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Starting from the premise that private feelings cannot be contained or eliminated from public deliberation or action, this text embarks on an inquiry into the influence of honour on behaviour in 19th-century France. It considers how French society was goverend by a strict code of honour and that males in particular were vunerable to acute feelings of shame, while any other feelings referred to as "sentiment" were considered the special domain of women. Examining the realms of both marriage and the public sphere, the author uncovers the feelings of shame and self-esteem, fear and desire, that entered in an unperceived yet fundamental way into the sense of self that many elite men and women worked out in the course of their lives.