Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos Part 19

So much generosity finally turns against themselves, and they soon become accustomed to demand as a right what is granted them as a favor.

You see women every day (even among those we despise with so much reason), who reign with a scepter of iron, treat as slaves men who are attached to them, debase them by force of controlling them. Well, these are the women who are loved longer than the others. I am persuaded that a woman of refinement, well brought up, would never think of following such an example. That military manner is repugnant to gentleness and morals, and lacks that decency which const.i.tutes the charm in things even remote from virtue. But let the reasonable woman soften the clouds a trifle, there will always remain precisely what is necessary to hold a lover.

We are slaves, whom too much kindness often renders insolent; we often demand to be treated like those of the new world. But we have in the bottom of our hearts a comprehension of justice, which tells us that the governing hand bears down upon us sometimes for very good reasons, and we take kindly to it.

Now, for my last word: In everything relating to the force and energy of love, women should be the sovereigns; it is from them we hope for happiness, and they will never fail to grant us that as soon as they can govern our hearts with intelligence, moderate their own inclinations, and maintain their own authority, without compromising it and without abusing it.

XLV

What Favors Men Consider Faults

To explain in two words to your satisfaction, Marquis. This is what I think of the letter I sent you yesterday: For a woman to profit by the advice of Monsieur de Saint-Evremond it is requisite that she should be affected with only a mediocre fancy, and have excited the pa.s.sion of love. However, we shall talk about that more at large whenever it may please you, now, I will take up what concerns you.

The sacrifice the Countess has exacted of you is well worth the price you put upon it. To renounce for her sake, a woman whose exterior proclaimed her readiness to accord you whatever favor you might be willing to ask; to renounce her publicly, in the presence of her rival, and with so little regard for her vanity, is an effort which naturally will not pa.s.s without a proportionate recompense. The Countess could not have found a happier pretext for giving you her portrait.

But to take a solemn day when the Marquise received at her home for the first time since her illness; to select a moment when the moneyed woman was taking up arms to make an a.s.sault of beauty upon a woman of rank; to speak to her merely in pa.s.sing, to pretend to surrender yourself entirely to the pleasure of seeing her rival; to entertain the latter and become one of her party, is an outrage for which you will never be pardoned. Revenge will come quickly, and be as cruel as possible, you will see. It is I who guarantee it. Now for the second paragraph of your letter:

You ask me whether the last favor, or rather the last fault we can commit, is a certain proof that a woman loves you. Yes and no.

Yes, if you love the woman for whom you had your first pa.s.sion, and she is refined and virtuous. But even in such a case, this proof will not be any more certain, or more flattering for you, than all the others she may have given you of her inclination. Whatever a woman may do when she loves, even things of the slightest essential nature in appearance are as much certain marks of her pa.s.sion, as those greater things of which men are so proud. I will even add, that if this virtuous woman is of a certain disposition, the last favor will prove less than a thousand other small sacrifices you count for nothing, for then, on her own behalf less than on yours, she is too much interested in listening to you, for you to claim the glory of having persuaded her, although every one else would have been accorded the same favor.

I know a woman who permitted herself to be vanquished two or three times by men she did not love, and the man she really loved never obtained a single favor. It may happen, then, that the last favor proves nothing to him to whom it is granted. Whereas, on the contrary, it may happen that he owes the granting of it to the little regard had for him. Women never respect themselves more than with those they esteem, and you may be quite sure that it requires a very imperious inclination to cause a reasonable woman to forget herself in the presence of one whose disdain she dreads. Your pretended triumph, therefore, may originate in causes which, so far from being glorious for you, would humiliate you if you were aware of them.

We see, for example, a lover who may be repelled; the woman who loves him fears he will escape her to pay his addresses to another woman more accommodating; she does not wish to lose him, for it is always humiliating to be abandoned; she yields, because she is not aware of any other means of holding him. They say there is nothing to reproach in this. If he leaves her after that, at least he will be put in the wrong, for, since a woman becomes attached more by the favors she grants, she imagines the man will be forced into grat.i.tude. What folly!

