You may depend upon it, Marquis, that women are never misled when it comes to mutual praise; they fully appreciate the eulogies interchanged among themselves; and as they speak without sincerity, so they listen with little gratitude.  And although she who speaks, in praising the beauty of another, may do so in good faith, she who listens to the eulogy, considers less what the other says than her style of beauty.  Is she ugly?  We believe and love her, but if she be as handsome as we, we thank her coldly and disdain her; handsomer, we hate her more than before she spoke.

You must understand this, Marquis, that as much as two beautiful women may have something between them to explain, it is impossible for them to form a solid friendship.  Can two merchants who have the same goods to sell become good neighbors?  Men do not penetrate the true cause of the lack of cordiality among women.  Those who are the most intimate friends often quarrel over nothing, but do you suppose this “nothing” is the real occasion of their quarrel?  It is only the pretext.  We hide the motive of our actions when to reveal it would be a humiliation.  We do not care to make public the fact that it is jealousy for the beauty of our friend that is the real cause, to give that as the reason for estrangement would be to charge us with envy, a pleasure one woman will not give another; she prefers injustice.  Whenever it happens that two beautiful women are so happy as to find a pretext to get rid of each other, they seize upon it with vivacity, and hate each other with a cordiality which proves how much they loved each other before the rupture.

Well, Marquis, am I talking to you with sufficient frankness?  You see to what lengths my sincerity goes.  I try to give you just ideas of everything, even at my own expense, for I am assuredly not more exempt than another woman from the faults I sometimes criticise.  But as I am sure that what passes between us will be buried in oblivion, I do not fear embroiling myself in a quarrel with all my sex, they might, perhaps, claim the right to blame my ingenuity.

But the Countess is above all such petty things, she agrees, however, with everything I have just said.  Are there many women like her?

XL

Oratory and Fine Phrases do Not Breed Love

The example of the Marquise has not yet had any effect on the heart of her friend.  It appears, on the contrary, that she is more on guard against you, and that you have drawn upon yourself her reproaches through some slight favor you have deprived her of.

I have been thinking that she would not fail on this occasion to recall to your recollection, the protestations of respect and disinterestedness you made when you declared your passion for her.  It is customary in similar cases.  But what seems strange about it is, that the same eagerness that a woman accepts as a proof of disrespect, before she is in perfect accord with her lover, becomes, in her imagination, a proof of love and esteem, as soon as they meet on a common ground.