The man who hastens to tell another man that he has dropped a thousand
franc bill from his pocket-book, or even that the handkerchief is coming
out of his pocket, would think it a mean thing to warn him that some one
was carrying off his wife. There is certainly something extremely odd in
this moral inconsistency, but after all it admits of explanation. Since
the law cannot exercise any interference with matrimonial rights,
the citizens have even less right to constitute themselves a conjugal
police; and when one restores a thousand franc bill to him who has lost
it, he acts under a certain kind of obligation, founded on the principle
which says, “Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you!”
But by what reasoning can justification be found for the help which one
celibate never asks in vain, but always receives from another celibate
in deceiving a husband, and how shall we qualify the rendering of such
help? A man who is incapable of assisting a gendarme in discovering an
assassin, has no scruple in taking a husband to a theatre, to a concert
or even to a questionable house, in order to help a comrade, whom
he would not hesitate to kill in a duel to-morrow, in keeping an
assignation, the result of which is to introduce into a family a
spurious child, and to rob two brothers of a portion of their fortune by
giving them a co-heir whom they never perhaps would otherwise have had;
or to effect the misery of three human beings. We must confess that
integrity is a very rare virtue, and, very often, the man that thinks
he has most actually has least. Families have been divided by feuds, and
brothers have been murdered, which events would never have taken place
if some friend had refused to perform what passes to the world as a
harmless trick.
It is impossible for a man to be without some hobby or other, and all
of us are devoted either to hunting, fishing, gambling, music, money, or
good eating. Well, your ruling passion will always be an accomplice in
the snare which a lover sets for you, the invisible hand of this passion
will direct your friends, or his, whether they consent or not, to play
a part in the little drama when they want to take you away from home, or
to induce you to leave your wife to the mercy of another. A lover will
spend two whole months, if necessary, in planning the construction of
the mouse-trap.