CXLIX
Public opinion in 1822: A man of thirty seduces a girl of fifteen—the girl loses her reputation.
CL
Ten years later I met Countess Ottavia again; on seeing me once more she wept bitterly. I reminded her of Oginski. "I can no longer love," she told me. I answered in the poet's words: "How changed, how saddened, yet how elevated was her character!"
CLI
French morals will be formed between 1815 and 1880, just as English morals were formed between 1668 and 1730. There will be nothing finer, juster or happier than moral France about the year 1900. At the present day it does not exist. What is considered infamous in Rue de Belle-Chasse is an act of heroism in Rue du Mont-Blanc, and, allowing for all exaggeration, people really worthy of contempt escape by a change of residence. One remedy we did have—the freedom of the Press. In the long run the Press gives each man his due, and when this due happens to fall in with public opinion, so it remains. This remedy is now torn from us—and it will somewhat retard the regeneration of morals.
CLII
The Abbé Rousseau was a poor young man (1784), reduced to running all over the town, from morn till night, giving lessons in history and geography. He fell in love with one of his pupils, like Abelard with Héloïse or Saint-Preux with Julie. Less happy than they, no doubt—yet, probably, pretty nearly so—as full of passion as Saint-Preux, but with a heart more virtuous, more refined and also more courageous, he seems to have sacrificed himself to the object of his passion. After dining in a restaurant at the Palais-Royal with no outward sign of distress or frenzy, this is what he wrote before blowing out his brains. The text of his note is taken from the enquiry held on the spot by the commissary and the police, and is remarkable enough to be preserved.
"The immeasurable contrast that exists between the nobility of my feelings and the meanness of my birth, my love, as violent as it is invincible, for this adorable girl[1] and my fear of causing her dishonour, the necessity of choosing between crime and death—everything has made me decide to say good-bye to life. Born for virtue, I was about to become a criminal; I preferred death." (Grimm, Part III, Vol. II, p. 395.)
This is an admirable case of suicide, but would be merely silly according to the morals of 1880.