the innocent and conventional people who regard the gallant
adventures as crimes of so horrible a nature that only the most
depraved and desperate characters engage in them or would listen
to advances in that direction without raising an alarm with the
noisiest indignation, are clearly examples of the fact that most
sections of society do not know how the other sections live.
Industry is the most effective check on gallantry. Women may, as
Napoleon said, be the occupation of the idle man just as men are
the preoccupation of the idle woman; but the mass of mankind is
too busy and too poor for the long and expensive sieges which the
professed libertine lays to virtue. Still, wherever there is
idleness or even a reasonable supply of elegant leisure there is
a good deal of coquetry and philandering. It is so much
pleasanter to dance on the edge of a precipice than to go over it
that leisured society is full of people who spend a great part of
their lives in flirtation, and conceal nothing but the
humiliating secret that they have never gone any further. For
there is no pleasing people in the matter of reputation in this
department: every insult is a flattery; every testimonial is a
disparagement: Joseph is despised and promoted, Potiphar's wife
admired and condemned: in short, you are never on solid ground
until you get away from the subject altogether. There is a
continual and irreconcilable conflict between the natural and
conventional sides of the case, between spontaneous human
relations between independent men and women on the one hand and
the property relation between husband and wife on the other, not
to mention the confusion under the common name of love of a
generous natural attraction and interest with the murderous
jealousy that fastens on and clings to its mate (especially a
hated mate) as a tiger fastens on a carcase. And the confusion is