ons, and maintain their own authority, without compromising
it and without abusing it.

XLV

What Favors Men Consider Faults

To explain in two words to your satisfaction, Marquis. This is what I
think of the letter I sent you yesterday: For a woman to profit by the
advice of Monsieur de Saint-Evremond it is requisite that she should
be affected with only a mediocre fancy, and have excited the passion
of love. However, we shall talk about that more at large whenever it
may please you, now, I will take up what concerns you.

The sacrifice the Countess has exacted of you is well worth the price
you put upon it. To renounce for her sake, a woman whose exterior
proclaimed her readiness to accord you whatever favor you might be
willing to ask; to renounce her publicly, in the presence of her
rival, and with so little regard for her vanity, is an effort which
naturally will not pass without a proportionate recompense. The
Countess could not have found a happier pretext for giving you her
portrait.

But to take a solemn day when the Marquise received at her home for
the first time since her illness; to select a moment when the moneyed
woman was taking up arms to make an assault of beauty upon a woman of
rank; to speak to her merely in passing, to pretend to surrender
yourself entirely to the pleasure of seeing her rival; to entertain
the latter and become one of her party, is an outrage for which you
will never be pardoned. Revenge will come quickly, and be as cruel as
possible, you will see. It is I who guarantee it. Now for the second
paragraph of your letter:

You ask me whether the last favor, or rather the last fault we can
commit, is a certain proof that a woman loves you. Yes and no.

Yes, if you love the woman for whom you had your first passion, and
she is refined and virtuous. But even in such a case, this proof will
not be any more certain, or more flattering for you, than all the
others she may have given you of her inclination. Whatever a woman may
do when she loves, even things of the slightest essential nature in
appearance are as much certain marks of her passion, as those greater
things of which men are so proud. I will even add, that if this
virtuous woman is of a certain disposition, the last favor will prove
less than a thousand other small sacrifices you count for nothing, for
then, on her own behalf less than on yours, she is too much interested
in listening to you, for you to claim the g