Now that over three years have passed since that night in Florence, I suppose, I may confess to you that I loved you deeply. You yourself, however, stifled my love by your fantastic devotion and your insane passion. From the moment that you became my slave, I knew it would be impossible for you ever to become my husband. However, I found it interesting to have you realize your ideal in my own person, and, while I gloriously amused myself, perhaps, to cure you. I found the strong man for whom I felt a need, and I was as happy with him as, I suppose, it is possible for any one to be on this funny ball of clay. But my happiness, like all things mortal, was of short duration. About a year ago he fell in a duel, and since then I have been living in Paris, like an Aspasia— And you?—Your life surely is not without its sunshine, if you have gained control of your imagination, and those qualities in you have materialized, which at first so attracted me to you—your clarity of intellect, kindness of heart, and, above all else, your—_moral seriousness_. I hope you have been cured under my whip; the cure was cruel, but radical. In memory of that time and of a woman who loved you passionately, I am sending you the portrait by the poor German. _Venus in Furs_.” I had to smile, and as I fell to musing the beautiful woman suddenly stood before me in her velvet jacket trimmed with ermine, with the whip in her hand. And I continued to smile at the woman I had once loved so insanely, at the fur-jacket that had once so entranced me, at the whip, and ended by smiling at myself and saying: The cure was cruel, but radical; but the main point is, I have been cured. * * * * * “And the moral of the story?” I said to Severin when I put the manuscript down on the table. “That I was a donkey,” he exclaimed without turning around, for he seemed to be embarrassed. “If only I had beaten her!” “A curious remedy,” I exclaimed, “which might answer with your peasant-women—” “Oh, they are used to it,” he replied eagerly, “but imagine the effect upon one of our delicate, nervous, hysterical ladies—” “But the moral?” “That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but _never his companion._ This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work. “At present we have only the choice of being hammer or anvil, and I was the kind of donkey who let a woman make a slave of him, do you understand? “The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped. “The blows, as you see, have agreed with me; the roseate supersensual mist has dissolved, and no one can ever make me believe again that these ‘sacred apes of Benares’6 or Plato’s rooster7 are the image of God.” [Footnote 6: One of Schopenhauer’s designations for women.]