One must do something to give a little variety to life; and nothing is so amusing, or keeps the mind so pleasingly awake, especially in the country, as the flattery of an agreable fellow.
I am not, however, quite sure I shall not look abroad for a flirt, for one’s friend’s husband is almost as insipid as one’s own.
Our romantic adventures being at an end, my dear; and we being all degenerated into sober people, who marry and settle; we seem in great danger of sinking into vegetation: on which subject I desire Rivers’s opinion, being, I know, a most exquisite enquirer into the laws of nature.
Love is a pretty invention, but, I am told, is apt to mellow into friendship; a degree of perfection at which I by no means desire Fitzgerald’s attachment for me to arrive on this side seventy.
What must we do, my dear, to vary our days?
Cards, you will own, are an agreable relief, and the least subject to pall of any pleasures under the sun: and really, philosophically speaking, what is life but an intermitted pool at quadrille?
I am interrupted by a divine colonel in the guards.
Adieu! Your faithful
A. Fitzgerald.
LETTER CCXXIV.228.
To Mrs. Fitzgerald.