last form of love—­when they are not devout.  They will do you innumerable good services; sing your praises and make you desirable to society.  Avoid young women.  Do not think I say this from personal self-interest.  The woman of fifty will do all for you, the woman of twenty will do nothing; she wants your whole life while the other asks only a few attentions.  Laugh with the young women, meet them for pastime merely; they are incapable of serious thought.  Young women, dear friend, are selfish, vain, petty, ignorant of true friendship; they love no one but themselves; they would sacrifice you to an evening’s success.  Besides, they all want absolute devotion, and your present situation requires that devotion be shown to you; two irreconcilable needs!  None of these young women would enter into your interests; they would think of themselves and not of you; they would injure you more by their emptiness and frivolity than they could serve you by their love; they will waste your time unscrupulously, hinder your advance to fortune, and end by destroying your future with the best grace possible.  If you complain, the silliest of them will make you think that her glove is more precious than fortune, and that nothing is so glorious as to be her slave.  They will all tell you that they bestow happiness, and thus lull you to forget your nobler destiny.  Believe me, the happiness they give is transitory; your great career will endure.  You know not with what perfidious cleverness they contrive to satisfy their caprices, nor the art with which they will convert your passing fancy into a love which ought to be eternal.  The day when they abandon you they will tell you that the words, “I no longer love you,” are a full justification of their conduct, just as the words, “I love,” justified their winning you; they will declare that love is involuntary and not to be coerced.  Absurd!  Believe me, dear, true love is eternal, infinite, always like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent demonstration; white hair often covers the head but the heart that holds it is ever young.  No such love is found among the women of the world; all are playing comedy; this one will interest you by her misfortunes; she seems the gentlest and least exacting of her sex, but when once she is necessary to you, you will feel the tyranny of weakness and will do her will; you may wish to be a diplomat, to go and come, and study men and interests,—­no, you must stay in Paris, or at her country-place, sewn to her petticoat, and the more devotion you show the more ungrateful and exacting she will be.  Another will attract you by her submissiveness; she will be your attendant, follow you romantically about, compromise herself to keep you, and be the millstone about your neck.  You will drown yourself some day, but the woman will come to the surface.

The least manoeuvring of these women of the world have many nets.  The silliest triumph because too foolish to excite distrust.  The one