A human being of a low order or of a simple nature does not feel the energy of that new sentiment called love rise within him until the development of the germinative glands has marked in him the character of the sex and made of that being a man or a woman. On the other hand, in rich and powerful natures, many years before sex has impressed its deep mark on the organism, a vague, mysterious and chaste sympathy attracts the young boy toward the young girl. There, where the sun of the infinite azure of the skies is to rise, one notices a rosy tint lightly projected on the horizon, but sufficient to warn us: "There must the greatest star shine some day, the father of all light." The sun is ever the most beautiful among all the beautiful things of the skies, and I have studied with warm and constant affection, watched with religious attention the first crepuscules of that other sun which we are now studying in this book. They appear without being invited by the precocious corruption of books and of neighbors, they rise spontaneously in the heart of the most unconscious innocence; they shine like serene and calm rays of a light that later will be ardent and fascinating. They appear and disappear, like flashes of lightning, flashes which noiselessly illuminate the clouds and then leave them darker than before. A vulgar and coarse malignity repeats a blasphemy every day when it asserts that no child is ignorant of the secrets of love. The innocence of childhood is truer, more sincere and deeper than is supposed, and lasts limpid and adamantine even when it has been splashed with the mud of social corruption. The rosy lips of a child may repeat, with an expression of lascivious malice, a jest learned by chance from a maid-servant or from a libertine, but that stain does not penetrate into the crystalline nature of the child, and the spray of a fountain will be sufficient to wash the trace away. The malignant rabble is wont to doubt of the innocence of others, just as the wicked is to deny all virtue.