'I know, my dear; a b.u.t.terfly's oath, nothing more. You should have been wiser, and not allowed yourself to be taken in.'

Then he goes in the neighbourhood of a beautiful, haughty, vain lily.

Meantime an ugly b.u.mble comes near the rose and tries to sting her. She calls the b.u.t.terfly to her help, but he does not even deign to answer.

For him the rose is the past and the lily the present. He is no more grateful than he is faithful.

WHEN HE MEETS THE LILY

With the lily, whom he understands well, he knows he has to proceed in quite a different manner. He must use flattery.

'Imagine, lovely lily,' he says to her, 'that this silly and vain rose thinks she is the queen of flowers. She is beautiful, no doubt, but what is her beauty compared to yours? What is her perfume? Almost insipid compared to your enchanting, intoxicating fragrance. What is her shape compared to your glorious figure? Why, she looks like a pink cabbage. Is not, after all, pure whiteness incomparable? My dear lady, you are above compet.i.tion.'

The vain lily listens with attention and pleasure. The wily b.u.t.terfly sees he is making progress. He goes on flattering, then risks a few words of love.

'Ah!' sighs the lily, 'if you were not a fickle b.u.t.terfly, I might believe half of what you say!'

'You do not know me!' he exclaims indignantly. 'I have only the shape of a b.u.t.terfly; I have not the heart of one. How could I be unfaithful to you if you loved me? Are you not the most beautiful of flowers? How could it be possible for me to prefer any other to you? No, no; for the rest of my life there will be but the lily for me.'

The vanity of the lily is flattered, she believes him, and gives herself up to the pa.s.sionate embrace of the b.u.t.terfly.

'Oh, beloved one,' she exclaims in ecstasy, 'you will love me for ever; you will always be mine as I am yours!'

'To tell you the truth, my dear lily,' says the b.u.t.terfly coolly, 'you are very nice, but your perfume is rather strong, a little vulgar, and one gets tired of it quickly. I am not sure that I do not prefer the rose to you. Now, be good, and let me go quickly. I am a b.u.t.terfly. I cannot help my nature; I was made like that. Good-bye!'

THE MODEST VIOLET

Then he flies towards a timid violet, modestly hidden in the ivy near the wall. Her sweet odour reveals her presence. So he stops and says to her:

'Sweet, exquisite violet, how I do love you! Other flowers may be beautiful, my darling, but that is all. You, besides, are good and modest; as for your sweet, delicious perfume, it is absolutely beyond compet.i.tion. I might admire a rose or a lily for a moment, lose my head over them, but not my heart. You alone can inspire sincere and true love. If you will marry me--for you do not imagine that I could ask you to love me without at the same time asking you to be my wife--we will lead a quiet, retired life of eternal bliss, hidden in the ivy, far from the noise and the crowd.'

'This would be beautiful,' says the violet, 'but I am afraid you are too brilliant for me, and I too modest and humble for you. I have been warned against you. People say you are fickle.'

'Who could have slandered me so? Your modesty is the very thing that has attracted me to you. I have crossed the garden without looking at any other flower in order to come to you straight. What I want is a heart like yours--tender, faithful--a heart that I may feel is mine for the rest of my days.'

And he swears his love, always promising matrimony as soon as a few difficulties, 'over which he has no control,' are surmounted. The poor little violet is fascinated, won; she loves him, and gives herself to him; but it is not long before he goes.

'Surely,' she says, with her eyes filled with tears, 'you are not going to abandon me. You are not going to leave me to fight the great big battle of life alone, with all the other flowers of the garden to sneer at me and despise me! Oh no, dear; I have loved you with my modest soul; I have given you all I have in the world. No, no, you are not going away, never to return again! It would be too cruel! No, the world is not so bad as that; you will return, won't you?'

'I feel very sorry for you, dear--really very sorry; but, you see, I cannot. I am a gentleman, and I have my social position to think of. I am sure you understand that. You say you are fond of me; then you will put yourself in my place, and conclude that I have done the best I could for you. Good-bye! Forget me as quickly as you can.'

The little violet commits suicide; and the b.u.t.terfly, reading an account of it in the following day's papers, has not even a tear to shed, no remorse, no regret.

A SHINING SOCIAL LIGHT.

He is called by his club friends 'a devil of a fellow with the girls,'

and that is almost meant as a compliment. As for the women of the very best society, he is thought rather enterprising and dangerous; but I have never heard that, for his conduct, he has ever been turned out of a respectable house or of a decent club.

There is one drawback to the perfect happiness of the b.u.t.terfly: he is generally in love with a worthless woman, who makes a fool of him.

CHAPTER IV

WOMEN LOVE BETTER THAN MEN

How many people understand what love means? How many appreciate it? How many ever realize what it is? For some it is a more or less sickly sentiment, for others merely violent desires.

Alas! it requires so many qualifications to appreciate love that very few people are sufficiently free from some vulgarity or other to be worthy of speaking of love without profanity.

Love requires too much constancy to suit the light-hearted, too much ardour to suit calm temperaments, too much reserve to suit violent const.i.tutions, too much delicacy to suit people dest.i.tute of refinement, too much enthusiasm to suit cool hearts, too much diplomacy to suit the simple-minded, too much activity to suit indolent characters, too many desires to suit the wise.

See what love requires to be properly and thoroughly appreciated, and you will easily understand why it must be in woman's nature to love better and longer than man.

Men can worship better than women, but women can love better than men.

Of this there can be no doubt.

Very often women believe that they are loved when they are only ardently desired because they are beautiful, piquant, elegant, rich, difficult to obtain, and because men are violent, ambitious, wilful, and obstinate; and the more obstacles there are in their way, the more bent they feel on triumphing over difficulties.

To obtain a woman men will risk their lives, ruin themselves, commit any act of folly or extravagance which you care to name. Women are flattered by these follies and extravagances due to motives of very different characters; but they mistake pa.s.sion for love.

Yet pa.s.sion is very seldom compatible with true love. Pa.s.sion is as fickle as love is constant. Pa.s.sion is but a proof of vanity and selfishness.

Woman is only the pretext for the display of it. Singers, actresses, danseuses, all women detached from that shade and mystery in which love delights in dwelling, women who give to the public all the treasures of their beauty, amiability, and talent are those who inspire in men the most violent pa.s.sions, but they are seldom truly loved unless they consent to retire from the glare of the footlights and withdraw to the shade.

Pa.s.sion excites vanity, noise, envy: it plays to the gallery. Love seeks retirement, and prefers a moss bank against some wall covered with ivy, some solitude where silence is so perfect that two hearts can hear each other beat, where s.p.a.ce is so small that lips must forcibly meet.

The man who takes his bride to Paris for the honeymoon does not really love her. If he loves truly he will take her to the border of a forest in some secluded, picturesque spot, where nature will act as a church in which both will fervently worship.

Now, with very few exceptions, women understand these things much better than men. They are born with feelings of delicacy and refinement that only few men can acquire or develop; they are more earnest, more poetical, better diplomatists, and of temperaments generally more artistic.

Besides--and it is in this that they are infinitely superior to men--whereas many men see their love cooled by possession, all women see theirs increased and sealed by it.

The moment a woman is possessed by the man she loves, she belongs to him body, heart, and soul. Her love is the occupation of her life, her only thought, and, I may add without the slightest idea of irreverence, her religion.

She loves that man as she does G.o.d. If all men could only be sufficiently impressed with this fact, how kind and devoted to women they would be!

CHAPTER V

IS WOMAN A RESPONSIBLE BEING?