rling over and over, and at times touching the
bottom. Coming from a ball, for instance, where they have danced with
a modest girl, they seek the company of bad characters, and spend the
night in riotous feasting. The last words they addressed to a beautiful
and virtuous woman are still on their lips; they repeat them and burst
into laughter. Shall I say it? Do they not raise, for some pieces of
silver, the vesture of chastity, that robe so full of mystery, which
respects the being it embellishes and engirds her without touching?
What idea can they have of the world? They are like comedians in the
greenroom. Who, more than they, is skilled in that delving to the bottom
of things, in that groping at once profound and impious? See how they
speak of everything; always in terms the most barren, crude, and abject;
such words appear true to them; the rest is only parade, convention,
prejudice. Let them tell a story, let them recount some experience, they
will always use the same dirty and material expressions. They do not say
"That woman loved me;" they say: "I betrayed that woman;" they do not
say: "I love;" they say, "I desire;" they never say: "If God wills;"
they say: "If I will." I do not know what they think of themselves and
of such monologues as these.

Hence, of a necessity, either from idleness or curiosity, while they
strive to find evil in everything, they do not comprehend that others
still believe in the good. Therefore they have to be so nonchalant as to
stop their ears, lest the hum of the busy world should suddenly startle
them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others
go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but fleeting. But
when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and see what has taken
place in him during an hour passed in the society of brutal reality! He
says to himself: "My sister is not like that creature I have just left!"
And from that day he is disturbed and uneasy.

Sinful curiosity is a vile malady born of impure contact. It is the
prowling instinct of phantoms who raise the lids of tombs; it is an
inexplicable torture with which God punishes those who have sinned;
they wish to believe that all sin as they have done, and would be
disappointed perhaps to find that it was not so. But they inquire, they
search, they dispute; they wag their heads from side to side as does an
architect who adjusts a column, and thus strive to find what they desire
to find. Gi