, are there not 
 enough of these peasants in the world ! 
 
 Doctor. I beg your pardon.^ 
 
 Mme. Dupont [in the same tone] I said that if she 
 had no more children, there would only be the fewer to 
 be unhappy. 
 
 Doctor. It is useless for us to continue this dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 Mme. Dupont [rousing herself] I shall not take 
 your advice ! I shall not listen to you ! 
 
 Doctor. There is one here already who regrets not 
 having done so. 
 
 George. Yes ; O, God, yes ! 
 
 Mme. Dupont [more and more exalted] I do not care ! 
 I do not care if I am punished for it in this world and 
 the next! If it is a crime, if it is a sin, I accept all the 
 responsibility, however heavy it may be ! Yes, yes ! If 
 it must be, I will lose my soul to save our child's life, 
 our little one's ! I know that hell exists for the wicked: 
 that is one of my profoundest convictions. Then let God 
 judge me — if I am damned, so much the worse for me! 
 
 Doctor. I shall not allow you to take that responsi- 
 bility. To enable you to do so, my consent would be 
 necessary, and I refuse it.
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 55 
 
 Mme. Dupont. What do you mean? 
 
 Doctor. I shall speak to the nurse and give her the 
 fullest particulars^ which I am convinced you have not 
 done. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. What ! you, a doctor, would betray 
 family secrets entrusted to you in the strictest confidence ! 
 Secrets of this kind ! 
 
 Doctor. The betrayal, if it is one, is forced on me 
 by the law. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. The law ! I thought you were bound 
 to secrecy ? 
 
 Doctor [turning the pages of the volume of reports^ 
 Not in this case. Here is a judgment given by the court 
 at Dijon: I thought that I might have to read it to you. 
 [Reading^ " A doctor who knowingly omits to inform a 
 nurse of the dangers incurred by her in giving milk to a 
 syphilitic child may be held responsible in damages for 
 the results caused by her ignorance." You see that the 
 law is against you, as well as your conscience ; and I may 
 add that, even were it not so, I should not allow you to 
 be led by your feelings into committing such a crime. If 
 you do not consent to have the child fed by hand, I shall 
 either speak to the nurse or give up the case. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. You dare to threaten us ! Oh, you 
 know the power that your knowledge gives you ! You 
 know what need we are in of your services, and that if you 
 abandon us perhaps our child will die ! And if we give 
 way to you, she will die all the same! \Wildly'] O, my 
 God, my God, why cannot I sacrifice myself? Oh, if only 
 my aged body could take the place of this woman's young 
 flesh, and my poor dry breasts give to our child the milk 
 that would save her life! With what joy I would give 
 myself up to this disease ! With what rapture I would 
 suffer the most horrible ravages that it could inflict on 
 me ! Oh, if I could but offer myself, without fear and 
 without regret!
 
 56 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 George [flings himself into her arms with sobs and 
 cries of] Mother! Mother! Mother! 
 They weep. 
 
 Doctor [to himself, moved] Poor people! Poor 
 people ! 
 
 Mme. Dupont [sitting down with an air of resignation'] 
 Tell us what we must do. 
 
 Doctor. Keep the nurse here as dry-nurse so that she 
 may not carry the infection elsewhere. We will feed the 
 child by hand, and I beg you in all sincerity not to ex- 
 aggerate the danger that will result from the change. I 
 have every hope of restoring the baby to health in a short 
 space of time; and I assure you that I will use every 
 possible effort to bring about a happy conclusion. I will 
 call again to-morrow. Good-day. 
 
 Mme. Dupont [without moving] Thank you, doctor. 
 
 George [going to the door and shaking hands] Thank 
 you, thank you! [The doctor goes out. George comes 
 back and goes to his mother with outstretched arms] 
 Mother ! 
 
 Mme. Dupont [repulsing him] Let me be. 
 
 George [checking himself] Are we not unhappy 
 enough, without hating one another? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. It is God who visits upon your child 
 the sins of its father. 
 
 George [raising his shoulders gloomily] You believe 
 that, when there is not a man alive so wicked and unjust 
 as to commit such an act ! 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Oh, I know you believe in nothing. 
 
 George. Not in that kind of God. 
 
 The nurse, who comes in by the left soon after the 
 doctor has gone out, appears. 
 
 Nurse. If you please, ma'am, I 've been thinking I 
 wovild rather go away at once, and only have the five hun- 
 dred francs. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. What do you say? You want to leave 
 us?
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 57 
 
 Nurse. Yes, ma'am. 
 
 George. But ten minutes ago you did n't want to. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. What has hajapened.^ 
 
 Nurse. I 've been thinking. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Thinking! About what? 
 
 Nurse. Well, I want to go back to my baby and my 
 husband. 
 
 George. But ten minutes ago — There must be 
 something else. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Evidently there is something else. 
 
 Nurse. No, ma'am. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. But there must be ! 
 
 Nurse. Wellj then, I 'm afraid that Paris does n't 
 suit me. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. How can you tell without waiting to 
 try.? 
 
 Nurse. I 'd rather go back home at once. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. At least tell us why. 
 
 Nurse. I have told you. I 've been thinking. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Wliat about? 
 
 Nurse. I 've been thinking. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Oh, don't say that over and over 
 again ! " I 've been thinking, I 've been thinking." 
 What have you been thinking about? 
 
 Nurse. About everything. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Can't you tell us about what? 
 
 Nurse. I tell you, about everything. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Idiot ! 
 
 George [stepping in front of his mother'\ Let me 
 speak to her. 
 
