now the libertine's philosophy. Always ignore the
consequences to the woman.

DON JUAN. The consequences, yes: they justify her fierce grip of the
man. But surely you do not call that attachment a sentimental one. As
well call the policeman's attachment to his prisoner a love relation.

ANA. You see you have to confess that marriage is necessary, though,
according to you, love is the slightest of all the relations.

DON JUAN. How do you know that it is not the greatest of all the
relations? far too great to be a personal matter. Could your father have
served his country if he had refused to kill any enemy of Spain unless
he personally hated him? Can a woman serve her country if she refuses to
marry any man she does not personally love? You know it is not so:
the woman of noble birth marries as the man of noble birth fights, on
political and family grounds, not on personal ones.

THE STATUE. [impressed] A very clever point that, Juan: I must think it
over. You are really full of ideas. How did you come to think of this
one?

DON JUAN. I learnt it by experience. When I was on earth, and made those
proposals to ladies which, though universally condemned, have made me
so interesting a hero of legend, I was not infrequently met in some such
way as this. The lady would say that she would countenance my advances,
provided they were honorable. On inquiring what that proviso meant, I
found that it meant that I proposed to get possession of her property if
she had any, or to undertake her support for life if she had not; that I
desired her continual companionship, counsel and conversation to the
end of my days, and would bind myself under penalties to be always
enraptured by them; and, above all, that I would turn my back on all
other women for ever for her sake. I did not object to these conditions
because they were exorbitant and inhuman: it was their extraordinary
irrelevance that prostrated me. I invariably replied with perfect
frankness that I had never dreamt of any of these things; that unless
the lady's character and intellect were equal or superior to my own, her
conversation must degrade and her counsel mislead me; tha t her constant
companionship might, for all I knew, become intolerably tedious to me;
that I could not answer for my feelings for a week in advance, much
less to the end of my life; that to cut me off from all natural and
unconstrained relations with the rest of my fellow creatures would
narrow and w