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.

Therefore, my dear, the kiss is our strongest weapon, but we must take care not to dull it.  Do not forget that its value is only relative, purely conventional.  It continually changes according to circumstances, the state of expectancy and the ecstasy of the mind.  I will call attention to one example.

Another poet, Francois Coppee, has written a line which we all remember, a line which we find delightful, which moves our very hearts.

After describing the expectancy of a lover, waiting in a room one winter’s evening, his anxiety, his nervous impatience, the terrible fear of not seeing her, he describes the arrival of the beloved woman, who at last enters hurriedly, out of breath, bringing with her part of the winter breeze, and he exclaims: 

   Oh! the taste of the kisses first snatched through the veil.

Is that not a line of exquisite sentiment, a delicate and charming observation, a perfect truth?  All those who have hastened to a clandestine meeting, whom passion has thrown into the arms of a man, well do they know these first delicious kisses through the veil; and they tremble at the memory of them.  And yet their sole charm lies in the circumstances, from being late, from the anxious expectancy, but from the purely—­or, rather, impurely, if you prefer—­sensual point of view, they are detestable.

Think!  Outside it is cold.  The young woman has walked quickly; the veil is moist from her cold breath.  Little drops of water shine in the lace.  The lover seizes her and presses his burning lips to her liquid breath.  The moist veil, which discolors and carries the dreadful odor of chemical dye, penetrates into the young man’s mouth, moistens his mustache.  He does not taste the lips of his beloved, he tastes the dye of this lace moistened with cold breath.  And yet, like the poet, we would all exclaim: