"The day before you would see all the men smiling, expansive, charming, using their softest tones and tenderest looks to prove by every grace of look and accent the amorous principles of such logic as this: 'Whatever is pleasant is right.' 'Discretion is the only virtue.' 'Your heart was not consulted when they gave you your tyrant.' 'There are certain feelings that are inevitably sympathetic.''Your soul longs for its twin sister, take my soul.' (This piece of a soul, by the way, has enormous moustaches, or side-whiskers.) 'When it has reached a certain stage, guilty love becomes a sacred duty,' etc. I will excuse you, madame, from hearing a variety of other excellent reasonings, which generally do not deceive those that hear them, any more than those that give utterance to them. "But on the evening after the promulgation of this terrible law, when there would be danger of the fine, what a difference! As all those pretty paradoxes of night before last might end, after all, in the payment of a heavy sum, and as that sum would reduce by just so much the luxury and comfort which are the necessities of an essentially material life, while love is only a delightful superfluity, you would see all the men suddenly become serious, pompous, dignified, frightened at the slightest attempt at conversation from a woman, if she was at all removed from the rest of the company; prudish and scared as schoolgirls before their head teacher, you would hear them cry out aloud so that every one could hear them, and in their most solemn voice, the voice that they use when they make political speeches, refuse requests, and later scold their wives and children with: 'After all, good morals are the foundation of society.' 'We must draw the line somewhere!' 'There are some duties that a gallant man ought to respect.' 'I had a mother once.' 'I shall be a father some day.' 'There is no real pleasure except in the satisfaction of conscience,' etc. For I will spare you, madame, a quantity of other formulas more or less moral, which, as soon as the question of a fine came up, might be translated thus: 'Ladies, I know that you are all as charming as possible; but I love my opera box, my house, my table, my stable, my gaming, my journey to the summer resorts or to Italy, my pictures, my bric-à-brac; shall I risk all of these for a few moments of felicity, as rare as it is intoxicating? No!'" "It is infamous," said the marquise; "out of a hundred men, not one would answer in this way." "Permit me, madame, to be of an absolutely opposite opinion. I believe the men of our day are pitilessly attached to material comfort, and willing to sacrifice everything else to it, and, more than all the rest, that which is called love." "You believe that?" said Madame de Pënâfiel with profound astonishment. "You believe that? And how old might you be, monsieur?"