at last persuaded her that the union of the sexes is in itself a matter of the most perfect indifference, provided only that decorum of appearance be preserved, and the peace of mind of persons concerned be not disturbed.[42] This execrable lesson, which greater and more unselfish men held and propagated in grave books before the end of the century, took root in her mind.  If we accept Rousseau’s explanation, it did so the more easily as her temperament was cold, and thus corroborated the idea of the indifference of what public opinion and private passion usually concur in investing with such enormous weightiness.  “I will even dare to say,” Rousseau declares, “that she only knew one true pleasure in the world, and that was to give pleasure to those whom she loved."[43] He is at great pains to protest how compatible this coolness of temperament is with excessive sensibility of character; and neither ethological theory nor practical observation of men and women is at all hostile to what he is so anxious to prove.  The cardinal element of character is the speed at which its energies move; its rapidity or its steadiness, concentration or volatility; whether the thought and feeling travel as quickly as light or as slowly as sound.  A rapid and volatile constitution like that of Madame de Warens is inconsistent with ardent and glowing warmth, which belongs to the other sort, but it is essentially bound up with sensibility, or readiness of sympathetic answer to every cry from another soul.  It is the slow, brooding, smouldering nature, like Rousseau’s own, in which we may expect to find the tropics.

To bring the heavy artillery of moral reprobation to bear upon a poor soul like Madame de Warens is as if one should denounce flagrant want of moral purpose in the busy movements of ephemera.  Her activity was incessant, but it ended in nothing better than debt, embarrassment, and confusion.  She inherited from her father a taste for alchemy, and spent much time in search after secret elixirs and the like.  “Quacks, taking advantage of her weakness, made themselves her master, constantly infested her, ruined her, and wasted, in the midst of furnaces and chemicals, intelligence, talents, and charms which would have made her the delight of the best societies."[44] Perhaps, however, the too notorious vagrancy of her amours had at least as much to do with her failure to delight the best societies as her indiscreet passion for alchemy.  Her person was attractive enough.  “She had those points of beauty,” says Rousseau, “which are desirable, because they reside rather in expression than in feature.  She had a tender and caressing air, a soft eye, a divine smile, light hair of uncommon beauty.  You could not see a finer head or bosom, finer arms or hands."[45] She was full of tricks and whimsies.  She could not endure the first smell of the soup and meats at dinner; when they were placed on the table she nearly swooned, and her disgust lasted some time, until at the end of half an hour or so she took her first morsel.[46] On the whole, if we accept the current standard of sanity, Madame de Warens must be pronounced ever so little flighty; but a monotonous world can afford to be lenient to people with a slight craziness, if it only has hearty benevolence and cheerfulness in its company, and is free from egoism or rapacious vanity.