are young, you are making your debut in the world, and you are
regarded as a man who has never yet had any love affairs. The
Chevalier has lived; what woman will not appreciate these differences?




XXI

The Comedy of Contrariness


Probity in love, Marquis? How can you think of such a thing? Ah, you
are like a drowned man. I shall take good care not to show your letter
to any one, it would dishonor you. You do not know how to undertake
the manoeuvres I have advised you to make, you say? Your candor, your
high sentiments made your fortune formerly! Well, love was then
treated like an affair of honor, but nowadays, the corruption of the
age has changed all that; love is now nothing more than a play of the
humor and of vanity.

Your inexperience still leaves your virtues in an inflexible condition
that will inevitably cause your ruin, if you have not enough
intelligence to bring them into accord with the morals of the times.
One can not now wear his sentiments on his sleeve. Everything is show;
payment is made in airs, demonstrations, signs. Everybody is playing a
comedy, and men have had excellent reasons for keeping up the farce.
They have discovered the fact that nobody can gain anything by telling
the actual truth about women. There is a general agreement to
substitute for this sincerity a collection of contrary phrases. And