without being able to give the reason.  I am very cruel to thus dissipate the phantoms of your self love, but I am telling you the truth.  You are flattered by the love of a woman, because you believe it implies the worthiness of the object loved.  You do her too much honor:  let us say rather, that you have too good an opinion of yourself.  Understand that it is not for yourself that we love you, to speak with sincerity, it is our own happiness we seek.  Caprice, interest, vanity, disposition, the uneasiness that affects our hearts when they are unoccupied, these are the sources of the great sentiment we wish to deify!  It is not great qualities that affect us; if they enter for anything into the reasons which determine us in your favor, it is not the heart which receives the impression, it is vanity; and the greater part of the things in you which please us, very often makes you ridiculous or contemptible.

But, what will you have?  We need an admirer who can entertain us with ideas of our perfections; we need an obliging person who will submit to our caprices; we need a man!  Chance presents us with one rather than another; we accept him, but we do not choose him.  In a word, you believe yourselves to be the objects of our disinterested affection.  I repeat:  You think women love you for yourselves.  Poor dupes!  You are only the instruments of their pleasures, the sport of their caprices.  I must, however, do women justice; it is not that you are what I have just enumerated with their consent, for the sentiments which I develop here are not well defined in their minds, on the contrary, with the best faith in the world, women imagine themselves influenced and actuated only by the grand ideas which your vanity and theirs has nourished.  It would be a crying injustice to accuse them of deceit in this respect; but, without being aware of it, they deceive themselves, and you are equally deceived.

You see that I am revealing the secrets of the good goddess.  Judge of my friendship, since, at the expense of my own sex, I labor to enlighten you.  The better you know women, the fewer follies they will lead you to commit.

XV

The Hidden Motives of Love

Really, Marquis, I do not understand how you can meekly submit to the serious language I sometimes write you.  It seems as if I had no other aim in my letters than to sweep away your agreeable illusions and substitute mortifying truths.  I must, however, get rid of my mania for saying deeply considered things.  I know better than any one else that pleasant lies are more agreeable than the most reasonable conversation, but my disposition breaks through everything in spite of me.  I feel a fit of philosophy upon me again to-day, and I must ask you to prepare to endure the broadside of morality I am making ready to give you.  Hereafter, I promise you more gayety.  So now to answer your letter.

No, I will not take back anything.  You may make war on me as much as it please you, because of the bad opinion of my sex I expressed in my last letter.  Is it my fault if I am furnished with disagreeable truths to utter?  Besides, do you not know, Marquis, that the being on earth who thinks the most evil of women, is a woman?