"That would be true wisdom." "And be faithful to her?" "Obviously." "Or else renounce everything?" "I won't go as far as that. Your case isn't desperate. You have fled in time." "I didn't fly. I was driven away." "Bless her cruel heart. Tell me, did she permit indiscretions?" "Yes, I should almost have said willingly." "She will be a dangerous wife." "She is so innocent!" "There are no innocent women. They know by instinct all that we claim to teach them." "That's just what innocence is." "Perhaps. But a delicate voluptuary with an innocent and amorous girl is a lost man." "I begin to realise the fact." "There are not," Bouret went on, "several kinds of love. There is only one kind. Love is physical. The most ethereal reverberates through the organism with as much certainty as the most brutal. Nature knows only one end, procreation, and if the road you take does not lead there, she stops you and condemns you at least to some simulacrum; that is her vengeance. Every intersexual sentiment tends towards love, unless its initial character be well defined or unless the partners are in a phase of life in which love is impossible.... But I am treating you too much as a friend and too little as a patient. You seem to be pensive. You're not as much interested in questions as Leonor Varin. He is my pupil in the physiology of morals. How is Lanfranc? He doesn't Platonise, doesn't flirt...." "Oh! no." "Varin interests me. Do you know him?" "Very little." "The loss is yours. One of his days he will become a fine mind, if he gets over the sensual crisis. I'd like to marry him to some one." "That's your panacea." "Perhaps it is one, my friend, on condition that marriage is taken seriously. It's only in marriage that one can find stability. By the way, have you seen Des Boys' daughter? He writes to me from time to time. We have remained friends because, though he's a fool, he's a laconic fool. And then he's a very decent sort of fellow and a man to whom I owe my position. He seems to be almost embarrassed with his daughter. He has no connections in the world. What's she like? Pretty? "Yes." "Intelligent? I mean, of course, as far as a woman can be intelligent." "Yes." "And now the principal thing--her health?" "Good as far as one can see." "Ho, ho! I shall unloose Varin in pursuit of this nymph." "Unnecessary; he knows her." "Ah, he knows her?" M. Hervart got up. He was afraid that some unforeseen question might make him say something silly. Suppose Bouret, who was a friend of Des Boys, guessed something? He tried to think of an ambiguous phrase and found one: "I spent a day at the Des Boys' with Varin. I don't know if he's a familiar of the house." And with that he went away. "What a bad business!" he said to himself, as he thought of his health, for the rest was of secondary importance to him now. "No more women! No more Gratienne! No libidinous thoughts! Am I master of my thoughts? Why not a course of pious reading?"