re the most intimate
friends often quarrel over nothing, but do you suppose this "nothing"
is the real occasion of their quarrel? It is only the pretext. We hide
the motive of our actions when to reveal it would be a humiliation. We
do not care to make public the fact that it is jealousy for the beauty
of our friend that is the real cause, to give that as the reason for
estrangement would be to charge us with envy, a pleasure one woman
will not give another; she prefers injustice. Whenever it happens
that two beautiful women are so happy as to find a pretext to get rid
of each other, they seize upon it with vivacity, and hate each other
with a cordiality which proves how much they loved each other before
the rupture.

Well, Marquis, am I talking to you with sufficient frankness? You see
to what lengths my sincerity goes. I try to give you just ideas of
everything, even at my own expense, for I am assuredly not more exempt
than another woman from the faults I sometimes criticise. But as I am
sure that what passes between us will be buried in oblivion, I do not
fear embroiling myself in a quarrel with all my sex, they might,
perhaps, claim the right to blame my ingenuity.

But the Countess is above all such petty things, she agrees, however,
with everything I have just said. Are there many women like her?

XL

Oratory and Fine Phrases do Not Breed Love

The example of the Marquise has not yet had any effect on the heart of
her friend. It appears, on the contrary, that she is more on guard
against you, and that you have drawn upon yourself her reproaches
through some slight favor you have deprived her of.

I have been thinking that she would not fail on this occasion to
recall to your recollection, the protestations of respect and
disinterestedness you made when you declared your passion for her. It
is customary in similar cases. But what seems strange about it is,
that the same eagerness that a woman accepts as a proof of disrespect,
before she is in perfect accord with her lover, becomes, in her
imagination, a proof of love and esteem, as soon as they meet on a
common ground.

Listen to married women, and to all those who, being unmarried, permit
the same prerogatives; hear them, I say, in their secret complaints
against unfaithful husbands and cooling lovers. They are despised, and
that is the sole reason they can imagine. But with us, what they
consider a mark of esteem and sincerity, is it anything el