aste so many
pleasures unknown to them, how many sorrows too of which the beasts have
no idea! What is frightful for you is that over three-fourths of the
earth nature has poisoned the pleasures of love and the sources of life
with an appalling disease to which man alone is subject, and which
infects in him the organs of generation alone.

It is in no wise with this plague as with so many other maladies that
are the result of our excesses. It was not debauch that introduced it
into the world. Phryne, Lais, Flora, Messalina and those like them,
were not attacked by it; it was born in some islands where men lived in
innocence, and thence spread itself over the ancient world.

If ever one could accuse nature of despising her work, of contradicting
her plans, of acting against her designs, it is in this detestable
scourge which has soiled the earth with horror and filth. Is that the
best of all possible worlds? What! if Caesar, Antony, Octavius never had
this disease, was it not possible for it not to cause the death of
Francois I.? "No," people say, "things were ordered thus for the best."
I want to believe it; but it is sad for those to whom Rabelais dedicated
his book.

Erotic philosophers have often debated the question of whether Heloise
could still really love Abelard when he was a monk and emasculate? One
of these qualities did very great harm to the other.

But console yourself, Abelard, you were loved; the root of the hewn tree
still retains a remnant of sap; the imagination aids the heart. One can
still be happy at table even though one eats no longer. Is it love? is
it simply a memory? is it friendship? All that is composed of something
indescribable. It is an obscure feeling resembling the fantastic
passions retained by the dead in the Elysian fields. The heroes who,
during their lifetime, shone in the chariot races, drove imaginary
chariots when they were dead. Heloise lived with you on illusions and
supplements. She kissed you sometimes, and with all the more pleasure
that having taken a vow at the Paraclet monastery to love you no longer,
her kisses thereby became more precious as more guilty. A woman can
barely be seized with a passion for a eunuch: but she can keep her
passion for her lover become eunuch, provided that he remains lovable.

It is not the same, ladies, for a lover who has grown old in service;
the externals subsist no longer; the wrinkles horrify; the white
eyebrows shock; the lost teeth