the most innocent caress. At first you ask for nothing, or for so
slight a favor, that a woman conscientiously believes herself obliged
to grant it, delighted with you on account of your modesty. To obtain
this slight favor, you protest never to ask another, and yet, even
while making your protestations, you are preparing to exact more. She
becomes accustomed to it and permits further trifling, which seems to
be of so little importance that she would endure it from any other
man, if she were on the slightest terms of intimacy with him. But, to
judge from the result, what appears to be of so little consequence on
one day when compared with the favor obtained the day before, becomes
very considerable when compared with that obtained on the first day. A
woman, re-assured by your discretion, does not perceive that her
frailties are being graduated upon a certain scale. She is so much
mistress of herself, and the little things which are at first exacted,
appear to her to be so much within her power of refusal, that she
expects to possess the same strength when something of a graver
character is proposed to her. It is just this way: she flatters
herself that her power of resistance will increase in the same
proportion with the importance of the favors she will be called upon
to grant. She relies so entirely upon her virtue, that she challenges
danger by courting it. She experiments with her power of resistance;
she wishes to see how far the granting of a few unimportant favors can
lead her. Here is where she is imprudent, for by her very rashness she
accustoms her imagination to contemplate suggestions which are the
final cause of her seduction. She travels a long way on the road
without perceiving that she has moved a single step. If upon looking
back along the route, she is surprised at having yielded so much, her
lover will be no less surprised at having obtained so much.

But I go still further. I am persuaded that love is not always