Certainly there are exceptions, and I am far from saying _Ab una disce omnes_.
You, Madame, for instance, who read me, I am convinced that you are not in that category of women of whom the Englishman Pope made this wicked remark.
Suzanne felt now possessed by a wild infatuation for the man to whom she had yielded herself almost without love; and do not young girls frequently yield themselves in this manner? She felt herself attracted towards him by the purely physical and magnetic phenomenon which impels the female towards the male; for we shall try in vain and talk in vain, raise ourselves on our dwarfish heels, talk of the ethereal essence of our soul and the quintessence of our feelings, idealize woman and deify love, there always comes a moment when we become like the brute, and when the passion of seraphims cannot be distinguished in anything from that of man.
........who goes by night In some street obscure, to a lodging low and dark.
Suzanne certainly had not taken note of her impressions.
Attracted towards Marcel by his sympathetic beauty, by his sweet and unctuous voice, and especially by the vague sorrow displayed on his countenance, perhaps still more by the opposition and slanders of her father, she had allowed herself to be won, before she know where she was going.
She was far from any carnal thought, and she would have been considerably surprised if anyone had told her that the priest loved her otherwise than as a sister is loved.
But that is not what we men understand by love.
The Werthers who regard their mistress as a sacred divinity whom we ought to touch with trembling, are rare. They are not met again after eighteen. Marcel was more than eighteen; therefore he had found his desires become more inflamed than ever in the presence of his mistress.
If he had been hesitating and timid, like Charlotte's lover, I do not doubt that she would have found time to gather within herself the force necessary to resist him, but she felt herself mastered before even she had recovered from her terror and confusion.
I do not wish to try and excuse her, but she repented; and how far more worthy of respect is the repentance of certain fallen women than the haughty virtue of certain others.