My dear, the days of Fontenoy are gone out; everybody nowadays only tries to get the first fire, by hook or by crook. Ours is an age of cowardice and cuirassed cannon; chivalry is out of place in it.
With a woman, the vulgarity that lies in public adulation is apt to nauseate; at least if she be so little of a woman that she is not vain, and so much of one that she cares for privacy. For the fame of our age is not glory but notoriety; and notoriety is to a woman like the bull to Pasiphae—whilst it caresses it crushes.
Had she your talent the world would have heard of her. As it is, she only enjoys herself. Perhaps the better part. Fame is a cone of smoke. Enjoyment is a loaf of sugar.
There is no such coward as the woman who toadies Society because she has outraged Society. The bully is never brave.
"Oignez vilain il vous poindra: poignez vilain il vous oindra," is as true of the braggart's soul still, as it used to be in the old days of Froissart, when the proverb was coined.