For my own part, however riches may change me, there is one matter in which I shall never change.  If I have neither morals nor virtue, I shall not be wholly without taste, without sense, without delicacy; and this will prevent me from spending my fortune in the pursuit of empty dreams, from wasting my money and my strength in teaching children to betray me and mock at me.  If I were young, I would seek the pleasures of youth; and as I would have them at their best I would not seek them in the guise of a rich man.  If I were at my present age, it would be another matter; I would wisely confine myself to the pleasures of my age; I would form tastes which I could enjoy, and I would stifle those which could only cause suffering.  I would not go and offer my grey beard to the scornful jests of young girls; I could never bear to sicken them with my disgusting caresses, to furnish them at my expense with the most absurd stories, to imagine them describing the vile pleasures of the old ape, so as to avenge themselves for what they had endured.  But if habits unresisted had changed my former desires into needs, I would perhaps satisfy those needs, but with shame and blushes.  I would distinguish between passion and necessity, I would find a suitable mistress and would keep to her.  I would not make a business of my weakness, and above all I would only have one person aware of it.  Life has other pleasures when these fail us; by hastening in vain after those that fly us, we deprive ourselves of those that remain.  Let our tastes change with our years, let us no more meddle with age than with the seasons.  We should be ourselves at all times, instead of struggling against nature; such vain attempts exhaust our strength and prevent the right use of life.

The lower classes are seldom dull, their life is full of activity; if there is little variety in their amusements they do not recur frequently; many days of labour teach them to enjoy their rare holidays.  Short intervals of leisure between long periods of labour give a spice to the pleasures of their station.  The chief curse of the rich is dullness; in the midst of costly amusements, among so many men striving to give them pleasure, they are devoured and slain by dullness; their life is spent in fleeing from it and in being overtaken by it; they are overwhelmed by the intolerable burden; women more especially, who do not know how to work or play, are a prey to tedium under the name of the vapours; with them it takes the shape of a dreadful disease, which robs them of their reason and even of their life.  For my own part I know no more terrible fate than that of a pretty woman in Paris, unless it is that of the pretty manikin who devotes himself to her, who becomes idle and effeminate like her, and so deprives himself twice over of his manhood, while he prides himself on his successes and for their sake endures the longest and dullest days which human being ever put up with.