plomacy.

Love, my dear, is made up of imperceptible sensations. We know that it
is as strong as death, but also as frail as glass. The slightest shock
breaks it, and our power crumbles, and we are never able to raise it
again.

We have the power of making ourselves adored, but we lack one tiny
thing, the understanding of the various kinds of caresses. In embraces
we lose the sentiment of delicacy, while the man over whom we rule
remains master of himself, capable of judging the foolishness of certain
words. Take care, my dear; that is the defect in our armor. It is our
Achilles' heel.

Do you know whence comes our real power? From the kiss, the kiss alone!
When we know how to hold out and give up our lips we can become queens.

The kiss is only a preface, however, but a charming preface. More
charming than the realization itself. A preface which can always be read
over again, whereas one cannot always read over the book.

Yes, the meeting of lips is the most perfect, the most divine sensation
given to human beings, the supreme limit of happiness: It is in the kiss
alone that one sometimes seems to feel this union of souls after which
we strive, the intermingling of hearts, as it were.

Do you remember the verses of Sully-Prudhomme:

Caresses are nothing but anxious bliss,
Vain attempts of love to unite souls through a kiss.

One caress alone gives this deep sensation of two beings welded into one
--it is the kiss. No violent delirium of complete possession is worth
this trembling approach of the lips, this first moist and fresh contact,
and then the long, lingering, motionless rapture.

Therefore, my dear, the kiss is our strongest weapon, but we must take
care not to dull it. Do not forget that its value is only relative,
purely conventional. It continually changes according to circumstances,
the state of expectancy and the ecstasy of the mind. I will call
attention to one example.

Another poet, Francois Coppee, has written a line which we all remember,
a line which we find delightful, which moves our very hearts.

After describing the expectancy of a lover, waiting in a room one
winter's evening, his anxiety, his nervous impatience, the terrible fear
of not seeing her, he describes the arrival of the beloved woman, who
at last enters hurriedly, out of breath, bringing with her part of the
winter breeze, and he exclaims:

Oh! the taste of the kisses first snatched through the veil.

Is that n