antagonist hurled those who refuse to repent into lakes of burning
brimstone, there to be tormented by devils with horns and tails. Of that
antagonist, and of that conception of repentance, how much is left that
could be used in a play by me dedicated to you? On the other hand, those
forces of middle class public opinion which hardly existed for a
Spanish nobleman in the days of the first Don Juan, are now triumphant
everywhere. Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman
dares now shock his greengrocer. The women, "marchesane, principesse,
cameriere, cittadine" and all, are become equally dangerous: the sex
is aggressive, powerful: when women are wronged they do not group
themselves pathetically to sing "Protegga il giusto cielo": they grasp
formidable legal and social weapons, and retaliate. Political parties
are wrecked and public careers undone by a single indiscretion. A man
had better have all the statues in London to supper with him, ugly as
they are, than be brought to the bar of the Nonconformist Conscience by
Donna Elvira. Excommunication has become almost as serious a business as
it was in the X century.

As a result, Man is no longer, like Don Juan, victor in the duel of
sex. Whether he has ever really been may be doubted: at all events
the enormous superiority of Woman's natural position in this matter is
telling with greater and greater force. As to pulling the Nonconformist
Conscience by the beard as Don Juan plucked the beard of the
Commandant's statue in the convent of San Francisco, that is out of the
question nowadays: prudence and good manners alike forbid it to a hero
with any mind. Besides, it is Don Juan's own beard that is in danger of
plucking. Far from relapsing into hypocrisy, as Sganarelle feared,
he has unexpectedly discovered a moral in his immorality. The growing
recognition of his new point of view is heaping responsibility on him.
His former jests he has had to take as seriously as I have had to take
some of the jests of Mr W. S. Gilbert. His scepticism, once his least
tolerated quality, has now triumphed so completely that he can no
longer assert himself by witty negations, and must, to save himself from
cipherdom, find an affirmative position. His thousand and three affairs
of gallantry, after becoming, at most, two immature intrigues leading to
sordid and prolonged complications and humiliations, have been discarded
altogether as unworthy of his philosophic dignity and comp