"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 has become the wisest character and the way this character has developed is truly breathtaking.
