fraid to ignite my amorous
fury, how can you expect me to believe you now, when you pretend to fear
it, and when I am only asking you to let me touch a thing, which, if it
be as you say, will only disgust me?"

"Ah! disgust you; I am quite certain of the contrary. Listen to me. Were
I a girl, I feel I could not resist loving you, but, being a man, it is
my duty not to grant what you desire, for your passion, now very natural,
would then become monstrous. Your ardent nature would be stronger than
your reason, and your reason itself would easily come to the assistance
of your senses and of your nature. That violent clearing-up of the
mystery, were you to obtain it, would leave you deprived of all control
over yourself. Disappointed in not finding what you had expected, you
would satisfy your passion upon that which you would find, and the result
would, of course, be an abomination. How can you, intelligent as you are,
flatter yourself that, finding me to be a man, you could all at once
cease to love me? Would the charms which you now see in me cease to exist
then? Perhaps their power would, on the contrary, be enhanced, and your
passion, becoming brutal, would lead you to take any means your
imagination suggested to gratify it. You would persuade yourself that you
might change me into a woman, or, what is worse, that you might change
yourself into one. Your passion would invent a thousand sophisms to
justify your love, decorated with the fine appellation of friendship, and
you would not fail to allege hundreds of similarly disgusting cases in
order to excuse your conduct. You would certainly never find me
compliant; and how am I to know that you would not threaten me with
death?"

"Nothing of the sort would happen, Bellino," I answered, rather tired of
the length of his argument, "positively nothing, and I am sure you are
exaggerating your fears. Yet I am bound to tell you that, even if all you
say should happen, it seems to me that to allow what can strictly be
considered only as a temporary fit of insanity, would prove a less evil
than to render incurable a disease of the mind which reason would soon
cut short."

Thus does a poor philosopher reason when he takes it into his head to
argue at those periods during which a passion raging in his soul makes
all its faculties wander. To reason well, we must be under the sway
neither of love nor of anger, for those two passions have one thing in
common which is that, in thei