the rules of an unjust world, the laws of morality itself are
suspended in men's relations with women. They may pass as good
men, though they have caused women the most terrible suffering
which it is in the power of one human being to inflict upon
another. They may be regarded as loyal, though they have betrayed
them. They may have received from a woman marks of a devotion
which would so link two friends, two fellow soldiers, that either
would feel dishonored if he forgot them, and they may consider
themselves free of all obligations by attributing the services to
love--as if this additional gift of love detracted from the value
of the rest!

One cannot help noticing how lacking in neatness of expression is
this woman who wrote so much. It is because she wrote so much that
she wrote in such a muffled manner. It is because she thought so
much that her reflections were either not her own, or were never
clear. It is because she loved so much, and had so many lovers--
Benjamin Constant; Vincenzo Monti, the Italian poet; M. de
Narbonne, and others, as well as young Rocca--that she found both
love and lovers tedious.

She talked so much that her conversation was almost always mere
personal opinion. Thus she told Goethe that he never was really
brilliant until after he had got through a bottle of champagne.
Schiller said that to talk with her was to have a "rough time,"
and that after she left him, he always felt like a man who was
just getting over a serious illness. She never had time to do
anything very well.

There is an interesting glimpse of her in the recollections of Dr.