XLVIII

Friendship Must Be Firm

I do not conceal it, Marquis, your conduct in regard to the Countess had put me out of patience with you, and I was tempted to break off all my relations with so wicked a man as you.  My good nature in yielding to your entreaties inclines me to the belief that my friendship for you borders on a weakness.  You are right, though.  To be your friend only so long as you follow my advice would not be true friendship.  The more you are to be censured the stronger ought to be my hold on you, but you will understand that one is not master of his first thoughts.  Whatever effort I may make to find you less guilty, the sympathy I have for the misfortune of my friend is of still greater importance to me.  There were moments when I could not believe in your innocence, and they were when so charming a woman complained of you.  Now that her situation is improving every day, I consider my harshness in my last letter almost as a crime.

I shall, hereafter, content myself with pitying her without importuning you any longer about her.  So let us resume our ordinary gait, if it please you.  You need no longer fear my reproaches, I see they would be useless as well as out of place.

XLIX

Constancy Is a Virtue Among the Narrow Minded

You did not then know, Marquis, that it is often more difficult to get rid of a mistress than to acquire one?  You are learning by experience.  Your disgust for the moneyed woman does not surprise me except that it did not happen sooner.

What! knowing her character so well, you could imagine that the despair she pretended at the sight of your indifference increasing every day, could be the effect of a veritable passion?  You could also be the dupe of her management!  I admire, and I pity your blindness.

But was it not also vanity which aided a trifle in fortifying your illusion?  In truth it would be a strange sort of vanity, that of being loved by such a woman; but men are so vain, that they are flattered by the love of the most confirmed courtesan.  In any case undeceive yourself.  A woman who is deserted, when she is a woman like your beauty, has nothing in view in her sorrow but her own interest.  She endeavors by her tears and her despair, to persuade you that your person and your merit are all she regrets; that the loss of your heart is the summit of misfortune; that she knows nobody who can indemnify her for the loss of it.  All these sentiments are false.  It is not an afflicted lover who speaks; it is a vain woman, desperate at being anticipated, exasperated at the lack of power in her charms, worrying over a plan to replace you promptly, anxious to give herself an appearance of sensibility, and to appear worthy of a better fate.  She justifies this thought of Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld:  “Women do not shed tears over the lovers they have had, so much because they loved them, as to appear more worthy of being loved.”  It is for D——­ to enjoy the sentiment.