woman. It is true, that many old _roues_
and _habitues_ of brothels later on become faithful husbands and
fathers, especially when they have had the luck to escape venereal
disease.

But whoever looks behind the scenes may soon convince himself that the
happiness of most unions of this kind is very relative. The
degradation of the sexual sentiment of a man who has long been
accustomed to live with prostitutes is never entirely effaced, and
generally leaves indelible traces in the human brain.

I readily admit that a man with good hereditary dispositions, who has
only yielded for a short time to seductive influences, may be reformed
by a true and profound love. But even in him, excesses leave traces
which later on may easily lead him astray when he becomes tired of the
monotony of conjugal relations with the same woman. On the other hand,
we must also recognize that sexual relations in themselves, even in
marriage, create a habit which often urges a married man to
extra-nuptial coitus, even when he had remained continent before
marriage.

The tricks which are played on a man by his sexual appetite,
especially by his polygamous instincts, must not, however, be
confounded with the systematic, artificial and abnormal training of
the same appetite. The physical and psychic attractions of a woman are
capable of completely diverting the sexual desires of a man from their
primary object, and of directing them on the siren who captivates his
senses. The elements of the sexual appetite here form an inextricable
mixture with those of love, and constitute the inexhaustible theme of
novels and most true and sensational love stories.

Hereditary pathological dispositions play a considerable role in many
cases of this kind. Also, marriages of sudden and passionate love (we
are not dealing here with love marriages concluded after sufficient
reflection and deep mutual acquaintanceship) are not more stable than
the so-called "_mariages de convenance_," for passionate natures,
usually more or less pathological, are apt to fall from one extreme to
the other. The power exercised by sexual passion in such cases is
terrible. It produces conditions that may lead to suicide or
assassination. In men whose power of reason is neither strong nor
independent, opinions and conceptions are frequently changed; love may
change to hatred and hatred to love, the sentiment of justice may lead
to injustice, the loyal man may become a liar, etc. In fact