many threats to leave her! But do not forget this: So
much emotion will become your punishment, if you treat love after the
manner of a hero of romance, and you will meet a fate entirely the
contrary if you treat it like a reasonable man.

But ought I to continue to write you? The moments you employ to read
my letters will be so many stolen from love. Great Heavens! how I
should like to be a witness of your situations! Indeed, for a
sober-minded person, is there a spectacle more amusing than the
contortions of a man in love?

XIII

Vanity Is a Fertile Soil for Love.

You are not satisfied, then, Marquis, with what I so cavalierly said
about your condition? You wish me by all means to consider your
adventure as a serious thing, but I shall take good care not to do so.
Do you not see that my way of treating you is consistent with my
principles? I speak lightly of a thing I believe to be frivolous, or
simply amusing. When it comes to an affair on which depends a lasting
happiness, you will see me take on an appropriate tone. I do not want
to pity you, because it depends upon yourself whether you are to be
pitied or not. By a trick of your imagination, what now appears to be
a pain to you may become a pleasure. To succeed, make use of my recipe
and you will find it good. But to refer to the second paragraph of
your letter:

You say you are all the more surprised at the coldness of the Countess
as you did not think it in earnest. According to what you say, your
conjectures are based on the indiscretions of her friends. The good
she spoke about you to them, was the main cause of your taking a fancy
to her. I know men by this trait. The smallest word that escapes a
woman's lips leads them into the belief that she has designs upon
them. Everything has some reference to their merits; their vanity
seizes upon everything, and they turn everything into profit. To
examine them closely, nearly all of them love through gratitude, and
on this point, women are not any more reasonable. So that gallantry is
an intercourse in which we want the others to go along with us, always
want to be their debtors. And you know pride is much more active in
paying back than in giving. If two lovers would mutually explain,
without reservation, the beginning and progress of their passion, what
confidences would they not exchange?

Elise, to whom Valere uttered a few general compliments, responded,
perhaps without intending to, in a more a