Sometimes I think of forming another liaison; but I have no one in view; more frequently I make up my mind that, if I succeed in bringing about a rupture, I will never again involve myself in such bonds, and yet there is nothing to justify that resolution, for the present connection has been, to all appearance, a very happy one and I have no reason in the world for complaining of Rosette.--She has always been kind to me, and has behaved as well as any one could; she has been exemplarily faithful to me and has not given an opening for suspicion; the most alert and most anxious jealousy could have had no word of blame for her and must have slept in security.--A jealous man could have been jealous only of the past; in that direction, it is true, there was ample ground for jealousy. But luckily, jealousy of that sort is a very rare article, and one has quite enough to do to look after the present without going back to fumble under the ashes of extinct passion for phials of poison and cups of gall.--What woman could a man love, if he thought of all that?--You may have a sort of vague idea that a woman has had several lovers before you; but you say to yourself--a man's pride has so many tortuous folds and counterfolds!--that you are the first she has really loved, and that it was through a combination of fatal circumstances that she became connected with men unworthy of her, or else through a vague craving of a heart that sought to satisfy itself and changed because it had not met its affinity. Perhaps one can really love none but a virgin--a virgin in body and in mind--a fragile bud that has never been caressed as yet by any zephyr and whose carefully hidden breast has neither received the drop of rain nor the pearl of dew; a chaste flower that displays its white robe for you alone, a beautiful lily with a silver urn at which no desire has slaked its thirst and which has been gilded only by your sun, swayed by no breath but yours, watered by no hand but yours.--The glare of the noonday sun is less agreeable than the divine pallor of the dawn, and all the ardor of an experienced heart that knows what life is, yields the palm to the celestial ignorance of a youthful heart just awaking to love.--Ah! what a bitter, degrading thought it is that you are wiping away another's kisses, that there may not be a single spot upon that brow, those lips, that bosom, those shoulders, that whole body which is yours now, that has not been reddened and branded by other lips; that those divine murmurs which come to the relief of the tongue that can find no more words of love, have been heard before; that those excited senses did not learn their ecstasy and their delirium from you, and that away, away down in one of those recesses of the heart which are never visited, there lives an inexorable memory which compares the joys of an earlier day to the joys of to-day!