 Nurse. I know we 're only poor country folk. 
 
 George. Listen to me, nurse. Just now you were 
 not only satisfied with your wages, but you were afraid 
 we were going to send you away. In addition to your 
 wages we have promised to give you a large sum of 
 money at the end of your time here — and now you want
 
 58 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 to leave us, at once ! Come now, you must have some 
 sort of reason. Has anyone been doing anything to 
 you? 
 
 Nurse. No, sir. 
 
 George. Well, then? 
 
 Nurse. I 've been thinking. 
 
 George [ea:asperated] Don't go on repeating that 
 silly thing! What do you mean by it? [Gently] Come, 
 come ! Tell me why you want to go away. [Silence] Eh? 
 
 Nurse. I have told you. 
 
 George. One might as well talk to a block of wood. 
 
 Mme. Dupont [coming forward] But you have no 
 right to leave us. 
 
 Nurse. Yes ; I want to go away. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I shall not allow you to go ! 
 
 George. Oh, well, let her go; after all we can't keep 
 her by force. [To the nurse] Since you want to go, you 
 shall go ; but I can only say that you 're as stupid as a 
 cow. 
 
 Nurse. I don't mind if I am. 
 
 George. I shall not pay you for the month that has 
 just begun, and you will pay for your own railway ticket. 
 
 Nurse. We '11 see about that. 
 
 George. Yes ; you will see. You '11 see this moment, 
 too! Be off with you! I don't want you any longer. 
 Now, then! 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Don't fly into a rage, George. [To 
 the nurse] You don't mean it seriously, nurse, surely? 
 
 Nurse. I would rather go back home at once and only 
 have my five hundred francs. 
 
 George. What's that? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. What are you talking about? 
 
 George. Five hundred francs? 
 
 Mme. Dupont. What five hundred francs ? 
 
 Nurse. The five hundred francs you promised me, to 
 be sure !
 
 Act II Damaged Goods 59 
 
 George. We never promised you anything of the 
 sort! 
 
 Nurse. Yes, you did. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Yes; when you had finished nursing 
 the baby, and if we were satisfied with you. 
 
 Nurse. No; you said you would give me five hundred 
 francs when I left. Now I 'm going away, so I want 
 them. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. You will please not address me in 
 that tone; you understand.'' 
 
 Nurse. You 've only got to give me my money and I 
 shan't say a word more. 
 
 George. Oh, that's it, is it? Very well, I discharge 
 you on the spot. Now, then, be off with you ! 
 
 Mme. Dupont. I should think so, indeed. 
 
 George. Off you go ! 
 
 Nurse. Give me my five hundred francs. 
 
 George \_pointing furiously at the door^ Take your 
 blasted carcase out of this! Do you hear? 
 
 Nurse. Hullo, hullo ! You speak to me a bit more 
 politely; can't you? 
 
 George. Will you get out of this, or have I got to 
 send for the police ? 
 
 Nurse. The police! What for, eh, what for? 
 
 George. To chuck you out, you — 
 
 Nurse. Well, and what am I ? I 'm only a country 
 girl, I am. I may be a bit stupid — 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Stupid ! I should think you were. 
 You have no more brains than a mule. 
 
 Nurse. I may be stupid, but I 'm not — 
 
 Mme. Dupont [^interrupting] You have no more 
 heart than a stone. You are a wicked woman. 
 
 George. You 're no better than a thief. 
 
 Nurse. Oh, a thief am I ? I should like to know why. 
 
 George. Because you 're trying to get money that 
 is n't yours.
 
 60 Damaged Goods Act II 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Because you are deserting our baby. 
 You are a wicked woman. 
 
 George. Do you want me to put you out? [He takes 
 her by the arm^. 
 
 Nurse. Oh, that's it, is it.'' So you want me to tell 
 you why I 'm going? 
 
 George. Now, then, out with it. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Well, why is it? 
 
 Henriette enters at the hack. In the noise of the 
 quarrel no one perceives her. 
 
 Nurse. Very well, then. I 'm going away because 
 I don't want to catch your beastly diseases here. 
 
 Mme. Dupont. Be quiet, will you? 
 
 George. Shut up, can't you? 
 
 Nurse. Oh, you need n't be afraid ; everyone knows 
 about it. Justin listened at the door to what your doctor 
 was saying and told me what was up. Oh, I may be 
 stupid, but I 'm not so stupid as that. I 'm going to have 
 my money and get out of this. 
 
 George. Shut up ! 
 
 Mme. Dupont. [taking her by the arm] Hold your 
 tongue, I tell you ! 
 
 Nurse. Let me go! Let me go! I know your brat 's 
 not going to live. I know it 's rotten through and 
 through because its father 's got a beastly disease that 
 he caught from some woman of the streets. 
 
 Henriette, "with two hoarse cries, falls to the ground 
 in a fit of nervous sobbing. 
 
 George [rushing towards her^ My God ! 
 
 Henriette eludes him and pulls herself up with disgust, 
 hatred, and horror depicted all over her. 
 
 Henriette [shrieking like a mad wvmany. Don't 
 touch me ! Don't touch me !
 
 ACT III 
 
 The doctor's room in the hospital "where he is chief 
 physician. The doctor enters with a medical student, 
 both in their hospital clothes, and takes off his apron 
 while talking. 
 
 Doctor. By the way, my dear fellow, is the gentle- 
 man we passed in the passage waiting for you? 
 
 Student. No, not for me. 
 
 Doctor. Then it 's my deputy. Do you know this 
 name? Where did I put his card? [He looks on his 
 desk] Ah, here. " Loches, deputy for Sarthes." 
 
