Vanity prevents them from contradicting these flattering
rumors, and like the young priests who celebrate masses without a
Host, they enjoy a mere show passion, and are veritable
supernumeraries of love.
Under these circumstances sometimes a husband on returning home asks
the porter: "Has no one been here?"--"M. le Baron came past at two
o'clock to see monsieur; but as he found no one was in but madame he
went away; but Monsieur A----- is with her now."
You reach the drawing-room, you see there a young celibate, sprightly,
scented, wearing a fine necktie, in short a perfect dandy. He is a man
who holds you in high esteem; when he comes to your house your wife
listens furtively for his footsteps; at a ball she always dances with
him. If you forbid her to see him, she makes a great outcry and it is
not till many years afterwards [see Meditation on _Las Symptoms_] that
you see the innocence of Monsieur A----- and the culpability of the
baron.
We have observed and noted as one of the cleverest manoeuvres, that of
a young woman who, carried away by an irresistible passion, exhibited
a bitter hatred to the man she did not love, but lavished upon her
lover secret intimations of her love. The moment that her husband was
persuaded that she loved the _Cicisbeo_ and hated the _Patito_, she
arranged that she and the _Patito_ should be found in a situation
whose compromising character she had calculated in advance, and her
husband and the execrated celibate were thus induced to believe that
her love and her aversion were equally insincere.
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