ss makes her happy, and that she is not jealous of her best friend
being her rival. To convince you that you ought not to be angry with her
for having discovered our secret, she proves, by sending me here in her
place, that she is pleased to see your heart divided between her and me.
You know very well that she loves me, and that I am often either her wife
or her husband, and as you do not object to my being your rival and
making her often as happy as I can, she does not want you either to
suppose that her love is like hatred, for the love of a jealous heart is
very much like it."

"You plead the cause of your friend with the eloquence of an angel, but,
dear little wife, you do not see the affair in its proper light. You have
intelligence and a pure soul, but you have not my experience.
M---- M----'s love for me has been nothing but a passing fancy, and she
knows that I am not such an idiot as to be deceived by all this affair. I
am miserable, and it is her doing."

"Then I should be right if I complained of her also, because she makes me
feel that she is the mistress of my lover, and she shews me that, after
seducing him from me, she gives him back to me without difficulty. Then
she wishes me to understand that she despises also my tender affection
for her, since she places me in a position to shew that affection for
another person."

"Now, dearest, you speak without reason, for the relations between you
two are of an entirely different nature. Your mutual love is nothing but
trifling nonsense, mere illusion of the senses. The pleasures which you
enjoy together are not exclusive. To become jealous of one another it
would be necessary that one of you two should feel a similar affection
for another woman but M---- M---- could no more be angry at your having a
lover than you could be so yourself if she had one; provided, however,
that the lover should not belong to the other"

"But that is precisely our case, and you are mistaken. We are not angry
at your loving us both equally. Have I not written to you that I would
most willingly give you my place near M---- M----? Then you must believe
that I despise you likewise?"

"My darling, that wish of yours to give me up your place, when you did
not know that I was happy with M---- M----, arose from your friendship
rather than from your love, and for the present I must be glad to see
that your friendship is stronger than your love, but I have every reason
to be sorry when M