No, a man is not a monster because he seeks to please a woman; it is our right to win her by aggression with all its consequences, short of crime and cowardice.

A man may have many virtues even if he does deceive a woman; if he deceives her, it is because he finds her wanting in some of the treasures that he sought in her.

None but a queen, an actress, or a woman placed so far above a man that she seems to him a queen, can go to him of herself without incurring blame--and for a young girl to do it! Why, she is false to all that God has given her that is sacred and lovely and noble,--no matter with what grace or what poetry or what precautions she surrounds her fault." "To seek the master and find the servant!" she said bitterly, "oh! I can never recover from it!" "Nonsense! Monsieur Ernest de La Briere is, to my thinking, fully the equal of the Baron de Canalis.

He was private secretary of a cabinet minister, and he is now counsel for the Court of Claims; he has a heart, and he adores you, but--he _does not write verses_.

No, I admit, he is not a poet; but for all that he may have a heart full of poetry.