M. Raindal proposed to establish by means of examples that their great social moving force was the search after pleasure and especially the so-called gallant pleasures: the whole effort of human labor tended towards woman and her conquest. The refinements, especially, and all the arts often owed to her their birth and always their prosperity. It was for woman that the stones were set in gold, the silks embroidered and all the melodies resounded. M. Raindal meditated upon these developments so much that he had more than once fallen a prey to fever and headaches. At his call, the facts jumped out of their cells and rushed to line themselves in battle array as if they were well disciplined little soldiers. There was notably one chapter--Chapter VI--on _Love and Gallantry in Ancient Egypt_ based on the religious legends, the toilet paraphernalia and the popular stories which had been discovered, and of which the master already possessed the main line and almost every paragraph. There were days, however, when he conceived certain scruples concerning the value of his idea. Would not people charge him with pursuing the same attempt at scandal which his last book had inaugurated? Would they not reproach him with lingering purposely in immoral episodes? Did he even possess the gift, the necessary competency to fathom the prodigious problems of sentiment? The first two queries M. Raindal rejected wholly in the name of the contempt which a lofty soul owes to insinuations that are prompted by jealousy. The third one seemed to him more delicate a subject and more likely to give rise to controversies. He delighted in discussing it with Boerzell, who never failed to come every Sunday to pay the permitted call in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. "Sincerely, M. Boerzell," he asked, "do you think that a man needs to have been a libertine to properly appreciate the subtleties of sentiment? Do you believe, in short, that to speak competently of love it is necessary that a man should be a specialist in it, a professional, a practitioner, as it were?" "Oh, master!" Boerzell replied cautiously, "that's a complex question.... I must say it's one I haven't considered...." "Don't you think," continued M. Raindal, "that a multitude of sentiments exist which one appreciates all the better for not having felt them oneself?" "That is incontestable!" Boerzell answered. "You observe that in this matter one is able to retain a freshness of impression, a preciseness of view which prove to be of the highest value in scientific analyses.... One is not blinded either by vanity or by the intervention of personal recollections.... The mind retains, intact, its impartiality, its penetration, and the calm which is indispensable for regular observations...." "Surely, master!" Boerzell admitted. "Nevertheless don't you fear that a certain coldness might result from this procedure?"