"Tell us what this passion is, monsieur," said Madame de Pënâfiel, "this passion that can perform all these miracles,--what is it?" "It is selfishness, or the passion for material comfort, madame; a passion that can be translated by a trivial and very significant word,--money." "And how will you utilise the excessive love of money in the development of this excessive and threatening virtue, of which you have drawn such an exaggerated picture that I am still quite overcome?" said Lord Falmouth. "Just as they do in your country, monsieur, by punishing every infraction of duty by an enormous fine. How else can it be done? In our epoch of materialism we no longer fear anything except that which touches our daily life, our pocket; this being the case, the system of fines applied to the maintenance of good morals will certainly be the most powerful social lever of the period. For instance, imagine that a confirmed, inexorable moralist was determined to put a stop, suddenly and brutally, to those weaknesses that society pardons,--a man entirely devoted to his sense of duty, or, if you like it better, take a man who is very ugly, very tiresome, and consequently very envious of certain charming sins that he has never been lucky enough to commit, but that he is determined to exterminate,--suppose that this blood-thirsty moralist is a legislator, and that one day in the halls of state he discloses a most deplorable state of affairs, and then demands and obtains, after some discussion, from the majority, whom you can, without any great stretch of imagination, suppose to consist of men who are also very ugly, old, and tiresome, the passage of a bill organising a secret police, destined to ferret out and unmask every act that threatens private life: imagine that finally a law is promulgated, which punishes by a fine of fifty thousand francs the tender crime whose victims fill our tribunals, and that the fine shall be doubled in case of a second arrest. This fine is not to be offered in the shameful form of damages to the injured party, but employed, let us suppose, in the education of abandoned children,--so that the superfluous would help the necessitous." "And do you believe, monsieur," cried the marquise, "that the ignoble fear of paying a given sum would render the majority of men less attentive, less devoted to women?" "I believe it so firmly, madame, that I can give you an excellent sketch of the two very different aspects of a salon, filled with the same persons, on the day before and the day after the promulgation of such a law.