How maladroit women are if they imagine that by their fears and their doubts of the sincerity and constancy of men, they can make any one believe they are fleeing from love, or despise it!  As soon as they fear they will be deceived in the enjoyment of its pleasures; when they fear they will not long enjoy it, they already know the charms of it, and the only source of anxiety then is, that they will be deprived of its enjoyment too soon.  Forever haunted by this fear, and attacked by the powerful inclination toward pleasure, they hesitate, they tremble with the apprehension that they will not be permitted to enjoy it but just long enough to make the privation of it more painful.  Hence, Marquis, you may very easily conjecture a woman who talks to you as does the Countess, using this language: 

“I can imagine all the delights of love.  The idea I have formed of it is quite seductive.  Do you think that deep in my heart I desire to enjoy its charms less than you?  But the more its image is ravishing to my imagination, the more I fear it is not real, and I refuse to yield to it lest my happiness be too soon destroyed.  Ah, if I could only hope that my happiness might endure, how feeble would be my resistance?  But will you not abuse my credulity?  Will you not some day punish me for having had too much confidence in you?  At least is that day very far off?  Ah, if I could hope to gather perpetually the fruits of the sacrifice I am making of my repose for your sake, I confess it frankly, we would soon be in accord.”

XX

The Half-way House to Love

The rival you have been given appears to me to be all the more redoubtable, as he is the sort of a man I have been advising you to be.  I know the Chevalier; nobody is more competent than he to carry a seduction to a successful conclusion.  I am willing to wager anything that his heart has never been touched.  He makes advances to the Countess in cold blood.  You are lost.  A lover as passionate as you have appeared to be, makes a thousand blunders.  The most favorable designs would perish under your management.  He permits everybody to take the advantage of him on every occasion.  Indeed, such is his misfortune that his precipitation and his timidity injure his prospects by turns.

A man who makes love for the pleasure he finds in it, profits by the smallest advantage; he knows the feeble places and makes himself master of them.  Everything leads his way, everything is combined for his purpose.  Even his imprudences are often the result of wise reflection; they help him along the road to success; they finally acquire so superior a position that, from their beginning, so to speak, dates the hour of his triumph.