ON LOVE CHAPTER I
OF LOVE My aim is to comprehend that passion, of which every sincere development has a character of beauty. There are four kinds of love. 1. Passion-love—that of the Portuguese nun(1), of HÉloÏse for Abelard, of Captain de VÉsel, of Sergeant de Cento. 2. Gallant love—that which ruled in Paris towards 1760, to be found in the memoirs and novels of the period, in CrÉbillon, Lauzun, Duclos, Marmontel, Chamfort, Mme. d'Épinay, etc. etc. 'Tis a picture in which everything, to the very shadows, should be rose-colour, in which may enter nothing disagreeable under any pretext whatsoever, at the cost of a lapse of etiquette, of good taste, of refinement, etc. A man of breeding foresees all the ways of acting, that he is likely to adopt or meet with in the different phases of this love. True love is often less refined; for that in which there is no passion and nothing unforeseen, has always a store of ready wit: the latter is a cold and pretty miniature, the former a picture by the Carracci. Passion-love carries us away in defiance of all our interests, gallant love manages always to respect them. True, if we take from this poor love its vanity, there is very little left: once stripped, it is like a tottering convalescent, scarcely able to drag himself along. 3. Physical love. Out hunting—a fresh, pretty country girl crosses your path and escapes into the wood. Everyone knows the love founded on this kind of pleasure: and all begin that way at sixteen, however parched and unhappy the character. 4. Vanity-love. The vast majority of men, especially in France, desire and have a fashionable woman, in the same way as a man gets a fine horse, as something which the luxury of a young man demands. Their vanity more or less flattered, more or less piqued, gives birth to transports of feelings. Sometimes there is also physical love, but by no means always: often there is not so much as physical pleasure. A duchess is never more than thirty for a bourgeois, said the Duchesse de Chaulnes, and those admitted to the Court of that just man, king Lewis of Holland, recall with amusement a pretty woman from the Hague, who could not help finding any man charming who was Duke or Prince. But true to the principle of monarchy, as soon as a Prince arrived at Court, the Duke was dismissed: she was, as it were, the decoration of the diplomatic body. The happiest case of this uninspiring relationship is that in which to physical pleasure is added habit. In that case store of memories makes it resemble love a little; there is the pique of self-esteem and sadness on being left; then, romance forces upon us its ideas and we believe that we are in love and melancholy, for vanity aspires to credit itself with a great passion. This, at least, is certain that, whatever kind of love be the source of pleasure, as soon as the soul is stirred, the pleasure is keen and its memory alluring, and in this passion, contrary to most of the others, the memory of our losses seems always to exceed the bounds of what we can hope for in the future. Sometimes, in vanity-love habit or despair of finding better produces a kind of friendship, of all kinds the least pleasant: it prides itself on its security, etc.[1]Physical pleasure, being of our nature, is known to everybody, but it takes no more than a subordinate position in the eyes of tender and passionate souls. If they raise a laugh in the salons, if often they are made unhappy in the intrigues of society, in return the pleasure which they feel must remain always inaccessible to those hearts, whose beat only vanity and gold can quicken. A few virtuous and sensitive women have scarcely a conception of physical pleasures: they have so rarely risked them, if one may use the expression, and even then the transports of passion-love caused bodily pleasure almost to be forgotten. There are men victims and instruments of diabolical pride, of a pride in the style of Alfieri. Those people who, perhaps, are cruel because, like Nero, judging all men after the pattern of their own heart, they are always a-tremble—such people, I say, can attain physical pleasure only in so far as it is accompanied by the greatest possible exercise of pride, in so far, that is to say, as they practise cruelties on the companion of their pleasures. Hence the horrors of Justine(2). At any rate such men have no sense of security. To conclude, instead of distinguishing four different forms of love, we can easily admit eight or ten shades of difference. Perhaps mankind has as many ways of feeling as of seeing; but these differences of nomenclature alter in no degree the judgments which follow. Subject to the same laws, all forms of love, which can be seen here below, have their birth, life and death or ascend to immortality.[2]
CHAPTER II
OF THE BIRTH OF LOVE This is what takes place in the soul:— 1. Admiration. 2. A voice within says: "What pleasure to kiss, to be kissed." 3. Hope(3). We study her perfections: this is the moment at which a woman should yield to realise the greatest possible physical pleasure. In the case even of the most reserved women, their eyes redden at the moment when hope is conceived: the passion is so strong, the pleasure so keen, that it betrays itself by striking signs. 4. Love is born. To love—that is to have pleasure in seeing, touching, feeling, through all the senses and as near as possible, an object to be loved and that loves us. 5. The first crystallisation begins. The lover delights in decking with a thousand perfections the woman of whose love he is sure: he dwells on all the details of his happiness with a satisfaction that is boundless. He is simply magnifying a superb bounty just fallen to him from heaven,—he has no knowledge of it but the assurance of its possession. Leave the mind of a lover to its natural movements for twenty-four hours, and this is what you will find. At the salt mines of Salzburg a branch stripped of its leaves by winter is thrown into the abandoned depths of the mine; taken out two or three months later it is covered with brilliant crystals; the smallest twigs, those no stouter than the leg of a sparrow, are arrayed with an infinity of sparkling, dazzling diamonds; it is impossible to recognise the original branch. I call crystallisation the operation of the mind which, from everything which is presented to it, draws the conclusion that there are new perfections in the object of its love. A traveller speaks of the freshness of the orange groves at Genoa, on the sea coast, during the scorching days of summer.—What pleasure to enjoy that freshness with her! One of your friends breaks his arm in the hunting-field.