“The reasons you draw from the legitimate views of marriage,” said I, “prove that those who hold them, fend to the same end as two ordinary lovers, perhaps, even in better faith, with this difference only, that they wish an extra ceremony attached to it.”

This shot roused the indignation of my adversary.

“You join impiety to libertinage,” said she, moving away from me.

I took the liberty of making some investigations, and would you believe it, Marquis?  This prude so refined, had such frequent ‘distractions’ with her three husbands, who were all young and vigorous, that she buried them in a very short time.

Come now, Marquis, retract your error; abandon your chimera, reserve delicacy of sentiment for friendship; accept love for what it is.  The more dignity you give it, the more dangerous you make it; the more sublime the idea you form of it, the less correct it is.  Believe de la Rochefoucauld, a man who knows the human heart well:  “If you expect to love a woman for love of herself,” says he, “you will be much mistaken.”

X

The Sensation of Love Forms a Large Part of a Woman’s Nature

The commentaries the Countess has been making you about her virtue, and the refinement she expects in a lover, have certainly alarmed you.  You think she will always be as severe as she now appears to you.  All I have told you does not reassure you.  You even esteem it a favor to me that you stop with doubting my principles.  If you dared you would condemn them entirely.  When you talk to me in that fashion, I feel at liberty to say that I believe you.  It is not your fault if you do not see clearly into your own affair, but in proportion as you advance, the cloud will disappear, and you will perceive with surprise the truth of what I have been telling you.

The more cold blooded you are, or at least, as long as passion has not yet reached that degree of boldness its progress will ultimately lead you to, the mere hope of the smallest favor is a crime; you tremble at the most innocent caress.  At first you ask for nothing, or for so slight a favor, that a woman conscientiously believes herself obliged to grant it, delighted with you on account of your modesty.  To obtain this slight favor, you protest never to ask another, and yet, even while making your protestations, you are preparing to exact more.  She becomes accustomed to it and permits further trifling, which seems to be of so little importance that she would endure it from any other man, if she were on the slightest terms of intimacy with him.  But, to judge from the result, what appears to be of so little consequence on one day when compared with the favor obtained the day before, becomes very considerable when compared with that obtained on the first day.  A woman, re-assured by your discretion, does not perceive that her frailties are being graduated upon a certain scale.