Ninon de Lenclos

“ The Countess knows very well how to appreciate the discourse of the Chevalier; and to say everything in a word, she knows him to be a man whose heart is worn out. Women, who, to hear them talk, go in more for metaphysics, know admirably how to tell the difference between a lover of his class and a man like you. But you will always be more formidable and more to be dreaded by your manner of making yourself felt.
You boast to me of your respectful esteem, but I reply that it is nothing of the kind, and the Countess knows it well. Nothing ends with so little respect as a passion like yours. ”

“ What a satisfaction to read in the eyes of an adorable woman the power you have over her; to see her slightest acts give birth to an impression of tenderness, whenever they relate to you; to hear her voice soften when it is to you or of you she speaks; to enjoy her confusion at your slightest eagerness, her anxiety at your most innocent caresses? Is there a more delicious condition than that of a lover who is sure of being loved, and can there be any sweeter than at such moments? What a charm for a lover to be expected with an impatience that is not concealed ”

“ They are good enough to be scrupulous over their growing coldness. Long after love has fled they continue to insist that they still love. They exert themselves to no purpose, and after having tormented themselves as long as they can bear it, they surrender to dissatisfaction, and become inconstant with as much good faith as they possessed when they protested that they would be forever constant. Nothing is simpler and easier to explain. The fermentation of a budding love, excited in their heart the charm that seduced them; by and by, the enchantment is dispelled, and nonchalance follows. ”

“ I am fully persuaded that you will not become more amorous. Henceforth, you will have nothing but a passing taste, frivolous relations, engagements, caprices; all the arrows of love will glance from you. It is true you will not experience its pangs, but will you enjoy, in the least, its sweetness? Can you hope ever to recover from the fantasies to which you surrender yourself, those moments of delight which were formerly your supreme felicity? I have no desire to flatter you, but I believe it my duty to do you this much justice: Your heart is intended for refined pleasures. ”

“ You should blush to deserve the least reproach from the Countess. What sort of a woman is it you seem to prefer to her? A woman without delicacy and without love; a woman who is guided only by the attractions of pleasure; more vain than sensible; more voluptuous than tender; more passionate than affectionate, she seeks, she cherishes in you nothing but your youth and all the advantages that accompany it.
You know what her rival is worth; you know all your wrong doing with her; you agree that you are a monster of ingratitude, yet, you are unwilling to take it upon yourself to merit her pardon. ”

“ Besides, when you compare your respect and esteem with the free and almost indecent manner of the Chevalier; when you draw from it the conclusion that she should prefer you to him, you do not know how incorrectly you argue. The Chevalier is nothing but a gallant, and what he says is not worth considering, or at least appears so. Frivolity alone, the habit of romancing to all the pretty women he finds in his way, makes him talk. Love counts for nothing, or at least for very little, in all his liaisons. Like the butterfly, he hovers only a moment over each flower. ”

“ You do her too much honor: let us say rather, that you have too good an opinion of yourself. Understand that it is not for yourself that we love you, to speak with sincerity, it is our own happiness we seek. Caprice, interest, vanity, disposition, the uneasiness that affects our hearts when they are unoccupied, these are the sources of the great sentiment we wish to deify! It is not great qualities that affect us; if they enter for anything into the reasons which determine us in your favor, it is not the heart which receives the impression, it is vanity ”

“ Poor Marquis!—and I answer you, that all this is love, true and beautiful. The absence of mind which she affects with you, the nonchalance she puts on for a mask, ought to make you feel at heart that she is far from being indifferent. But your lack of boldness, the consequences which she feels must follow such a passion as yours, the interest which she already takes in your condition, all this intimidates the countess herself, and it is you who raise obstacles in her path. ”

“ Is this the tender and philosophic Ninon? Has she not raised between us that shadow of virtue that makes her sex adorable? What chimeras have changed your heart? Shall I tell you? You carry your cruelty to the extent of fighting against yourself, resisting your own desires. I have seen in your eyes a hundred times less resistance than you now set against me. And these tears which my condition has drawn from your eyes—tell me, are they shed through indifference or hate? Are you ashamed to avow a sensibility which honors humanity? ”

