Rhetoric makes use of nature's secrets in the same way as painters who try to imitate it: their most beautiful work is false.

This young girl, whose mind had not been refined by study, aimed at being considered innocent and artless, and she did her best to succeed, but I had seen too good a specimen of her cleverness.
"Well, my dear Bettina," I said, "your story has affected me; but how do you think I am going to accept your convulsions as natural, and to believe in the demoniac symptoms which came on so seasonably during the exorcisms, although you very properly expressed your doubts on the matter ?" Hearing this, Bettina stared at me, remaining silent for a few minutes, then casting her eyes down she gave way to fresh tears, exclaiming now and then: "Poor me! oh, poor me!" This situation, however, becoming most painful to me, I asked what I could do for her.

She answered in a sad tone that if my heart did not suggest to me what to do, she did not herself see what she could demand of me.
"I thought," said she, "that I would reconquer my lost influence over your heart, but, I see it too plainly, you no longer feel an interest in me.

Go on treating me harshly; go on taking for mere fictions sufferings which are but too real, which you have caused, and which you will now increase.

Some day, but too late, you will be sorry, and your repentance will be bitter indeed." As she pronounced these words she rose to take her leave; but judging her capable of anything I felt afraid, and I detained her to say that the only way to regain my affection was to remain one month without convulsions and without handsome Father Mancia's presence being required.
"I cannot help being convulsed," she answered, "but what do you mean by applying to the Jacobin that epithet of handsome?
Could you suppose-- ?" "Not at all, not at all--I suppose nothing; to do so would be necessary for me to be jealous.