They were carrying away Clochette’s body.

THE KISS

My Little Darling:  So you are crying from morning until night and from night until morning, because your husband leaves you; you do not know what to do and so you ask your old aunt for advice; you must consider her quite an expert.  I don’t know as much as you think I do, and yet I am not entirely ignorant of the art of loving, or, rather, of making one’s self loved, in which you are a little lacking.  I can admit that at my age.

You say that you are all attention, love, kisses and caresses for him.  Perhaps that is the very trouble; I think you kiss him too much.

My dear, we have in our hands the most terrible power in the world:  Love.

Man is gifted with physical strength, and he exercises force.  Woman is gifted with charm, and she rules with caresses.  It is our weapon, formidable and invincible, but we should know how to use it.

Know well that we are the mistresses of the world!  To tell the history of Love from the beginning of the world would be to tell the history of man himself:  Everything springs from it, the arts, great events, customs, wars, the overthrow of empires.

In the Bible you find Delila, Judith; in fables we find Omphale, Helen; in history the Sabines, Cleopatra and many others.

Therefore we reign supreme, all-powerful.  But, like kings, we must make use of delicate diplomacy.

Love, my dear, is made up of imperceptible sensations.  We know that it is as strong as death, but also as frail as glass.  The slightest shock breaks it, and our power crumbles, and we are never able to raise it again.

We have the power of making ourselves adored, but we lack one tiny thing, the understanding of the various kinds of caresses.  In embraces we lose the sentiment of delicacy, while the man over whom we rule remains master of himself, capable of judging the foolishness of certain words.  Take care, my dear; that is the defect in our armor.  It is our Achilles’ heel.

Do you know whence comes our real power?  From the kiss, the kiss alone!  When we know how to hold out and give up our lips we can become queens.

The kiss is only a preface, however, but a charming preface.  More charming than the realization itself.  A preface which can always be read over again, whereas one cannot always read over the book.

Yes, the meeting of lips is the most perfect, the most divine sensation given to human beings, the supreme limit of happiness:  It is in the kiss alone that one sometimes seems to feel this union of souls after which we strive, the intermingling of hearts, as it were.

Do you remember the verses of Sully-Prudhomme: 

   Caresses are nothing but anxious bliss,
   Vain attempts of love to unite souls through a kiss.

One caress alone gives this deep sensation of two beings welded into one —­it is the kiss.  No violent delirium of complete possession is worth this trembling approach of the lips, this first moist and fresh contact, and then the long, lingering, motionless rapture.