=Love.=--I speak here of the true love of a higher nature of one sex for the other, or _sexual love_, which is not simple friendship, but is combined with sexual appetite. To write on love is almost to pour water into the ocean, for literature is three parts composed of dissertations on love. There can be no doubt that the normal man feels a great desire for love. The irradiations of love in the mind constitute one of the fundamental conditions of human happiness and one of the principal objects of life. Unfortunately, the question is too often treated with exaggerated sentiment, or on the other hand, with sensual cynicism; it is examined from one side only, or else it is misunderstood. First of all, love appears to be usually kindled by the sexual appetite. This is the celebrated story of Cupid's arrow. One falls in love with a face, a look, a smile, a white breast, a sweet and melodious voice, etc. However, the relations between love and sexual appetite are extremely delicate and complex. In man, the second may exist without the first and love may often persist without appetite, while in woman the two things are difficult to separate, and in any case, in her, the original appetite without love is much more rare. The two things are thus not identical; even the most materialistic and libidinous egoist will agree to this, if he is not too narrow-minded. It may also happen that love precedes appetite, and this often leads to the most happy unions. Two characters may have extreme mutual sympathy, and this purely intellectual and sentimental sympathy may at first develop without a shadow of sensuality. This is nearly always the case when it exists from infancy. In modern society an enormous number of sexual unions, or marriages, are consummated without a trace of love, and are based on pure speculation, conventionality or fortune. Here it is tacitly assumed that the normal sexual appetite combined with custom will cement the marriage and render it durable. As the normal man has not, as a rule, extreme sentiments, such prevision is usually realized on the whole, the conjoints becoming gradually adapted to one another, more or less successfully according to the discoveries which are made after marriage. Even when they are relatively true, love stories generally deal with exceptional cases, often even pathological; for the average marriage does not appear to the novelist sufficiently piquant or interesting to captivate his readers. We are not concerned here with extremes, or with the tragic situations met with in novels, but with normal and ordinary love, as it most often occurs in reality.