If with a stroke of a magic wand one could raise all those who have committed self-destruction to life again, after having dressed their wounds, they would take up life gaily, and even another love affair. Parents always have the duty and the right of speaking, protesting, and counselling, nay, even of interposing a _veto_, if they see their children’s future endangered when they have chosen love as arbitrator, but have forgotten to call good sense and reason as witnesses. If you _will_ marry an abject creature who will dishonour your name and the name of the family to which you belong, and of whom after a few months of warm passion you yourself will be ashamed; if you _will_ marry a woman suffering from tuberculous disease, or one of a consumptive family, or where madness is present; if you _will_ increase the sad patrimony of proletaries and the unemployed, having neither present nor future resources; if in one way or another you throw yourself with closed eyes head foremost into a bottomless abyss only to satisfy carnal excitement which you may call passion, but which is only the desire of the flesh—father and mother have full right to oppose your ruin with all possible means; and even if they should not succeed they will have done their duty. If the means they take succeed you will later on thank them with a warm gratitude. In all these cases I allow you to combat, to weep, even tear out some of your hair; but the tears over, the muscles tired, gather up the hair you have torn out and present it to your fair one, telling her to keep it until your return as a pledge of your _eternal faith_; for you ought to leave, and that instantly, even on foot, even asking money of the tyrannical parents or of some compassionate friend. Travel in far countries, and who knows if on your return you will not find a neat little packet tied with rose-coloured ribbon—your letters, your hair, and perhaps the announcement of the marriage of your old _fiancée_. If your love, instead, has known how to resist the long absence, if it has strengthened and grown, who knows if the hard parents will not be moved to pity and try to make an adjustment, provided, however, that there be no consumption, madness, or other calamities to dissuade you from marriage in an absolute and decided way. Better that you should die than sow death broadcast in future generations. ⁂