t, and then proceed to the narratives.

I always preserved a tincture of romantic metaphysics with regard to
love. The brutality of the senses had less to do with my peccadilloes
than a delicate inclination and tenderness of heart. I cherished so
lofty and respectful a conception of feminine honour and virtue that any
women who abandoned themselves to facile pleasures were abhorrent to my
taste. A _fille de joie_, as the voluptuaries say, appeared to me more
frightful, more disgusting, than the Orc described by Boiardo.[2] Never
have I employed the iniquitous art of seduction by suggestive language,
nor have I ever allowed myself the slightest freedom which might
stimulate desire. Languishing in soft and thrilling sentiments, I
demanded from a woman sympathy and inclination of like nature with my
own. If she fell, I thought that this should only happen through one of
those blind and sudden transports which suppress our reason on both
sides, the mutual violence of which admits of no control. Nothing could
have been more charming to my fancy than the contemplation of a woman,
blushing, terrified, with eyes cast down to earth, after yielding to the
blind force of affection in self-abandonment to impulse. I should have
remembered how she made for me the greatest of all sacrifices--that of
honour and of virtue, on which I set so high a value. I should have
worshipped her like a deity. I could have spent my life's blood in
consoling her; and without swearing eternal constancy, I should have
been most stable on my side in loving such a mistress. On the other
hand, I could have safely defied all men alive upon the earth to take a
more sudden, more resolute, and more irreversible step of separation
than myself, however much it cost me, if only I discovered in that woman
a character different from what I had imagined and conceived of her,
while all the same I should have maintained her honour and good repute
at the cost of my own life.

This delicate or eccentric way of mine in thinking about love exposed me
to facile deceptions in my youthful years, when the blood boils, and
self-love has some right to illusion, and the great acquirement of
experience is yet to be made.

The narratives of my first loves will confer but little honour on the
fair sex; but before I enter on them I must protest that I have always
made allowance for the misfortune under which, perhaps, I suffered, of
having had bad luck in love; which does not shak