 Student. That 's the famous Loches. 
 
 Doctor. Ah, yes, deputy for Sarthes. A regular 
 orator, is n't he ? 
 
 Student. Tremendous, I believe. 
 
 Doctor. That 's the man we want then. He busies 
 himself a great deal with social questions? 
 
 Student. Just so. 
 
 Doctor. I suppose he wants to start an agitation 
 in the Chamber in favor of the laws for which we have 
 been clamoring so long. No doubt he means to post him- 
 self up first. This is what he writes: " Loches, deputy 
 for Sarthes, presents his compliments," etc. . . . would 
 be much obliged if I would see him to-morrow, Sunday, 
 not for a consultation. 
 
 Student. It 's very likely he has some idea of the sort. 
 
 Doctor. Now that I have a deputy I will post him 
 up, I can assure you. That 's why I have had the case 
 from St. Charles' ward and number 28 brought here. 
 
 61
 
 62 Damaged Goods Act III 
 
 Student. Shall you want me? 
 
 Doctor. Not at all, my dear fellow. Good-bye. 
 
 Student. Good-bye, sir. 
 
 Doctor [calling to the other as he goes out] Would 
 you mind telling them to show in M. Loches.'' Thanks 
 very much. Good-bye. 
 
 The student goes out. 
 
 Laches enters and bows. The doctor motions him to be 
 
 seated. 
 
 LocHES. I must thank you for being so kind as to 
 receive me out of your regular hours. The business that 
 brings me here is peculiarly distressing. I am the 
 father-in-law of M. George Dupont. After the terrible 
 revelation of yesterday, my daughter has returned to 
 me with her child, and I have come to ask you to be so 
 good as to continue attending on the infant, but at my 
 house. 
 
 Doctor. Very good. 
 
 LocHEs. Thank you. Now, as to the scoundrel who 
 is the cause of all these misfortunes. 
 
 Doctor [very gently] You must excuse me, but that 
 is a subject on which I cannot enter. My functions are 
 only those of a physician. 
 
 LocHES [in a thick voice] I ask your pardon, but I 
 think when you have heard me for a moment, you will 
 agree with me. I shall not trouble you with the plans of 
 vengeance I formed yesterday, when my poor daughter 
 fled to me with her child in her arms after the revelation 
 that you know. You will excuse me if I speak to you in 
 this state — oh, I can scarce contain my indignation ! I 
 had intended to talk of this calmly : but when I think 
 of that man and of his infamous conduct — the brutal, 
 cowardly blow he has struck at me and mine — I cannot 
 control myself — I — I — It is abominable ! My 
 daughter! A girl of twenty-two! Twenty-two! 
 A silence.
 
 Act III Damaged Goods 63 
 
 Doctor. I understand and respect your feelings ; 
 but, believe me, you are not in a fit state to form any 
 decision at this moment. 
 
 LocHES [with an effort] Yes, yes: I will command 
 myself. All last night I spent in profound reflection; 
 and after rejecting the ideas I mentioned, this is the 
 conclusion to which I have come in conjunction with 
 my daughter: we desire to obtain a divorce as soon as 
 possible. Consequently I have come to ask you for the 
 certificate which will be the basis of our action. 
 
 Doctor. What certificate? 
 
 LocHEs. A certificate attesting the nature of the 
 disease which this man has contracted. 
 
 Doctor. I regret that I am unable to furnish you 
 with such a certificate. 
 
 LocHES. How is that.'' 
 
 Doctor. The rule of professional secrecy is absolute. 
 
 LocHES. It is impossible that it should be your duty 
 to take sides with a criminal against his innocent victims. 
 
 Doctor. To avoid all discussion, I may add that even 
 were I free, I should refuse your request. 
 
 LocHES. May I ask why.'' 
 
 Doctor. I should regret having helped you to obtain 
 a divorce. 
 
 LocHES. Then just because you hold this or that 
 theorj'^, because your profession has rendered you scep- 
 tical or insensible to the sight of misery like ours, my 
 daughter must bear this man's name to the end of her 
 life! 
 
 Doctor. It would be in your daughter's own interest 
 that I should refuse. 
 
 LocHES. Indeed ! You have a strange conception of 
 her interest. 
 
 Doctor [very gently] In your present state of ex- 
 citement you will probably begin to abuse me before five 
 minutes are over. That will not disturb a man of my
 
 64 Damaged Goods Act III 
 
 experience, but you see why I refused to discuss these 
 subjects. However, since I have let myself in for it, I 
 may as well explain my position. You ask me for a cer- 
 tificate in order to prove to the court that your son-in- 
 law has contracted syphilis ? 
 
 LocHES. Yes. 
 
 Doctor. You do not consider that in doing so you 
 will publicly acknowledge that your daughter has been 
 exposed to the infection. The statement will be officially 
 registered in the papers of the case. Do you suppose 
 that after that your daughter is likely to find a second 
 husband ? 
 
 LocHES. She will never marry again. 
 
 Doctor. She says so now. Can you be sure that she 
 will say so in five or in ten years time? Besides, you 
 will not obtain a divorce, because I shall not furnish you 
 with the necessary proof. 
 
 LocHES. I shall find other ways to establish it. I 
 shall have the child examined by another doctor. 
 
 Doctor. Indeed ! You think that this poor little 
 thing has not been unlucky enough in her start in life? 
 She has been blighted physically: you wish besides to 
 stamp her indelibly with the legal proof of congenital 
 syphilis ? 
 
