n a second,
the rapid and divine sensation of this intoxication, of this madness
which gives to lovers more happiness in an instant than other men can
gather during a whole lifetime!

THE THIEF

While apparently thinking of something else, Dr. Sorbier had been
listening quietly to those amazing accounts of burglaries and
daring deeds that might have been taken from the trial of Cartouche.
"Assuredly," he exclaimed, "assuredly, I know of no viler fault nor
any meaner action than to attack a girl's innocence, to corrupt her,
to profit by a moment of unconscious weakness and of madness, when her
heart is beating like that of a frightened fawn, and her pure lips seek
those of her tempter; when she abandons herself without thinking of the
irremediable stain, nor of her fall, nor of the morrow.

"The man who has brought this about slowly, viciously, who can tell with
what science of evil, and who, in such a case, has not steadiness and
self-restraint enough to quench that flame by some icy words, who has
not sense enough for two, who cannot recover his self-possession and
master the runaway brute within him, and who loses his head on the edge
of the precipice over which she is going to fall, is as contemptible as
any man who breaks open a lock, or as any rascal on the lookout for a
house left defenceless and unprotected or for some easy and dishonest
stroke of business, or as that thief whose various exploits you have
just related to us.

"I, for my part, utterly refuse to absolve him, even when extenuating
circumstances plead in his favor, even when he is carrying on a
dangerous flirtation, in which a man tries in vain to keep his balance,
not to exceed the limits of the game, any more than at lawn tennis; even
when the parts are inverted and a man's adversary is some precocious,
curious, seductive girl, who shows you immediately that she has nothing
to learn and nothing to experience, except the last chapter of love, one
of those girls from whom may fate always preserve our sons, and whom a
psychological novel writer has christened 'The Semi-Virgins.'

"It is, of course, difficult and painful for that coarse and
unfathomable vanity which is characteristic of every man, and which
might be called 'malism', not to stir such a charming fire, difficult to
act the Joseph and the fool, to turn away his eyes, and, as it were,
to put wax into his ears, like the companions of Ulysses when they were
attracted by the divine