—How sweet to be nursed by a woman you love! To be always with her, to see every moment her love for you, would make pain almost a blessing: and starting from the broken arm of your friend, you conclude with the absolute conviction of the angelic goodness of your mistress. In a word, it is enough to think of a perfection in order to see it in that which you love. This phenomenon, which I venture to call crystallisation, is the product of human nature, which commands us to enjoy and sends warm blood rushing to our brain; it springs from the conviction that the pleasures of love increase with the perfections of its object, and from the idea: "She is mine." The savage has no time to go beyond the first step. He is delighted, but his mental activity is employed in following the flying deer in the forest, and with the flesh with which he must as soon as possible repair his forces, or fall beneath the axe of his enemy. At the other pole of civilisation, I have no doubt that a sensitive woman may come to the point of feeling no physical pleasure but with the man she loves.[1] It is the opposite with the savage. But among civilised peoples, woman has leisure at her disposal, while the savage is so pressed with necessary occupations that he is forced to treat his female as a beast of burden. If the females of many animals are more fortunate, it is because the subsistence of the males is more assured. But let us leave the backwoods again for Paris. A man of passion sees all perfections in that which he loves. And yet his attention may still be distracted; for the soul has its surfeit of all that is uniform, even of perfect bliss.[2] This is what happens to distract his attention:— 6. Birth of Doubt. After ten or twelve glances, or some other series of actions, which can last as well several days as one moment, hopes are first given and later confirmed. The lover, recovered from his first surprise and, accustomed to his happiness or guided by theory, which, always based on the most frequent cases, must only take light women into account—the lover, I say, demands more positive proofs and wishes to press his good fortune. He is parried with indifference,[3] coldness, even anger, if he show too much assurance—in France a shade of irony, which seems to say: "You are not quite as far as you think." A woman behaves in this way, either because she wakes up from a moment of intoxication, and obeys the word of modesty, which she trembles to have infringed, or simply through prudence or coquetry.The lover comes to doubt of the happiness, to which he looked forward: he scans more narrowly the reasons that he fancied he had for hope. He would like to fall back upon the other pleasures of life, and finds them annihilated. He is seized with the fear of a terrible disaster, and at the same time with a profound preoccupation. 7. Second crystallisation. Here begins the second crystallisation, which forms diamonds out of the proofs of the idea—"She loves me." The night which follows the birth of doubts, every quarter of an hour, after a moment of fearful unhappiness, the lover says to himself—"Yes, she loves me"—and crystallisation has its turn, discovering new charms. Then doubt with haggard eye grapples him and brings him to a standstill, blank. His heart forgets to beat—"But does she love me?" he says to himself. Between these alternatives, agonising and rapturous, the poor lover feels in his very soul: "She would give me pleasures, which she alone can give me and no one else." It is the palpability of this truth, this path on the extreme edge of a terrible abyss and within touch, on the other hand, of perfect happiness, which gives so great a superiority to the second crystallisation over the first. The lover wanders from moment to moment between these three ideas:— - She has every perfection.
- She loves me.
- What means of obtaining the greatest proof of her love?
The most agonising moment of love, still young, is when it sees the false reasoning it has made, and must destroy a whole span of crystallisation. Doubt is the natural outcome of crystallisation.
CHAPTER III
OF HOPE A very small degree of hope is enough to cause the birth of love. In the course of events hope may fail—love is none the less born. With a firm, daring and impetuous character, and in an imagination developed by the troubles of life, the degree of hope may be smaller: it can come sooner to an end, without killing love. If a lover has had troubles, if he is of a tender, thoughtful character, if he despairs of other women, and if his admiration is intense for her whom he loves, no ordinary pleasure will succeed in distracting him from the second crystallisation. He will prefer to dream of the most doubtful chance of pleasing her one day, than to accept from an ordinary woman all she could lavish. The woman whom he loves would have to kill his hope at that period, and (note carefully, not later) in some inhuman manner, and overwhelm him with those marks of patent contempt, which make it impossible to appear again in public. Far longer delays between all these periods are compatible with the birth of love. It demands much more hope and much more substantial hope, in the case of the cold, the phlegmatic and the prudent. The same is true of people no longer young. It is the second crystallisation which ensures love's duration, for then every moment makes it clear that the question is—be loved or die. Long months of love have turned into habit this conviction of our every moment—how find means to support the thought of loving no more? The stronger the character the less is it subject to inconstancy. This second crystallisation is almost entirely absent from the passions inspired by women who yield too soon. After the crystallisations have worked—especially the second, which is far the stronger—the branch is no longer to be recognised by indifferent eyes, for:— (1) It is adorned with perfections which they do not see. (2) It is adorned with perfections which for them are not perfections at all. The perfection of certain charms, mentioned to him by an old friend of his love, and a certain hint of liveliness noticed in her eye, are a diamond in the crystallisation[1] of Del Rosso. These ideas, conceived during the evening, keep him dreaming all the night. An unexpected answer, which makes me see more clearly a tender, generous, ardent, or, as it is popularly called, romantic[2] soul, preferring to the happiness of kings the simple pleasures of a walk with the loved one at midnight in a lonely wood, gives me food for dreams[3] for a whole night. Let him call my mistress a prude: I shall call his a whore. [1] I have called this essay a book of Ideology. My object was to indicate that, though it is called "Love," it is not a novel and still less diverting like a novel. I apologise to philosophers for having taken the word Ideology: I certainly did not intend to usurp a title which is the right of another. If Ideology is a detailed description of ideas and all the parts which can compose ideas, the present book is a detailed description of all the feelings which can compose the passion called Love. Proceeding, I draw certain consequences from this description: for example, the manner of love's cure. I know no word to say in Greek "discourse on ideas." I might have had a word invented by one of my