CHASTITY IN ITS RELATIONS TO LOVE

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[Pg 156] 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 b............