“Up to the present time, nobody has ever spoken to you of love.  Your mirror alone has told you that you are beautiful.  Your heart, I can see by the appearance of indifference that envelops you like a mantle, has not yet been developed.  As long as you remain as you are, as long as you can be kept in sight as you are, I will be your guarantee.  But when your heart has spoken, when your enchanting eyes shall have received life and expression from sentiment, when they shall speak the language of love, when an internal unrest shall agitate your breast, when, in fine, desire, half stifled by the scruples of a good education, shall have made you blush more than once in secret, then your sensibility, through the combats by which you will attempt to vanquish it, will diminish your severity toward others, and their faults will appear more excusable.

“The knowledge of your weakness will no longer permit you to regard your virtue as infallible.  Your astonishment will carry you still farther.  The little help it will be to you against too impetuous inclinations, will make you doubt whether you ever had any virtue.  Can you say a man is brave before he has ever fought?  It is the same with us.  The attacks made upon us are alone the parents of our virtue, as danger gives birth to valor.  As long as one has not been in the presence of the enemy, it is impossible to say whether he is to be feared, and what degree of resistance it will be necessary to bear against him.

“Hence to justify a woman in flattering herself that she is essentially virtuous and good by force of her own strength, she must be in a position where no danger, however great it may be, no motive no matter how pressing, no pretext whatever, shall be powerful enough to triumph over her.  She must meet with the most favorable opportunities, the most tender love, the certainty of secrecy, the esteem and the most perfect confidence in him who attacks her.  In a word, all these circumstances combined should not be able to make an impression upon her courage, so that to know whether a woman be virtuous in the true meaning of the word, one must imagine her as having escaped unscathed all these united dangers, for it would not be virtue but only resistance where there should be love without the disposition, or disposition without the occasion.  Her virtue would always be uncertain, as long as she had never been attacked by all the weapons which might vanquish her.  One might always say of her:  if she had been possessed of a different constitution, she might not have resisted love, or, if a favorable occasion had presented itself, her virtue would have played the fool.”

“According to this,” said I, “it would be impossible to find a single virtuous woman, for no one has ever had so many enemies to combat.”

“That may be,” she replied, “but do you know the reason?  Because it is not necessary to have so many to overcome us, one alone is sufficient to obtain the victory.”