akes you expect boundless
delights?

In your intercourse with a woman who is beneath you, the delight of
flattered _amour-propre_ is on her side. You are not in the secret of
the happiness which you give.

In a case of a woman above you, either in fortune or social position,
the ticklings of vanity are not only intense, but are equally shared.
A man can never raise his mistress to his own level; but a woman always
puts her lover in the position that she herself occupies. "I can make
princes and you can make nothing but bastards," is an answer sparkling
with truth.

If love is the first of passions, it is because it flatters all the
rest of them at the same time. We love with more or less intensity in
proportion to the number of chords which are touched by the fingers of a
beautiful mistress.

Biren, the jeweler's son, climbing into the bed of the Duchesse de
Courlande and helping her to sign an agreement that he should be
proclaimed sovereign of the country, as he was already of the young and
beautiful queen, is an example of the happiness which ought to be given
to their lovers by our four hundred thousand women.

If a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the heads
which crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artistic woman
of fashion. Now we all love more or less to be at the top.

It is on this brilliant section of the nation that the attack is made by
men whose education, talent or wit gives them the right to be considered
persons of importance with regard to that success of which people of
every country are so proud; and only among this class of women is the
wife to be found whose heart has to be defended at all hazard by our
husband.

What does it matter whether the considerations which arise from the
existence of a feminine aristocracy are or are not equally applicable
to other social classes? That which is true of all women exquisite
in manners, language and thought, in whom exceptional educational
facilities have developed a taste for art and a capacity for feeling,
comparing and thinking, who have a high sense of propriety and
politeness and who actually set the fashion in French manners, ought
to be true also in the case of women whatever their nation and whatever
their condition. The man of distinction to whom this book is dedicated
must of necessity possess a certain mental vision, which makes
him perceive the various degrees of light that fill each class and
compreh