learned friends, but I am already vexed enough at having to adopt the new word crystallisation, and, if this essay finds readers, it is quite possible that they will not allow my new word to pass. To avoid it, I own, would have been the work of literary talent: I tried, but without success. Without this word, which expresses, according to me, the principal phenomenon of that madness called Love—madness, however, which procures for man the greatest pleasures which it is given to the beings of his species to taste on earth—without the use of this word, which it were necessary to replace at every step by a paraphrase of considerable length, the description, which I give of what passes in the head and the heart of a man in love, would have become obscure, heavy and tedious, even for me who am the author: what would it have been for the reader? I invite, therefore, the reader, whose feelings the word crystallisation shocks too much, to close the book. To be read by many forms no part of my prayers—happily, no doubt, for me. I should love dearly to give great pleasure to thirty or forty people of Paris, whom I shall never see, but for whom, without knowing, I have a blind affection. Some young Madame Roland, for example, reading her book in secret and precious quickly hiding it, at the least noise, in the drawers of her father's bench—her father the engraver of watches. A soul like that of Madame Roland will forgive me, I hope, not only the word crystallisation, used to express that act of madness which makes us perceive every beauty, every kind of perfection, in the woman whom we begin to love, but also several too daring ellipses besides. The reader has only to take a pencil and write between the lines the five or six words which are missing.
CHAPTER IV In a soul completely detached—a girl living in a lonely castle in the depth of the country—the slightest astonishment may bring on a slight admiration, and, if the faintest hope intervene, cause the birth of love and crystallisation(4). In this case love delights, to begin with, just as a diversion. Surprise and hope are strongly supported by the need, felt at the age of sixteen, of love and sadness. It is well known that the restlessness of that age is a thirst for love, and a peculiarity of thirst is not to be extremely fastidious about the kind of draught that fortune offers. Let us recapitulate the seven stages of love. They are:— - Admiration.
- What pleasure, etc.
- Hope.
- Love is born.
- First crystallisation.
- Doubt appears.
- Second crystallisation.
Between Nos. 1 and 2 may pass one year. One month between Nos. 2 and 3; but if hope does not make haste in coming, No. 2 is insensibly resigned as a source of unhappiness. A twinkling of the eye between Nos. 3 and 4. There is no interval between Nos. 4 and 5. The sequence can only be broken by intimate intercourse. Some days may pass between Nos. 5 and 6, according to the degree to which the character is impetuous and used to risk, but between Nos. 6 and 7 there is no interval.
CHAPTER V Man is not free to avoid doing that which gives him more pleasure to do than all other possible actions.[1] Love is like the fever(5), it is born and spends itself without the slightest intervention of the will. That is one of the principal differences between gallant-love and passion-love. And you cannot give yourself credit for the fair qualities in what you really love, any more than for a happy chance. Further, love is of all ages: observe the passion of Madame du Deffant for the graceless Horace Walpole. A more recent and more pleasing example is perhaps still remembered in Paris. In proof of great passions I admit only those of their consequences, which are exposed to ridicule: timidity, for example, proves love. I am not speaking of the bashfulness of the enfranchised schoolboy.
CHAPTER VI
THE CRYSTALS OF SALZBURG Crystallisation scarcely ceases at all during love. This is its history: so long as all is well between the lover and the loved, there is crystallisation by imaginary solution; it is only imagination which make him sure that such and such perfection exists in the woman he loves. But after intimate intercourse, fears are continually coming to life, to be allayed only by more real solutions. Thus his happiness is only uniform in its source. Each day has a different bloom. If the loved one yields to the passion, which she shares, and falls into the enormous error of killing fear by the eagerness of her transports,[1] crystallisation ceases for an instant; but when love loses some of its eagerness, that is to say some of its fears, it acquires the charm of entire abandon, of confidence without limits: a sense of sweet familiarity comes to take the edge from all the pains of life, and give to fruition another kind of interest. Are you deserted?—Crystallisation begins again; and every glance of admiration, the sight of every happiness which she can give you, and of which you thought no longer, leads up to this agonising reflexion: "That happiness, that charm, I shall meet it no more. It is lost and the fault is mine!" You may look for happiness in sensations of another kind. Your heart refuses to feel them. Imagination depicts for you well enough the physical situation, mounts you well enough on a fast hunter in Devonshire woods.[2] But you feel quite certain that there you would find no pleasure. It is the optical illusion produced by a pistol shot. Gaming has also its crystallisation, provoked by the use of the sum of money to be won. The hazards of Court life, so regretted by the nobility, under the name of Legitimists, attached themselves so dearly only by the crystallisation they provoked. No courtier existed who did not dream of the rapid fortune of a Luynes or a Lauzun, no charming woman who did not see in prospect the duchy of Madame de Polignac. No rationalist government can give back that crystallisation. Nothing is so anti-imagination as the government of the United States of America. We have noticed that to their neighbours, the savages, crystallisation is almost unknown. The Romans scarcely had an idea of it, and discovered it only for physical love. Hate has its crystallisation: as soon as it is possible to hope for revenge, hate begins again. If every creed, in which there is absurdity and inconsequence, tends to place at the head of the party the people who are most absurd, that is one more of the effects of crystallisation. Even in mathematics (observe the Newtonians in 1740) crystallisation goes on in the mind, which cannot keep before it at every moment every part of the demonstration of that which it believes. In proof, see the destiny of the great German philosophers, whose immortality, proclaimed so often, never manages to last longer than thirty or forty years. It is the impossibility of fathoming the "why?" of our feelings, which makes the most reasonable man a fanatic in music. In face of certain contradictions it is not possible to be convinced at will that we are right.
