Like St. Peter you hold the keys of Paradise.
I would ask of any reasonable creature, would a demon marshal round
the angel whose ruin he had vowed all the elements of disaster with
more solicitude than that with which good morals conspire against the
happiness of a husband? Are you not a king surrounded by flatterers?
This young girl, with all her ignorance and all her desires, committed
to the mercy of a man who, even though he be in love, cannot know her
shrinking and secret emotions, will submit to him with a certain sense
of shame, and will be obedient and complaisant so long as her young
imagination persuades her to expect the pleasure or the happiness of
that morrow which never dawns.
In this unnatural situation social laws and the laws of nature are in
conflict, but the young girl obediently abandons herself to it, and,
from motives of self-interest, suffers in silence. Her obedience is a
speculation; her complaisance is a hope; her devotion to you is a sort
of vocation, of which you reap the advantage; and her silence is
generosity. She will remain the victim of your caprices so long as she
does not understand them; she will suffer from the limitations of your
character until she has studied it; she will sacrifice herself without
love, because she believed in the show of passion you made at the
first moment of possession; she will no longer be silent when once she
has learned the uselessness of her sacrifices.
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