had greater helps to guarantee you against misfortune. I am not
seeking to deprive you of the merit of your virtue, nor am I
endeavoring to prevent you from attaching too much importance to it;
by convincing you of its fragility, I wish to obtain from you only a
trifle of indulgence for those whom a too impetuous inclination, or
the misfortunes of circumstances have precipitated into a position so
humiliating in their own eyes; my sole object is to make you
understand that you ought to glorify yourself less in the possession
of an advantage which you do not owe to yourself, and of which you may
be deprived to-morrow."

She was going to continue, but some one interrupted us. Soon
afterward, I learned by my own experience that I should not have had
so good an opinion of many virtues which had been formerly imposed
upon me, beginning with my own.




XXVI

Love Demands Freedom of Action


I have been of the same opinion as you, Marquis, although the ideas I
communicated to you yesterday appeared to be true speculatively, that
it would be dangerous if all women were to be guided by them. It is
not by a knowledge of their frailty, that women will remain virtuous,
but by the conviction that they are free and mistresses of themselves
when it comes to yield or to resist. Is it by persuading a soldier