She must indeed, have a very singular idea of you to hope that she can impose upon you.  Do you wish to know what she is?  The Chevalier is actually without an affair of the heart on hand, engage him to take your place.  I have not received two letters from you that do not speak of the facility with which she will be consoled for having lost you.  A woman of her age begins to fear that she will not recover what she has lost, and so she is obliged to degrade her charms by taking the first new comer.  Perhaps her sorrow is true, but she deceives you as to the motives she gives for it.  Break these chains without scruple.  In priding yourself on your constancy and delicacy for such an object, you appear to me to be as ridiculous as you were when you lacked the same qualities on another occasion.

Do you remember, Marquis, what Monsieur de Coulanges said to us one day?  “Constancy is the virtue of people of limited merit.  Have they profited by the caprice of an amiable woman to establish themselves in her heart? the sentiment of medicrioty fixes them there, it intimidates them, they dare not make an effort to please others.  Too happy at having surprised her heart, they are afraid of abandoning a good which they may not find elsewhere, and, as an instant’s attention to their little worth might undeceive this woman, what do they then do?  They elevate constancy up among the virtues; they transform love into a superstition; they know how to interest reason in the preservation of a heart which they owe only to caprice, occasion, or surprise.”  Be on your guard against imitating these shallow personages.  Hearts are the money of gallantry; amiable people are the assets of society, whose destiny is to circulate in it and make many happy.  A constant man is therefore as guilty as a miser who impedes the circulation in commerce.  He possesses a treasure which he does not utilize, and of which there are so many who would make good use of it.

What sort of a mistress is that who is retained by force of reason?  What languor reigns in her society, what violence must one not employ to say there is love when it has ceased to exist?  It is seldom that passion ceases in both parties at the same time, and then constancy is a veritable tyrant; I compare it to the tyrant of antiquity who put people to death by tying them to dead bodies.  Constancy condemns us to the same punishment.  Discard such a baleful precedent to the liberty of association.

Believe me, follow your tastes, for the court lady you mentioned; she may weary you at times, it is true, but at least she will not degrade you.  If, as you say, she is as little intelligent as she is beautiful, her reign will soon be over.  Your place in her heart will soon be vacant, and I do not doubt that another or even several other gallantries will follow yours.  Perhaps you will not wait for the end, for I see by your letter that you are becoming a man of fashion.  The new system you have adopted makes