CHAPTER VII
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE BIRTH OF LOVE IN THE TWO SEXES Women attach themselves by the favours they dispense. As nineteen-twentieths of their ordinary dreams are relative to love, after intimate intercourse these day-dreams group themselves round a single object; they have to justify a course so extraordinary, so decisive, so contrary to all the habits of modesty. Men have no such task; and, besides, the imagination of women has time to work in detail upon the sweetness of such moments. As love casts doubts upon things the best proved, the woman who, before she gave herself, was perfectly sure that her lover was a man above the crowd, no sooner thinks she has nothing left to refuse him, than she is all fears lest he was only trying to put one more woman on his list. Then, and then only appears the second crystallisation, which, being hand in hand with fear, is far the stronger.[1] Yesterday a queen, to-day she sees herself a slave. This state of soul and mind is encouraged in a woman by the nervous intoxication resulting from pleasures, which are just so much keener as they are more rare. Besides, a woman before her embroidery frame—insipid work which only occupies the hand—is thinking about her lover; while he is galloping with his squadron over the plain, where leading one wrong movement would bring him under arrest. I should think, therefore, that the second crystallisation must be far stronger in the case of women, because theirs are more vivid fears; their vanity and honour are compromised; distraction at least is more difficult. A woman cannot be guided by the habit of being reasonable, which I, Man, working at things cold and reasonable for six hours every day, contract at my office perforce. Even outside love, women are inclined to abandon themselves to their imagination and habitual high spirits: faults, therefore, in the object of their love ought more rapidly to disappear. Women prefer emotion to reason—that is plain: in virtue of the futility of our customs, none of the affairs of the family fall on their shoulders, so that reason is of no use to them and they never find it of any practical good. On the contrary, to them it is always harmful; for the only object of its appearance is to scold them for the pleasures of yesterday, or forbid them others for tomorrow. Give over to your wife the management of your dealings with the bailiffs of two of your farms—I wager the accounts will be kept better than by you, and then, sorry tyrant, you will have the right at least to complain, since to make yourself loved you do not possess the talent. As soon as women enter on general reasonings, they are unconsciously making love. But in matters of detail they take pride in being stricter and more exact than men. Half the small trading is put into the hands of women, who acquit themselves of it better than their husbands. It is a well-known maxim that, if you are speaking business with a woman, you cannot be too serious. This is because they are at all times and in all places greedy of emotion.—Observe the pleasures of burial rites in Scotland.
CHAPTER VIII This was her favoured fairy realm, and here she erected her aerial palaces.—Bride of Lammermoor, Chap. III. A girl of eighteen has not enough crystallisation in her power, forms desires too limited by her narrow experiences of the things of life, to be in a position to love with as much passion as a woman of twenty-eight(4). This evening I was exposing this doctrine to a clever woman, who maintains the contrary. "A girl's imagination being chilled by no disagreeable experience, and the prime of youth burning with all its force, any man can be the motive upon which she creates a ravishing image. Every time that she meets her lover, she will enjoy, not what he is in reality, but that image of delight which she has created for herself. "Later, she is by this lover and by all men disillusioned, experience of the dark reality has lessened in her the power of crystallisation, mistrust has clipped the wings of imagination. At the instance of no man on earth, were he a very prodigy, could she form so irresistible an image: she could love no more with the same fire of her first youth. And as in love it is only the illusion formed by ourselves which we enjoy, never can the image, which she may create herself at twenty-eight, have the brilliance and the loftiness on which first love was built at sixteen: the second will always seem of a degenerate species." "No, madam. Evidently it is the presence of mistrust, absent at sixteen, which must give to this second love a different colour. In early youth love is like an immense stream, which sweeps all before it in its course, and we feel that we cannot resist it. Now at twenty-eight a gentle heart knows itself: it knows that, if it is still to find some happiness in life, from love it must be claimed; and this poor, torn heart becomes the seat of a fearful struggle between love and mistrust. Crystallisation proceeds gradually; but the crystallisation, which emerges triumphant from this terrible proof, in which the soul in all its movements never loses sight of the most awful danger, is a thousand times more brilliant and more solid than crystallisation at sixteen, in which everything, by right of age, is gaiety and happiness." "In this way love should be less gay and more passionate."[1] This conversation (Bologna, 9 March, 1820), bringing into doubt a point which seemed to me so clear, makes me believe more and more, that a man can say practically nothing with any sense on that which happens in the inmost heart of a woman of feeling: as to a coquet it is different—we also have senses and vanity. The disparity between the birth of love in the two sexes would seem to come from the nature of their hopes, which are different. One attacks, the other defends; one asks, the other refuses; one is daring, the other timid. The man reflects: "Can I please her? Will she love me?" The woman: "When he says he loves me, isn't it for sport? Is his a solid character? Can he answer to himself for the length of his attachments?" Thus it is that many women regard and treat a young man of twenty-three as a child. If he has gone through six campaigns, he finds everything different—he is a young hero. On the man's side, hope depends simply on the actions of that which he loves—nothing easier to interpret. On the side of woman, hope must rest on moral considerations—very difficult rightly to appreciate.Most men demand such a proof of love, as to their mind dissipates all doubts; women are not so fortunate as to be able to find such a proof. And there is in life this trouble for lovers—that what makes the security and happiness of one, makes the danger and almost the humiliation of the other. In love, men run the risk of the secret torture of the soul—women expose themselves to the scoffs of the public; they are more timid, and, besides, for them public opinion means much more.