When I spoke of temper I only meant the kind which gives a stronger relish, anxiety, and a little jealousy:  that, in a word, which springs from love alone, and not from natural brutality, that roughness which one ordinarily calls “bad temper.”  When it is love which makes a woman rough, when that alone is the cause of her liveliness, what sort can the lover be who has so little delicacy as to complain of it?  Do not these errors prove the violence of passion?  For myself, I have always thought that he who knew how to keep himself within proper bounds, was moderately amorous.  Can one be so, in effect, without allowing himself to be goaded by the fire of a devouring impetuosity, without experiencing all the revolutions which it necessarily occasions?  No, undoubtedly.  Well! who can see all these disturbances in a beloved object without a secret pleasure?  While complaining of its injustice and its transports, one feels no less deliciously at heart that he is loved, and with passion, and that these same aggravations are most convincing proofs that it is voluntary.

There, Marquis, is what constitutes the secret charm of the troubles which lovers sometimes suffer, of the tears they shed.  But if you are going to believe that I wished to tell you that a woman of bad temper, capricious, can make you happy, undeceive yourself.  I said, and I shall always persist in my idea, that diversity is necessary, caprices, bickerings, in a gallant intercourse, to drive away weariness, and to perpetuate the strength of it.  But consider that these spices do not produce that effect except when love itself is the source.  If temper is born of a natural brusqueness, or of a restless, envious, unjust disposition, I am the first one to say that such a woman will become hateful, she will be the cause of disheartening quarrels.  A connection of the heart becomes then a veritable torment, from which it is desirable to free oneself as quickly as possible.

VI

Certain Maxims Concerning Love

You think, then, Marquis, that you have brought up an invincible argument, when you tell me that one is not the master of his own heart, in disposing of it where he wishes, and that consequently you are not at liberty to choose the object of your attachment?  Morals of the opera!  Abandon this commonplace to women who expect, in saying so, to justify their weaknesses.  It is very necessary that they should have something to which to cling:  like the gentleman of whom our friend Montaigne speaks who, when the gout attacked him, would have been very angry if he had not been able to say:  “Cursed ham!” They say it is a sympathetic stroke.  That is too strong for me.  Is anyone master of his heart?  He is no longer permitted to reply when such good reasons are given.  They have even so well sanctioned these maxims that they wish to attract everyone to their arms in order to try to overcome them.  But these same maxims find so much approbation only because everyone is interested in having them received.  No one suspects that such excuses, far from justifying caprices, may be a confession that one does not wish to correct them.