This was quite beyond me,
and I made all manner of guesses as to how a woman could resemble
a pistol. It seemed so inconsistent to be told in one breath that a
woman wounds from afar, and in another that to touch her is perdition.
All this was so incomprehensible that I immersed myself in study, and
so contrived to clear my brain of it.
Coming from persons in whom I felt unbounded confidence, these
absurdities carried conviction to my very soul, and even now, after
fifty years' hard experience of the world[1] the impression has not
quite worn off. The comparison between women and firearms made me very
cautious, and not until age began to creep over me did I see that this
also was vanity, and that the Preacher was right when he said: "Go thy
way, eat thy bread joyfully ... with the woman whom thou lovest." My
ideas upon this head outlived my ideas upon religion, and this is
why I have enjoyed immunity from the opprobrium which I should not
unreasonably have been subjected to if it could have been said that I
left the seminary for other reasons than those derived from philology.
The commonplace interrogation, "Where is the woman?" in which laymen
invariably look for an explanation of all such cases cannot but seem
a paltry attempt at humour to those who see things as they really are.
My early days were passed in this high school of faith and of respect.
The liberty in which so many giddy youths find themselves suddenly
landed was in my case acquired very gradually; and I did not attain
the degree of emancipation which so many Parisians reach without any
effort of their own, until I had gone through the German exegesis.
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