Delphine Gay, spouse de Girardin, was a woman as there are very few: at a time when there were probably still muses, some of them certainly have visited her in her cradle!
Delphine was a poet and also a novelist; she excelled in writing plays with chiseled dialogues and unexpected plots; she was a journalist with biting wit and humour; she held a literary salon
where the greatest feathers of her time were not prayed to come to talk ― her bright wit, her amusing and accurate rejoinders, her goodness and, icing on the cake: her beauty, charmed
everyone.
In the first part of Do not Play with Pain, you will find Delphine Gay's mind: analysis, criticism, humor, irony ― kindness will appear later. The author decrypts, like under a microscope,
the machiavellic mechanisms of seduction of a great seducer. It is devious, precise like a Swiss clock, implacable like the teeth of a shark.
Then we meet a young widow who will fall prey to this seducer. The seducer is like a cat playing with a mouse and who knows exactly what are going to be her reactions to his apparent indifference
or to his kicking and studied paws.
This kind and sad young woman seems a prey far too easy, but ... but here come the women’s immense capacities to endure, to bounce back, to think, to do introspection, and finally to forgive and
to love, and the end is extremely moving.
To console you for not being able to read this little book that is only available in French, here are some excerpts that show a small part of Mrs. Gay de Girardin’s mind:
Analytical mind:
"In Paris and everywhere else, the effects of fashion are the same; it starts like wildfire, but you have to set it on fire. There are people who have everything needed to be fashionable: powder
is not lacking; the wildfire is made, but the fire is never lighted, and they remain ignored all their life."
Self-mockery:
"A fool who speaks confidently can say a lot of nonsense with impunity; in conversations, in newspapers, we let say the biggest nonsenses without understanding them; that explains why we dared to
proclaim ourselves the most witty people of the universe. "
* We, French! Delphine Gay is true and no one is spared! 😊
Delicacy and humour:
"For a woman who loves or believes she loves, which is the same thing, if not more, there is only one being on earth; all the rest of the human race is immediately eliminated; the beloved man
alone is responsible for bearing all the events that happen. Someone has a horse fall ... it's him! - A young man fought a duel ... it's him! - The thunder fell on a traveler ... it's him! -
Alas! we are right to fear for what we love madly; any person who is too beloved is thereby endangered; Idolatry brings bad luck."
Criticism of the status of women in society
"God! how she would have liked to read this letter! Ah! how often is it painful to be a well-brought up woman! A good education is a treasure which, like all treasures, is a great embarrassment
for the one who possesses it. How many times well-brought up people are tempted to exclaim, like The Bourgeois Gentilhomme, but in a totally opposite sense: "My father, my mother, I bear a grudge
against you, not for allowing me to ignore the beautiful things but, on the contrary, for having taught them to me too well, for having taught me to always deprive myself of what I would like so
much!"
Knowledge of human nature:
"A woman can hide that she suffers, that she is bored, that she loves ... but she cannot hide that she is waiting."