[8] See the tone of society at Geneva, above all in the "best" families—use of a Court to correct the tendency towards prudery by laughing at it—Duclos telling stories to Madame de Rochefort—"Really, you take us for too virtuous." Nothing in the world is so nauseous as modesty not sincere.
[9] "Ah, my dear Fronsac, there are twenty bottles of champagne between the story, that you're beginning to tell us, and our talk at this time of day."
[10] It is the story of the melancholy temperament and the sanguine. Consider a virtuous woman (even the mercenary virtue of certain of the faithful—virtue to be had for a hundredfold reward in Paradise) and a blasé debauchee of forty. Although the Valmont[(13)] of the Liaisons Dangereuses is not as far gone as that, the Présidente de Tourvel[(13)] is happier than he all the way through the book: and if the author, with all his wit, had had still more, that would have been the moral of his ingenious novel.
[11] Melancholy temperament, which may be called the temperament of love. I have seen women, the most distinguished and the most made for love, give the preference, for want of sense, to the prosaic, sanguine temperament. (Story of Alfred, Grande Chartreuse, 1810.)
I know no thought which incites me more to keep what is called bad company.
(Here poor Visconti loses himself in the clouds.)
Fundamentally all women are the same so far as concerns the movements of the heart and passion: the forms the passions take are different. Consider the difference made by greater fortune, a more cultivated mind, the habit of higher thoughts, and, above all, (and more's the pity) a more irritable pride.
Such and such a word irritates a princess, but would not in the very least shock an Alpine shepherdess. Only, once their anger is up, the passion works in princess and shepherdess the same). (The Editor's only note.)
[12] M.'s remark.
[13] Vol. Guarna.