bark upon an intrigue
whose consequences and details fill her with dread. You are still
there for some purpose or other; you are a weight in the balance,
although a very light one. On the other hand, the lover presents
himself arrayed in all the graces of novelty and all the charms of
mystery. The conflict which has arisen in the heart of your wife
becomes, in presence of the enemy, more real and more full of peril
than before. Very soon the more dangers and risks there are to be run,
the more she burns to plunge into that delicious gulf of fear,
enjoyment, anguish and delight. Her imagination kindles and sparkles,
her future life rises before her eyes, colored with romantic and
mysterious hues. Her soul discovers that existence has already taken
its tone from this struggle which to a woman has so much solemnity in
it. All is agitation, all is fire, all is commotion within her. She
lives with three times as much intensity as before, and judges the
future by the present. The little pleasure which you have lavished
upon her bears witness against you; for she is not excited as much by
the pleasures which she has received, as by those which she is yet to
enjoy; does not imagination show her that her happiness will be keener
with this lover, whom the laws deny her, than with you? And then, she
finds enjoyment even in her terror and terror in her enjoyment. Then
she falls in love with this imminent danger, this sword of Damocles
hung over her head by you yourself, thus preferring the delirious
agonies of such a passion, to that conjugal inanity which is worse to
her than death, to that indifference which is less a sentiment than
the absence of all sentiment.

You, who must go to pay your respects to the Minister of Finance, to
write memorandums at the bank, to make your reports at the Bourse, or
to speak in the Chamber; you, young men, who have repeated with many
others in our first Meditation the oath that you will defend your
happiness in defending your wife, what can you oppose to these desires
of hers which are so natural? For, with these creatures of fire, to
live is to feel; the moment they cease to experience emotion they are
dead. The law in virtue of which you take your position produces in
her this involuntary act of minotaurism. "There is one sequel," said
D'Alembert, "to the laws of movement." Well, then, where are your
means of defence?-- Where, indeed?

Alas! if your wife has not yet kissed the apple of the Se