First Part Chapter 25

For women, happiness no doubt cannot consist in the mere satisfaction
of desire. Sometimes, in the evening, when I am not required to take a
hand in the game, and can sink back in my armchair, imagination bears
me on its strong wings into the very heart of your life. Then, its
riches, its changeful tints, its surging passions become my own, and I
ask myself to what end such a stormy preface can lead. May I not
swallow up the book itself? For you, my darling, the illusions of love
are possible; for me, only the facts of homely life remain. Yes, your
love seems to me a dream!

Therefore I find it hard to understand why you are determined to throw
so much romance over it. Your ideal man must have more soul than fire,
more nobility and self-command than passion. You persist in trying to
clothe in living form the dream ideal of a girl on the threshold of
life; you demand sacrifices for the pleasure of rewarding them; you
submit your Felipe to tests in order to ascertain whether desire,
hope, and curiosity are enduring in their nature. But, child, behind
all your fantastic stage scenery rises the altar, where everlasting
bonds are forged. The very morrow of your marriage the graceful
structure raised by your subtle strategy may fall before that terrible
reality which makes of a girl a woman, of a gallant a husband.
Remember that there is not exemption for lovers. For them, as for
ordinary folk like Louis and me, there lurks beneath the wedding
rejoicings the great "Perhaps" of Rabelais.