"
"I must be very fond of you, my good dunce, to confide such high
thoughts to you," said the young man, who was at that moment having
his feet rubbed with a soft brush lathered with English soap.
"Have I not the most devoted attachment to you," replied Paul de
Manerville, "and do I not like you because I know your
superiority? . . ."
"You must have noticed, if you are in the least capable of observing
any moral fact, that women love fops," went on De Marsay, without
replying in any way to Paul's declaration except by a look. "Do you
know why women love fops? My friend, fops are the only men who take
care of themselves. Now, to take excessive care of oneself, does it
not imply that one takes care in oneself of what belongs to another?
The man who does not belong to himself is precisely the man on whom
women are keen. Love is essentially a thief. I say nothing about that
excess of niceness to which they are so devoted. Do you know of any
woman who has had a passion for a sloven, even if he were a remarkable
man? If such a fact has occurred, we must put it to the account of
those morbid affections of the breeding woman, mad fancies which float
through the minds of everybody. On the other hand, I have seen most
remarkable people left in the lurch because of their carelessness. A
fop, who is concerned about his person, is concerned with folly, with
petty things. And what is a woman? A petty thing, a bundle of follies.
With two words said to the winds, can you not make her busy for four
hours? She is sure that the fop will be occupied with her, seeing that
he has no mind for great things.
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