The woman we love must not only be the companion of our voluptuousness, but also the mother of our children; the man a woman loves must be the husband and the father of the family. We should not consecrate the blush of our face in that of our children, who will curse our wicked loves, and will, perhaps, execrate the name of the father or the memory of the mother. When pride has lost its keenness, and the hour of revenge has passed, woe to us if we shall find ourselves alone with a creature whom we cannot hold in estimation! If Love is really the holiest thing of life, the most ardent affection, the most voluptuous joy, we must erect a temple to him, with our own hands, and with our most sublime sentiments decorate his tabernacle, in which we can worthily adore him as a god. Love born among crimes and turpitudes is a nest woven with thorny shrubs and thistles, while we should weave it with the most aromatic leaves and the most beautiful flowers. Men and women, we should vie with each other in gleaning fields and gardens and in bearing to love every gentle affection, every noble aspiration, every impulse of lofty ambition. Lust and pride, when coupled, become the step-parents of every love without esteem, which, like every organism born of evil, lives a scrofulous and rachitic life, full of sorrows and calamities. If love is really the most precious gem, we should enclose it in a casket which, for richness of material, artistic skill and inimitable esthetic conception, should be worthy of its contents. Nothing but noblest things should touch it; no breath, unless perfumed with sandalwood and roses, should be exhaled near it; no hand but that of an angel should caress it; no heat should warm it but that of the kisses of two loving lips. If woman should concede her love only to the honest and industrious man, if it were possible that man loved no woman but a modest one, we would see the human family regenerated in the course of a generation, we would see men educated through voluptuousness. For the prison that terrifies, for the hell that threatens, we would then substitute the caresses of a woman, the kisses of a man, as educative energies. Shall this eternally be a dream? Shall we always threaten and assault men to make them better? Shall we not have a medicine less cruel than sorrow to cure men of vice and crime? CHAPTER XII BOUNDARIES OF LOVE--THEIR RELATIONS TO THOUGHT