KNOWING

As you may guess, in common with all young girls I was trying to find out about love and its pleasures. But never having been in the convent, not having a best friend, and watched over continually by a vigilant mother, my notions about it were of the vaguest and I was unable to clarify them. My own nature, on which I have since then most certainly had reason only to congratulate myself, offered me no clue at that time. You might almost have thought it was silently working towards perfecting what it had begun. Only my head was in a whirl. I did not desire to enjoy these pleasures, I just wished to know. This desire for knowledge suggested to me the means of acquiring it.

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