Women are actuated by different motives in yielding. Curiosity impels some, they desire to know what love is. Another woman, with few advantages of person or figure, would hold her lover by the attractions of pleasure. One woman is determined to make a conquest flattering to her vanity. Still another one surrenders to pity, opportunity, importunities, to the pleasure of taking revenge on a rival, or an unfaithful lover. How can I enumerate them all? The heart is so very strange in its vagaries, and the reasons and causes which actuate it are so curious and varied, that it is impossible to discover all the hidden springs that set it in motion. But if we delude ourselves as to the means of holding you, how often do men deceive themselves as to the proofs of our love? If they possessed any delicacy of discernment, they would find a thousand signs that prove more than the most signal favor granted.

Tell me, Marquis, what have I done to Monsieur de Coulanges? It is a month since he has set foot in my house. But I will not reproach him, I shall be very pleasant with him when he does come. He is one of the most amiable men I am acquainted with. I shall be very angry with you if you fail to bring him to me on my return from Versailles. I want him to sing me the last couplets he has composed, I am told they are charming.

XLVI

Why Inconstancy Is Not Injustice

It was too kind of you, Marquis, to have noticed my absence. If I did not write you during my sojourn in the country, it was because I knew you were happy, and that tranquilized me. I felt too, that it was necessary for love to be accorded some rights, as its reign is usually very short, and besides that, friendship not having any quarrel with love, I waited patiently an interval in your pleasure which would enable you to read my letters.

Do you know what I was doing while away? I amused myself by piecing out all the events liable to happen in the condition your society is now in. I foresaw the bickerings between the Countess and her rival, and I predicted they would end in an open rupture; I also guessed that the Marquise would not espouse the cause of the Countess, but would take up the other's quarrel. The moneyed woman is not quite so handsome as her rival, a decisive reason for declaring for her and backing her up without danger.

What will be the upshot of all this quarreling among these women? How many revolutions, Good Heavens! in so short a time! Your happiness seems to be the only thing that has escaped. You discover new reasons every day for loving and esteeming this amiable Countess. You believe that a woman of so much real merit, and with so interesting a figure, will become known more and more. Let nothing weaken the esteem you have always had for her. You have, it is true, obtained an avowal of her love for you, but is she less estimable for that? On the contrary, ought not her heart to augment in price in your eyes, in proportion to the certainty you have acquired that you are its sole possessor? Even if you shall have obtained proofs of her inclination we spoke about recently, do you think that gives you any right to underrate her?

I can not avoid saying it; men like you arouse my indignation every time they imagine they claim the right to lack in courtesy for my s.e.x, and punish us for our weaknesses. Is it not the height of injustice and the depth of depravity to continue to insult the grief which is the cause of their changes? Can not women be inconstant without being unjust? Is their distaste always to be followed by some injurious act?

If we are guilty, is it the right of him who has profited by our faults, who is the cause of them, to punish us?

Always maintain for the Countess the sentiments you have expressed in her regard. Do not permit a false opinion to interfere with the progress which they can still make in your heart. It is not our defeat alone which should render us despicable in your eyes. The manner in which we have been defended, delivered, and guarded, ought to be the only measure of your disdain.

So Madame de La Fayette is of the opinion that my last letter is based upon rather a liberal foundation? You see where your indiscretions lead me. But she does not consider that I am no more guilty than a demonstrator of anatomy. I a.n.a.lyse the metaphysical man as he dissects the physical one. Do you believe that out of regard to scruples he should omit in his operations those portions of his subject which might offer corrupted minds occasions to draw sallies out of an ill regulated imagination? It is not the essence of things that causes indecency; it is not the words, or even the ideas, it is the intent of him who utters them, and the depravity of him who listens. Madame de La Fayette was certainly the last woman in the world whom I would have suspected of reproaching me in that manner, and to-morrow, at the Countess', I will make her confess her injustice.

