"As you can espouse but one man, it is sufficient to be loved by one in the manner that you wish. A woman who comports herself voluntarily so as to captivate the hearts of many men, and leaves each to believe that she prefers him above all, is an unworthy coquette, who sins against Justice and Kindness: against Justice, inasmuch as she demands a sentiment for which she can make no return; as she acts towards others as she would think it unjust that others should act towards her; against Kindness, inasmuch as she risks causing suffering to sincere hearts and sacrificing their repose to a pleasurable impulse of vanity: such a woman, my child, is contemptible; she is a dangerous enemy of her sex; first, because she gives a bad opinion of it; next, because she is an enemy to the repose of other women; I know that you are too ingenuous, too true and too worthy to fear that you will fall into such errors. "You have acknowledged to me that your young imagination had pictured to itself a man. Far from banishing this ideal, let it be always present to your mind, much less in its physical aspect than in that of intellect, morality and industry. This image will do more to keep you safe than all my counsels, than all the surveillance that I might, but never would exercise over you, because this would be unworthy of us both. "Do not forget however that an ideal is absolute; that the reality is always defective; do not therefore seek in the man to whom you shall give your heart, a realization of the ideal, but the qualities and faculties which, with your aid, will permit him to approximate to what you wish to see him. You yourself are the ideal of a man, not such as you are, but such as he will aid you to become. "I dwell upon this point, my daughter, because nothing is more dangerous than to insist on finding the ideal in the reality; this makes us over difficult and lacking in indulgence; and, if we have a lively imagination and little reason, renders us unhappy and involves us in innumerable errors. You know and feel that the end of love is Marriage; now one of your duties as lover and spouse is the improvement of the one to whom you shall be united. You will stand with him in two different relations! first as his betrothed, afterwards as his wife. Your modifying power will, in the first case, be exercised in a direct proportion to his desire to please and to be worthy of you; in the second, in proportion to his confidence, esteem and affection for you. In the first case, he will _wish_ to modify himself; in the second, he will do so without knowing it." "What, mother, will he not always love me the same?"