“This is the way I reasoned:  Destined to live among men, formed to please them, and to share in their happiness, we are obliged to suffer from their caprices, and above all fear their malignity.  It seems that they have no other object in our education than that of fitting us for love, indeed, it is the only passion permitted us, and by a strange and cruel contrariety, they have left us only one glory to obtain, which is that of gaining a victory over the very inclination imposed upon us.  I therefore endeavored to ascertain the best means of reconciling in use and custom, two such glaring extremes, and I found predicaments on all sides.

“We are, I said to myself, simple enough when we enter society, to imagine that the greatest happiness of a woman should be to love and be loved.  We then are under the impression that love is based on esteem, upheld by the knowledge of amiable qualities, purified by delicacy of sentiment, divested of all the insipidities which disfigure it, in a word, fostered by confidence and the effusions of the heart.  But unfortunately, a sentiment so flattering for a woman without experience, is everything less than that in practice.  She is always disabused when too late.

“I was so good in the beginning as to be scandalized at two imperfections I perceived in men, their inconstancy and their untruthfulness.  The reflections I made on the first of these defects, led me to the opinion that they were more unfortunate than guilty.  From the manner in which the human heart is constituted, is it possible for it to be occupied with only one object?  No, but does the treachery of men deserve the same indulgence?  Most men attack a woman’s virtue in cold blood, in the design to use her for their amusement, to sacrifice her to their vanity, to fill a void in an idle life, or to acquire a sort of reputation based upon the loss of ours.  There is a large number of men in this class.  How to distinguish true lovers?  They all look alike on the surface, and the man who pretends to be amorous, is often more seductive than one who really is.

“We are, moreover, dupes enough to make love a capital affair.  You men, on the contrary, consider it merely a play; we rarely surrender to it without an inclination for the person of the lover; you are coarse enough to yield to it without taste.  Constancy with us is a duty; you give way to the slightest distaste without scruple.  You are scarcely decent in leaving a mistress, the possession of whom, six months before, was your glory and happiness.  She may consider herself well off if she is not punished by the most cruel indiscretions.

“Hence I regarded things from their tragical side, and said to myself:  ’If love draws with it so many misfortunes, a woman who cherishes her peace of mind and reputation, should never love.’  However, everything tells me that we have a heart, that this heart is made for love, and that love is involuntary.  Why, then, venture to destroy an inclination that is part of our being?  Would it not be wiser to rectify it?  Let us see how it will be possible to succeed in such an enterprise.