QUOTE : The unknown is terribly tempting, and danger even more so. But in its contempt for the instinct of the individual, modern society has done its best to eliminate both of these phenomena : certainly, under present conditions, the unknown no longer exists except for those whose emotions are easily intoxicated, and as for danger, everything visibly assumes an inoffensive hue each day. And yet in love—love of all kinds, whether it is this physical fury, or this spectre, or this diamond-like genie who murmurs to me a name equivalent to coolness—in all love there resides an outlaw principle, an irrepressible sense of delinquency, contempt for prohibitions and a taste for havoc. Confine this hundred-headed passion within the boundaries of your estates, if you will, or requisition whole palaces for it : nothing can stop it surging forth elsewhere, always elsewhere, there where its appearance is least expected, where its splendour is an outburst. Best of all, love thrusts up shoots where no one plants it : how vulgarity convulses it ! it is liable to give sudden wanton twitches. There are maniacs possessed by the street's haunting memory, and only there can they experience the full flow of their nature.