“Should I pose as an agreeable man, and try to captivate her attention and good graces by the minute attentions and delicate flattery which constitute what is classically called paying court?  But D’Arzenac had seized this role, and filled it in such a superior way that all competition would be unsuccessful.  I saw where this had led him.  It needed, in order to inflame this heart, a more active spark than foppish gallantry; the latter flatters the vanity without reaching the heart.

“There was the passionate method—­ardent, burning, fierce love.  There are some women upon whom convulsive sighs drawn from the depths of the stomach, eyebrows frowning in a fantastic manner, and eyes in which only the whites are to be seen and which seem to say:  ’Love me, or I will kill you!’ produce a prodigious effect.  I had myself felt the power of this fascination while using it one day upon a softhearted blond creature who thought it delightful to have a Blue-Beard for a lover.  But the drooping corners of Clemence’s mouth showed at times an ironical expression which would have cooled down even an Othello’s outbursts.

“‘She has brains, and she knows it,’ said I to myself; ’shall I attack her in that direction?’ Women rather like such a little war of words; it gives them an opportunity for displaying a mine of pretty expressions, piquant pouts, fresh bursts of laughter, graceful peculiarities of which they well know the effect.  Should I be the Benedict to this Beatrice?  But this by-play would hardly fill the prologue, and I very much wished to reach the epilogue.

“I passed in review the different routes that a lover might take to reach his end; I recapitulated every one of the more or less infallible methods of conquering female hearts; in a word, I went over my tactics like a lieutenant about to drill a battalion of recruits.  When I had ended I had made no farther advance than before.

“‘To the devil with systems!’ exclaimed I; ’I will not be so foolish as wilfully to adopt the role of roue when I feel called upon to play the plain role of true lover.  Let those who like play the part of Lovelace!  As for myself, I will love; upon the whole, that is what pleases best.’  And I jumped headlong into the torrent without troubling myself as to the place of landing.

“While I was thus scheming my attack, Madame de Bergenheim was upon her guard and had prepared her means of defence.  Puzzled by my reserve, which was in singular contrast with my almost extravagant conduct at our first meeting, her woman’s intelligence had surmised, on my part, a plan which she proposed to baffle.  I was partly found out, but I knew it and thus kept the advantage.