If you study the expression on the face of a woman who is scenting a very odorous flower and feels as though inebriated, you will see that such a picture resembles, more than anything else, a sublime scene of love. Ask many over-sensual men and they will tell you that they cannot visit with impunity the laboratories where essences and perfumes are made. Ask the art of the perfume-maker, and it will answer that, after having mixed a hundred essences of flowers and leaves, it gives relief to and improves all those perfumes by adding an infinitesimal quantity of a matter, fetid in itself, but taken from the organs of love of some animal. Ask why women love perfumes so much, and perhaps a few will be able to tell you, or will answer with a blush. And if by a long experience they have already learned the most subtle mysteries of the senses, all the finest arts of coquetry, they will tell you that perfumes are a powerful weapon in the arsenal of love and that some of them possess an irresistible charm over the senses of man. It is difficult to remain a long time in the warm atmosphere of voluptuousness without sacrificing a great part of those noble forces which are destined for higher attainments; and this explains why no impassioned mania for perfumes can have a moral influence over us. He who plunges into the tepid, titillating and morbid wave of odors no longer measures his strength in relation to a chaste and robust virility, but squeezes from the fruit the last drop of juice, and in the rapid convulsion of weariness imagines new delights. But between this human debasement and the contempt for perfumes there is an abyss, and by abandoning them to the courtesan, or to the savage woman who anoints herself from head to foot, we throw away, without any reason, much of a dear and sweet voluptuousness which could be enjoyed and cultivated by us without any offense to morals. Do you believe that a kiss given to that one whom you love and who is yours, through the petals of a rose, is a sin of lust? Do you ever believe that love gathered in a shower of violets, hyacinths and narcissus, between the crepuscules of two sighs, could be called lasciviousness? Nature is eternally rich, and the garlands we weave with her flowers around our joys do not deplete her inexhaustible gardens. CHAPTER XI BOUNDARIES OF LOVE--THEIR RELATIONS TO OTHER SENTIMENTS--JEALOUSY