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CHAPTER XIII.
"All of us, men and women, are brought up in these aberrations of
feeling that we call love. I from childhood had prepared myself for this
thing, and I loved, and I loved during all my youth, and I was joyous in
loving. It had been put into my head that it was the noblest and highest
occupation in the world. But when this expected feeling came at last,
and I, a man, abandoned myself to it, the lie was pierced through and
through. Theoretically a lofty love is conceivable; practically it is
an ignoble and degrading thing, which it is equally disgusting to
talk about and to remember. It is not in vain that nature has made
ceremonies, but people pretend that the ignoble and the shameful is
beautiful and lofty.
"I will tell you brutally and briefly what were the first signs of my
love. I abandoned myself to beastly excesses, not only not ashamed of
them, but proud of them, giving no thought to the intellectual life of
my wife. And not only did I not think of her intellectual life, I did
not even consider her physical life.
"I was astonished at the origin of our hostility, and yet how clear it
was! This hostility is nothing but a protest of human nature against the
beast that enslaves it. It could not be otherwise. This hatred was the
hatred of accomplices in a crime. Was it not a crime that, this poor
woman having become pregnant in the first month, our liaison should have
continued just the same?
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