him from Aminta, were four
centuries to Maulear. Like the majority of rich young men of our times,
yielding at an early age to _liaisons_, he had formed an erroneous and
unjust opinion of women in general. The withered myrtles he had often
gathered, the passing amours in which almost all the men of his rank,
fortune and appearance indulge, had distorted his mind in relation to a
sex, the least respectable portion of which alone he was acquainted
with. But the young Marquis had exalted sentiments, and his high spirit
turned aside from vulgar, common pleasures. His first loves, or not to
profane that word, his first indulgences, had for their object those
women who lead astray an ardent mind or passionate natures; those women
who, betrayed into marriage, seek elsewhere a recompense for their
misfortunes or the deceptions practised upon them, and fancy they can
find it in the inexperience and youth of young men, whom chance throws
in their way. The latter proudly, and at first eagerly, accepting their
conquests, soon discover, that often they are not heroes. They become
themselves the accomplices of the criminal devices, the studied
falsehoods, employed by married women to abuse those on whom they
depend. In either case they see each other insensibly change, and in
spite of themselves conceive an aversion to those pleasures, even in
sharing which they blush. The idol becomes a mere woman, and the hero of
these adventures fancies himself right in estimating all women by a few
exceptions, and becomes an atheist in love because he has sacrificed to
false gods.

This deplorable theory had taken possession of Maulear. His naturally
pure sentiments, the poetry of his heart, had been dissipated in
ephemeral indulgences. The Countess of Grandmesnil, the guardian of the
young man, fearing lest a serious passion should contravene his father's
views,--encouraged him in his _liaisons_, or at least she did nothing to
induce him to abandon them. Under this sad opinion, which is
unfortunately too common in our days, that female virtue is but a name,
and that the most prudent only need opportunity to go astray, Maulear
came to Naples, where we must say much success in gallantry fortified
his faith in these detestable principles.

His meeting with one so pure as Aminta had wrought a complete change in
his ideas. He saw woman under a new aspect, as we dream of her at
twenty, when the young soul first awakes. He suffered intensely when
sus