embarrassed as this cytisus which you apostrophized would be in counting
up his descendants, should we not?

"From eighteen to forty years, in fact, counting in every chance cursory
acquaintanceship, we may well say that we have been intimate with two or
three hundred women.

"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