the facts, dear Ana. The Life Force respects
marriage only because marriage is a contrivance of its own to secure
the greatest number of children and the closest care of them. For honor,
chastity and all the rest of your moral figments it cares not a rap.
Marriage is the most licentious of human institutions--

ANA. Juan!

THE STATUE. [protesting] Really!--

DON JUAN. [determinedly] I say the most licentious of human
institutions: that is the secret of its popularity. And a woman seeking
a husband is the most unscrupulous of all the beasts of prey. The
confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the
conscience of the human race than any other single error. Come, Ana!
do not look shocked: you know better than any of us that marriage is
a mantrap baited with simulated accomplishments and delusive
idealizations. When your sainted mother, by dint of scoldings and
punishments, forced you to learn how to play half a dozen pieces on the
spinet which she hated as much as you did--had she any other purpose
than to delude your suitors into the belief that your husband would have
in his home an angel who would fill it with melody, or at least play him
to sleep after dinner? You married my friend Ottavio: well, did you ever
open the spinet from the hour when the Church united him to you?

ANA. You are a fool, Juan. A young married woman has something else to
do than sit at the spinet without any support for her back; so she gets
out of the habit of playing.

DON JUAN. Not if she loves music. No: believe me, she only throws away
the bait when the bird is in the net.

ANA. [bitterly] And men, I suppose, never throw off the mask when
their bird is in the net. The husband never becomes negligent, selfish,
brutal--oh never!

DON JUAN. What do these recriminations prove, Ana? Only that the hero is
as gross an imposture as the heroine.

ANA. It is all nonsense: most marriages are perfectly comfortable.

DON JUAN. "Perfectly" is a strong expression, Ana. What you mean is that
sensible people make the best of one another. Send me to the galleys and
chain me to the felon whose number happens to be next before mine; and I
must accept the inevitable and make the best of the companionship. Many
such companionships, they tell me, are touchingly affectionate; and
most are at least tolerably friendly. But that does not make a chain
a desirable ornament nor the galleys an abode of bliss. Those who talk
most about the ble