However variform the sexual elements of love may be, our modern civilization is stained by a most heinous sin because we allow woman, who is the true and great priestess of love, but a small tribute and a trivial part. We have for ourselves ambition, glory, science, the morbid thirst for gain; we have granted to man all the energies of sentiment, all the conquests of genius, all the victories of passion; to woman we have refused every nourishment of heart and thought, representing to her that she must only love. After having robbed her of nearly every field of human activity, we have left the garden of love to her as her only possession, her only solace. And when this poor prisoner, with all the ardent curiosity of her nature, wished to pick the flowers and the scented herbs of her garden, when she proceeded to cultivate the garden in her own way, we interfered there, too, setting up the posters of our restrictive regulations and erecting the fences of our laws: "That flower-bed is reserved; that flower must not be picked. No thoroughfare." The selection of the plants to cultivate must also be made by us,--by us, who possess the orchard and the field, the meadow and the forest, the ice-fields of the Alps and the water of the ocean. Thus we have a woman slave who murmurs and conspires against us; thus we have made sterile and barren the garden where a proud and noble lady would have splendidly received us, where we could rest from our glorious labors; thus, instead of being welcomed by a lady of our station, in gilded halls, brilliantly decorated with gems, we have a woman prisoner or slave who reclines her head on our knees and weeps. We have measured the bread and wine of her life as the jailer does with the thief; and, tyrants in love as well, we have kept the lion's share both in voluptuousness and in the free choice of the sovereign affection. But every injustice must be paid for, just as the equilibrium is reëstablished every time it has been disturbed; and the continual deceptions, only too well justified, of our slaves, seraglio conspiracies and palace plots, are every day evidence that we erect upon a false foundation the edifice of family, and loudly proclaim that it will soon be necessary to give woman what belongs to her, the free choice of loves, the equality of rights in the affections as well as in the family. CHAPTER XV LOVE AND AGE