nfaithful, and it is no more a question of love with him than of
the star of Saturn.

"What is there in that word? A word that is merited, positive, withering,
at will. But why? It is still but a word. Can you kill a body with a
word?

"And if you love that body? Some one pours a glass of wine and says to
you: 'Do not love that, for you can get four for six francs.' And it may
intoxicate you!

"But Desgenais loves his mistress, since he keeps her; he must,
therefore, have a peculiar fashion of loving? No, he has not; his fashion
of loving is not love, and he cares no more for the woman who merits
affection than for her who is unworthy. He loves no one, simply and
truly.

"What has led him to this? Was he born thus? To love is as natural as to
eat and to drink. He is not a man. Is he a dwarf or a giant? Is he always
so impassive? Upon what does he feed, what beverage does he drink? Behold
him at thirty like old Mithridates; poisons are his familiar friends.

"There is the great secret, my child, the key you must grasp. By whatever
process of reasoning debauchery may be defended, it will be proven that
it is natural at a given day, hour, or night, but not to-morrow nor every
day. There is not a nation on earth which has not considered woman either
the companion and consolation of man or the sacred instrument of life,
and has not under either of these two forms honored her. And yet here is
an armed warrior who leaps into the abyss that God has dug with His own
hands between man and brute; as well might he deny that fact. What mute
Titan is this who dares repress under the kisses of the body the love of
the soul, and place on human lips the stigma of the brute, the seal of
eternal silence?

"There is a word that should be studied. In it you hear the faint moan of
those dismal labyrinths we know as secret societies, mysteries that the
angels of destruction whisper in the ear of night as it descends upon the
earth. That man is better or worse than God has made him. He is like a
sterile woman, in whom nature has not completed her work, or there is
distilled in the shadow of his life some venomous poison.

"Ah! yes, neither occupation nor study has been able to cure you, my
friend. To forget and to learn, that is your device. You turn the leaves
of dead books; you are too young for antiquities. Look about you, the
pale throng of men surrounds you. The eyes of life's sphynx glitter in
the midst of divine hieroglyphics; d