“ Considered as a friendly intimacy when reason presides, it is not a passion, it is no longer love, it is, in truth, a warm hearted esteem, but tranquil; incapable of drawing you away from any fixed position. If, walking in the footsteps of our ancient heroes of romance, you aim at great sentiments, you will see that this pretended heroism makes of love only a sad and sometimes fatal folly. It is a veritable fanaticism; but if you disengage it from all that opinion makes it, it will soon be your happiness and pleasure. ”

“ Someone whom you esteem for the justice and strength of his ideas, said one day at my house, that caprice in women was too closely allied to beauty to be an antidote. I opposed this opinion with so much animation, that it could readily be seen that the contrary maxim was my sentiment, and I am, in truth, well persuaded that caprice is not close to beauty, except to animate its charms in order to make them more attractive, to serve as a goad, and to flavor them. There is no colder sentiment, and none which endures less than admiration. ”

“ The Countess knows the ways of the world. Believe me, and leave to the Celadons, such things as sublime talk, beautiful sentiments; let them spin out perfection. I tell you on behalf of women: there is not one of us who does not prefer a little rough handling to too much consideration. Men lose through blundering more hearts than virtue saves.
The more timidity a lover shows with us the more it concerns our pride to goad him on; the more respect he has for our resistance, the more respect we demand of him. ”

“ In the eyes of a clear sighted man, all this rubbish of stilted phrases is but a parade at which he mocks, and which does not prevent him from penetrating their real sentiments. The evil they speak of love, the resistance they oppose to it, the little taste they pretend for its pleasures, the measures they take against it, the fear they have of it, all that springs from love itself. Their very manner renders it homage, indicates that they harbor the thought of it. Love assumes a thousand different forms in their minds. Like pride, it lives and flourishes upon its own defeat ”

“ I assume sufficient intelligence in her to be able to control her inclination. For to hold a lover, it is not enough (perhaps it is too much) to love passionately, she must love with prudence, with restraint, and modesty is, for that reason, the most ingenious virtue refined persons have ever imagined. To yield to the impetuosity of an inclination; to be annihilated, so to speak, in the object loved, is the method of a woman without discernment. That is not love, it is a liking for a moment, it is to transform a lover into a spoiled child. ”

“ You have such noble thoughts, Marquis. What is passing in your mind is proof of it. You can not realize, or imagine anything less than the pure and delicate sentiments which fill your heart. To see the Countess, hold sweet discourse with her, listen to the sound of her gentle voice, dance attendance upon her, that is the height of your desires, it is your supreme happiness. Far from you are those vulgar sentiments which I unworthily substitute for your sublime metaphysics; sentiments created for worldly souls occupied solely with sensual pleasures. ”

“ You were not to have at the most but a light and fleeting taste of it, and not a regulated passion. Now I perceive that things become more serious every day. You are beginning to treat love with a dignity which worries me. The knowledge of true merits, solid qualities, and good character is creeping into the motives of your liaison, and combining with the personal charms which render you so blindly amorous. I do not like to have so much esteem mixed with an affair of pure gallantry. It leaves no freedom of action, it is work instead of amusement. ”

“ It would be better for the common good if they were to resist less in the beginning and more afterward. I maintain that they never can forestall loathing without leaving the heart something to wish for, and the time to consider.
I hear them continually complaining that our indifference is always the fruit of their complaisance for us. They are ever recalling the time when, goaded by love and sentiment, we spent whole days by their side. How blind they are! They do not perceive that it is still in their power to bring us back to an allegiance, the memory of which is so dear. ”

“ Have we not seen women succeed in destroying in their hearts a weakness which has taken them by surprise, as soon as they have discovered that the object of their affections was unworthy of them? How often have they stifled the most tender affection, and sacrificed it to the conventionalities of an establishment? Rest, time, absence, are remedies which passion, however ardent one may have supposed it, can never resist; insensibly it weakens, and dies all at once. I know that to withdraw honorably from such a liaison requires all the strength of reason. ”

“ We are, I said to myself, simple enough when we enter society, to imagine that the greatest happiness of a woman should be to love and be loved. We then are under the impression that love is based on esteem, upheld by the knowledge of amiable qualities, purified by delicacy of sentiment, divested of all the insipidities which disfigure it, in a word, fostered by confidence and the effusions of the heart. But unfortunately, a sentiment so flattering for a woman without experience, is everything less than that in practice. She is always disabused when too late. ”