XLVII

Cause of Quarrels Among Rivals

What, I, Marquis, astonished at the new bickerings of your moneyed woman? Do not doubt for an instant that she employs all the refinements of coquetry to take you away from the Countess. She may have a liking for you, but moderate your amour propre so far as that is concerned, for the most powerful motive of her conduct, is, without contradiction, the desire for revenge. Her vanity is interested in punishing her rival for having obtained the preference.

Women never pardon such a thing as that, and if he who becomes the subject of the quarrel is not the first object of their anger, it is because they need him to display their resentment. You have encountered in the rival of the Countess precisely what you exacted from her to strengthen your attachment. You are offered in advance the price of the attentions you devote to her, and from which you will soon be dispensed, and I think you will have so little delicacy as to accept them. It is written across the heart of every man: "To the easiest."

You should blush to deserve the least reproach from the Countess. What sort of a woman is it you seem to prefer to her? A woman without delicacy and without love; a woman who is guided only by the attractions of pleasure; more vain than sensible; more voluptuous than tender; more pa.s.sionate than affectionate, she seeks, she cherishes in you nothing but your youth and all the advantages that accompany it.

You know what her rival is worth; you know all your wrong doing with her; you agree that you are a monster of ingrat.i.tude, yet, you are unwilling to take it upon yourself to merit her pardon. Truly, Marquis, I do not understand you. I am beginning to believe that Madame de Sevigne was right when she said that her son knew his duty very well, and could reason like a philosopher on the subject, but that he was carried away by his pa.s.sions, so that "he is not a head fool, but a heart fool" (ce n'est pas par la tete qu'il est fou, mais par le coeur).

You recall in vain what I said to you long ago about making love in a free and easy manner. You will remember that I was then enjoying myself with some jocular reflections which were not intended to be formal advice. Do not forget, either, that the question then was about a mere pa.s.sing fancy, and not of an ordinary mistress. But the case to-day is very different, you can not find among all the women of Paris, a single one who can be compared with her you are so cruelly abandoning. And for what reason? Because her resistance wounds your vanity. What resource is left us to hold you?

I agree with you, nevertheless, that when a pa.s.sion is extinguished it can not be relighted without difficulty. No one is more the master of loving than he is of not loving. I feel the truth of all these maxims; I do homage to them with regret, as soon as, with a knowledge of the cause, I consider that you reject what is excellent and accept the worse; you renounce a solid happiness, durable pleasures, and yield to depraved tastes and pure caprices; but I can see that all my reflections will not reform you. I am beginning to fear that I am wearying you with morals, and to tell you the truth, it is very ridiculous in me to preach constancy when it is certain that you do not love, and that you are a heart fool.

I therefore abandon you to your destiny, without, however, giving up my desire to follow you into new follies. Why: should I be afflicted?

Would it be of any moment to a.s.sume with you the tone of a pedagogue?

a.s.suredly not, both of us would lose too much thereby. I should become weary and you would not be reformed.

XLVIII

Friendship Must Be Firm

I do not conceal it, Marquis, your conduct in regard to the Countess had put me out of patience with you, and I was tempted to break off all my relations with so wicked a man as you. My good nature in yielding to your entreaties inclines me to the belief that my friendship for you borders on a weakness. You are right, though. To be your friend only so long as you follow my advice would not be true friendship. The more you are to be censured the stronger ought to be my hold on you, but you will understand that one is not master of his first thoughts. Whatever effort I may make to find you less guilty, the sympathy I have for the misfortune of my friend is of still greater importance to me. There were moments when I could not believe in your innocence, and they were when so charming a woman complained of you. Now that her situation is improving every day, I consider my harshness in my last letter almost as a crime.

I shall, hereafter, content myself with pitying her without importuning you any longer about her. So let us resume our ordinary gait, if it please you. You need no longer fear my reproaches, I see they would be useless as well as out of place.

XLIX

Constancy Is a Virtue Among the Narrow Minded

You did not then know, Marquis, that it is often more difficult to get rid of a mistress than to acquire one? You are learning by experience.