bog of debauchery engulfs so many men of a naturally
good nature. In this sense, cold natures are better off; they can
cover themselves with the glory of a "virtue" the resplendent rays of
which become lost in a penumbra of defects and weaknesses from which
these natures suffer in other domains.

=Sexual Hypocrisy.=--Hypocrisy is a peculiarity deeply rooted in the
human mind. We can affirm that whoever pretends never to have been a
hypocrite lies, quite as much as one who swears he has never lied. But
nowhere, save perhaps in the domain of religion, does hypocrisy play a
greater part than in the sexual domain. Nowhere is there so much
falsehood, and men who are most honest on other points make no scruple
of deceiving their wives in this respect. I do not speak here of the
simulation of sentiments of love, for it is too banal, and there is no
need to be too exacting over this point, for there are strong
attenuating circumstances.

First of all, erotic feelings are capable of blinding man for the
moment, as far as persuading him of the eternal duration of love and
fidelity which he promises the object of his appetites, as well as of
the reality of the celestial qualities under which this object appears
to him, or with which it pleases him to adorn it. Two persons mutually
excited by sexual passion are fascinated by the illusions of a mirage,
which often vanishes soon afterward, so that it is not rare to see
them on the following day hurling the most violent abuse at each
other.

Those who have not been witnesses of such events may hardly believe
them. It is sufficient, however, to be a magistrate or to read the
reports of lawsuits between debased persons as the result of love
quarrels, broken engagements or marriages, seductions, etc., to study
the letters that the two parties have written before and after their
quarrel, in order to be convinced of the correctness of what we have
said above. In the first letters the lovers adulate each other and
adorn each other with the most hyperbolic epithets, swearing eternal
love and fidelity, and deluding each other in the most absurd manner.
In letters written sometimes only a few days later we are astonished
to see the same individuals grossly insulting each other and mutually
covering themselves with ignoble calumnies. This is how passion
without reason passes through the furnaces of love and hatred,
dragging after it all the artificial scaffolding of what man imagines
to be