Nothing is sadder than the contrast between the exalted love of a virtuous and chaste young girl, and the debauched life, with its traits of cynical pornography, of the majority of young men. Guy de Maupassant has described this contrast in a most striking manner in his romance entitled "_Une Vie_." I know a number of cases in which the complete ignorance of young married women with regard to sexual relations, combined with the cynical lewdness of their husbands, has transformed the exalted love of a young girl into profound disgust, and has sometimes even caused mental disorders. Although not very common, the psychoses resulting from the deception and shock of the nuptial night are not very rare. But what is much worse than this douche of cold water which suddenly substitutes the reality of coitus for the ideal exaltation of sentiment, are the subsequent discoveries made by the young wife, when the cynical mind of her husband on the subject of sexual connection and love is unveiled to her in all its grossness, resulting from his previous life of debauchery. Torn and sullied in its deepest fibers, the feminine mind then becomes the seat of a desperate struggle between reality full of deceptions and the illusions of a dream of happiness. If it is only a question of bad habits, or want of tact in the husband, behind which there exists perhaps true love, the wounds in the woman's sentiment may heal and intimacy may develop; but when the cynicism is too marked, when the habits of sexual debauchery are too inveterate, the love of a virtuous woman is soon stifled, and is changed to resignation and disgust, often to martyrdom or hatred. In other cases the woman is weak and ill-developed and allows herself to sink to the level of her husband's sentiments. Sometimes, the crisis is accentuated and leads to divorce. In de Maupassant's "_Une Vie_," he describes with profound insight the continuous deceptions of a young innocent and sentimental girl who marries an egoistic roué, and whose life is transformed into martyrdom and completely ruined. De Maupassant's romances contain such true psychology of sexual life and love in all their forms, often even in their exceptional aberrations, that they furnish an admirable illustration to the present chapter. =Petticoat Government.=--A series of most important irradiations of love in woman results from the need she feels of being, if not dominated, at least protected by her husband. To be happy, a woman must be able to respect her husband and even regard him with more or less veneration; she must see in him the realization of an ideal, either of bodily strength, courage, unselfishness or superior intellect. If this is not the case, the husband easily falls under the petticoat government, or indifference and antipathy may develop in the wife, at least if misfortune or illness in the husband does not excite her pity and transform her into a resigned nurse.