Car ces mots pour toujours ont vendu tes caresses; L'amour ne les doit plus donner ni recevoir; L'usage des époux à réglé les tendresses, Et leurs baisers sont un devoir. Malheur, malheur à moi, que le ciel, en ce monde, A jeté comme un hôte à ses lois étranger! À moi qui ne sais pas, dans ma douleur profonde, Souffrir longtemps sans me venger! Malheur! car une voix qui n'a rien de la terre M'a dit: 'Pour ton bonheur, c'est sa mort qu'il te faut?' Et cette voix m'a fait comprendre le mystère Et du meurtre et de l'échafaud.... Viens donc, ange du mal, dont la voix me convie, Car il est des instants où, si je te voyais, Je pourrais, pour son sang, t'abandonner ma vie Et mon âme ... si j'y croyais!" What do you think of my lines? They are impious, blasphemous and atheistic, and, in fact, I will proclaim it, as I copy them here nearly a quarter of a century after they were made, they would be inexcusably poor if they had been written in cold blood. But they were written at a time of passion, at one of those crises when a man feels driven to give utterance to his sorrows, and to describe his sufferings in another language than his ordinary speech. Therefore, I hope they may earn the indulgence of both poets and philosophers. Now, was _Antony_ really as immoral a work as certain of the papers made out? No; for, in all things, says an old French proverb (and, since the days of Sancho Panza, we know that proverbs contain the wisdom of nations), we must see the end first before passing judgment. Now, this is how _Antony_ ends. Antony is engaged in a guilty intrigue, is carried away by an adulterous passion, and kills his mistress to save her honour as a wife, and dies afterwards on the scaffold, or at least is sent to the galleys for the rest of his days. Very well, I ask you, are there many young society people who would be disposed to fling themselves into a sinful intrigue, to enter upon an adulterous passion,--to become, in short, Antonys and Adèles, with the prospect in view, at the end of their passion and romance, of death for the woman and of the galleys for the man? People will answer me, that it is the form in which it is put that is dangerous, that Antony makes murder admirable, and Adèle justifies adultery.