“After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there is such a thing as other people’s happiness and peace, and that you are ruining a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse yourself with women like my wife⁠—with them you are within your rights, for they know what you want of them. They are armed against you by the same experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid to marry her⁠ ⁠… to deceive, to kidnap.⁠ ⁠… Don’t you understand that it is as mean as beating an old man or a child?⁠ ⁠…”

Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with a questioning look.

“I don’t know about that, eh?” said Anatole, growing more confident as Pierre mastered his wrath. “I don’t know that and don’t want to,” he said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of his lower jaw, “but you have used such words to me⁠—‘mean’ and so on⁠—which as a man of honor I can’t allow anyone to use.”