monotony which crushes
you and makes you an object of pity.

It is women who have taken upon themselves to dissipate these mortal
languors by the vivacious gayety they inject into their society; by
the charms they know so well how to lavish where they will prove
effectual. A reckless joy, an agreeable delirium, a delicious
intoxication, are alone capable of awakening your attention, and
making you understand that you are really happy, for, Marquis, there
is a vast difference between merely enjoying happiness and relishing
the sensation of enjoying it. The possession of necessary things does
not make a man comfortable, it is the superfluous which makes him
rich, and which makes him feel that he is rich.

It is not because you possess superior qualities that you are a
pleasant companion, it may be a real defect which is essential to you.
To be received with open arms, you must be agreeable, amusing,
necessary to the pleasure of others. I warn you that you can not
succeed in any other manner, particularly with women. Tell me, what
would you have me do with your learning, the geometry of your mind,
with the precision of your memory, etc.? If you have only such
advantages, Marquis, if you have no charming accomplishments to offset
your crudity--I can vouch for their opinion--far from pleasing women,
you will seem to them like a critic of whom they will be afraid, and
you will place them under so much constraint, that the enjoyment they
might have permitted themselves in your society will be banished. Why,
indeed, try to be amiable toward a man who is a source of anxiety to
you by his nonchalance, who does not unbosom himself? Women are not at
their ease except with those who take chances with them, and enter
into their spirit. In a word, too much circumspection gives others a
chill like that felt by a man who goes out of a warm room into a cold
wind. I intended to say that habitual reserve locks the doors of the
hearts of those who associate with us; they have no room to expand.

You must also bear this in mind, Marquis, that in cases of gallantry,
your first advances must be made under the most favorable
circumstances. You must have read somewhere, that one pleases more by
agreeable faults than by essential qualities. Great virtues are like
pieces of gold of which one makes less use than of ordinary currency.

This idea calls to my mind those people who, in place of our kind of
money, use shells as their medium of exch