“ However, a man without prejudice, would see in the Countess only a lover as reasonable as she is tender; a woman who, without having an ostentatious virtue, nevertheless remains constantly attached to it; a woman, in a word, who seeks in good faith the proper means of reconciling love and duty. The difficulty in allying these two contraries is not slight, and it is the source of the inequalities that wound you. Figure to yourself the combats she must sustain, the revolutions she suffers, her embarrassment in endeavoring to preserve a lover whom too uniform a resistance might repel. ”

“ 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 is thus by turning it to the profit of the vanity which he rescues from virtue, that this enchanter hides from our eyes the grades of our weakness."
Such are at present, Marquis, the sentiments of the Countess, and I am not sure if they leave you much to hope for. ”

“ However little intelligence a woman may have, she knows that the strongest tie to bind you to her is anticipation, wherefore, you must let her lay the blame on you. If she were to arm herself from the first with a severity that would indicate that she is invincible, from that time, no lovers for her. What a solitude would be hers, what shame even? For a woman of the most pronounced virtue is no less sensible of the desire to please, she makes her glory consist in securing homage and adoration. ”

“ I only desire to impress it upon you, that all their misunderstandings should emanate from love itself; that the woman should not forget (by a species of pusillanimous kindness) the respect and attentions due her; that by an excessive sensitiveness, she does not convert her love into a source of anxiety capable of poisoning every moment of her existence; that by a scrupulous fidelity, she may not render her lover too sure that he has nothing to fear on that score.
Neither should a woman by a sweetness, an unalterable evenness of temper, be weak enough to pardon everything lacking in her lover. ”

“ I am frank, and I am quite sure that if women would be honest, they would soon confess that they are not a bit more refined than men. Indeed, if they saw in love only the pleasures of the soul, if they hoped to please only by their mental accomplishments and their good character, honestly, now, would they apply themselves with such particular care to please by the charms of their person? What is a beautiful skin to the soul; an elegant figure; a well shaped arm? What contradictions between their real sentiments and those they exhibit on parade! ”

“ But every reasonable woman does not fail to use the same language as soon as a lover shows her some respectful pretensions.
"I only want your heart," they say, "your sentiments, your esteem is all I desire. Alas! you will find only too many women with so little delicacy as to believe themselves very happy in accepting what I refuse. I will never envy them a happiness of that kind."
Be on your guard, Marquis, and do not openly combat such fine sentiments; to doubt a woman's sincerity on such occasions, is to do more than offend them, it is to be maladroit. ”

“ You have really what one calls the "need of loving." Yes, Marquis, nature, in forming us, gave us an allowance of sentiments which must expend themselves upon some object. Your age is the proper period for the agitations of love; as long as this sentiment does not fill your heart, something will always be wanting; the restlessness of which you complain will never cease. In a word, love is the nourishment of the heart as food is of the body; to love is to fulfill the desire of nature, to satisfy a need. But if possible, manage it so that it will not become a passion. ”

“ I confess, however, that hymen, or what you call your "defeat," is, in an ordinary woman, the grave of love. But then it is less upon the lover that the blame falls, than upon her who complains of the cooling of the passion; she casts upon the depravity of the heart what is due to her own unskillfulness, and her lack of economy. She has expended in a single day everything that might keep alive the inclination she had excited. She has nothing more to offer to the curiosity of her lover, she becomes always the same statue; no variety to be hoped for, and her lover knows it well. ”

“ Your happiness seems to be the only thing that has escaped. You discover new reasons every day for loving and esteeming this amiable Countess. You believe that a woman of so much real merit, and with so interesting a figure, will become known more and more. Let nothing weaken the esteem you have always had for her. You have, it is true, obtained an avowal of her love for you, but is she less estimable for that? On the contrary, ought not her heart to augment in price in your eyes, in proportion to the certainty you have acquired that you are its sole possessor? ”

“ Ever since you have been associated with women, have you not established as a principle that you must be on your guard against the sentiments they affect? If your beauty had accepted you merely for the purpose of re-awakening a languishing love in the heart of her Celadon; if you were only the instrument of jealousy on the part of one and artifice on the other, would that be a miracle? ”