 LocHES. So when the victims seek to defend them- 
 selves they are struck still lower ! So the law provides 
 no arms against the man who takes an innocent, con- 
 fiding young girl in sound health, knowingly befouls her 
 with the heritage of his debauchery, and makes her 
 mother of a wretched mite whose future is such that 
 those who love it most do not know whether they had 
 better pray for its life or for its immediate deliverance! 
 This man has inflicted on his wife the supreme insult, the 
 most odious degradation. He has, as it were, thrust her 
 into contact with the streetwalker with whose vice he 
 is stained, and created between her and that common
 
 Act III Damaged Goods 65 
 
 thing a bond of blood to poison herself and her child. 
 Thanks to him, this abject creature, this prostitute, lives 
 our life, makes one of our family, sits down with us at 
 table. He has smirched my daughter's imagination as he 
 has tarnished her body, and bound up for ever in her 
 mind the ideal of love that she placed so high with 
 heaven knows what horrors of the hospital. He has 
 struck her ph3'sically and morally, in her dignity and her 
 modesty, in her love and in her child. He has hurled 
 her into the depths of shame. And the state of law 
 and opinion is such that this woman cannot be separated 
 from this man save at the cost of a scandal which will 
 overwhelm herself and her child. Very well, then, I 
 shall not ask the aid of the law. Last night I wondered 
 if it was not my duty to go and shoot down that brute 
 like a mad dog. It was cowardice that prevented me. 
 Weakly I proposed to invoke the law. Well, since the 
 law will not do justice, I will take it into my own hands. 
 Perhaps his death will serve as a warning to others. 
 
 Doctor [putting aside his hat] You will be tried for 
 your life. 
 
 LocHES. And I shall be acquitted. 
 
 Doctor. Yes ; but after the public narration of all 
 your troubles. The scandal and the misfortune will be 
 so much the greater, that is all. And how do you know 
 that the day after your acquittal you will not find your- 
 self before another and less lenient judge.'* When your 
 daughter, realizing that you have rendered her unhappi- 
 ness irreparable, and seized with pity for your victim, 
 demands by what right you have killed the father of her 
 child, what will you say? What will you say when that 
 child one day asks the same question? 
 
 LocHES [speaking before the other has done^ Then 
 what can I do? 
 
 Doctor [immediately] Forgive. 
 A silence.
 
 66 Damaged Goods Act III 
 
 LocHES l^without energy'\ Never. 
 
 Doctor. Are you quite sure that you have the right 
 to be so inflexible? Was it not within your power at a 
 certain moment to spare your daughter the possibility of 
 this misery? 
 
 LocHES. Within my power ! Do you imply that I am 
 responsible ? 
 
 Doctor. Yes; I do. When the marriage was pro- 
 posed you doubtless made inquiries concerning your 
 future son-in-law's income ; you investigated his securi- 
 ties ; you satisfied yourself as to his character. You 
 only omitted one point, but it was the most important 
 of all: you made no inquiries concerning his health. 
 
 LoCHES. No. 
 
 Doctor. And why? 
 
 LocHES. Because it is not the custom. 
 
 Doctor. Well, it ought to be made the custom. Be- 
 fore giving his daughter in marriage a father ought to 
 take as much care with regard to her husband as a house 
 of business takes in engaging an employee. 
 L. LocHES. You are right; a law should be passed. 
 
 Doctor. No, no ! We want no new laws : there are 
 too many already. All that is needed is for people to 
 understand the nature of this disease rather better. It 
 would soon become the custom for a man who proposed 
 for a girl's hand to add to the other things for which 
 he is asked a medical statement of bodily fitness, which 
 would make it certain that he did not bring this plague 
 into the family with him. It would be perfectly simple. 
 Once it was the custom, the man would go to his doctor 
 for a certificate of health before he could sign the regis- 
 ter, just as now, before he can be married in church, he 
 goes to his priest for a certificate that he has confessed. 
 As things are, before a marriage is concluded the family 
 lawyers meet to discuss matters : a meeting between the 
 two doctors would be at least as useful and would pre-
 
 Act III Damaged Goods 67 
 
 vent many misfortunes. Your inquiry, you see, was in- 
 complete. Your daughter might well ask you, who are 
 a man and a father, and ought to know these things, why 
 you did not take as much trouble about her health as 
 about her fortune. I tell you that you must forgive. 
 
 LocHES. Never! 
 
 Doctor. Well, there is one last argument which, 
 since I must, I will put to you. Are you yourself with- 
 out sin, that you are so relentless to others.'' 
 
 LocHES. I have never had any shameful disease, sir! 
 
 Doctor. I was not asking you that. I was asking 
 you if you had never exposed yourself to catching one. 
 [He pauses. Loches does not reply] Ah, you see! 
 Then it is not virtue that has saved you ; it is luck. Few 
 things exasperate me more than that term " shameful 
 disease," which you used just now. This disease is like 
 all other diseases: it is one of our afflictions. There is 
 no shame in being wretched — even if one deserves to 
 be so. [Hotly] Come, come, let us have a little plain 
 speaking ! I should like to know how many of these 
 rigid moralists, who are so choked with their middle- 
 class prudery that they dare not mention the name 
 syphilis, or when they bring themselves to speak of it 
 do so with expressions of every sort of disgust, and treat 
 its victims as criminals, have never run the risk of con- 
 tracting it themselves? It is those alone who have the 
 right to talk. How many do you think there are? Four 
 out of a thousand? Well, leave those four aside: be- 
 tween all the rest and those who catch the disease there 
 is no difference but chance. [Bursting out] And by 
 heavens, those who escape won't get much sympathy 
 from me: the others at least have paid their fine of 
 suffering and remorse, while they have gone scot-free ! 
 [Recovering himself] Let 's have done, if you please, 
 once for all with this sort of hypocrisy. Your son-in- 
 law, like yourself and like the immense majority of men.
 
