In that study we have seen by what paths one is led to love, and we were therefore obliged to consider friendship, compassion and many other sentiments as sources of love. But all endearing sentiments may have relation to the Prince of Affections; that is to say, take the place of love that wanes. When the sun shines in the heavens, the light of the moon and that of the minor stars are invisible; and in the same way, when love glows above the horizon of life, friendship, compassion, and all other tender affections can no longer be seen or felt; but when love disappears we can see the minor sentiments take its place.
Esteem, veneration and all other analogous sentiments may be companions of love; but only too often they are bestowed upon a creature who little deserves them. Love is a wizard that transforms and beautifies and magnifies everything he touches; and we can have immense esteem and deep veneration for the most despicable man, for the most abject, most wicked woman. It does not reflect much honor upon us, but it is true. No brigand ever stood in need of loves, often deep and ardent, and no beautiful courtesan ever lacked illustrious lovers. What does it matter if the object of love is a disgrace in everybody's eyes, spat upon by public contempt, set in the pillory of universal hatred?
We love him, we love her; that is enough. And why do we love him? Why do we love her? Because it pleases us. Before the inappellable rudeness of this explanation what can science say, what can morality suggest?
Science recognizes the fact and explains it. A creature despicable in every respect must please us very much to inspire us with love; and this sentiment must be really gigantic if it conquers human conventionalities, vulgar prejudices and the most persistent habits. It has been said with much truth that no woman was more ardently loved than a homely woman; and the same may be said of a brutal or criminal man, a woman of the street or abject for any reason. A great man, if accused of loving a debased or silly woman, could often, blushing with shame, strip her before the world, like ancient Phryne, saying: "Let him dare throw the first stone at me, who feels himself incapable of loving this beautiful creature!" And the man who, through crime or baseness, has been banned from civilized society, has in his heart, for the woman who loves him, some pure and virgin oasis in which his love is lying; he still has some untainted place reserved in his soul for the beloved one; and this love, concealed and bitter, possesses, for certain natures, all the perilous seductions of strong aromas and intoxicating poisons. No man in the world is entirely wicked; and some of the ferocious kindnesses of the assassin, some of the generous impulses of the thief are preserved for the companion of love. Such is the omnipotence of this sentiment, which, like an ancient alchemist, transmutes the vilest metals into liquid gold and discovers the only diamond buried in the sand of a great alluvium! Science, then, admits loves without esteem, and, bowing its head with a blush of shame, acknowledges that they are only too frequent.
Where science is still and humiliates itself, morality erects its head and flagellates. Love without esteem is a crime—and a crime which breeds other crimes. Woe to us when, bold avengers of public contempt, we dare boast of loving a vile creature, and impudently parade such love, as though intending by our arrogance to impose silence on indignant decency, or by our insolence to act as pedestal for the offended paramour! Liars in our own eyes, we defy, alone, the holiest and most inviolable laws of beauty and honesty; and proud, first, then bold and insolent, we end by becoming truly ribalds, and all encircled and hidden by mire, we permit no gentle creature to approach us who could inspire us with a pure and noble affection. Human passions may try many stunts and tricks, but, in the end, natural sentiments, like normal situations, are the healthiest and most enjoyable. We can raise, for an instant, the vilest creatures on the shield of pride, but our arms will tire and we will roll into the mire, together with our idol of a day.
The woman we love must not only be the companion of our voluptuousness, but also the mother of our children; the man a woman loves must be the husband and the father of the family. We should not consecrate the blush of our face in that of our children, who will curse our wicked loves, and will, perhaps, execrate the name of the father or the memory of the mother. When pride has lost its keenness, and the hour of revenge has passed, woe to us if we shall find ourselves alone with a creature whom we cannot hold in estimation!
If Love is really the holiest thing of life, the most ardent affection, the most voluptuous joy, we must erect a temple to him, with our own hands, and with our most sublime sentiments decorate his tabernacle, in which we can worthily adore him as a god. Love born among crimes and turpitudes is a nest woven with thorny shrubs and thistles, while we should weave it with the most aromatic leaves and the most beautiful flowers. Men and women, we should vie with each other in gleaning fields and gardens and in bearing to love every gentle affection, every noble aspiration, every impulse of lofty ambition. Lust and pride, when coupled, become the step-parents of every love without esteem, which, like every organism born of evil, lives a scrofulous and rachitic life, full of sorrows and calamities.
If love is really the most precious gem, we should enclose it in a casket which, for richness of material, artistic skill and inimitable esthetic conception, should be worthy of its contents. Nothing but noblest things should touch it; no breath, unless perfumed with sandalwood and roses, should be exhaled near it; no hand but that of an angel should caress it; no heat should warm it but that of the kisses of two loving lips.
If woman should concede her love only to the honest and industrious man, if it were possible that man loved no woman but a modest one, we would see the human family regenerated in the course of a generation, we would see men educated through voluptuousness. For the prison that terrifies, for the hell that threatens, we would then substitute the caresses of a woman, the kisses of a man, as educative energies. Shall this eternally be a dream? Shall we always threaten and assault men to make them better? Shall we not have a medicine less cruel than sorrow to cure men of vice and crime?