should ensue.

But Beauchene waxed passionate on the subject. That question of the
birth-rate and the present-day falling off in population was one which he
thought he had completely mastered, and on which he held forth at length
authoritatively. He began by challenging the impartiality of Boutan, whom
he knew to be a fervent partisan of large families. He made merry with
him, declaring that no medical man could possibly have a disinterested
opinion on the subject. Then he brought out all that he vaguely knew of
Malthusianism, the geometrical increase of births, and the arithmetical
increase of food-substances, the earth becoming so populous as to be
reduced to a state of famine within two centuries. It was the poor's own
fault, said he, if they led a life of starvation; they had only to limit
themselves to as many children as they could provide for. The rich were
falsely accused of social wrong-doing; they were by no means responsible
for poverty. Indeed, they were the only reasonable people; they alone, by
limiting their families, acted as good citizens should act. And he became
quite triumphant, repeating that he knew of no cause for self-reproach,
and that his ever-growing fortune left him with an easy conscience. It
was so much the worse for the poor, if they were bent on remaining poor.
In vain did the doctor urge that the Malthusian theories were shattered,
that the calculations had been based on a possible, not a real, increase
of population; in vain too did he prove that the present-day economic
crisis, the evil distribution of wealth under the capitalist system, was
the one hateful cause of poverty, and that whenever labor should be
justly apportioned among one and all the fruitful earth would easily
provide sustenance for happy men ten times more numerous than they are
now. The other refused to listen to anything, took refuge in his egotism,
declared that all those matters were no concern of his, that he felt no
remorse at being rich, and that those who wished to become rich had, in