“What I see proves the contrary; you are alive with excitement now, but if your desires had been entirely satisfied, you would be dead, benumbed, motionless.  I know it by experience:  if you had breathed the full ecstacy of enjoyment, as you desired, you would have found a weak ardour only at long intervals.”

“Ah! charming creature, your experience is but very small; do not trust to it.  I see that you have never known love.  That which you call love’s grave is the sanctuary in which it receives life, the abode which makes it immortal.  Give way to my prayers, my lovely friend, and then you shall know the difference between Love and Hymen.  You shall see that, if Hymen likes to die in order to get rid of life, Love on the contrary expires only to spring up again into existence, and hastens to revive, so as to savour new enjoyment.  Let me undeceive you, and believe me when I say that the full gratification of desires can only increase a hundredfold the mutual ardour of two beings who adore each other.”

“Well, I must believe you; but let us wait.  In the meantime let us enjoy all the trifles, all the sweet preliminaries of love.  Devour thy mistress, dearest, but abandon to me all thy being.  If this night is too short we must console ourselves to-morrow by making arrangements for another one.”

“And if our intercourse should be discovered?”

“Do we make a mystery of it?  Everybody can see that we love each other, and those who think that we do not enjoy the happiness of lovers are precisely the only persons we have to fear.  We must only be careful to guard against being surprised in the very act of proving our love.  Heaven and nature must protect our affection, for there is no crime when two hearts are blended in true love.  Since I have been conscious of my own existence, Love has always seemed to me the god of my being, for every time I saw a man I was delighted; I thought that I was looking upon one-half of myself, because I felt I was made for him and he for me.  I longed to be married.  It was that uncertain longing of the heart which occupies exclusively a young girl of fifteen.  I had no conception of love, but I fancied that it naturally accompanied marriage.  You can therefore imagine my surprise when my husband, in the very act of making a woman of me, gave me a great deal of pain without giving me the slightest idea of pleasure!  My imagination in the convent was much better than the reality I had been condemned to by my husband!  The result has naturally been that we have become very good friends, but a very indifferent husband and wife, without any desires for each other.  He has every reason to be pleased with me, for I always shew myself docile to his wishes, but enjoyment not being in those cases seasoned by love, he must find it without flavour, and he seldom comes to me for it.