Following up this thought, he drew his grief round him like a cloak, and wrapped himself in it. Like a sick man full of pity for himself, he pursued the painful visions and the haunting ideas which swarmed endlessly in his burning head. What he had seen caused him physical pain; noticing this fact, he instantly set himself to find the cause of it, for he was always ruled by the philosophical bent of his temperament. “The objects,” thought he, “which are associated with the most powerful desires of the flesh cannot be regarded with indifference, for when they do not give delight, they cause disgust. It is not in herself that Madame Bergeret possesses the power of putting me between these two alternatives; it is as a symbol of that Venus who is the joy of gods and men. For to me, although she may indeed be one of the least lovable and least mysterious of these symbols of Venus, yet at the same time she must needs be one of the most characteristic and vivid. And the sight of her linked in community of act and feeling with my pupil, M. Roux, reduced her instantly to that elementary type-form which, as I said, must either inspire attraction or repulsion. Thus we may see that every sexual symbol either satisfies or disappoints desire, and for that reason attracts or repels our gaze with equal force, according to the physiological condition of the spectators, and sometimes even according to the successive moods of the same witness. “This observation brings one to the true reason for the fact that, in all nations and at all periods, sexual rites have been performed in secret, in order that they might not produce violent and conflicting emotions in the spectators. At length it became customary to conceal everything that might suggest these rites. Thus was born Modesty, which governs all men, but particularly the more lascivious nations.” Then M. Bergeret reflected: “Accident has enabled me to discover the origin of this virtue which varies most of all, merely because it is the most universal, this Modesty, which the Greeks call Shame. Very absurd prejudices have become connected with this habit which arises from an attitude of mind peculiar to man and common to all men, and these prejudices have obscured its true character. But I am now in a position to formulate the true theory of Modesty. It was at a smaller cost to himself that Newton discovered the laws of gravitation under a tree.”