an impartial judge between us.

ARM. If I felt this great wrath with which you accuse me, I could find
enough to authorise it. You deserve it but too well. A first love has
such sacred claims over our hearts, that it would be better to lose
fortune and renounce life than to love a second time. Nothing can be
compared to the crime of changing one's vows, and every faithless
heart is a monster of immorality.

CLI. Do you call that infidelity, Madam, which the haughtiness of your
mind has forced upon me? I have done nothing but obey the commands it
imposed upon me; and if I offend you, you are the primary cause of the
offence. At first your charms took entire possession of my heart. For
two years I loved you with devoted love; there was no assiduous care,
duty, respect, service, which I did not offer you. But all my
attentions, all my cares, had no power over you. I found you opposed
to my dearest wishes; and what you refused I offered to another.
Consider then, if the fault is mine or yours. Does my heart run after
change, or do you force me to it? Do I leave you, or do you not rather
turn me away?

ARM. Do you call it being opposed to your love, Sir, if I deprive it
of what there is vulgar in it, and if I wish to reduce it to the
purity in which the beauty of perfect love consists? You cannot for me
keep your thoughts clear and disentangled from the commerce of sense;
and you do not enter into the charms of that union of two hearts in
which the body is ignored. You can only love with a gross and material
passion; and in order to maintain in you the love I have created, you
must have marriage, and all that follows. Ah! what strange love! How
far great souls are from burning with these terrestrial flames! The