My dear Prince, endeavor to recollect that you are not in India; the manners of the Sunda Isles do not prevail here, and I feared from your letter some desperate act which would put you in the power of your friends, the police.  In Europe we have professors of aesthetics, Sanscrit, Slavonic, dancing and fencing, but professors of jealousy are not authorized.  There is no chair in the College of France for wild beasts; lessons expressed in roarings and in blows from savage paws do very well for the fabulous tiger city of Java legends.  If you are jealous, try to deprive your rival of the railroad grant which he was about to obtain, or ruin him in his electoral college by spreading the report that, in his youth, he had written a volume of sonnets.  This is constitutional revenge which will not bring you before the bar of justice.  The courts now-a-days are so tricky that they might give you some trouble even for suppressing such an insipid fop as Leon de Varezes.  Tigers, whatever you may say, are bad instructors.  With regard to tigers, we only tolerate cats, and then they must have velvet paws.

These counsels of moderation addressed to you, I have profited by myself, for, in another way, I have reached a fine degree of exasperation.  You suspect, of course, that Louise Guerin is at the bottom of it, for a woman is always at the bottom of every man’s madness.  She is the leaven that ferments all our worst passions.

Madame Taverneau set out for Rouen; I went to see Louise, my heart full of joy and hope.  I found her alone, and at first thought that the evening would be decisive, for she blushed high on seeing me.  But who the deuce can count upon women!  I left her the evening before, sweet, gentle and confiding; I found her cold, stern, repelling and talking to me as if she had never seen me before.  Her manner was so convincing that nothing had passed between us, that I found it necessary to take a rapid mental survey of all the occurrences of our expedition to the Andelys to prove to myself that I was not somebody else.  I may have a thousand faults, but vanity is not among them.  I rarely flatter myself, consequently I am not prone to believe that every one is thunder-struck, in the language of the writers of the past century, on beholding me.  My interpretation of glances, smiles, tones of the voice are generally very faithful; I do not pass over expressions that displease me.  I put this interpretation upon Louise’s conduct.  I do not feel an insuperable dislike to M. Edgar de Meilhan.  Sure of the meaning of my text, I acted upon it, but Louise assumed such imposing and royal airs, such haughty and disdainful poses, that unless I resorted to violence I felt I could obtain nothing from her.  Rage, instead of love, possessed me; my hands clenched convulsively, driving the nails into my flesh.  The scene would have turned into a struggle.  Fortunately, I reflected that such emphasized declarations of love, with the greater part of romantic and heroic actions, were not admitted in the Code.