nd can say what we like,
explain to me why a man as superior as yourself--for you are
superior--should affect to exaggerate a foppery which cannot be
natural. Why spend two hours and a half in adorning yourself, when it is
sufficient to spend a quarter of an hour in your bath, to do your hair
in two minutes, and to dress! There, tell me your system."

"I must be very fond of you, my good dunce, to confide such high
thoughts to you," said the young man, who was at that moment having his
feet rubbed with a soft brush lathered with English soap.

"Have I not the most devoted attachment to you," replied Paul de
Manerville, "and do I not like you because I know your superiority?..."

"You must have noticed, if you are in the least capable of observing any
moral fact, that women love fops," went on De Marsay, without replying
in any way to Paul's declaration except by a look. "Do you know why
women love fops? My friend, fops are the only men who take care of
themselves. Now, to take excessive care of oneself, does it not imply
that one takes care in oneself of what belongs to another? The man who
does not belong to himself is precisely the man on whom women are keen.
Love is essentially a thief. I say nothing about that excess of niceness
to which they are so devoted. Do you know of any woman who has had a
passion for a sloven, even if he were a remarkable man? If such a fact
has occurred, we must put it to the account of those morbid affections
of the breeding woman, mad fancies which float through the minds of
everybody. On the other hand, I have seen most remarkable people left in
the lurch because of their carelessness. A fop, who is concerned about
his person, is concerned with folly, with petty things. And what is a
woman? A petty thing, a bundle of follies. With two words said to the
winds, can you not make her busy for four hours? She is sure that the
fop will be occupied with her, seeing that he has no mind for great
things. She will never be neglected for glory, ambition, politics,
art--those prostitutes who for her are rivals. Then fops have the
courage to cover themselves with ridicule in order to please a woman,
and her heart is full of gratitude towards the man who is ridiculous for
love. In fine, a fop can be no fop unless he is right in being one. It
is women who bestow that rank. The fop is love's colonel; he has his
victories, his regiment of women at his command. My dear fellow, in
Paris everything is kno