The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.
Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.
It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.
The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse - as a luxury befitting a young man.
Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.