"January 24, 1795. "You refuse to see me; you are offended by my last conversation, and, no doubt, intend henceforth to admit none but your countrymen, and thus expiate your recent deviation from that rule. Yet, far from repenting the sincerity with which I spoke to _you_, whom, perhaps chimerically, I would fain consider an Englishwoman, I will dare to say, still more plainly, that you can preserve neither your own dignity nor your own peace, by choosing a husband from your present society. I know not one Italian who deserves you; not one who could honor you by his alliance, whatever were the _title_ he had to bestow. The men are far less estimable here than the women, to whose errors they add worse of their own. Would you persuade me that these sons of the South, who so carefully avoid all trouble, and live but for enjoyment, can be capable of love? Did you not, last month, see at the Opera a man who had not eight days before lost a wife he was said to adore? The memory of the dead, the thought of death itself, is here, as much as possible, thrown aside. Funeral ceremonies are performed by the priests, as the duties of love are fulfilled by _cavaliéres servéntes_. Custom has prescribed all rites beforehand: regret and enthusiasm are nothing. But what, above all, must be destructive to love, is the fact that your men cannot be respected; women give them no credit for submission, because they found them originally weak, and destitute of all serious employment. It is requisite, for the perfection of natural and social order, that men should protect, and women be protected; but by guardians adoring the weakness they defend, and worshipping the gentle divinity which, like the Penates of the ancients, calls down good fortune on the house. Here one might almost say that woman is the sultan, and men her seraglio; it is they who have most pliancy and softness. An Italian proverb says: 'Who knows not how to feign, knows not how to live,' Is not that a feminine maxim? but where you have neither military glory nor free institutions, how should men acquire strength and majesty of mind? Their wit degenerates into a kind of cleverness, with which they play the game of life like a match at chess, wherein success is everything. All that remains of their love for antiquity consists in exaggerated expressions and external grandeur; but, beside this baseless greatness, you often find the most vulgar tastes, the most miserably neglected homes. Is this, then, Corinne, the country you prefer? Is its boisterous applause so essential to you, that every other kind of destiny would seem dull, compared with these re-echoing _brávos?_ Who could hope to make you happy, in tearing you from this tumult? You are an incomprehensible person: deep