“If you mean by feeling ,” said the King, “approaching so close as to leave no space between two individuals, know, stranger, that this offence is punishable in my dominions by death. And the reason is obvious. The frail form of a woman, being liable to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by the State; but since women cannot be distinguished by the sense of sight from men, the law ordains universally that neither man nor woman shall be approached so closely as to destroy the interval between the approximator and the approximated.