nd of your servant Arabella, whose sole
morality is to imagine caresses no man has yet felt and which the angels
inspire."

I know nothing more destructive than the wit of an Englishwoman; she
gives it the eloquent gravity, the tone of pompous conviction with which
the British hide the absurdities of their life of prejudice. French wit
and humor, on the other hand, is like a lace with which our women adorn
the joys they give and the quarrels they invent; it is a mental jewelry,
as charming as their pretty dresses. English wit is an acid which
corrodes all those on whom it falls until it bares their bones, which it
scrapes and polishes. The tongue of a clever Englishwoman is like that
of a tiger tearing the flesh from the bone when he is only in play.
All-powerful weapon of a sneering devil, English satire leaves a deadly
poison in the wound it makes. Arabella chose to show her power like the
sultan who, to prove his dexterity, cut off the heads of unoffending
beings with his own scimitar.

"My angel," she said, "I can talk morality too if I choose. I have asked
myself whether I commit a crime in loving you; whether I violate the
divine laws; and I find that my love for you is both natural and pious.
Why did God create some beings handsomer than others if not to show us
that we ought to adore them? The crime would be in not loving you. This
lady insults you by confounding you with other men; the laws of morality
are not applicable to you; for God has created you above them. Am I
not drawing nearer to divine love in loving you? will God punish a poor
woman for seeking the divine? Your great and luminous heart so resembles
the heavens that I am like the gnats which flutter about the torches
of a fete and burn themselves; are they to be punished for their error?
besides, is it an error? may it not be pure worship of the light? They
perish of too much piety,--if you call it perishing to fling one's self
on the breast of him we love. I have the weakness to love you, whereas
that woman has the strength to remain in her Catholic shrine. Now, don't
frown. You think I wish her ill. No, I do not. I adore the morality
which has led her to leave you free, and enables me to win you and hold
you forever--for you are mine forever, are you not?"

"Yes."

"Forever and ever?"

"Yes."

"Ah! I have found favor in my lord! I alone have understood his worth!
She knows how to cultivate her estate, you say. Well, I leave that to
farmers