A virgin is ours a thousand times more than any other woman; she must love us much, or at least she must desire an embrace much, to descend from the pedestal of the idol and come to us; to descend from the altar and tread the vulgar ground of earthly life. And the mystery of the unknown, and the fascination of primitiæ, and of being the first teacher of the art of love, centuplicate for us the sweet joys of a first embrace. Even the dreadful trepidation of finding the temple violated holds us suspended over the abysses of desperation and voluptuousness, of which, at very short intervals, we sound the somber sorrows, the ineffable delights. And a woman, too, who knows that she is a virgin will fathom the immensity of her sacrifice, and if she has the fortune of finding it equal to the immensity of her affection she feels one of the greatest ecstasies that can vibrate simultaneously nerves and thoughts, senses and sentiments. She had already given her heart and all her affections to her god; today she gives him the seal which attests the possession of her entire self; and divides with her companion all that she has, all that she feels, all that she desires. An angel yesterday, she allows her lover to tear away her wings and becomes again a woman in order to be a wife, a friend, a mother. Priestess of a temple, she burns on the altar of love the niveous robe of the vestal and cries, sobbing with joy and sorrow: "I am thine, all thine! Is there anything more that I can give thee? Tell me and I will give it to thee. I have clipped my wings, that thou mayst carry me aloft on the wings of thy genius; I have burned my temple, that I may live only in the temple of thy heart; I have forsworn the religion of my dreams, that I may be nothing but thy companion. Do not deceive me; I was thy virgin, and I shall be only thy wife. Have an immense love, an immense sympathy for me!" And yet, we must say it to cause some one who will read these pages to turn pale with animosity, there are men who dare accept the sacrifice of the virgin without any right to be priests of love. And there are men who bite and defile her with the slime of the viper. Miserable, a hundred times miserable wretches! Amidst tears of shame and humiliation, may the woman dream of an infinite adultery; may human dignity, insulted, avenge itself by making the man a cuckold a thousand times; may the profaned virgin reascend to heaven, hurling anathema at the sacrilegious profaner of the temple; may the jury of entire humanity rise with the full majesty of its omnipotence and spit in the face of the enervated who has dared to ask of heaven an angel and of man a virgin, and may a horde of sneering demons scourge him, tie him to the great pillory of ridicule and, in the loudest voice, proclaim him the most dastardly, the last among men!