 68 Damaged Goods Act III 
 
 has had mistresses before he married. He has had the 
 ill-luck to catch syphilis, and married supposing that 
 the disease was no longer dangerous when in fact it still 
 was. It is a misfortune that we must do our best to 
 remedy, and not to aggravate. Perhaps in your youth 
 you deserved what he has got even more than he; at any 
 rate your position towards him is as that of the culprit 
 who has escaped punishment towards his less fortunate 
 comrade. That is a reflection that should, I think, touch 
 you. 
 
 LocHES. You put it in such a way — 
 
 Doctor. Am I not right? 
 
 LocHES. Perhaps ; but I can't tell my daughter all 
 this to persuade her to return to her husband. 
 
 Doctor. There are other arguments that you can use. 
 
 LocHES. What, then, good heavens? 
 
 Doctor. Any number. You can tell her that a sep- 
 aration will be a calamity for all parties and that her 
 husband is the only person interested in helloing her at 
 any price to save her child. You can tell her that out 
 of the ruins of her first happiness she can construct a 
 life of solid affection that will have every chance of 
 being lasting and most sincerely enviable. There is 
 much truth in the saying that reformed rakes make the 
 best husbands. Take j^our son-in-law. If your daughter 
 consents to forgive and forget, he will not only respect 
 her, he will be eternally grateful. You can tell her all 
 this and you will find much else to say besides. As for 
 the future, we will make sure that when they are re- 
 united their next child shall be healthy and vigorous. 
 
 LocHES. Is that possible? 
 
 Doctor. Yes, yes ! A thousand times yes ! I have 
 one thing that I always tell my patients: if I could I 
 would paste it up at every street corner. " Syphilis is 
 like a woman M-hose temper is roused by the feeling that 
 her power is disdained. It is terrible only to those who
 
 Act III Damaged Goods 69 
 
 think it insignificant, not to those who know its dangers." 
 Repeat that to your daughter. Give her back to her hus- 
 band, — she has nothing more to fear from him, — and 
 in two years' time I guarantee that you will be a happy 
 grandfather. 
 
 LocHES. Thank you, doctor. I do not know if I can 
 ever forget. But you have made me so uneasy on the 
 score of these responsibilities that I have ignored and 
 given me back so much hope, that I will promise you to 
 do nothing rash. If my poor child can, after a time, 
 bring herself to forgive her husband, I shall not stand in 
 the way. 
 
 Doctor. Good ! But if you have another daughter, 
 take care not to make the same mistake that you made 
 over the marriage of your first. 
 
 LocHES. How was I to know? 
 
 Doctor. Ah, there it is. You did n't know ! You are 
 a father and you did n't know ! You are a deputy and 
 have the honor and the burden of making laws for us, 
 and you did n't know ! You did n't know about syphilis, 
 just as you probably do not know about alcoholism and 
 tuberculosis. 
 
 LocHES. Really, I — 
 
 Doctor. Well, if you like I will except you. But 
 there are five hundred others, are there not, who sit in 
 the Chamber and style themselves Representatives of the 
 people.'' Here are the three unspeakable gods to whom 
 every day thousands of human sacrifices are offered up. 
 What single hour do your colleagues find for the organi- 
 zation of our forces against these insatiable monsters? 
 Take alcoholism. The manufacture of poisonous liquors 
 should be prohibited and the number of licences cut 
 down. But we are afraid of the power of the great dis- 
 tillers and of the voting strength of the trade: conse- 
 quently we deplore the immorality of the working classes 
 and quiet our conscience by writing pamphlets and
 
 70 Damaged Goods Act III 
 
 preaching sermons. Pah! Then take tuberculosis: 
 everyone knows that the real remedy is to pay sufficient 
 wages and have insanitary workmen's dwellings knocked 
 down. But no one will do it, although the working class 
 is the most useful we have as well as the worst rewarded. 
 Instead, workmen are recommended not to spit. Ad- 
 mirable, is n't it? Finally, syphilis. Why do you not 
 concern yourselves with that? You create offices of state 
 for all sorts of things: why do you not one day set 
 about creating an office of public health? 
 
 LocHES. My dear doctor, you are falling into the 
 common French mistake of attributing all the ills in the 
 world to the government. In this case it is for you to 
 show us the way. These are matters for scientific ex- 
 perts. You must begin by pointing out the necessary 
 measures, and then — 
 
 Doctor. And then — what? Ha! It is fifteen 
 years since a scheme of this kind, worked out and ap- 
 proved unanimously by the Academy of Medicine, was 
 submitted to the proper authorities. Since that day it 
 has never been heard of again. 
 
 LocHES. Then you think that there really are meas- 
 ures to be taken? 
 
 Doctor. You shall answer that question yourself. I 
 must tell you that when I received your card yesterday 
 I imagined that it was in your public capacity that you 
 were about to interest yourself in these matters. Con- 
 sequently, after naming the hour of your visit, I told off 
 two of my hospital patients to show to you. You need 
 not be alarmed. I shall not shock your nerves. To 
 outward appearance they have nothing the matter with 
 them. They are not bad cases; they are simply the 
 damaged goods of our great human cargo. I merely 
 wished to give you food for reflection, not a lesson in 
 pathology. You came on another matter. So much the 
 worse for you. I have you and I shall not let you go.
 
