s; no honest woman's love, not even that of the bigot
for her spiritual director, has ever been greater than the attachment of
a mistress who shares the dangers of a great criminal.

With these men a passion is almost always the first cause of
their daring enterprises and murders. The excessive love
which--constitutionally, as the doctors say--makes woman irresistible
to them, calls every moral and physical force of these powerful natures
into action. Hence the idleness which consumes their days, for excesses
of passion necessitate sleep and restorative food. Hence their loathing
of all work, driving these creatures to have recourse to rapid ways
of getting money. And yet, the need of a living, and of high living,
violent as it is, is but a trifle in comparison with the extravagance
to which these generous Medors are prompted by the mistress to whom they
want to give jewels and dress, and who--always greedy--love rich food.
The baggage wants a shawl, the lover steals it, and the woman sees in
this a proof of love.

This is how robbery begins; and robbery, if we examine the human soul
through a lens, will be seen to be an almost natural instinct in man.

Robbery leads to murder, and murder leads the lover step by step to the
scaffold.

Ill-regulated physical desire is therefore, in these men, if we may
believe the medical faculty, at the root of seven-tenths of the crimes
committed. And, indeed, the proof is always found, evident, palpable
at the post-mortem examination of the criminal after his execution. And
these monstrous lovers, the scarecrows of society, are adored by their
mistresses. It is this female devotion, squatting faithfully at the
prison gate, always eagerly balking the cunning of the examiner, and
incorruptibly keeping the darkest secrets which make so many trials
impenetrable mysteries.

In this, again, lies the strength as well as the weakness of the
accused. In the vocabulary of a prostitute, to be honest means to break
none of the laws of this attachment, to give all her money to the man
who is nabbed, to look after his comforts, to be faithful to him in
every way, to undertake anything for his sake. The bitterest insult one
of these women can fling in the teeth of another wretched creature is
to accuse her of infidelity to a lover in quod (in prison). In that case
such a woman is considered to have no heart.

La Pouraille was passionately in love with a woman, as will be seen.

Fil-de-Soie,