"Now that we have finished drawing the long-bow, I should like to tell you, not my last, but my first adventure,--I mean the first adventure of my life, my first fall,--for it is a moral fall after all, in the arms of Venus. Oh! I am not going to tell you my first--what shall I call it?--my first appearance; certainly not. The leap over the first hedge (I am speaking figuratively) has nothing interesting about it. It is generally rather a disagreeable one, and one picks oneself up rather abashed, with one charming illusion the less, with a vague feeling of disappointment and sadness. That _realization_ of love the first time one experiences it is rather repugnant; we had dreamt of it as being so different, so delicate, so refined. It leaves a physical and moral sense of disgust behind it, just like as when one has happened to have put one's hand into some clammy matter and feels in a hurry to _wash_ it off. You may _rub_ it as hard as you like, but the moral feeling remains. "Yes! but one very soon gets quite used to it; there is no doubt about that. For my part, however, I am very sorry it was not in my power to give the Creator the benefit of my advice when He was arranging these little matters. I wonder what _I_ should have done? I am not quite sure, but I think with the English savant, John Stuart Mill, I should have managed differently; I should have found some more convenient and more poetical combination; yes--more poetical. "I really think that the Creator showed Himself to be too much of a naturalist ... too ... what shall I say? His invention lacks poetry. "However, what I am going to tell you is about my first woman of the world, the first woman in society I ever made love to;--I beg your pardon, I ought to say the first woman of the world that ever triumphed over me. For at first it is _we_ who allow ourselves to be taken, while, later on--well, then it is quite another matter. "She was a friend of my mother's, a charming woman in every way. When such women are chaste, it is generally from sheer stupidity, and when they are in love they are furiously so. And then--_we_ are accused of corrupting _them_! Yes, yes, of course! With them it is always the rabbit that begins and never the sportsman. I know all about it; they don't seem to put their fingers near us, but they do it all the same, and do what they like with us, without it being noticed, and then they actually accuse us of having ruined them, dishonored them, humiliated them, and all the rest of it.