you know, a passion with women of that sort. Du Guenic would let
himself be cut in pieces, and would chop up his wife for Beatrix; and
you think it is an easy matter to drag a man from the depths of such
credulity! Ah! madame, Shakespeare's Iago would lose all his
handkerchiefs. People think that Othello, or his younger brother,
Orosmanes, or Saint-Preux, Rene, Werther, and other lovers now in
possession of fame, represented love! Never did their frosty-hearted
fathers know what absolute love is; Moliere alone conceived it. Love,
Madame la duchesse, is not loving a noble woman, a Clarissa--a great
effort, faith! Love is to say to one's self: 'She whom I love is
infamous; she deceives me, she will deceive me; she is an abandoned
creature, she smells of the frying of hell-fire;' but we rush to her,
we find there the blue of heaven, the flowers of Paradise. That is how
Moliere loved, and how we, scamps that we are! how we love. As for me,
I weep at the great scene of Arnolphe. Now, that is how your
son-in-law loves Beatrix. I shall have trouble separating Rochefide
from Madame Schontz; but Madame Schontz will no doubt lend herself to
the plot; I shall study her interior. But as for Calyste and Beatrix,
they will need the blows of an axe, far deeper treachery, and so base
an infamy that your virtuous imagination could never descend to it
--unless indeed your director gave you a hand. You have asked the
impossible, you shall be obeyed. But in spite of my settled intention
to war with fire and sword, I cannot absolutely promise you success. I
have known lovers who did not recoil before the most awful
disillusions. You are too virtuous to know the full power of women who
are not virtuous."

"Do not enter upon those infamous actions until I have consulted the
Abbe Brossette to know how far I may be your accomplice," cried the
duchess, with a naivete which disclosed what selfishness there is in