IV.  My clerical ideas have exercised a still greater influence over me in all that relates to the rules of morality.  I should have looked upon it as a lack of decorum if I had made any change in my austere habits upon this score.  The world at large, in its ignorance of spiritual things, believes that men only abandon the ecclesiastical calling because they find its duties too severe.  I should never have forgiven myself if I had done anything to lend even a semblance of reason to views so superficial.  With my extreme conscientiousness I was anxious to be at rest with myself, and I continued to live in Paris the life which I had led in the seminary.  As time went on, I recognised that this virtue was as vain as all the others; and more especially I noted that nature does not in the least encourage man to be chaste.  I none the less persevered in the mode of life I had selected, and I deliberately imposed upon myself the morals of a Protestant clergyman.  A man should never take two liberties with popular prejudice at the same time.  The freethinker should be very particular as to his morals.  I know some Protestant ministers, very broad in their ideas, whose stiff white ties preserve them from all reproach.  In the same way I have, thanks to a moderate style and blameless morals, secured a hearing for ideas which, in the eyes of human mediocrity, are advanced.

The worldly views in regard to the relations between the sexes are as peculiar as the biddings of nature itself.  The world, whose; judgments are rarely altogether wrong, regards it as more or less ridiculous to be virtuous, when one is not obliged to be so as a matter of professional duty.  The priest, whose place it is to be chaste as it is that of the soldier to be brave, is, according to this view, almost the only person who can, without incurring ridicule, stand by principles over which morality and fashion are so often at variance.  There can be no doubt that, upon this point, as on many others, adherence to my clerical principles has been injurious to me in the eyes of the world.  These principles have not affected my happiness.  Women have, as a rule, understood how much respect and sympathy for them my affectionate reserve implied.  In fine, I have been beloved by the four women whose love was of the most comfort to me:  My mother, my sister, my wife and my daughter.  I have had the better part, and it will not be taken from me, for I often fancy that the judgments which will be passed upon us in the valley of Jehosophat, will be neither more nor less than those of women, countersigned by the Almighty.