to defend
yourself against a violent passion? Does it depend upon you to arrange
all the circumstances of your life, so that you will never find
yourself alone with a lover who adores you, who knows his advantages
and how to profit by them? Does it depend upon you to prevent his
pleadings, I assume them to be innocent at first, from making upon
your senses the impression they must necessarily make? Certainly not;
to insist upon such an anomaly would be to deny that the magnet is
master of the needle. And you pretend that your virtue is your own
work, that you can personally claim the glory of an advantage that is
liable to be taken from you at any moment? Virtue in women, like all
the other blessings we enjoy, is a gift from Heaven; it is a favor
which Heaven may refuse to grant us. Reflect then how unreasonable you
are in glorifying in your virtue: consider your injustice when you so
cruelly abuse those who have had the misfortune to be born with an
ungovernable inclination toward love, whom a sudden violent passion
has surprised, or who have found themselves in the midst of
circumstances out of which you would not have emerged with any greater
glory.

"Shall I give you another proof of the justice of my ideas? I will
take it from your own conduct. Are you not dominated by that deep
persuasion that every woman who wishes to preserve her virtue, need
never allow herself to be caught, that she must watch over the
smallest trifles, because they lead to things of greater importance?
It is much easier for you to take from men the desire to make an
attack upon your virtue by assuming a severe exterior, than to defend
against their attacks. The proof of this is in the fact that we give
young girls in their education as little liberty as is possible in
order to restrain them. We do more: a prudent mother does not rely
upon her fear of dishonor, nor upon the bad opinion she has of men,
she keeps her daughter out of sight; she puts it out of her power to
succumb to temptation. What is the excuse for so many precautions?
Because the mother fears the frailty of her pupil, if she is exposed
for an instant to danger.

"In spite of all these obstacles with which she is curbed, how often
does it not happen that love overcomes them all? A girl well trained,
or better, well guarded, laughs at her virtue, because she imagines it
is all her own, whereas, it is generally a slave rigorously chained
down, who thinks everybody is satisfied