O divine creatures, ye lovely virgins, slender and diaphanous, who lower your periwinkle eyes and clasp your lily hand in the pictures with golden backgrounds of the old German masters, ye stained-glass saints, ye missal martyrs who smile so sweetly amid the convolutions of the arabesques, and come forth so fresh and fair from the flower-bells!--O ye lovely courtesans lying all naked in your hair on beds strewn with roses, beneath great purple curtains, with your bracelets and necklaces of huge pearls, your fan and your mirrors, gleaming in the shadow in the fiery rays of the setting sun!--ye dark-skinned maidens of Titian, who display so wantonly your undulating hips, your firm, round thighs, your polished breasts and your supple and muscular loins!--ye antique goddesses, who rear your white phantoms in the shady corners of gardens!--ye are a part of my seraglio; I have possessed you all in turn.--Sainte Ursule, I have kissed your hands on the fair hands of Rosette; I have toyed with the black hair of the Muranese and Rosette never had such a hard task to rearrange her hair: I have been with you more than Acteon was, O virgin Diana, and I have not been changed to a stag: it was I who replaced your handsome Endymion!--What a multitude of rivals whom she does not suspect and upon whom she cannot be revenged! yet they are not all painted or carved! Women, when you notice that your lover is more affectionate than usual, that he presses you in his arms with unwonted emotion; when he rests his head upon your knees and raises it to look at you with moist and wandering eyes; when enjoyment serves only to augment his desire and he stifles your voice with his kisses as if he dreaded to hear it, be sure that he simply does not know that you are there; that he has, at that moment, an assignation with a chimera which you make palpable, and whose part you play.--Many chamber-maids have profited by the love that queens inspire.--Many women have profited by the love that goddesses inspire, and a commonplace reality has often served as the pedestal for an ideal idol. That is why poets habitually take dirty trollops for mistresses.--You can lie ten years with a woman without ever seeing her; that is the history of many great geniuses, whose ignoble or obscure connections have caused the world to wonder.