the ends of the
earth, to the Indies for her sake. I--I--" etc. My dear Paul, have
you never lived in Paris, have you never had the honor of
belonging by ties of friendship to Henri de Marsay, that you
should be so ignorant of the commonest things, the primitive
principles that move the feminine mechanism, the a-b-c of their
hearts? Then hear me:--

Suppose you exterminate yourself, suppose you go to Saint-Pelagie
for a woman's debts, suppose you kill a score of men, desert a
dozen women, serve like Laban, cross the deserts, skirt the
galleys, cover yourself with glory, cover yourself with shame,
refuse, like Nelson, to fight a battle until you have kissed the
shoulder of Lady Hamilton, dash yourself, like Bonaparte, upon the
bridge at Arcola, go mad like Roland, risk your life to dance five
minutes with a woman--my dear fellow, what have all those things
to do with _love_? If love were won by samples such as those
mankind would be too happy. A spurt of prowess at the moment of
desire would give a man the woman that he wanted. But love, _love_,
my good Paul, is a faith like that in the Immaculate conception of
the Holy Virgin; it comes, or it does not come. Will the mines of
Potosi, or the shedding of our blood, or the making of our fame
serve to waken an involuntary, an inexplicable sentiment? Young
men like you, who expect to be loved as the balance of your
account, are nothing else than usurers. Our legitimate wives owe
us virtue and children, but they don't owe us love.

Love, my dear Paul, is the sense of pleasure given and received,
and the certainty of giving and receiving it; love is a desire
incessantly moving and growing, incessantly satisfied and
insatiable. The day when Vandenesse stirred the cord of a desire
in your wife's heart which you had left untouched, all your
self-satisfied affection, your gifts, your deeds, your money, ceased
to be even memories; one emotion of love in your wife's heart has
cast out the treasures of your own passion, which are now nothing
better than old iron. Felix has the virtues and the beauties in
her eyes, and the simple moral is that blinded by your own love
you never made her love you.

Your mother-in-law is on the side of the lover against the
husband,--secretly or not; she may have closed her eyes, or she
may have opened them; I know not what she has done--but one thing
is certain, she is fo