This chapter may to many readers seem utterly useless in a psychological work, since chastity is a question of hygiene or a negation of love; and in any case, someone could whisper in my ear: "Non est hic locus." Let the enemies of chastity, or those who do not know what chastity is, jump this chapter, which will be among the shortest in the book, and allow us, when we speak of light, to say at least what shade means.

Chastity is the shadow of love, and the most enthusiastic among the adorers of the sun seeks always the friendly shade of a tree where, among the labyrinths of the knotty roots, or on the soft carpet of a meadow, he can slowly drink in the light of which he went in search; he, too, must love a tranquil shade from which to contemplate without injury the distant splendors of the supreme father of every energy and every heat. Even in the desert of sand called the Sahara, or in the desert of grass called the Pampas, man feels the necessity of resting in the shadow of his camel, or of his horse, to brood voluptuously over the long and fiery suns absorbed. Repose you, also, then in the shadow of the hair, of the eyebrows of your sweetheart to relish the long memories of the lightning flashes of love.

Chastity is not only repose, but also a wise and powerful creation of new energies and infinite poetry. Voluptuousness is a hurricane or thunderbolt, but always a superior force which brutally rends and brutally bends the tree of life, dashing the leaves against the ground that nourishes them. Chastity is a boundless temple, in which the fresh and silent atmosphere dries the sweat of the struggles, refreshes the sultry air of the battle and restores calm to every turbulent and stormy brow. The chastity of two lovers is a real temple in which the animal man collects himself, prays and invokes an unknown god that he may make him an angel; and love is purified, cleansed of all mire, and soars on its wings to the highest regions of the ideal. Desire, when subdued without violence but without hesitation by chastity, lowers its eyes, bows its head and kneels before the statue of love, and, quivering but subdued, caresses with its long neck and warm hair the soft knees, like an enamored swan fondled by the gentle hand of a nude but chaste woman.

Have you ever noticed two lovers who, sitting on one chair, read the same book together, while a little child, the fruit of their first loves, sits at their feet, chattering and prattling? When that little angel raises its head too petulantly or screams too boisterously, the fondling hand of the mother or that of the father will silence him. Thus must desire long remain under restraint at the feet of the two lovers, obeying an amorous voice and not the rod of the schoolmaster of old.

No more odious virtue exists than chastity taught by the intolerant and often not very chaste prude; no more delicate, more sublime virtue than chastity taught by love and by the noblest faculties of the human mind. An immodest love, an unchaste love may be happy for a time; it may laugh and smile, let itself be carried away by the maelstrom of voluptuousness into a revel of unrestrained dances; but it is always an inebriated love, and inebriety ends quickly and, generally, very badly. Chaste love is ardent but serene; a love always armed and always cheerful; a sapphire illuminated by electric light. Self-imposed chastity is a hidden form of onanism, disease or mania; the evidence of something lacking in a man, or of a violent amputation, of a cruel mutilation. The free and sweet chastity of two lovers is a most wise lust, which sacrifices the daily bread to the splendors of a Sardanapalian banquet; an education of senses and affections; a most holy worship of the noblest joys of thought; one of the most precious gems that can adorn the crown of life. Blessed are those who know how to be chaste in this manner, to turn love into an energy that educates and etherealizes, and who find in it the greater coefficient of noble ambitions and magnanimous purposes!

And you, women, you who have the "intellect of love," teach chastity to us, for whom this holiest of virtues is difficult to acquire. Prize dearly this delicate mission, because you will be the first to enjoy its fruits. Through an ignoble and vulgar calculation, you prefer to disarm your lovers in order that they may not strike other victims than you,—perhaps, also, that they may not hurt their own hands; but your calculation is groundless. From the nausea of satiety more infidelity has sprung than from the prudent restraint of desires; and to leave a desire always lighted, and a flower in your garden always untouched, is one of the most precious secrets for reigning eternally, for being always loved.

There is an absolute chastity imposed by the cruel laws of sects or of society, but this is not the place to speak of it. And there is another absolute chastity imposed by ambition, by a misinterpreted virtue, or even by egotism; a chastity which, at the bottom, is nothing else than self-idolatry, a rabid concentration of forces to reach lofty or insensate ends. The fruit which human voluptuousness reaps is, however, generally beneath its desire or expectation, and nature wreaks its vengeance in a thousand ways upon those who outrage it. In many cases, however, true, sincere chastity, imposed by an iron will, is an admirable thing, deserving a place among the rarest and most valuable things in a museum. Not one case in a hundred of those upon which history has bestowed veneration deserves the praises which are habitually offered to them, because many of these forms of chastity are false, or easy through impotency; they are, therefore, false virtues. Other chastities are as sterile as the sands of the desert, they are clouds that rise without shape and without aim in the imagination of the human heart, and vanish without leaving any trace. Be that as it may, they do not belong to the history of love, and to discuss them here would entitle the gentle reader to whisper in my ear a second time: "Non est hic locus."