If you had reared him in this manner, madam, on surprising in your son the first signs of the ardent attraction that man feels toward the other sex, far from abandoning the education of this instinct to the chances of inexperience, you would do for it what you did for the others; you would teach the young man to subject it to a wise discipline.
Instead of repeating the stupidly atrocious phrase; young men must sow their wild oats, you would have taken your son's hand affectionately in your own, and, looking in his face, would have said: "My child, Nature decrees that a woman should henceforth attract you more strongly than I, and should maintain or destroy what I have so laboriously built up: I do not murmur at this; it must be so. But my affection and duty require me to enlighten you in this grave juncture. Tell me, if a young man, to satisfy the instinct which is now awakening in you, should corrupt your sister, should sacrifice her life, what would you think of him? what would you do?"
The young man, accustomed from childhood to practise Justice, would not fail to reply: "I should think him depraved and cowardly. Would he not be punished?"
"No, my son, the seducer is not punished by the law."
"Well! I would kill him, for my right of justice reverts to me when the law makes no provision."
"Right, my child. Then you will be neither depraved nor cowardly with respect to any young girl; you will not deserve the sentence which you have pronounced; namely, death. You will respect all young girls and women as you would wish your sister, your daughter to be respected.
"Another question: what would you think of a man who should persuade me to betray your father; who should rob him of my heart and cares; who should draw me aside from the grave duties of maternity? What would you think of the man who should act thus with respect to your own companion?"
"I would judge him like the former and would treat him no better."
"Right again. Then you will respect all married women as you would wish your mother and your wife to be respected; and if you should meet any one towards whom you should feel attracted, or who should be disloyal enough to seek to attract you, you will shun her: for flight is the sole remedy for passion.
"A multitude of women, innocent at first, have been turned aside from the right path by men who do not think as you do. They now avenge themselves upon your sex for the evil it has done them. They corrupt and ruin men who, in their company, lose all sense of morality, who learn to laugh at what you believe and venerate, and undermine and destroy their health. Do you feel the deplorable courage to expose yourself to such risks?"