Think of La Valchiusa saying yesterday of Lampugnani: "Ah, that man was made for me, he could love, ... etc., etc," and so on in this strain to a friend—all before her daughter, a little thing of fourteen or fifteen, very much on the alert, and whom she also took with her on the more than friendly walks with the lover in question.
Sometimes girls get hold of sound rules of conduct, For examples take Madame Guarnacci, addressing her two daughters and two men, who have never called on her before. For an hour and a half she treats them to profound maxims, based on examples within their own knowledge (that of La Cercara in Hungary), on the precise point at which it is right to punish with infidelity a lover who misbehaves himself. (Ravenna, January 23rd, 1820.)
XV
The sanguine man, the true Frenchman (Colonel M——) instead of being tormented by excess of feeling, like Rousseau, if he has a rendezvous for the next evening at seven, sees everything, right up to the blessed moment, through rosy spectacles. People of this kind are not in the least susceptible to passion-love; it would upset their sweet tranquillity. I will go so far as to say that perhaps they would find its transports a nuisance, or at all events be humiliated by the timidity it produces.
XVI
Most men of the world, through vanity, caution or disaster, let themselves love a woman freely only after intimate intercourse.
XVII
With very gentle souls a woman needs to be easy-going in order to encourage crystallisation.
XVIII
A woman imagines that the voice of the public is speaking through the mouth of the first fool or the first treacherous friend who claims to be its faithful interpreter to her.