—"Sois considÉrÉe, il le faut."[2] They have not that sure means of ours of mastering public opinion by risking for an instant their life. Women, then, must naturally be far more mistrustful. In virtue of their habits, all the mental movements, which form periods in the birth of love, are in their case more mild, more timid, more gradual and less decided. There is therefore a greater disposition to constancy; they will less easily withdraw from a crystallisation once begun. A woman, seeing her lover, reflects with rapidity, or yields to the happiness of loving—happiness from which she is recalled in a disagreeable manner, if he make the least attack; for at the call to arms all pleasures must be abandoned. The lover's part is simpler—he looks in the eyes of the woman he loves; a single smile can raise him to the zenith of happiness, and he looks continually for it.[3] The length of the siege humiliates a man; on the contrary it makes a woman's glory. A woman is capable of loving and, for an entire year, not saying more than ten or twelve words to the man whom she loves. At the bottom of her heart she keeps note how often she has seen him—twice she went with him to the theatre, twice she sat near him at dinner, three times he bowed to her out walking. One evening during some game he kissed her hand: it is to be noticed that she allows no one since to kiss it under any pretext, at the risk even of seeming peculiar. In a man, LÉonore(6) remarked to me, such conduct would be called a feminine way of love.
CHAPTER IX I make every possible effort to be dry. I would impose silence upon my heart, which feels that it, has much to say. When I think that I have noted a truth, I always tremble lest I have written only a sigh.
CHAPTER X In proof of crystallisation I shall content myself with recalling the following anecdote. A young woman hears that Edward, her relation, who is to return from the Army, is a youth of great distinction; she is assured that he loves her on her reputation; but he will want probably to see her, before making a proposal and asking her of her parents. She notices a young stranger at church, she hears him called Edward, she thinks of nothing but him—she is in love with him. Eight days later the real Edward arrives; he is not the Edward of church. She turns pale and will be unhappy for ever, if she is forced to marry him. That is what the poor of understanding call an example of the senselessness of love. A man of generosity lavishes the most delicate benefits upon a girl in distress. No one could have more virtues, and love was about to be born; but he wears a shabby hat, and she notices that he is awkward in the saddle. The girl confesses with a sigh that she cannot return the warm feelings, which he evidently has for her. A man pays his attentions to a lady of the greatest respectability. She hears that this gentleman has had physical troubles of a comical nature: she finds him intolerable. And yet she had no intention of giving herself to him, and these secret troubles in no way blighted his understanding or amiability. It is simply that crystallisation was made impossible. In order that a human being may delight in deifying an object to be loved, be it taken from the Ardennes forest or picked up at a Bal de Coulon, that it seems to him perfect is the first necessity—perfect by no means in every relation, but in every relation in which it is seen at the time. Perfect in all respects it will seem only after several days of the second crystallisation. The reason is simple—then it is enough to have the idea of a perfection in order to see it in the object of our love. Beauty is only thus far necessary to the birth of love—ugliness must not form an obstacle. The lover soon comes to find his mistress beautiful, such as she is, without thinking of ideal beauty. The features which make up the ideally beautiful would promise, if he could see them, a quantity of happiness, if I may use the expression, which I would express by the number one; whereas the features of his mistress, such as they are, promise him one thousand units of happiness. Before the birth of love beauty is necessary as advertisement: it predisposes us towards that passion by means of the praises, which we hear given to the object of our future love. Very eager admiration makes the smallest hope decisive. In gallant-love, and perhaps in passion-love during the first five minutes, a woman, considering a possible lover, gives more weight to the way in which he is seen by other women, than to the way in which she sees him herself. Hence the success of princes and officers.[1] The pretty women of the Court of old king Lewis XIV were in love with that sovereign.Great care should be taken not to offer facilities to hope, before it is certain that admiration is there. It might give rise to dullness, which makes love for ever impossible, and which, at any rate, is only to be cured by the sting of wounded pride. No one feels sympathy for the simpleton, nor for a smile which is always there; hence the necessity in society of a veneer of rakishness—that is, the privileged manner. From too debased a plant we scorn to gather even a smile. In love, our vanity disdains a victory which is too easy; and in all matters man is not given to magnifying the value of an offering.
CHAPTER XI Crystallisation having once begun, we enjoy with delight each new beauty discovered in that which we love. But what is beauty? It is the appearance of an aptitude for giving you pleasure. The pleasures of all individuals are different and often opposed to one another; which explains very well how that, which is beauty for one individual, is ugliness for another. (Conclusive example of Del Rosso and Lisio, 1st January, 1820.) The right way to discover the nature of beauty is to look for the nature of the pleasures of each individual. Del Rosso, for example, needs a woman who allows a certain boldness of movement, and who by her smiles authorises considerable licence; a woman who at each instant holds physical pleasures before his imagination, and who excites in him the power of pleasing, while giving him at the same time the means of displaying it. Apparently, by love Del Rosso understands physical love, and Lisio passion-love. Obviously they are not likely to agree about the word beauty.[1] The beauty then, discovered by you, being the appearance of an aptitude for giving you pleasure, and pleasure being different from pleasure as man from man, the crystallisation formed in the head of each individual must bear the colour of that individual's pleasures.A man's crystallisation of his mistress, or her beauty, is no other thing than the collection of all the satisfactions of all the desires, which he can have felt successively at her instance.
