But what would you have! I cannot make my lovers hideous in character, unsightly in looks and repulsive in manners. The love-making between Quasimodo and Locuste would not be listened to beyond the third scene! Take Molière for instance. Does not Angélique betray Georges Dandin in a delightful way? And Valère steal from his father in a charming fashion? And Don Juan deceive Dona Elvire in the most seductive of language? Ah! Molière knew as well as the moderns what adultery was! He died from its effects. What broke his heart, the heart which stopped beating at the age of fifty-three? The smiles given to the young Baron by la Béjart, her ogling looks at M. de Lauzun, a letter addressed by her to a third lover and found the morning of that ill-fated representation of the _Malade imaginaire_ which Molière could scarcely finish! It is true that, in Molière's time, it was called cuckoldry and made fun of; that nowadays, we style it adultery, and weep over it. Why was it called cuckoldry in the seventeenth century and adultery in the nineteenth? I will tell you. Because, in the seventeenth century, the Civil Code had not been invented. The Civil Code? What has that to do with it? You shall see. In the seventeenth century there existed the rights of primogeniture, seniority, trusteeship and of entail; and the oldest son inherited the name, title and fortune; the other sons were either made M. le Chevalier or M. le Mousquetaire or M. l'Abbé, as the case might be. They decorated the first with the Malta Cross, the second they decked out in a helmet with buffalo tails, they endowed the third with a clerical collar. While, as for the daughters, they did not trouble at all about them; they married whom they liked if they were pretty, and anybody who would have them if they were plain. For those who either would not or could not be married there remained the convent, that vast sepulchre for aching hearts. Now, although three-quarters of the marriages were _marriages de convenance_, and contracted between people who scarcely knew each other, the husband was nearly always sure that his first male child was his own. This first male child secured,--that is to say, the son to inherit his name, title and fortune, when begotten by him,--what did it matter who was the father of M. le Chevalier, M. le Mousquetaire or M. l'Abbé? It was all the same to him, and often he did not even inquire into the matter! Look, for example, at the anecdote of Saint-Simon and of M. de Mortemart.