"Certainly, monseigneur, your life, at least since I have had the honor to be attached to you, has been a continued series of very spicy adventures, and some very dangerous ones. Abductions, seductions, duels, attacks with force, made openly,--nothing stopped you when you had resolved upon anything. Could you find any obstacles? Rich, noble, generous, fortune and nature have done everything for you, monsieur le marquis. You have profited by it; you have enjoyed life; many men have envied you your good fortune." "My good fortune! Do you truly imagine that I have been happy?" "And what should have prevented your being so, monseigneur?" "Nothing; and that is perhaps why weariness and disgust have often attacked me in the midst of the pleasures, the voluptuousness, I have tasted. Sometimes, without doubt, I have felt happiness, but it has been so short and has fled so rapidly. The appearance of beauty has inflamed my senses and made my heart palpitate. The charming sex, which I idolize, has always exercised an absolute empire over me. At the sight of a pretty woman I love, or at least believe I love; but no sooner are my desires satisfied than my love expires, and I am obliged to seek a new object to reanimate my benumbed senses." "Happily, this capital contains any quantity of pretty faces; the city and the court afford you sufficient to vary your pleasures." "Sentiment and memory are alike exhausted. I fear that, having once had force to take fire, my poor heart has become like those imperfect gun flints on which the hammer strikes without effect. I am tired of the intrigues of the court, which are even easier than the others. Where do you think I could find something more spicy? There everything is done with etiquette, and everyone is so polished. We know life too well to get angry at the least infidelity; one leaves or one takes with the most profound obeisances, and this wearies one to death; courtiers have nothing new to offer one. What should I accomplish in Marion de Lorme's circle? I should see always the same faces. When the Cardinal had made her fashionable, I didn't find the woman so witty that one would wish to have anything to do with her. How different with this young and beautiful Ninon! People will long speak of her; her name will go down the centuries. But she has too much wit and too little love, for me. My heart, cold before its time, needs to come in contact with a passionate heart in order to rewarm itself. In the city one does not fare much better with the women. The little bourgeoises have become coquettes. Still, if they only knew how to be cruel; but a name, a figure, a rich cloak, seems to turn their heads. The merchants know how to rob us, and the grisettes entice us; and in the midst of all that the husbands are so kind, so complacent; they fear us as they would fire; our titles render them mute; of honor they are hopeless. If this continues, it will