himself. What a sorceress is a
pretty woman! The true name of love is captivity.

Man is made prisoner by the soul of a woman; by her flesh as well, and
sometimes even more by the flesh than by the soul. The soul is the true
love, the flesh, the mistress.

We slander the devil. It was not he who tempted Eve. It was Eve who
tempted him. The woman began. Lucifer was passing by quietly. He
perceived the woman, and became Satan.

The flesh is the cover of the unknown. It is provocative (which is
strange) by its modesty. Nothing could be more distracting. It is full
of shame, the hussey!

It was the terrible love of the surface which was then agitating
Gwynplaine, and holding him in its power. Fearful the moment in which
man covets the nakedness of woman! What dark things lurk beneath the
fairness of Venus!

Something within him was calling Dea aloud, Dea the maiden, Dea the
other half of a man, Dea flesh and blood, Dea with uncovered bosom. That
cry was almost driving away the angel. Mysterious crisis through which
all love must pass and in which the Ideal is in danger! Therein is the
predestination of Creation. Moment of heavenly corruption! Gwynplaine's
love of Dea was becoming nuptial. Virgin love is but a transition. The
moment was come. Gwynplaine coveted the woman.

He coveted a woman!

Precipice of which one sees but the first gentle slope!

The indistinct summons of nature is inexorable. The whole of woman--what
an abyss!

Luckily, there was no woman for Gwynplaine but Dea--the only one he
desired, the only one who could desire him.

Gwynplaine felt that vague and mighty shudder which is the vital claim
of infinity. Besides there was the aggravation of the spring. He was
breathing the nameless odours of the starry darkness. He walked forward
in a wild feeling of delight. The wandering perfumes of the rising sap,
the heady irradiations which float in shadow, the distant opening of
nocturnal flowers, the complicity of little hidden nests, the murmurs of
waters and of leaves, soft sighs rising from all things, the freshness,
the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May, is the vast
diffusion of sex murmuring, in whispers, their proposals of
voluptuousness, till the soul stammers in answer to the giddy
provocation. The ideal no longer knows what it is saying.

Any one observing Gwynplaine walk would have said, "See!--a drunken
man!"

He almost staggered under the weight of his own heart, of