Be sincere with the first kiss, if you desire love to be the chief joy of life, not a shameful trade of voluptuous lies. Yes, yours is the first love, but because it is the first it is neither true nor just nor natural that it should be the greatest, the one, the only love. Do not swear falsely, do not perjure yourselves before you know what truth is. To the eternity of your vows, the indifference of tomorrow will answer with a sardonic, mocking grin. Before you have really loved, you will sing in every tune that virtue does not exist, that love is a dream, and, children and elders at the same time, you will forswear a god whose temple you have never seen. You are two: a man and a woman; and you say that you love each other, and perhaps it is first love for both. Well, then, during the first days do not swear, if you still value the word of an honest man, and if perjury still has terrors for you. Rarely is the first love true love, as the first book of an author rarely is the true expression of his genius. One is weak from excessive youth as from old age; and the one and first and only love, like many other dogmatic formulas which delight so much that pedantic and hypocritical biped called man, has made more victims in modern society than many crimes and many maladies of body and mind ever did. If your love is the first, so much the better; with hands chastely clasped and lips modestly conjoined, do not pronounce any other words but these: "Let us love each other!" If you are among the few and happy mortals who will love but once; if you are among the very few who, in the first woman or in the first man, have found the angel seen in their first dreams of youth, thousand and thousand times blessed! The fidelity of the future will cement for life the virtues of your souls. As for myself, if the increased progress of true and healthy democracy should eliminate from juridical institutions the formula of the oath, I would wish that the man and the woman who love each other should never swear. An adjuration less and a caress more, what a delight! An eternity less, and a longer caress, what voluptuousness! Nor should chaste and chosen souls throw my book away, feeling hurt by my cynic advice. If they will read the pages that follow, they will clearly see that no one more than I intends to elevate love to the most serene regions of the ideal, and that, however high sentiment can ascend, I, also, feel the strength to follow it. The triple and thick skin of hypocrisy that enwraps us from infancy, the Arcadic varnish which makes us look polished and brilliant, nearly always forbid us to see the true nature of things, and in love we are all unmistakably counterfeiters. The greatest liberty, the greatest sincerity alone can cure us of this malady, which is civil rather than national, because it penetrates every race, every social class; it does not spare the highest and strongest natures; it has become an integral part of every fiber of our hearts, of