Have we not proved that moral
nature, like physical nature, has its laws?
Your young wife will never take a lover, as we have elsewhere said,
without making serious reflections. As soon as the honeymoon wanes,
you will find that you have aroused in her a sentiment of pleasure
which you have not satisfied; you have opened to her the book of life;
and she has derived an excellent idea from the prosaic dullness which
distinguishes your complacent love, of the poetry which is the natural
result when souls and pleasures are in accord. Like a timid bird, just
startled by the report of a gun which has ceased, she puts her head
out of her nest, looks round her, and sees the world; and knowing the
word of a charade which you have played, she feels instinctively the
void which exists in your languishing passion. She divines that it is
only with a lover that she can regain the delightful exercise of her
free will in love.
You have dried the green wood in preparation for a fire.
In the situation in which both of you find yourselves, there is no
woman, even the most virtuous, who would not be found worthy of a
_grande passion_, who has not dreamed of it, and who does not believe
that it is easily kindled, for there is always found a certain
_amour-propre_ ready to reinforce that conquered enemy--a jaded wife.
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