Woman on Her Own, False Gods and The Red Robe: Three Plays By Brieux · Eugène Brieux
SCENE XI:--Mouzon, Yanetta, the recorder.
Chapter 26 of 39 · 2 min read
YANETTA. Ah, you are angry, aren't you—furious—because you haven't got your way! Although you've done everything, everything you possibly could, short of killing us by inches! You pretend to be kind. You spoke kindly to us. You wanted to make me send my husband to the scaffold! [Mouzon has taken up his brief and affects to be studying it with indifference] It's your trade to supply heads to the guillotine. You must have criminals, guilty men, you must have them at any cost. When a man falls into your clutches he's a dead man. They come in here innocent and they've got to go out again guilty. It's your trade; it's a matter of vanity with you to succeed! You ask questions which don't seem to mean anything in particular, and yet they may send a man to the next world; and when you've forced the poor wretch to condemn himself you're delighted, like a savage would be!
MOUZON [to the gendarmes] Take her away—be quick!
YANETTA. Yes, a savage! You call that justice! [To the gendarmes] You don't take me like that, I tell you! [She clings to the furniture] You're a butcher! You are as cruel as the people in history who broke one's bones to make one confess! [The gendarmes have dragged her free; she lets herself fall to the ground and shouts the rest of her speech while the men drag her to the door at the back] Brute! Savage brute! No, you don't think so—you think yourself a fine fellow, I haven't a doubt, and you're a butcher—
MOUZON. Take her away, I tell you! What, the two of you can't rid me of that madwoman?
The gendarmes make a renewed effort.
YANETTA. Butcher! Coward! Judas! Pitiless beast! Yes, pitiless, and you are all the more dishonest and brutal when you've got poor folk like us to do with. [She is at the door, holding to the frame] Ah, the brutes, they are breaking my fingers! Yes, the poorer one is the wickeder you are! [They carry her away. Her cries are still heard as the curtain falls] The poorer one is the more wicked you are—the poorer one is the more wicked you are—
CURTAIN.
ACT III
The office of the District Attorney. A door to the left, set in a diagonal wall, gives on to a corridor. It opens inwardly, so that the lettering on the outside can be read: "Parquet de Monsieur le Procureur de la République." A desk, chairs, and a chest of drawers.
