Listen to married women, and to all those who, being unmarried, permit the same prerogatives; hear them, I say, in their secret complaints against unfaithful husbands and cooling lovers.  They are despised, and that is the sole reason they can imagine.  But with us, what they consider a mark of esteem and sincerity, is it anything else than the contrary?  I told you some time ago, that women themselves, when they are acting in good faith, go farther than men in making love consist in an effervescence of the blood.  Study a lover at the commencement of her passion:  with her, then, love is purely a metaphysical sentiment, with which the senses have not the least relation.  Similar to those philosophers who, in the midst of grievous torments would not confess that they were suffering pain, she is a martyr to her own system; but, at last, while combatting this chimera, the poor thing becomes affected by a change; her lover vainly repeats that love is a divine, metaphysical sentiment, that it lives on fine phrases, on spiritual discourses, that it would be degrading to mingle with it anything material and human; he vainly, boasts of his respect and refinement.  I tell you, Marquis, on the part of all women, that such an orator will never make his fortune.  His respect will be taken as an insult, his refinement for derision, and his fine discourses for ridiculous pretexts.  All the grace that will be accorded him, is that she will find a pretext to quarrel with him because he has been less refined with some other woman, and that he will be put to the sorrowful necessity of displaying his high flown sentiments to his titular mistress, and what is admirable about this is, that the excuse for it arises out of the same principle.

P.S.—­You have so much deference for my demands!  You not only show my letters to M. de la Rochefoucauld, but you read them before the whole assembly of my friends.  It is true that the indulgence with which my friends judge them, consoles me somewhat for your indiscretion, and I see very well that the best thing for me to do is to continue on in my own way as I have in the past.  But, at least, be discreet when I mention matters relating to the glory of the Countess; otherwise, no letters.

XLI

Discretion Is Sometimes the Better Part of Valor

No, Marquis, I can not pardon in you the species of fury with which you desire what you are pleased to call the “supreme happiness.”  How blind you are, not to know that when you are sure of a woman’s heart, it is in your interests to enjoy her defeat a long time before it becomes entire.  Will you never understand, that of all there is good on earth, it is the sweetness of love that must be used with the greatest economy?