o
consider a loving one, as I wanted her to ascribe my reserve to the
respect I felt for her. I then left her with a promise to call another
day to see her father. I never kept my promise. The reader will see how I
met her again after ten years.

How many thoughts crowded upon my mind as I left that house! What a
lesson! I compared reality with the imagination, and I had to give the
preference to the last, as reality is always dependent on it. I then
began to forsee a truth which has been clearly proved to me in my after
life, namely, that love is only a feeling of curiosity more or less
intense, grafted upon the inclination placed in us by nature that the
species may be preserved. And truly, woman is like a book, which, good or
bad, must at first please us by the frontispiece. If this is not
interesting, we do not feel any wish to read the book, and our wish is in
direct proportion to the interest we feel. The frontispiece of woman runs
from top to bottom like that of a book, and her feet, which are most
important to every man who shares my taste, offer the same interest as
the edition of the work. If it is true that most amateurs bestow little
or no attention upon the feet of a woman, it is likewise a fact that most
readers care little or nothing whether a book is of the first edition or
the tenth. At all events, women are quite right to take the greatest care
of their face, of their dress, of their general appearance; for it is
only by that part of the frontispiece that they can call forth a wish to
read them in those men who have not been endowed by nature with the
privilege of blindness. And just in the same manner that men, who have
read a great many books, are certain to feel at last a desire for
perusing new works even if they are bad, a man who has known many women,
and all handsome women, feels at last a curiosity for ugly specimens when
he meets with entirely new ones. It is all very well for his eye to
discover the paint which conceals the reality, but his passion has become
a vice, and suggests some argument in favour of the lying frontispiece.
It is possible, at least he thinks so, that the work may prove better
than the title-page, and the reality more acceptable than the paint which
hides it. He then tries to peruse the book, but the leaves have not been
opened; he meets with some resistance, the living book must be read
according to established rules, and the book-worm falls a victim to a
coquetry, the