arp me if I submitted to it, and, if not, would bring me
under the curse of clandestinity; that, finally, my proposals to her
were wholly unconnected with any of these matters, and were the outcome
of a perfectly simple impulse of my manhood towards her womanhood.

ANA. You mean that it was an immoral impulse.

DON JUAN. Nature, my dear lady, is what you call immoral. I blush for
it; but I cannot help it. Nature is a pandar, Time a wrecker, and Death
a murderer. I have always preferred to stand up to those facts and build
institutions on their recognition. You prefer to propitiate the three
devils by proclaiming their chastity, their thrift, and their loving
kindness; and to base your institutions on these flatteries. Is it any
wonder that the institutions do not work smoothly?

THE STATUE. What used the ladies to say, Juan?

DON JUAN. Oh, come! Confidence for confidence. First tell me what you
used to say to the ladies.

THE STATUE. I! Oh, I swore that I would be faithful to the death; that
I should die if they refused me; that no woman could ever be to me what
she was--

ANA. She? Who?

THE STATUE. Whoever it happened to be at the time, my dear. I had
certain things I always said. One of them was that even when I was
eighty, one white hair of the woman I loved would make me tremble more
than the thickest gold tress from the most beautiful young head. Another
was that I could not bear the thought of anyone else being the mother of
my children.

DON JUAN. [revolted] You old rascal!

THE STATUE. [Stoutly] Not a bit; for I really believed it with all
my soul at the moment. I had a heart: not like you. And it was this
sincerity that made me successful.

DON JUAN. Sincerity! To be fool enough to believe a ramping, stamping,
thumping lie: that is what you call sincerity! To be so greedy for
a woman that you deceive yourself in your eagerness to deceive her:
sincerity, you call it!

THE STATUE. Oh, damn your sophistries! I was a man in love, not a
lawyer. And the women loved me for it, bless them!

DON JUAN. They made you think so. What will you say when I tell you that
though I played the lawyer so callously, they made me think so too?
I also had my moments of infatuation in which I gushed nonsense and
believed it. Sometimes the desire to give pleasure by saying beautiful
things so rose in me on the flood of emotion that I said them
recklessly. At other times I argued against myself with a devilish
coldness t