What surprises me the most is the marked passage in your letter which states that since the Countess has appeared to love you, her character has totally changed.  I have no particular information on that point.  All I know is, that she made her debut in society as a lady of elegance, and her debut was all the more marked because, during the life of her husband, her conduct was entirely the contrary.  Do you not remember when you first made her acquaintance, that she was lively even to giddiness, heedless, bold, even coquettish, and appeared to be incapable of a reasonable attachment?  However, to-day, you tell me, she has become a serious melancholic; pre-occupied, timid, affected; sentiment has taken the place of mincing airs; at least she appears to so fit in with the character she assumes to-day, that you imagine it to be her true one, and her former one, borrowed.  All my philosophy would be at fault in such a case, if I did not recognize in this metamorphosis the effects of love.  I am very much mistaken if the storm raging around you to-day, does not end in the most complete victory, and one all the more assured because she has done everything in her power to prevent it.  But if you steadily pursue your object, carrying your pursuit even as far as importunity, follow her wherever she goes and where you can see her; if you take it upon yourself not to allude to your passion, and treat her with all the mannerism of an attentive follower, respectful, but impressed, what will happen?  She will be unable to refuse you the courtesies due any indifferent acquaintance.  Women possess an inexhaustible fund of kindness for those who love them.  You know this well, you men, and it is what always reassures you when you are treated unkindly.  You know that your presence, your attentions, the sorrow that affects you have their effect, and end by disarming our pride.

You are persuaded that those whom our virtue keeps at a distance through pride, are precisely those whom it fears the most, and unfortunately, your guess is only too just, it keeps them off, indeed, because it is not sure of its ability to resist them.  It does more sometimes, it goes to the length of braving an enemy whose attack it dares not anticipate.  In a word, the courage of a reasonable woman is nearly always equal to a first effort, but rarely is that effort lasting.  The very excess of its violence is the cause of its weakening.  The soul has only one degree of force, and exhausted by the constraint that effort cost it, it abandons itself to lassitude.  By and by, the knowledge of its weakness throws it into discouragement.  A woman of that disposition bears the first shock of a redoubtable enemy with courage, but, the danger better understood, she fears a second attack.  A woman, persuaded that she has done everything possible to defend herself against an inclination which is urging her on, satisfied with the combats in which she has been engaged, finally reaches the opinion that her resistance can not prevail