Here then we have a people, a society which has been sifted, and you
see the result!
XVI.
Manners are the hypocrisy of nations, and hypocrisy is more or less
perfect.
XVII.
Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.
Physical love is a craving like hunger, excepting that man eats all
the time, and in love his appetite is neither so persistent nor so
regular as at the table.
A piece of bread and a carafe of water will satisfy the hunger of any
man; but our civilization has brought to light the science of
gastronomy.
Love has its piece of bread, but it has also its science of loving,
that science which we call coquetry, a delightful word which the
French alone possess, for that science originated in this country.
Well, after all, isn't it enough to enrage all husbands when they
think that man is so endowed with an innate desire to change from one
food to another, that in some savage countries, where travelers have
landed, they have found alcoholic drinks and ragouts?
Hunger is not so violent as love; but the caprices of the soul are
more numerous, more bewitching, more exquisite in their intensity than
the caprices of gastronomy; but all that the poets and the experiences
of our own life have revealed to us on the subject of love, arms us
celibates with a terrible power: we are the lion of the Gospel seeking
whom we may devour.
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