rance, and
sounds well in a heroic poem; but you greatly deceive yourself if you
impute it all to your personal merit. Do you imagine that half the
chiefs concerned in the war of Troy were at all influenced by your
beauty, or troubled their heads what became of you, provided they came
off with honor? Believe me, love had very little to do in the affair:
Menelaus sought to revenge the affront he had received; Agamemnon was
flattered with the supreme command; some came to share the glory, others
the plunder; some because they had bad wives at home, some in hopes of
getting Trojan mistresses abroad; and Homer thought the story extremely
proper for the subject of the best poem in the world. Thus you became
famous; your elopement was made a national quarrel; the animosities of
both nations were kindled by frequent battles; and the object was not
the restoring of Helen to Menelaus, but the destruction of Troy by the
Greeks.--My triumphs, on the other hand, were all owing to myself, and
to the influence of personal merit and charms over the heart of man. My
birth was obscure; my fortunes low; I had past the bloom of youth, and
was advancing to that period at which the generality of our sex lose all
importance with the other; I had to do with a man of gallantry and
intrigue, a monarch who had been long familiarized with beauty, and
accustomed to every refinement of pleasure which the most splendid court
in Europe could afford: Love and Beauty seemed to have exhausted all
their powers of pleasing for him in vain. Yet this man I captivated, I
fixed; and far from being content, as other beauties had been, with the
honor of possessing his heart, I brought him to make me his wife, and
gained an honorable title to his tenderest affection.--The infatuation
of Paris reflected little honor upon you. A thoughtless youth, gay,
tender, and impressible, struck with your beauty, in violation of all
the most sacred laws of hospitality carries you off, and obstinately
refuses to restore you to your husband. You seduced Paris from his duty,
I recovered Louis from vice; you were the mistress of the Trojan prince,
I was the companion of the French monarch.

_Helen_--I grant you were the wife of Louis, but not the Queen of
France. Your great object was ambition, and in that you met with a
partial success;--my ruling star was love, and I gave up everything for
it. But tell me, did not I show my influence over Menelaus in his taking
me again after t