What is the destiny of women? What is their rôle on earth? It is to please. Now, a charming figure, personal graces, in a word, all the amiable and brilliant qualities are the only means of succeeding in that role. Women possess them to a superlative degree, and it is in these qualities that they wish men to resemble them. It will be vain for you to accuse them of frivolity, for they are playing the beauty rôle, since they are destined to make you happy. Is it not, indeed, due to the charm of our companionship, to the gentleness of our manners, that you owe your most satisfying pleasures, your social virtues, in fact, your whole happiness? Have some good faith in this matter. Is it possible for the sciences of themselves, the love of glory, valor, nay, even that friendship of which you boast so much, to make you perfectly happy? The pleasure you draw from any of them, can it be keen enough to make you feel happy? Certainly not. None of them have the power to relieve you from a wearisome monotony which crushes you and makes you an object of pity.
It is women who have taken upon themselves to dissipate these mortal languors by the vivacious gayety they inject into their society; by the charms they know so well how to lavish where they will prove effectual. A reckless joy, an agreeable delirium, a delicious intoxication, are alone capable of awakening your attention, and making you understand that you are really happy, for, Marquis, there is a vast difference between merely enjoying happiness and relishing the sensation of enjoying it. The possession of necessary things does not make a man comfortable, it is the superfluous which makes him rich, and which makes him feel that he is rich.
It is not because you possess superior qualities that you are a pleasant companion, it may be a real defect which is essential to you. To be received with open arms, you must be agreeable, amusing, necessary to the pleasure of others. I warn you that you can not succeed in any other manner, particularly with women. Tell me, what would you have me do with your learning, the geometry of your mind, with the precision of your memory, etc.? If you have only such advantages, Marquis, if you have no charming accomplishments to offset your crudity--I can vouch for their opinion--far from pleasing women, you will seem to them like a critic of whom they will be afraid, and you will place them under so much constraint, that the enjoyment they might have permitted themselves in your society will be banished. Why, indeed, try to be amiable toward a man who is a source of anxiety to you by his nonchalance, who does not unbosom himself? Women are not at their ease except with those who take chances with them, and enter into their spirit. In a word, too much circumspection gives others a chill like that felt by a man who goes out of a warm room into a cold wind. I intended to say that habitual reserve locks the doors of the hearts of those who associate with us; they have no room to expand.