Let us take good care, Marquis, not to make ourselves ridiculous in
this way. This fashion of straining our intelligence is nothing more,
in the age in which we are living, than playing the part of fools. In
former times people took it into their heads that love should be
something grave, they considered it a serious matter, and esteemed it
only in proportion to its dignity. Imagine exacting dignity from a
child! Away would go all its graces, and its youth would soon become
converted into old age. How I pity our good ancestors! What with them
was a mortal weariness, a melancholy frenzy, is with us a gay folly, a
delicious delirium. Fools that they were, they preferred the horrors
of deserts and rocks, to the pleasures of a garden strewn with
flowers. What prejudices the habit of reflection has brought upon us!
The proof that great sentiments are nothing but chimeras of pride and
prejudice, is, that in our day, we no longer witness that taste for
ancient mystic gallantry, no more of those old fashioned gigantic
passions.
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