We see, for example, a lover who may be repelled; the woman who loves him fears he will escape her to pay his addresses to another woman more accommodating; she does not wish to lose him, for it is always humiliating to be abandoned; she yields, because she is not aware of any other means of holding him.  They say there is nothing to reproach in this.  If he leaves her after that, at least he will be put in the wrong, for, since a woman becomes attached more by the favors she grants, she imagines the man will be forced into gratitude.  What folly!

Women are actuated by different motives in yielding.  Curiosity impels some, they desire to know what love is.  Another woman, with few advantages of person or figure, would hold her lover by the attractions of pleasure.  One woman is determined to make a conquest flattering to her vanity.  Still another one surrenders to pity, opportunity, importunities, to the pleasure of taking revenge on a rival, or an unfaithful lover.  How can I enumerate them all?  The heart is so very strange in its vagaries, and the reasons and causes which actuate it are so curious and varied, that it is impossible to discover all the hidden springs that set it in motion.  But if we delude ourselves as to the means of holding you, how often do men deceive themselves as to the proofs of our love?  If they possessed any delicacy of discernment, they would find a thousand signs that prove more than the most signal favor granted.

Tell me, Marquis, what have I done to Monsieur de Coulanges?  It is a month since he has set foot in my house.  But I will not reproach him, I shall be very pleasant with him when he does come.  He is one of the most amiable men I am acquainted with.  I shall be very angry with you if you fail to bring him to me on my return from Versailles.  I want him to sing me the last couplets he has composed, I am told they are charming.

XLVI

Why Inconstancy Is Not Injustice

It was too kind of you, Marquis, to have noticed my absence.  If I did not write you during my sojourn in the country, it was because I knew you were happy, and that tranquilized me.  I felt too, that it was necessary for love to be accorded some rights, as its reign is usually very short, and besides that, friendship not having any quarrel with love, I waited patiently an interval in your pleasure which would enable you to read my letters.

Do you know what I was doing while away?  I amused myself by piecing out all the events liable to happen in the condition your society is now in.  I foresaw the bickerings between the Countess and her rival, and I predicted they would end in an open rupture; I also guessed that the Marquise would not espouse the cause of the Countess, but would take up the other’s quarrel.  The moneyed woman is not quite so handsome as her rival, a decisive reason for declaring for her and backing her up without danger.