manifested in her, ought to have greatly impressed her.

Everything is now as it should be. However, shall I tell you
something? The way this matter has turned out alarms me. We agreed, if
you remember, that we were to treat the subject of love without
gloves. You were not to have at the most but a light and fleeting
taste of it, and not a regulated passion. Now I perceive that things
become more serious every day. You are beginning to treat love with a
dignity which worries me. The knowledge of true merits, solid
qualities, and good character is creeping into the motives of your
liaison, and combining with the personal charms which render you so
blindly amorous. I do not like to have so much esteem mixed with an
affair of pure gallantry. It leaves no freedom of action, it is work
instead of amusement. I was afraid in the beginning that your
relations would assume a grave and measured turn. But perhaps you will
only too soon have new pretensions, and the Countess by new disputes
will doubtless re-animate your liaison. Too constant a peace is
productive of a deadly ennui. Uniformity kills love, for as soon as
the spirit of method mingles in an affair of the heart, the passion
disappears, languor supervenes, weariness begins to wear, and disgust
ends the chapter.




XXVII

The Heart Needs Constant Employment