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same age, as well as of identical tastes—the people, who saw us always arm-in-arm, ended by not being able to think of the one apart from the other.
"Our friendship had almost become proverbial, and 'No Réné without Camille' had become a kind of by-word."
"But you, that had been so terrorized by the anonymous note, did you not fear that people might begin to suspect the real nature of your attachment?"
"That fear had quite passed away. Does the shame of a divorce-court keep the adultress from meeting her lover? Do the impending terrors of the law keep the thief from stealing? My conscience had been lulled by happiness into a calm repose; moreover, the knowledge I had acquired at Briancourt's gatherings, that I was not the only member of our cankered society who loved in the Socratic fashion, and that men of the highest intelligence, of the kindest heart, and of the purest aesthetic feelings, were—like myself—sodomists, quieted me. It is not the pains of hell we dread, but rather the low society
