At Lipka's to-night: and this time in a private room. Mme. Wildenhoff talked at great length, somewhat to the following effect:
"There is in reality only one kind of perfect love—that of the brute creation; indeliberate, irreflective love, wherein victory is to the strongest and most beautiful ; the pure reproductive instinct, unalloyed by any culture or mental analysis whatsoever. But we—we, who are civilized—unfortunately look down upon this sort of love. For we have reckoned, with quasi-mathematical exactitude, how much of love should be taken, and how much rejected, in order to get the greatest possible sum of quintessential delight. And thence has sprung quite a new type of love: instinct which has emancipated itself from obedience to the laws of nature—love with its chief motive, preservation of the species, eliminated. Now love of the kind I have spoken of generally receives the epithet of bestial ; whereas on the contrary it is most specially the outcome of refinement."
"It appears among nations at the epoch of their highest evelopment, and is the harbinger of their speedy decline," remarked Czolhanski, with solemn dignity.