 Act III Damaged Goods 71 
 
 [A slight pause]. I will ask you, therefore, to raise 
 your mind above your personal sorrow and to conceive 
 in the mass the thousands of beings who suffer from 
 similar causes. Thousands, mark you, from every rank 
 of society. The disease jumps from the hovel into the 
 home, frequently with few intermediate steps ; so that 
 to cleanse the gutter, where preventive measures can be 
 taken, means practically to safeguard the family life. 
 Our greatest enemy of all, as you shall see for yourself, 
 is ignorance. Ignorance, I repeat. The refrain is 
 always the same : " I did n't know." Patients, whom 
 we might have saved had they come in time, come too 
 late, in a desperate condition, and after having spread 
 the evil far and wide. And why? "I didn't know." 
 [Going towards the door] What can we do.'' We can't 
 hunt them out from the highways and hedges. [To a 
 woman in the passage] Come in, please. [The woman 
 enters. She is of the working class. The doctor turns 
 again to Loches] Here is a case. This woman is very 
 seriously ill. I have told her so, and I told her to come 
 here once a week. [To the woman] Is that so.^ 
 
 Woman. Yes, sir. 
 
 Doctor [angrily] And how long is it since you came 
 last.? 
 
 Woman. Three months. 
 
 Doctor. Three months ! How do you suppose I can 
 cure you like that.'' It is hopeless, do you hear, hopeless ! 
 Well, why did n't you come .'' Don't you know that you 
 have a very serious disease.'' 
 
 Woman. Oh, yes, sir. I know it is. My husband 
 died of it. 
 
 Doctor [more gently] Your husband died of it.f* 
 
 Woman. Yes, sir. 
 
 Doctor. Did he not go to the doctor.'' 
 
 Woman. No, sir. 
 
 Doctor. And is n't that a warning to you?
 
 72 Damaged Goods Act III 
 
 Woman. Oh, sir, I 'd come as often as you told me 
 to, only I can't afford it. 
 
 Doctor. How do you mean, you can't afford it.^ 
 
 LocHES. The consultations are gratis, are they 
 not.? 
 
 Woman. Yes, sir. But they 're during working hours, 
 and then, it 's a long way to come. One has to wait one's 
 turn with all the others, and sometimes it takes the best 
 part of the day, and I 'm afraid of losing my place if I 
 stop away so much. So I wait till I can't help coming 
 again. And then — 
 
 Doctor. Well.'* 
 
 Woman. Oh, it 's nothing, sir. You 're too kind to 
 me. 
 
 Doctor. Go on, go on. 
 
 Woman. I know I ought n't to mind, but I have n't 
 always been so poor. We were well off before my hus- 
 band fell ill, and I 've always lived by my own work. 
 It 's not as it is for a woman who has n't any self-respect. 
 I know it 's wrong, but having to wait like that with 
 everyone else and to tell all about myself before every- 
 one — I know I 'm wrong, but it 's hard all the same, it 's 
 very hard. 
 
 Doctor. Poor woman ! [A pause. Then very gently'\ 
 So it was from your husband that you caught this disease? 
 
 Woman. Yes, sir. We used to live in the country and 
 then my husband caught it and went half mad. He 
 did n't know what he was doing, and used to order all 
 kinds of things we could n't pay for. 
 
 Doctor. Why did he not get himself looked after? 
 
 Woman. He did n't know. We were sold up and 
 came to Paris ; we had n't any more money. Then he 
 went to the hospital. 
 
 Doctor. Well? 
 
 Woman. He got looked after there, but they Would n't 
 give him any medicines.
 
 Act III Damaged Goods 73 
 
 Doctor. How was that? 
 
 Woman. Because we had only been three months in 
 Paris. They only give you the medicines free if you 
 have lived here six months. 
 
 LocHEs. Is that so? 
 
 Doctor. Yes, that is the rule. 
 
 Woman. You see it is n't our fault. 
 
 Doctor. You have no children, have you? 
 
 Woman. I could n't ever bring one to birth, sir. My 
 husband was taken at the very beginning of our marriage, 
 while he was doing his time as a reservist. There are 
 women that hang about the barracks. 
 A silence. 
 
 Doctor. Ah ! Well, this is my private address ; you 
 come to see me there every Sunday morning. \^At the 
 door he slips a piece of money into her hand. Roughly^ 
 There, just take that and run along. What's that? 
 Tut, tut ! Nonsense ! Nonsense ! I have n't time to 
 listen to you. Run along, now. [He pushes her out. To 
 someone who is invisible to the audience] What can I 
 do for you? 
 
 Man [outside] I am the father of the young man you 
 saw this morning. I asked leave to speak to you after 
 the consultation was over. 
 
 Doctor. Ah, yes, just so, I recognize you. Your son 
 is at college, is n't he ? 
 
 Man [in the doorway] Yes, sir. 
 
 Doctor. Come in, come in. You can talk before this 
 gentleman. 
 
 Man [entering] You know, sir, the disaster that has 
 befallen us. My son is eighteen; as the result of this 
 disease he is half paralyzed. We are small trades- 
 people ; we have regularly bled ourselves in order to 
 send him to college, and now — I only wish the same 
 thing may n't happen to others. It was at the very 
 college gates that my poor boy was got hold of by one
 
 74 Damaged Goods Act III 
 
 of these women. Is it right, sir, that that should be al- 
 lowed ? Are n't there enough police to prevent children of 
 fifteen from being seduced like that? I ask, is it right? 
 
