Then, when this knowledge has come, when they have in a kiss divined the law of the Omnipotent, what must be their delight to owe to each other this revelation, this infinitude of joy! They have participated in a common blessing: they have put on their white robes and now are clad like the cherubim. Mingling their very breath, smiling with the same smile, they repose in their union. Holy hour, in which hearts beat more freely, finding a heaven to which they can ascend. Sainted hour, in which ignorant love suddenly learns the full measure of its strength, believes itself the master of the universe and is intoxicated with its first flight. Brothers, may God keep for you that hour, the remembrance of which perfumes one's entire life. It will never be mine. Such is fate. It is rare that two pure hearts meet; nearly always one heart of any twain can no longer give its ecstasy in its flower. To-day, most young men of twenty like ourselves, who are eager to love, lacking the power to force the bars and bolts of honest houses, hasten to the wide open doors of boudoirs easier of access. When we ask upon what shoulders we shall lean our heads, fathers hide their daughters and push us into the gloom of the lanes. They cry out to us to respect their children, who will some day be our wives; they prefer for them, instead of our first caresses, those learned elsewhere. Hence how few keep their early love for their brides, how few, in the desert of their youth, refuse the companions into whose society they are driven by the singular behavior of parents! Some, foolish and wicked lads, glory in their shame; they drag their ignoble flirtations before the public eye. Others, when the soul awakes at the first summons of the sweetheart, are filled with overwhelming sorrow on vainly interrogating the horizon and at not knowing where to find the rightful claimant of the heart. They go straight ahead, staring at the balconies, leaning towards each youthful visage: the balconies are deserted, the youthful visages remain veiled. Some night an arm is slipped within their own, a voice makes them start. Already weary and despairing, unable to discover the angel of love, they follow the spectre. Brothers, I do not wish to make an excuse for my fault, but let me say that it is strange to cloister purity and permit dissipation to walk in the glare of the sun with uplifted head. Let me deplore this distrust of love, which creates a solitude around the lover, and this guarding of virtue by vice, which causes a young man to encounter shame before reaching the door of innocence. He who yields to temptation may well say to his bride: "I am unworthy of you, but why did you not come to my rescue? Why did you not meet me in the flowery fields, before all those by-ways, each nook of which has its priestess? Why were you not the first to greet my eyes, thus sparing yourself in sparing me?"