FOR AND AGAINST

It is well understood that the fickle and capricious Dinorah snatched purses and that she was, in her love affairs—if one can call them that—somewhat frivolous. Nevertheless, she seems to be giving society, the society that severely pursues her, that harshly imprisoned her—a rather harsh lesson...
Dinorah took in abandoned children... She took in some of those poor kids who are superfluous in certain rare families, some of those pitiful little ones for whom the word "mother" is, alas! She hardly said anything...

She took them in and didn't immediately say to them:
"You are abandoned children!... You don't have the right to the sweetness, the affection, the cuddles that happy children are entitled to... You don't have the right, even, to be children!... She told them:
"I am your mother..." She didn't say to them:
"You will wear sad uniforms because you are abandoned children... Everyone must know that you are parentless..." She dressed them like ordinary children, like other children. She didn't say to them:
"You have to choose between the asylum and the reformatory. If you behave well, you will be prisoners. If you don't behave well, you will be convicts... You will always march in line until you come of age... You will always eat the same soup, always the same school and "welfare" stews. You'll always have wooden benches to sit on... You'll always be at school, even when you're playing within the four walls of a prison yard... You'll have teachers, tutors, supervisors, masters... principals... You'll never, never, never have parents...

Dinorah, the shameless Dinorah, the crazy Dinorah, at least raised lost children, other people's children, in a maternal way...

Society has never done so much... Society doesn't have a maternal instinct; it only has an administrative instinct...

Maurice PRAX.