VIRTUE

I am still too full of happiness to be able to appreciate it, but I am surprised by the unfamiliar delight it gave me. Can it then be true that virtue increases the value of a woman even in the very moment of her weakness? But let us dismiss this childish idea as an old wives’ tale. Do we not nearly always come across some resistance, more or less well-feigned, at the first surrender? Have I not found the delights I am speaking of with any other women? And yet this is not love. For I have to say that though with this astonishing woman I have sometimes experienced moments of weakness which resemble that unmanly passion, I have always managed to subdue them and adhere to my principles.

(Letter CXXV, The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil)