“Well, then, my friend, among this number can you be sure that you have not had children by at least one of them, and that you have not in the streets, or in the bagnio, some blackguard of a son who steals from and murders decent people, i.e., ourselves; or else a daughter in some disreputable place, or, if she has the good fortune to be deserted by her mother, as cook in some family?

“Consider, also, that almost all those whom we call ‘prostitutes’ have one or two children of whose paternal parentage they are ignorant, generated by chance at the price of ten or twenty francs.  In every business there is profit and loss.  These wildings constitute the ‘loss’ in their profession.  Who generated them?  You—­I—­we all did, the men called ‘gentlemen’!  They are the consequences of our jovial little dinners, of our gay evenings, of those hours when our comfortable physical being impels us to chance liaisons.

“Thieves, marauders, all these wretches, in fact, are our children.  And that is better for us than if we were their children, for those scoundrels generate also!

“I have in my mind a very horrible story that I will relate to you.  It has caused me incessant remorse, and, further than that, a continual doubt, a disquieting uncertainty, that, at times, torments me frightfully.

“When I was twenty-five I undertook a walking tour through Brittany with one of my friends, now a member of the cabinet.

“After walking steadily for fifteen or twenty days and visiting the Cotes-du-Nord and part of Finistere we reached Douarnenez.  From there we went without halting to the wild promontory of Raz by the bay of Les Trepaases, and passed the night in a village whose name ends in ‘of.’  The next morning a strange lassitude kept my friend in bed; I say bed from habit, for our couch consisted simply of two bundles of straw.

“It would never do to be ill in this place.  So I made him get up, and we reached Andierne about four or five o’clock in the evening.

“The following day he felt a little better, and we set out again.  But on the road he was seized with intolerable pain, and we could scarcely get as far as Pont Labbe.

“Here, at least, there was an inn.  My friend went to bed, and the doctor, who had been sent for from Quimper, announced that he had a high fever, without being able to determine its nature.

“Do you know Pont Labbe?  No?  Well, then, it is the most Breton of all this Breton Brittany, which extends from the promontory of Raz to the Morbihan, of this land which contains the essence of the Breton manners, legends and customs.  Even to-day this corner of the country has scarcely changed.  I say ‘even to-day,’ for I now go there every year, alas!

“An old chateau laves the walls of its towers in a great melancholy pond, melancholy and frequented by flights of wild birds.  It has an outlet in a river on which boats can navigate as far as the town.  In the narrow streets with their old-time houses the men wear big hats, embroidered waistcoats and four coats, one on top of the other; the inside one, as large as your hand, barely covering the shoulder-blades, and the outside one coming to just above the seat of the trousers.