Second Part Chapter 53

MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON

My dear Louise,--I have read and re-read your letter, and the more
deeply I enter into its spirit, the clearer does it become to me that
it is the letter, not of a woman, but of a child. You are the same old
Louise, and you forget, what I used to repeat over and over again to
you, that the passion of love belongs rightly to a state of nature,
and has only been purloined by civilization. So fleeting is its
character, that the resources of society are powerless to modify its
primitive condition, and it becomes the effort of all noble minds to
make a man of the infant Cupid. But, as you yourself admit, such love
ceases to be natural.

Society, my dear abhors sterility; but substituting a lasting
sentiment for the mere passing frenzy of nature, it has succeeded in
creating that greatest of all human inventions--the family, which is
the enduring basis of all organized society. To the accomplishment of
this end, it has sacrificed the individual, man as well as woman; for
we must not shut our eyes to the fact that a married man devotes his
energy, his power, and all his possession to his wife. Is it not she
who reaps the benefit of all his care? For whom, if not for her, are
the luxury and wealth, the position and distinction, the comfort and
the gaiety of the home?