Prudence consists in never threatening; in facilitating an enemy’s retreat; in not treading, as the proverb has it, on the serpent’s tail; and in avoiding, as one would a murder, an injury to the self-esteem of an inferior. However damaging to one’s interest an act may be, in the long run it is overlooked and explained in a thousand different ways; but wounded pride bleeds always, and never forgives. When two people are constantly together, hatred and love grow apace; every moment brings a new reason for stronger affection or increased detestation. Love and hate are sentiments which feed on themselves, but of the two hate is the stronger. Love is limited; its strength comes of life and prodigality. But hate is like death; it is in one sense an active abstraction; it subsists above men and things. To invent is lingering death; to copy is to live. If men were frank, they would acknowledge that misfortune has never taken them entirely unawares, nor without first sending to them some visible or occult warning. Many have not understood the meaning of these mysterious monitions until after the shipwreck. A singular fascination attaches to celebrity, however acquired, and it would seem that with women, as formerly with families, the glory of a crime effaced the shame. As certain families boast of decapitated ancestors, so does a pretty woman become more attractive through the renown of a terrible betrayal. We are pitiless only to vulgar sentiments and commonplace adventures. No moralist will deny that the well-bred, yet corrupt, are much more agreeable than the strictly exemplary; for, having sins to ransom, they are very indulgent to the defects of others. Virtue, on the contrary, considers herself sufficiently beautiful to dispense with any effort at being agreeable; and besides, those who are really virtuous have all a few slight suspicions about their position, and, feeling that they have been duped at the great bazaar of life, their speech has that bitter savor which is peculiar to those who affect to be misunderstood.