Poetic licence of this kind may be forgiven to the tellers of unusual stories; such adornments are of the substance of style and poetry rather than untruths. The gift of absolute liberty to men who are unequal by Nature is an organisation of social war; when those who should restrain the headlong instincts of the crowd are so mad as to unloose them, it does not need a great magician to foresee that they will be the first to be devoured, since animal lusts are bound to prey upon one another until the appearance of a bold and skilful huntsman who will end them by shot and snare. Cazotte foresaw Marat, as Marat in his turn foresaw reaction and a dictator. Cazotte made his first appearance in public as the author of some literary trifles and it is said that he owed his initiation to the romance of _Le Diable Amoureux_. There is no question that it is full of magical intuitions, and love, that supreme ordeal of life, is depicted in its pages under the true light of the doctrine of adeptship. Passion in a state of delirium and folly invincible for those who are slaves of imagination, physical love is but death in the guise of allurement, seeking to renew its harvest by means of birth. The physical Venus is death, painted and habited like a courtesan; Cupid also is a destroyer, like his mother, for whom he recruits victims. When the courtesan is satiated, death unmasks and calls in turn for its prey. This is why the Church—which safeguards birth by sanctifying marriage—lays bare in their true colours the debaucheries which are mortal, by condemning without pity all the disorders of love. If she who is beloved is not indeed an angel, earning immortality by sacrifice to duty in the arms of him whom she loves, she is a _stryge_ who expends, exhausts and slays him, finally exposing herself before him in all the hideousness of her animal egoism. Woe to the victims of the _Le Diable Amoureux_, thrice woe to those who are beguiled by the lascivious endearments of Biondetta. Speedily the gracious countenance of the girl will change into that camel’s head which appears so tragically at the end of the romance of Cazotte.