faults will appear more excusable.

"The knowledge of your weakness will no longer permit you to regard
your virtue as infallible. Your astonishment will carry you still
farther. The little help it will be to you against too impetuous
inclinations, will make you doubt whether you ever had any virtue. Can
you say a man is brave before he has ever fought? It is the same with
us. The attacks made upon us are alone the parents of our virtue, as
danger gives birth to valor. As long as one has not been in the
presence of the enemy, it is impossible to say whether he is to be
feared, and what degree of resistance it will be necessary to bear
against him.

"Hence to justify a woman in flattering herself that she is
essentially virtuous and good by force of her own strength, she must
be in a position where no danger, however great it may be, no motive
no matter how pressing, no pretext whatever, shall be powerful enough
to triumph over her. She must meet with the most favorable
opportunities, the most tender love, the certainty of secrecy, the
esteem and the most perfect confidence in him who attacks her. In a
word, all these circumstances combined should not be able to make an
impression upon her courage, so that to know whether a woman be
virtuous in the true meaning of the word, one must imagine her as
having escaped unscathed all these united dangers, for it would not be
virtue but only resistance where there should be love without the
disposition, or disposition without the occasion. Her virtue would
always be uncertain, as long as she had never been attacked by all the
weapons which might vanquish her. One might always say of her: if she
had been possessed of a different constitution, she might not have
resisted love, or, if a favorable occasion had presented itself, her
virtue would have played the fool."

"According to this," said I, "it would be impossible to find a single
virtuous woman, for no one has ever had so many enemies to combat."

"That may be," she replied, "but do you know the reason? Because it is
not necessary to have so many to overcome us, one alone is sufficient
to obtain the victory."

But I stuck to my proposition: "You pretend then that our virtue does
not depend upon ourselves, since you make it the puppet of occasion,
and of other causes foreign to our own will?"

"There is no doubt about it," she answered. "Answer me this: Can you
give yourself a lively or sedate disposition? Are you free