Whoever shall develop their hearts, will not fail
to render them an essential service. I am even fully convinced that
those women, who at heart, profess sentiments more comformable to
mine, would be the first to consider it an honor to dispute them.
Hence, I would be paying my court to women in two fashions, which
would be equally agreeable: In adopting the maxims which flatter their
inclinations, and in furnishing them with an occasion to appear
refined.

After all, Marquis, do you think it would betray a deep knowledge of
women, to believe that they could be offended with the malicious talk
I have been giving you about them? Somebody said a long time ago, that
women would rather have a little evil said of them than not be talked
about at all You see therefore, that even supposing that I have
written you in the intention with which I am charged, they would be
very far from being able to reproach me in the slightest degree.

Finally, Madame de Sevigne pretends that my "system" might become a
precedent. Truly, Marquis, I do not understand how, with the justice
for which she is noted, she was able to surrender to such an idea. In
stripping love, as I have, of everything liable to seduce you, in
making it out to be the effect of temperament, caprice, and vanity;
in a word, in undeceiving you concerning the metaphysics that lend it
grandeur and nobility, is it not evident that I have rendered it less
dangerous? Would it not be more dangerous, if, as pretends Madame de
Sevigne, it were to be transformed into a virtue? I would willingly
compare my sentiments with those of the celebrated legislator of
antiquity, who believed the best means of weakening the power of women
over his fellow citizens was to expose their nakedness. But I wish to
make one more effort in your favor. Since I am regarded as a woman
with a system, it will be better for me to submit to whatever such a
fine title exacts. Let us reason, therefore, for a moment upon
gallantry according to the method which appertains only to serious
matters.

Is love not a passion? Do not very strict minded people pretend that
the passions and vices mean the same things? Is vice ever more
seductive than when it wears the cloak of virtue? Wherefore in order
to corrupt virtuous souls it is sufficient for it to appear in a
potential form. This is the form in which the Platonicians deified it.
In all ages, in order to justify the passions, it was necessary to
apotheosize the