CHAPTER XII
FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF CRYSTALLISATION Why do we enjoy with delight each new beauty, discovered in that which we love? It is because each new beauty gives the full and entire satisfaction of a desire. You wish your mistress gentle—she is gentle; and then you wish her proud like Emilie in Corneille, and although these qualities are probably incompatible, instantly she appears with the soul of a Roman. That is the moral reason which makes love the strongest of the passions. In all others, desires must accommodate themselves to cold realities; here it is realities which model themselves spontaneously upon desires. Of all the passions, therefore, it is in love that violent desires find the greatest satisfaction. There are certain general conditions of happiness, whose influence extends over every fulfilment of particular desires:— 1. She seems to belong to you, for you only can make her happy. 2. She is the judge of your worth. This condition was very important at the gallant and chivalrous Courts of Francis I and Henry II, and at the elegant Court of Lewis XV. Under a constitutional and rationalist government women lose this range of influence entirely. 3. For a romantic heart—The loftier her soul, the more sublime will be the pleasures that await her in your arms, and the more purified of the dross of all vulgar considerations.The majority of young Frenchmen are, at eighteen, disciples of Rousseau; for them this condition of happiness is important. In the midst of operations so apt to mislead our desire of happiness, there is no keeping cool. For, the moment he is in love, the steadiest man sees no object such as it is. His own advantages he minimises, and magnifies the smallest favours of the loved one. Fears and hopes take at once a tinge of the romantic. (Wayward.) He no longer attributes anything to chance; he loses the perception of probability; in its effect upon his happiness a thing imagined is a thing existent.[1] A terrible symptom that you are losing your head:—you think of some little thing which is difficult to make out; you see it white, and interpret that in favour of your love; a moment later you notice that actually it is black, and still you find it conclusively favourable to your love. Then indeed the soul, a prey to mortal uncertainties, feels keenly the need of a friend. But there is no friend for the lover. The Court knew that; and it is the source of the only kind of indiscretion which a woman of delicacy might forgive.
CHAPTER XIII
OF THE FIRST STEP; OF THE FASHIONABLE WORLD; OF MISFORTUNES That which is most surprising in the passion of love is the first step—the extravagance of the change, which comes over a man's brain. The fashionable world, with its brilliant parties, is of service to love in favouring this first step. It begins by changing simple admiration (i) into tender admiration (ii)—what pleasure to kiss her, etc. In a salon lit by thousands of candles a fast valse throws a fever upon young hearts, eclipses timidity, swells the consciousness of power—in fact, gives them the daring to love. For to see a lovable object is not enough: on the contrary, the fact that it is extremely lovable discourages a gentle soul—he must see it, if not in love with him,[1] at least despoiled of its majesty. Who takes it into his head to become the paramour of a queen unless the advances are from her?[2] Thus nothing is more favourable to the birth of love than a life of irksome solitude, broken now and again by a long-desired ball. This is the plan of wise mothers who have daughters. The real fashionable world, such as was found at the Court of France,[3] and which since 1780,[4] I think, exists no more, was unfavourable to love, because it made the solitude and the leisure, indispensable to the work of crystallisation, almost impossible. Court life gives the habit of observing and making a great number of subtle distinctions, and the subtlest distinction may be the beginning of an admiration and of a passion.[5] When the troubles of love are mixed with those of another kind (the troubles of vanity—if your mistress offend your proper pride, your sense of honour or personal dignity—troubles of health, money and political persecution, etc.), it is only in appearance that love is increased by these annoyances. Occupying the imagination otherwise, they prevent crystallisation in love still hopeful, and in happy love the birth of little doubts. When these misfortunes have departed, the sweetness and the folly of love return. Observe that misfortunes favour the birth of love in light and unsensitive characters, and that, after it is born, misfortunes, which existed before, are favourable to it; in as much as the imagination, recoiling from the gloomy impressions offered by all the other circumstances of life, throws itself wholly into the work of crystallisation.
