"I go even further, myself, and maintain that the very fact that a man is faithful more than a little while makes him a terrible bore. He drives his mistress mad with his sighs, his protestations of love; he caresses her too much; he thinks of nothing but kissing her. There's nothing that women get so tired of as of being kissed."
"Oho! do you think so, my little Balloquet? That simply proves that you're a bad kisser, or that you're not popular. On the contrary, women adore caressing men; I know what I'm talking about."
"Oh! what a conceited creature this Fouvenard is! Think of it, messieurs! he would make us believe that the women adore him!"
"Well! why not?"
"Your nose is too much turned up; women like Roman noses. You can never look sentimental with a nose like a trumpet."
"So you think that a man must have a languorous, melancholy air, in order to make conquests, do you? Balloquet, you make me tired!"
"I'll give you points at that game whenever you choose, Fouvenard. We will take these gentlemen for judges. Tell the waiter to bring up six women,—of any condition and from any quarter, I don't care what one,—and we'll see which of us two they will prefer. What do you say?"
Young Balloquet's proposal aroused general laughter, and a gentleman who sat beside me observed to me:
"It might well be that the ladies wouldn't have anything to say to either of them. What do you think?"
"I think that any ladies who would consent to grace our dessert, at the behest of a waiter, would do it only on one condition; and men don't make a conquest of such women, as they give themselves to everybody."