Lies are all infamous; but in love there are some venial and some perfidious: it is one thing to deceive an old libertine and another to betray a faithful husband; one to lie to a frivolous coquette, another to deceive a virtuous woman. Further on we shall outline the rights and duties of love; but here we must point out the stem from which they hang, like the grapes from their stalk. Woman belongs to man, man belongs to woman; Love is the son of the most free selection; it is born when it wants and as it wants; it appears on the plains or on the summit of the mountains; it is born nude and as free as the air; it does not ask for passports, because it passes with impunity through all the police lines. Men and women, free and pure, you should seek and love each other; study true love, and consecrate it with the only vow that love should make when it would close itself in the temple of the family. If you truly love, if you are worthy of each other, if your love offends no superior duty, no human force can oppose your powerful attraction, and nature and men will bless your selection. Read and read again all that I have written on the first loves; swear seldom; never swear if you possess this virtue; at most swear but once, the first and last oath that will unite you in wedlock. The compact violated in the first steps of the life of love is a murder and prepares the career of a brigand tolerated by civilization. To betray a virgin is, in so far as the law is concerned, a question for the public prosecutor or for the mayor of your town; to betray her without dishonoring her is an anonymous infamy that poisons two existences and two loves, that leaves in you an eternal bitterness, in the woman an eternal rancor. Love, seek, study each other, but never swear, never lie to the maiden who at the dawn of youth demands of the first sun a ray to enlighten and warm her.