e morality of conjugal faith consisted in
opinion, the contentment of husbands being the only reasonable rule of
duty in wives; consequently that concealed infidelities, doing no injury,
could be no crime; in a word, he persuaded her that the sin consisted
only in the scandal, that woman being really virtuous who took care to
appear so. Thus the deceiver obtained his end in the subverting the
reason of a girl; whose heart he found it impossible to corrupt, and
received his punishment in a devouring jealousy, being persuaded she
would treat him as he had prevailed on her to treat her husband.

I don't know whether he was mistaken in this respect: the Minister Perret
passed for his successor; all I know, is, that the coldness of
temperament which it might have been supposed would have kept her from
embracing this system, in the end prevented her from renouncing it. She
could not conceive how so much importance should be given to what seemed
to have none for her; nor could she honor with the name of virtue, an
abstinence which would have cost her little.

She did not, therefore, give in to this false principle on her own
account, but for the sake of others; and that from another maxim almost
as false as the former, but more consonant to the generosity of her
disposition.

She was persuaded that nothing could attach a man so truly to any woman
as an unbounded freedom, and though she was only susceptible of
friendship, this friendship was so tender, that she made use of every
means which depended on her to secure the objects of it, and, which is
very extraordinary, almost always succeeded: for she was so truly
amiable, that an increase of intimacy was sure to discover additional
reasons to love and respect her. Another thing worthy of remark is,
that after her first folly, she only favored the unfortunate. Lovers in
a more brilliant station lost their labor with her, but the man who at
first attracted her pity, must have possessed very few good qualities if
in the end he did not obtain her affection. Even when she made an
unworthy choice, far from proceeding from base inclinations (which were
strangers to her noble heart) it was the effect of a disposition too
generous, humane, compassionate, and sensible, which she did not always
govern with sufficient discernment.

If some false principles misled her, how many admirable ones did she not
possess, which never forsook her! By how many virtues did she atone for
her f