CHAPTER XIV The following point, which will be disputed, I offer only to those—shall I say unhappy enough?—to have loved with passion during long years, and loved in the face of invincible obstacles:— The sight of all that is extremely beautiful in nature and in art recalls, with the swiftness of lightning, the memory of that which we love. It is by the process of the jewelled branch in the mines of Salzburg, that everything in the world which is beautiful and lofty contributes to the beauty of that which we love, and that forthwith a sudden glimpse of delight fills the eyes with tears. In this way, love and the love of beauty give life mutually to one another. One of life's miseries is that the happiness of seeing and talking to the object of our love leaves no distinct memories behind. The soul, it seems, is too troubled by its emotions for that which causes or accompanies them to impress it. The soul and its sensations are one and the same. It is perhaps because these pleasures cannot be used up by voluntary recollection, that they return again and again with such force, as soon as ever some object comes to drag us from day-dreams devoted to the woman we love, and by some new connexion[1] to bring her still more vividly to our memory. A dry old architect used to meet her in society every evening. Following a natural impulse, and without paying attention to what I was saying to her,[2] I one day sang his praises in a sentimental and pompous strain, which made her laugh at me. I had not the strength to say to her: "He sees you every evening." So powerful is this sensation that it extends even to the person of my enemy, who is always at her side. When I see her, she reminds me of LÉonore so much, that at the time I cannot hate her, however much I try. It looks as if, by a curious whim of the heart, the charm, which the woman we love can communicate, were greater than that which she herself possesses. The vision of that distant city, where we saw her a moment,[3] throws us into dreams sweeter and more profound than would her very presence. It is the effect of harsh treatment. The day-dreams of love cannot be scrutinised. I have observed that I can re-read a good novel every three years with the same pleasure. It gives me feelings akin to the kind of emotional taste, which dominates me at the moment, or if my feelings are nil, makes for variety in my ideas. Also, I can listen with pleasure to the same music, but, in this, memory must not intrude. The imagination should be affected and nothing else; if, at the twentieth representation, an opera gives more pleasure, it is either because the music is better understood, or because it also brings back the feeling it gave at the first. As to new lights, which a novel may throw upon our knowledge of the human heart, I still remember clearly the old ones, and am pleased even to find them noted in the margin. But this kind of pleasure pertains to the novels, in so far as they advance me in the knowledge of man, and not in the least to day-dreaming—the veritable pleasure of novels. Such day-dreaming is inscrutable. To watch it is for the present to kill it, for you fall into a philosophical analysis of pleasure; and it is killing it still more certainly for the future, for nothing is surer to paralyse the imagination than the appeal to memory(9). If I find in the margin a note, depicting my feelings on reading Old Mortality three years ago in Florence, I am plunged immediately into the history of my life, into an estimate of the degree of happiness at the two epochs, in short, into the deepest problems of philosophy—and then good-bye for a long season to the unchecked play of tender feelings. Every great poet with a lively imagination is timid, he is afraid of men, that is to say, for the interruptions and troubles with which they can invade the delight of his dreams. He fears for his concentration. Men come along with their gross interests to drag him from the gardens of Armida, and force him into a fetid slough: only by irritating him can they fix his attention on themselves. It is this habit of feeding his soul upon touching dreams and this horror of the vulgar which draws a great artist so near to love. The more of the great artist a man has in him, the more must he wish for titles and honours as a bulwark. [1] Scents.
CHAPTER XV Suddenly in the midst of the most violent and the most thwarted passion come moments, when a man believes that he is in love no longer—as it were a spring of fresh water in the middle of the sea. To think of his mistress is no longer very much pleasure, and, although he is worn-out by the severity of her treatment, the fact that everything in life has lost its interest is a still greater misery. After a manner of existence which, fitful though it was, gave to all nature a new aspect, passionate and absorbing, now follows the dreariest and most despondent void. It may be that your last visit to the woman, whom you love, left you in a situation, from which, once before, your imagination had gathered the full harvest of sensation. For example, after a period of coldness, she has treated you less badly, letting you conceive exactly the same degree of hope and by the same external signs as on a previous occasion—all this perhaps unconsciously. Imagination picks up memory and its sinister warnings by the way, and instantly crystallisation[1] ceases.
CHAPTER XVI In a small port, the name of which I forget, near Perpignan, 25th February, 1822.[1] This evening I have just found out that music, when it is perfect, puts the heart into the same state as it enjoys in the presence of the loved one—that is to say, it gives seemingly the keenest happiness existing on the face of the earth. If this were so for all men, there would be no more favourable incentive to love. But I had already remarked at Naples last year that perfect music, like perfect pantomime, makes me think of that which is at the moment the object of my dreams, and that the ideas, which it suggests to me, are excellent: at Naples, it was on the means of arming the Greeks. Now this evening I cannot deceive myself—I have the misfortune of being too great an admirer of milady L.[2] And perhaps the perfect music, which I have had the luck to hear again, after two or three months of privation, although going nightly to the Opera, has simply had the effect, which I recognised long ago—I mean that of producing lively thoughts on what is already in the heart. March 4th—eight days later. I dare neither erase nor approve the preceding observation. Certain it is that, as I wrote it, I read it in my heart. If to-day I bring it into question, it is because I have lost the memory of what I saw at that time. The habit of hearing music and dreaming its dreams disposes towards love. A sad and gentle air, provided it is not too dramatic, so that the imagination is forced to dwell on the action, is a direct stimulant to dreams of love and a delight for gentle and unhappy souls: for example, the drawn-out passage on the clarionet at the beginning of the quartet in Bianca and Faliero(10), and the recitative of La Camporesi towards the middle of the quartet. A lover at peace with his mistress enjoys to distraction Rossini's famous duet in Armida and Rinaldo, depicting so justly the little doubts of happy love and the moments of delight which follow its reconciliations. It seems to him that the instrumental part, which comes in the middle of the duet, at the moment when Rinaldo wishes to fly, and represents in such an amazing way the conflict of the passions, has a physical influence upon his heart and touches it in reality. On this subject I dare not say what I feel; I should pass for a madman among people of the north.
