“A golden cup; the only thing that can excite the cupidity of a man devoid of faith. The miserable slave of ‘Matter’ can never crave that precious drink; his thirst cannot be allayed by spiritual love; it is only a form of avarice and can be slaked by the possession of the golden vessel—physical beauty.”
“For you who know nothing of love but through sin—for you who never felt love but only hear of it, taking in at your ears the secrets of others who love, to you much of what concerns only the heart of man must be an inexplicable mystery. You see nothing in life but duties fulfilled and sins committed. This is much, no doubt, but it is not all. Only the man who has never drank at all can enjoy the insipid draught of mysticism, or the bitter savour of sin.”
“Only the man who has never drank at all, and who nevertheless is not thirsty, can, by the blessed gift of intuition—which is one of the best graces of our nature—fully enter into all the emotions of true love, from the noblest to the basest. The man who knows everything can feel for everything. You, who abuse us so roundly, might have found friends in those whom you have believed to be your enemies, and peacemakers in your married life in those whom you regard as its disturbers.”
“I refuse any such co-operation.”
“What right have you to complain when you have yourself broken every tie? The mere circumstance that he chooses to consider himself outside of the pale of the Church, deprives a man of the right of complaining of the pressure of a bond which is in its nature a religious one. ‘I need no religion,’ they say—‘I abominate it, I cast it from me; but I do not allow religion to defend itself against my attacks, I do not allow it to claim its own!’”
“No—what I do not allow it to claim is mine.”
“God will have the divine part...”
“And I demand the human part...”
Neither of the men finished his sentence.
“The human part is a convenient loop-hole,” said Paoletti sharply, “through which a man sneaks into unfaithfulness and adultery, leaving the martyred wife alone and without protection.”