 Doctor. No. 
 
 Man. Why don't they stop it, then? 
 
 Doctor. I don't know. 
 
 Man. Look at my son. He 'd be better in his grave. 
 He was such a good-looking chap. We were that 
 proud of him. 
 
 Doctor. Never despair. We '11 do our best to cure 
 him. [Sadly] But why did you wait so long before 
 bringing him to me? 
 
 Man. How was I to know what he had? He was 
 afraid to tell me ; so he let the thing go on. Then when 
 he felt he was really bad with it, he went, without letting 
 me know, to quacks, who robbed him without curing him. 
 Ah, that too ; is that right ? What 's the government 
 about that it allows that? Isn't that more important 
 than what they spend their time over? 
 
 Doctor. You are right. Their only excuse is that 
 they do not know. You must take courage. We have 
 cured worse cases than your son's. As for the others, 
 perhaps some day they will have a little attention paid 
 them. [He goes with the man to the door. Turning to 
 Loches] You see, the true remedy lies in a change of 
 our ways. Syphilis must cease to be treated like a mys- 
 terious evil the very name of which cannot be pro- 
 nounced. The ignorance in which the public is kept of 
 the real nature and of the consequences of this disease 
 helps to aggravate and to spread it. Generally it is con- 
 tracted because " I did n't know " ; it becomes danger- 
 ous for want of proper care because " I did n't know " ; 
 it is passed on from person to person because " I did n't 
 know." People ought to know. Young men ought to be 
 taught the responsibilities they assume and the mis- 
 fortunes they may bring on themselves.
 
 Act III Damaged Goods 75 
 
 LocHES. At the same time these things camiot be 
 taught to children at school. 
 
 Doctor. Why not, pray.'' 
 
 LocHEs. There are curiosities which it would be im- 
 prudent to arouse. 
 
 Doctor [hotly] So you think that by ignoring those 
 curiosities you stifle them? Why, every boy and girl 
 who has been to a boarding school or through college 
 knows you do not ! So far from stifling them, you drive 
 them to satisfy themselves in secret by any vile means 
 they can. There is nothing immoral in the act that re- 
 produces life by the means of love. But for the benefit 
 of our children we organize round about it a gigantic 
 conspiracy of silence. A respectable man will take his 
 son and daughter to one of these grand music halls, where 
 they will hear things of the most loathsome description; 
 but he won't let them hear a word spoken seriously on 
 the subject of the great act of love. No, no ! Not a word 
 about that without blushing : only, as many barrack room 
 jokes, as many of the foulest music hall suggestions as 
 you like ! Pornography, as much as you please : science, 
 never ! That is what we ought to change. The mystery 
 and humbug in which physical facts are enveloped ought 
 to be swept away and young men be given some pride in 
 the creative power with which each one of us is endowed. 
 They ought to be made to understand that the future of 
 the race is in their hands and to be taught to transmit 
 the great heritage they have received from their ancestors 
 intact with all its possibilities to their descendants. 
 
 LocHEs. Ah, but we should go beyond that ! I realize 
 now that what is needed is to attack this evil at its source 
 and to suppress prostitution. We ought to hound out 
 these vile women who poison the very life of society. 
 
 Doctor. You forget that they themselves have first 
 been poisoned. I am going to show you one of them. 
 I warn you, not that it matters much, that she won't
 
 76 Damaged Goods Act III 
 
 express herself like a duchess. I can make her talk by 
 playing on her vanity: she wants to be a ballet-dancer. 
 
 He opens the door and admits a pretty girl of some 
 twenty years: she is very gay and cheerful. 
 
 Doctor. Getting on all right? [Without rvaiting for 
 an answer] You still want to go on the stage^ don't you.'' 
 
 Girl. Rather. 
 
 Doctor. Well, this gentleman 's a friend of the man- 
 ager of the opera. He can give you a line to him; will 
 that do.'' 
 
 Girl. Why, of course. But if they want character, 
 I 'm done, you know. 
 
 Doctor. They won't. You just tell the gentleman 
 about yourself ; what you want to do and what you 've 
 done. Talk to him a bit. 
 
 Girl. My parents were people of good position. 
 They sent me to a boarding school — 
 
 Doctor [interrupting] You need n't tell him all that; 
 he won't believe a word of it. 
 
 Girl. Eh? Well, but if I tell him the truth, it's 
 all up with me. 
 
 Doctor. No, no; he won't mind. Now then, you 
 came to Paris — 
 
 Girl. Yes. 
 
 Doctor. You got a place as maid-servant? 
 
 Girl. Well, yes. 
 
 Doctor. How old were you then? 
 
 Girl. Why, I was turned seventeen. 
 
 Doctor. And then you had a baby? 
 
 Girl [astonished at the question] Of course I did; 
 next year. 
 
 Doctor. Well, who was its father? 
 
 Girl [treating it as a matter of course] Why, it was 
 my master, of course. 
 
 Doctor. Go on, go on. Tell us about it. Your mis- 
 tress found out. What happened then?
 
 Act III Damaged Goods 77 
 
 Girl [in the same tone] She sent me packing. I 'd 
 have done the same, if I 'd been her. 
 
 Doctor. Go on; what are you stopping for? Talk 
 away. The gentleman 's from the country ; he does n't 
 understand about these things. 
 
 Girl [gaily] Right oh! I'll tell you all about it. 
 One night the boss comes up to my room in his socks 
 and says: " If you shriek out, off you go ! " Then — 
 
 Doctor. No, no. Begin after you lost your place. 
 
 Girl. All right, if you think he '11 think it funny. 
 
