No woman can
do it. The best and cleverest among you don't know what love is--as a man
feels it. It isn't the frenzy with You that it is with Us. It
acknowledges restraints in a woman--it bursts through everything in a
man. It robs him of his intelligence, his honor, his self-respect--it
levels him with the brutes--it debases him into idiocy--it lashes him
into madness. I tell you I am not accountable for my own actions. The
kindest thing you could do for me would be to shut me up in a madhouse.
The best thing I could do for myself would be to cut my throat.--Oh, yes!
this is a shocking way of talking, isn't it? I ought to struggle against
it--as you say. I ought to summon my self-control. Ha! ha! ha! Here is a
clever woman--here is an experienced woman. And yet--though she has seen
me in Lucilla's company hundreds of times--she has never once discovered
the signs of a struggle in me! From the moment when I first saw that
heavenly creature, it has been one long fight against myself, one
infernal torment of shame and remorse; and this clever friend of mine has
observed so little and knows so little, that she can only view my conduct
in one light--it is the conduct of a coward and a villain!"
He got up, and took a turn in the room. I was--naturally, I think--a
little irritated by his way of putting it. A man assuming to know more
about love than a woman! Was there ever such a monstrous perversion of
the truth as that? I appeal to the women!
"You ought to be the last person to blame me," I said.
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