“You are right, we are not yet worthy of them.  It takes you a long time to get over it after you have been disturbed and annoyed about something.  How nice it is that you are so sensitive!”

“I am no more sensitive than you are—­only in a different way.”

“Well then, tell me!  I am not jealous—­how does it happen that you are?”

“Am I, unless I have cause to be?  Answer me that!”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“Well, I am not really jealous.  But tell me:  What were you talking about all yesterday evening?”

“So?  It is Amalia of whom you are jealous?  Is it possible?  That nonsense?  I did not talk about anything with her, and that was the funny part of it.  Did I not talk just as long with Antonio, whom a short time ago I used to see almost every day?”

“You want me to believe that you talk in the same way with the coquettish Amalia that you do with the quiet, serious Antonio.  Of course!  It is nothing more than a case of clear, pure friendship!”

“Oh no, you must not believe that—­I do not wish you to.  That is not true.  How can you credit me with being so foolish?  For it is a very foolish thing indeed for two people of opposite sex to form and conceive any such relation as pure friendship.  In Amalia’s case it is nothing more than playing that I love her.  I should not care anything about her at all, if she were not a little coquettish.

“Would that there were more like her in our circle!  Just in fun, one must really love all the ladies.”

“Julius, I believe you are going completely crazy!”

“Now understand me aright—­I do not really mean all of them, but all of them who are lovable and happen to come one’s way.”

“That is nothing more than what the French call galanterie and coquetterie.”

“Nothing more—­except that I think of it as something beautiful and clever.  And then men ought to know what the ladies are doing and what they want; and that is rarely the case.  A fine pleasantry is apt to be transformed in their hands into coarse seriousness.”

“This loving just in fun is not at all a funny thing to look at.”

“That is not the fault of the fun—­it is just miserable jealousy.  Forgive me, dearest—­I do not wish to get excited, but I must confess that I cannot understand how any one can be jealous.  For lovers do not offend each other, but do things to please each other.  Hence it must come from uncertainty, absence of love, and unfaithfulness to oneself.  For me happiness is assured, and love is one with constancy.  To be sure, it is a different matter with people who love in the ordinary way.  The man loves only the race in his wife, the woman in her husband only the degree of his ability and social position, and both love in their children only their creation and their property.  Under those circumstances fidelity comes to be a merit, a virtue, and jealousy is in order.  For they are quite right in tacitly believing that there are many like themselves, and that one man is about as good as the next, and none of them worth very much.”