 Doctor. Never mind that. Say what you 're doing 
 now. 
 
 Girl. Why, I come here every day. 
 
 Doctor. But before you come here? 
 
 Girl. Oh, I do my five hours on the streets. 
 
 Doctor. Well, how's that? The gentleman's from 
 the country, I tell you. He wants to know. Go on. 
 
 Girl. There now, I would n't have thought there was 
 anyone did n't know that. Why, I rig myself out as a 
 work-girl, with a little bag on my arm — they make togs 
 special for that, y' know — and then I trot along by the 
 shop windows. Pretty hard work, too, 'cause to do it real 
 well you have to walk fast. Then I stops in front of some 
 shop or other. Nine times out of ten that does the trick. 
 It just makes me laugh, I tell you, but you 'd think all 
 the men had learnt what to say out of a book. There 's 
 only two things they say, that 's all. It 's either: " You 
 walk very fast " or else: " Are n't you afraid, all alone? " 
 One knows what that means, eh ? Or else I do the 
 " young widow " fake. You 've got to go a bit fast like 
 that, too. I don't know why, but it makes 'em catch on. 
 They find out precious soon I 'm not a young widow, but 
 that doesn't make any odds. [Seriously] There 're 
 things like that I don't understand. 
 
 Doctor. What sort are they, then? Shopwalkers, 
 commercial travellers?
 
 78 Damaged Goods Act III 
 
 Girl. I like that ! Why, I only take real gentlemen. 
 
 Doctor. They say that 's what they are. 
 
 Girl. Oh, I can see well enough. Besides, a whole lot 
 of 'em have orders on. That makes me laugh, too. When 
 they meet you, they 've got their little bits of ribbon stuck 
 in their buttonhole. Then they follow you and they 
 have n't anything. I wanted to find out, so I looked over 
 my shoulder in a glass and saw my man snap the ribbon 
 out with his finger and thumb just as you do when you 're 
 shelling peas. You know ? 
 
 Doctor. Yes; I know. Tell us about your child. 
 What became of it? 
 
 Girl. Oh, I left it at that place in the Rue Denfer. 
 
 Doctor [to Loches] The foundlings' hospital. 
 
 LocHES. Did you not mind doing that.'' 
 
 Girl. It was better than dragging it about with me to 
 starve. 
 
 LocHES. Still, it was your child. 
 
 Girl. Well, what about its father? It was his child, 
 too, was n't it ? See here, I 'm not going to talk about 
 that again. Anyway, just tell me what I could have 
 done, you two there. Put it out to nurse? Well, of 
 course, I would have, if I 'd been sure of having the 
 money for it. But then I wanted to get another place; 
 and how was I to pay for nursing it with the twenty- 
 five or thirty francs a month I should have got, eh? If 
 I wanted to keep straight, I could n't keep the kid. See? 
 
 LocHES. It 's too horrible. 
 
 The doctor stops him rvith a gesture. 
 
 Girl [^angrily'] It's just as I tell you. What else 
 could I have done, eh? If you 'd been in my place you 'd 
 have done just the same. {Quieting down'] See here, 
 what 's the good of making a fuss about it? You '11 say: 
 " But you have n't been living straight." No more I 
 have, but how could I help it ? I could n't stay in my 
 places; and then, when you 're hungry and a jolly young
 
 Act III Damaged Goods 79 
 
 chap offers you. a dinner, my word, I 'd like to see the 
 girl who 'd say no. I never learnt any trade, you see. 
 So that the end of it all is that I found myself in St. 
 Lazare because I was ill. That 's pretty low down, too. 
 These beastly men give you their foul diseases and it 's 
 me they stick in prison. It 's a bit thick, that is. 
 
 Doctor. You gave them as good as you got, did n't 
 you, though? 
 
 Girl [gaily] Oh, I had my tit for tat! [To Laches'] 
 I suppose you 'd like to have that, too ? Before they 
 carted me off there, the day I found out I was in for it, 
 I was going home in a pretty temper when who do you 
 think I met in the street but my old boss ! I was that 
 glad to see him ! Now, thinks I to myself, you 're going 
 to pay me what you owe me — with interest, too ! I just 
 winked at him : oh, it did n't take long, I can tell you. 
 [Tragically] Then when I left him, I don't know what 
 came over me — I felt half mad. I took on everyone I 
 could, for anything or for nothing ! As many as I could, 
 aU the youngest and the best looking — well, I only gave 
 'em back what they gave me ! Now somehow I don't 
 care any more : where 's the use in pulling long faces 
 about things ? It only makes me laugh. Other women, 
 they do just the same; but then they do it for their 
 bread and butter, d' ye see. A girl must live even if 
 she is ill, eh.'' [A pause] Well, you'll give my name 
 to the chap at the theatre, won't you .'' The doc here '11 
 tell you my address. 
 
 LocHES. I promise you I will. 
 
 Girl. Thank ye, sir. 
 
 She goes out. 
 
 Doctor, Was I not right to keep that confession for 
 the end? This poor girl is typical. The whole problem 
 is summed up in her: she is at once the product and the 
 cause. We set the ball rolling, others keep it up, and it 
 runs back to bruise our own shins. I have nothing more
 
 80 Damaged Goods Act III 
 
 "to 
 
 to say. ]_He shaJces hands with Loches as he conducts 
 him to the door, and adds in a lighter tone] But if you 
 give a thought or two to what you have just seen when 
 you are sitting in the Chamber, we shall not have wasted 
 our time.
 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY EACILITY 
 
 AA 001340 450 4