In France, most women make no account of a young man until they have turned him into a coxcomb. It is only then that he can flatter their vanity. (Duclos.)
LIV
Zilietti said to me at midnight (at the charming Marchesina R...'s): "I'm not going to dine at San Michele (an inn). Yesterday I said some smart things—I was joking with Cl...; it might make me conspicuous."
Don't go and think that Zilietti is either a fool or a coward. He is a prudent and very rich man in this happy land. (Modena, 1820.)
LV
What is admirable in America is the government, not society. Elsewhere government does the harm. At Boston they have changed parts, and government plays the hypocrite, in order not to shock society.
LVI
Italian girls, if they love, are entirely given over to natural inspiration. At the very most all that can aid them is a handful of excellent maxims, which they have picked up by listening at the keyhole. As if fate had decreed that everything here should combine to preserve naturalness, they read no novels—and for this reason, that there are none. At Geneva or in France, on the contrary, a girls falls in love at sixteen in order to be a heroine, and at each step, almost at each tear, she asks herself: "Am I not just like Julie d'Étanges? "