But can you call this true:  “There is nobody but is ashamed of having loved when once he loves no longer”?  If it be true at all, I don’t think the love was much worth having or giving.  If one really loves once, one can never be ashamed of it; for we never cease to love.  However, this is the very high water of sentiment, you will say; but I blush no more for it than M. le Duc de Rochefoucauld for his own opinion.  Perhaps I am thinking of that kind of love about which he says:  “True love is like ghosts; which everybody talks about and few have seen.”  “Many be the thyrsus-bearers, few the Mystics,” as the Greek proverb runs.  “Many are called, few are chosen.”

As to friendship being “a reciprocity of interests,” the saying is but one of those which Rochefoucauld’s vanity imposed on his wit.  Very witty it is not, and it is emphatically untrue.  “Old men console themselves by giving good advice for being no longer able to set bad examples.”  Capital; but the poor old men are often good examples of the results of not taking their own good advice.  “Many an ingrate is less to blame than his benefactor.”  One might add, at least I will, “Every man who looks for gratitude deserves to get none of it.”  “To say that one never flirts—­is flirting.”  I rather like the old translator’s version of “Il y a de bons mariages; mais il n’y en a point de delicieux”—­“Marriage is sometimes convenient, but never delightful.”

How true is this of authors with a brief popularity:  “Il y a des gens qui ressemblent aux vaudevilles, qu’on ne chante qu’un certain temps.”  Again, “to be in haste to repay a kindness is a sort of ingratitude,” and a rather insulting sort too.  “Almost everybody likes to repay small favours; many people can be grateful for favours not too weighty, but for favours truly great there is scarce anything but ingratitude.”  They must have been small favours that Wordsworth had conferred when “the gratitude of men had oftener left him mourning.”  Indeed, the very pettiness of the aid we can generally render each other, makes gratitude the touching thing it is.  So much is repaid for so little, and few can ever have the chance of incurring the thanklessness that Rochefoucauld found all but universal.

“Lovers and ladies never bore each other, because they never speak of anything but themselves.”  Do husbands and wives often bore each other for the same reason?  Who said:  “To know all is to forgive all”?  It is rather like “On pardonne tant que l’on aime”—­“As long as we love we can forgive,” a comfortable saying, and these are rare in Rochefoucauld.  “Women do not quite know what flirts they are” is also, let us hope, not incorrect.  The maxim that “There is a love so excessive that it kills jealousy” is only a corollary from “as long as we love, we forgive.”  You remember the classical example, Manon Lescaut and the Chevalier des Grieux; not an honourable precedent.