be wearisome from the other? Why? Because in everything, and especially
in love, perfect harmony, absolute agreement in motion, voice, words, and
in demonstrations of tenderness, are necessary, with the person who
moves, speaks and manifests affection; it is necessary in age, in height,
in the color of the hair, and in the style of beauty.

If a woman of thirty-five, who has arrived at the age of violent,
tempestuous passion, were to preserve the slightest traces of the
caressing archness of her love affairs at twenty, were not to understand
that she ought to express herself differently, look at her lover
differently, and kiss him differently were not to see that she ought to
be Dido and not a Juliette, she would infallibly disgust nine lovers out
of ten, even if they could not account to themselves for their
estrangement. Do you understand me? No. I hoped so.

From the time that you turned on your tap of tenderness, it was all over
for me, my dear friend. Sometimes we would embrace for five minutes, in
one interminable kiss, one of those kisses which make lovers close their
eyes, as if part of it would escape through their looks, as if to
preserve it entire in that clouded soul which it is ravaging. And then,
when our lips separated, you would say to me:

"That was nice, you fat old dog."

At such moments, I could have beaten you; for you gave me successively
all the names of animals and vegetables which you doubtless found in some
_cookery book_, or _Gardener's Manual_. But that is nothing.

The caresses of love are brutal, bestial, and if one comes to think of
it, grotesque! ... Oh! My poor child, what joking elf, what perverse
sprite could have prompted the concluding words of your letter to me? I
have made a collection of them, but out of love for you, I will not show
them to you.

And you really sometimes said things which were quite inopportune, and
you managed now and then to let out an exalted: _I love you!_ on such
singular occasions, that I was obliged to restrain a strong desire to
laugh. There are times when the words: _I love you!_ are so out of place,
that they become indecorous; let me tell you that.

But you do not understand me, and many other women will also not
understand me, and think me stupid, though that matters very little to
me. Hungry men eat like gluttons, but people of refinement are disgusted
at it, and they often feel an invincible dislike for a dish, on account
of a mere trifle. It