To lose confidence in one we love, is the greatest agony possible. The four days, therefore, which separated him from Aminta, were four centuries to Maulear. Like the majority of rich young men of our times, yielding at an early age to _liaisons_, he had formed an erroneous and unjust opinion of women in general. The withered myrtles he had often gathered, the passing amours in which almost all the men of his rank, fortune and appearance indulge, had distorted his mind in relation to a sex, the least respectable portion of which alone he was acquainted with. But the young Marquis had exalted sentiments, and his high spirit turned aside from vulgar, common pleasures. His first loves, or not to profane that word, his first indulgences, had for their object those women who lead astray an ardent mind or passionate natures; those women who, betrayed into marriage, seek elsewhere a recompense for their misfortunes or the deceptions practised upon them, and fancy they can find it in the inexperience and youth of young men, whom chance throws in their way. The latter proudly, and at first eagerly, accepting their conquests, soon discover, that often they are not heroes. They become themselves the accomplices of the criminal devices, the studied falsehoods, employed by married women to abuse those on whom they depend. In either case they see each other insensibly change, and in spite of themselves conceive an aversion to those pleasures, even in sharing which they blush. The idol becomes a mere woman, and the hero of these adventures fancies himself right in estimating all women by a few exceptions, and becomes an atheist in love because he has sacrificed to false gods. This deplorable theory had taken possession of Maulear. His naturally pure sentiments, the poetry of his heart, had been dissipated in ephemeral indulgences. The Countess of Grandmesnil, the guardian of the young man, fearing lest a serious passion should contravene his father's views,--encouraged him in his _liaisons_, or at least she did nothing to induce him to abandon them. Under this sad opinion, which is unfortunately too common in our days, that female virtue is but a name, and that the most prudent only need opportunity to go astray, Maulear came to Naples, where we must say much success in gallantry fortified his faith in these detestable principles.