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The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honoré de Balzac
page 43 of 98 (43%)
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. She will never be neglected for
glory, ambition, politics, art--those prostitutes who for her are
rivals. Then fops have the courage to cover themselves with ridicule
in order to please a woman, and her heart is full of gratitude towards
the man who is ridiculous for love. In fine, a fop can be no fop
unless he is right in being one. It is women who bestow that rank. The
fop is love's colonel; he has his victories, his regiment of women at
his command. My dear fellow, in Paris everything is known, and a man
cannot be a fop there _gratis_. You, who have only one woman, and who,
perhaps, are right to have but one, try to act the fop! . . . You will
not even become ridiculous, you will be dead. You will become a
foregone conclusion, one of those men condemned inevitably to do one
and the same thing. You will come to signify _folly_ as inseparably as
M. de La Fayette signifies _America_; M. de Talleyrand, _diplomacy_;
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