In some people, and especially in women, devotion to God [La Bruyère wrote a note; 'fausse dévotion', devotion to God that is really something else but presents itself as the former] comes as a passion, or as the weakness of a certain age, or as a fashion that must be followed. They used to count up their week by the days that they gambled, went to spectacles, concerts, masked balls, or pretty sermons: on Monday they went to lose their money at Ismène's, on Tuesday their time at Climène's, and on Wednesday their reputation at Célimène's; they knew the night before all the joy they would have the next day and the day after that; they enjoyed at once present pleasures and future ones that could not fail them; they wished they could fit them all into a single day: that was their one anxiety and the subject of all their distraction; and if they sometimes found themselves at the Opera, they regretted having missed the comedy. Different times, different mores: now they overdo austerity and solitude; they no longer open their eyes, which were given to them so that they may see; they make no use of their senses; and, incredible thing! they don't speak much; yet they think, both well enough of themselves and badly enough of others; they emulate virtue and being reformed out of jealousy; they don't hate being first in this new type of life, just as they didn't in the type that they have recently given up due to politic or disgust. They used to waste themselves gaily in gallantry, luxury and idleness; and now they do so sadly in presumption and envy.