strange resolution has been taken against you; tremble, 'tis a thing
settled; the Countess purposes loving you at her ease, and without its
costing her any disturbance of her peace of mind. She has seen the
consequences of a passion similar to yours, and she can not face it
without dismay. She intends, therefore, to arrest its progress. Do not
let the proofs she has given you reassure you. You men imagine that as
soon as a woman has confessed her love she can never more break her
chains; undeceive yourself. The Countess is much more reasonable on
your account than I thought, and I do not hide from you the fact that
a portion of her firmness is due to my advice. You need not rely any
more on my letters, and you do not require any help from them to
understand women.

I sometimes regret that I have furnished you weapons against my sex,
without them would you ever have been able to touch the heart of the
Countess? I must avow that I have judged women with too much rigor,
and you now see me ready to make them a reparation. I know it now,
there are more stable and essentially virtuous women than I had
thought.

What a stock of reason! What a combination of all the estimable
qualities in our friend! No, Marquis, I could no longer withhold from
her the sentiment of my most tender esteem, and without consulting
your interests, I have united with her against you. You will murmur at
this, but the confidence she has given me, does it not demand this
return on my part? I will not hide from you any of my wickedness; I
have carried malice to the point of instructing her in the advantages
you might draw from everything I have written you about women.

"I feel," she said to me, "how redoubtable is a lover who combines
with so much knowledge of the heart, the talent to express himself in
such noble and delicate language. What advantages can he not have of
women who reason? I have remarked it, it is by his powers of reasoning
that he has overcome them. He possesses the art of employing the
intelligence he finds in a woman to justify, in the eyes of his
reason, the errors into which he draws her. Besides, a woman in love
thinks she is obliged to proportion her sacrifices to the good
qualities of the man she loves. To an ordinary man, a weakness is a
weakness, he blushes at it; to a man of intelligence, it is a tribute
paid to his merits, it is even a proof of our discernment; he
eulogizes our good taste and takes the credit of it. It i