'That is only because all human life is a game of cross purposes; one only wonders who first set the game going, to amuse the gods or make them weep.'
'That question will scarcely come under the head of amatory analysis. Besides, the world has been wondering about that ever since the beginning of time, and has never received any answer to its queries.'
'If a quotation be allowed,' suggested the ecclesiastic, 'in lieu of an original opinion, I would beg leave to recall the Prince de Ligne's "_Dans l'amour il n'y a que les commencements qui sont charmants_." In the middle of the romance I see you all yawn, at the end you usually quarrel. Some wise man--I forget who--has said that it requires much more talent and much more feeling to break off an attachment amiably than to begin it.'
'Because we all feel so amiable at the beginning that it is easy to be so.'
'Admit also that there are very few characters which will stand the test of intimacy; very few minds of sufficient charm and originality to be able to bear the strain of long and familiar intercourse.'
'That question is flippant and even coarse. The mind has something to do with it, even in animals; or why should the lion prefer one lioness to another? When d'Aubiac went to the gallows kissing a tiny velvet muff of Margaret de Valois, or when young Calixte de Montmorin knelt on the scaffold pressing to his lips a little bow of blue ribbon which had belonged to Madame de Vintimille, the muff and the ribbon represented a love with which certainly the soul had far more to do than the senses.'
'A sentiment if you will, but strong enough to overcome all fear of death or personal regret. The muff, the ribbon, were symbols of an imperishable and spiritual devotion; these trifles, like Psyche's butterfly, were representative of an immortal element in mortal life and mortal feeling.'
'M. de Béthune would go to the scaffold like that himself,' said the sovereign lady with a smile of approval and of indulgent derision.
'And our lady,' hinted the Duc de Béthune, 'forgets her own rule, that all personalities are forbidden.'
'It is of no use to have the power to make laws if one have not also the power to transgress them. Well, if immortality is to enter into love, let wit also enter there. One is not beheaded every day, but every day one is liable to be bored. _J'aime qu'on m'aime, mais avec de l'esprit._ Every intellectual person must exact that. To worship my ribbon is nothing if you also fatigue my patience and my ear. The majority of people divorce love and wit. They are very wrong. It is only wit which can tell love when he has gone too far, or is losing ground, has repeated himself _ad nauseam_, or requires absence to restore his charm.'