burn the Gospels as a pack of stories if you have not faith in this
innocent remark.

This, nevertheless, to certain ladies (I did not mention men, since
they have a smattering of the science), will still seem an untruth.
The writer has taken care here to give the mute reasons for this
strange antipathy; I mean the distastes of Bertha, because I love the
ladies above all things, knowing that for want of the pleasure of
love, my face would grow old and my heart torment me. Did you ever
meet a scribe so complacent and so fond of the ladies as I am? No; of
course not. Therefore, do I love them devotedly, but not so often as I
could wish, since I have oftener in my hands my goose-quill than I
have the barbs with which one tickles their lips to make them laugh
and be merry in all innocence. I understand them, and in this way.

The good man Bastarnay was not a smart young fellow of an amorous
nature, and acquainted with the pranks of the thing. He did not
trouble himself much about the fashion in which he killed a soldier so
long as he killed him; that he would have killed him in all ways
without saying a word in battle, is, of course, understood. The
perfect heedlessness in the matter of death was in accordance with the
nonchalance in the matter of life, the birth and manner of begetting a
child, and the ceremonies thereto appertaining. The good sire was
ignorant of the many litigious, dilatory, interlocutory and
proprietary exploits and the little humourings of the little fagots
placed in the oven to heat it; of the sweet perfumed branches gathered
little by little in the forests of love, fondlings, coddlings,
huggings, nursing, the bites at the cherry, the cat-licking, and other
little tricks and traffic of love which ruffians know, which lovers
preserve, and which the ladies love better than their salvation,