In the style of a classic courtesan, she elegantly chats about the various forms of love, with plenty of wit, mocking ease, and a healthy dose of self-irony. The narrator shares her life-wise insights with a pen pal referred to as "Doctor," who is actually the writer Franz Hessel, to whom she confides deep insights into her libertine love life and the different characters of the protagonists. There is the type of savior who believes in "true love" yet suffers only from self-delusion, the elegant companion dog, "exasperatingly dull but irresistibly elegant," the stranger who represents "deep sensation without emotional involvement," the love of poets and conversation, not to mention all the many Pauls and Pedros. An amusing study of the nature of the loving man.