been
agreed to feign. Let us then enjoy the enchantment without seeking to
know the cause of the charm which amuses and seduces us. To anatomize
love would be to enter upon its cure. Psyche lost it for having been
too curious, and I am tempted to believe that this fable is a lesson
for those who wish to analyze pleasure.

I wish to make some corrections in what I have said to you: If I told
you that men are wrong in priding themselves on their choice of a
woman, and their sentiments for her; if I said that the motives which
actuate them are nothing less than glorious for the men, I desire to
add, that they are equally deceived if they imagine that the
sentiments which they show with so much pompous display are always
created by force of female charms, or by an abiding impression of
their merits. How often does it happen that those men who make
advances with such a respectful air, who display such delicate and
refined sentiments, so flattering to vanity, who, in a word, seem to
breathe only through them, only for them, and have no other desire
than their happiness; how often, I repeat, are those men, who adorn
themselves with such beautiful sentiments, influenced by reasons
entirely the contrary? Study, penetrate these good souls, and you will
see in the heart of this one, instead of a love so disinterested, only
desire; in that one, it will be only a scheme to share your fortune,
the glory of having obtained a woman of your rank; in a third you
will discover motives still more humiliating to you; he will use you
to rouse the jealousy of some woman he really loves, and he will
cultivate your friendship merely to distinguish himself in her eyes by
rejecting you. I can not tell you how many motives, there are so many.
The human heart is an insolvable enigma. It is a whimsical combination
of all the known contrarieties. We think we know its workings; we see
their effects; we ignore the cause. If it expresses its sentiments
sincerely, even that sincerity is not reassuring. Perhaps its
movements spring from causes entirely contrary to those we imagine we
feel to be the real ones. But, after all, people have adopted the best
plan, that is, to explain everything to their advantage, and to
compensate themselves in imagination for their real miseries, and
accustom themselves, as I think I have already said, to deifying all
their sentiments. Inasmuch as everybody finds in that the summit of
his vanity, nobody has ever thought of