Bastardize families, falsify names and surnames, spread mendacity and sow deception in all the paths of social and civil life! Disseminate lies and scatter deceptions everywhere! See to it that there shall be no wall against which to lean, no road that can be trod without injuring the foot with a sharp stone or a piece of poisoned glass! Make the name of father a senseless word, that of mother a blasphemy! CHAPTER XX RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF LOVE "Love me! You must love me!" This is a cry of sorrow that often man utters, and oftener a forsaken woman; but it generally is a vain cry. To demand love as a right is one of the greatest follies; it is like asking poetry of the slave of thought, or expecting to find the perfumes of the rose and the cedar in the frigid zones that glaciate the head and the feet of our planet. Lovers, however, have always the right to hurl into space another cry of sorrow: "You must not betray me!" Better to snatch from one's hand the cup of love and shatter it into a thousand pieces than stealthily to pour into it the poison of betrayal or the wormwood of indifference. Love bursts forth spontaneously from the human heart, and draws all its beauty and strength from the infinite freedom of the horizon in which it moves. The laws that govern it are as simple as the simplest law of elementary physics: to attract, to unite, to render love for love, sweetness for sweetness, to give joy to those who give us so much joy, make happy those who make us happy: such is its law. If love were only a contact of hearts and thoughts; if, having ascended to heaven, you have descended from it without an angel; if in your embraces you have not rekindled the torch of life, greet each other as friends, bless the happy hours that your love has conceded you, and preserve in the most precious casket and among the dearest things the memory of the time that is no more. Never close a day of paradise with a blasphemy or a remorse; the tears of regret for what you have lost can be the dew of a summer night that tempers the ardor of the enamored corollas; but your tears should not be cursed by a lie, a betrayal, an insult. The only right--that of not being deceived--has its counterpart in a very simple duty--that of making oneself beloved. You cannot command love, but through beauty of form, quickness of mind, voluptuous grace of movements or virtues of the heart you have awakened the affection of affections; if you know how to preserve it, you will be loved forever. On the very first page of every code of love, at the beginning of every gospel of two lovers, I would always write this sentence: "Not to be loved is always a great fault." And you will find this sentence written in a hundred different forms in the pages of my book.