CHAPTER XVII
BEAUTY DETHRONED BY LOVE Alberic meets in a box at the theatre a woman more beautiful than his mistress (I beg to be allowed here a mathematical valuation)—that is to say, her features promise three units of happiness instead of two, supposing the quantity of happiness given by perfect beauty to be expressed by the number four. Is it surprising that he prefers the features of his mistress, which promise a hundred units of happiness for him? Even the minor defects of her face, a small-pox mark, for example, touches the heart of the man who loves, and, when he observes them even in another woman, sets him dreaming far away. What, then, when he sees them in his mistress? Why, he has felt a thousand sentiments in presence of that small-pox mark, sentiments for the most part sweet, and all of the greatest interest; and now, such as they are, they are evoked afresh with incredible vividness by the sight of this sign, even in the face of another woman. If ugliness thus comes to be preferred and loved, it is because in this case ugliness is beauty.[1] A man was passionately in love with a woman, very thin and scarred with small-pox: death bereft him of her. At Rome, three years after, he makes friends with two women, one more lovely than the day, the other thin, scarred with small-pox, and thereby, if you will, quite ugly. There he is, at the end of a week, in love with the ugly one—and this week he employs in effacing her ugliness with his memories; and with a very pardonable coquetry the lesser beauty did not fail to help him in the operation with a slight whip-up of the pulse.[2] A man meets a woman and is offended by her ugliness; soon, if she is unpretentious, her expression makes him forget the defects of her features; he finds her amiable—he conceives that one could love her. A week later he has hopes; another week and they are taken from him; another and he's mad.
CHAPTER XVIII
LIMITATIONS OF BEAUTY An analogy is to be seen at the theatre in the reception of the public's favourite actors: the spectators are no longer conscious of the beauty or ugliness which the actors have in reality. Lekain, for all his remarkable ugliness, had a harvest of broken hearts—Garrick also. There are several reasons for this; the principal being that it was no longer the actual beauty of their features or their ways which people saw, but emphatically that which imagination was long since used to lend them, as a return for, and in memory of, all the pleasure they had given it. Why, take a comedian—his face alone raises a laugh as he first walks on. A girl going for the first time to the FranÇais would perhaps feel some antipathy to Lekain during the first scene; but soon he was making her weep or shiver—and how resist him as TancrÈde[1] or Orosmane? If his ugliness were still a little visible to her eyes, the fervour of an entire audience, and the nervous effect produced upon a young heart,[2] soon managed to eclipse it. If anything was still heard about his ugliness, it was mere talk; but not a word of it—Lekain's lady enthusiasts could be heard to exclaim "He's lovely!" Remember that beauty is the expression of character, or, put differently, of moral habits, and that consequently it is exempt from all passion. Now it is passion that we want. Beauty can only supply us with probabilities about a woman, and probabilities, moreover, based on her capacity for self-possession; while the glances of your mistress with her small-pox scars are a delightful reality, which destroys all the probabilities in the world.
CHAPTER XIX
LIMITATIONS OF BEAUTY—(continued) A woman of quick fancy and tender heart, but timid and cautious in her sensibility, who the day after she appears in society, passes in review a thousand times nervously and painfully all that she may have said or given hint of—such a woman, I say, grows easily used to want of beauty in a man: it is hardly an obstacle in rousing her affection. It is really on the same principle that you care next to nothing for the degree of beauty in a mistress, whom you adore and who repays you with harshness. You have very nearly stopped crystallising her beauty, and when your friend in need tells you that she isn't pretty, you are almost ready to agree. Then he thinks he has made great way. My friend, brave Captain Trab, described to me this evening his feelings on seeing Mirabeau once upon a time. No one looking upon that great man felt a disagreeable sensation in the eyes—that is to say, found him ugly. People were carried away by his thundering words; they fixed their attention, they delighted in fixing their attention, only on what was beautiful in his face. As he had practically no beautiful features (in the sense of sculpturesque or picturesque beauty) they minded only what beauty he had of another kind, the beauty of expression.[1]While attention was blind to all traces of ugliness, picturesquely speaking, it fastened on the smallest passable details with fervour—for example, the beauty of his vast head of hair. If he had had horns, people would have thought them lovely.[2]The appearance every evening of a pretty dancer forces a little interest from those poor souls, blasÉ or bereft of imagination, who adorn the balcony of the opera. By her graceful movements, daring and strange, she awakens their physical love and procures them perhaps the only crystallisation of which they are still capable. This is the way by which a young scarecrow, who in the street would not have been honoured with a glance, least of all from people the worse for wear, has only to appear frequently on the stage, and she manages to get herself handsomely supported. Geoffroy used to say that the theatre is the pedestal of woman. The more notorious and the more dilapidated a dancer, the more she is worth; hence the green-room proverb: "Some get sold at a price who wouldn't be taken as a gift." These women steal part of their passions from their lovers, and are very susceptible of love from pique. How manage not to connect generous or lovable sentiments with the face of an actress, in whose features there is nothing repugnant, whom for two hours every evening we see expressing the most noble feelings, and whom otherwise we do not know? When at last you succeed in being received by her, her features recall such pleasing feelings, that the entire reality which surrounds her, however little nobility it may sometimes possess, is instantly invested with romantic and touching colours. "Devotee, in the days of my youth, of that boring French tragedy,[3] whenever I had the luck of supping with Mlle. Olivier, I found myself every other moment overbrimming with respect, in the belief that I was speaking to a queen; and really I have never been quite sure whether, in her case, I had fallen in love with a queen or a pretty tart."
CHAPTER XX Perhaps men who are not susceptible to the feelings of passion-love are those most keenly sensitive to the effects of beauty: that at least is the strongest impression which such men can receive of women. He who has felt his heart beating at a distant glimpse of the white satin hat of the woman he loves, is quite amazed by the chill left upon him by the approach of the greatest beauty in the world. He may even have a qualm of distress, to observe the excitement of others. Extremely lovely women cause less surprise the second day. 'Tis a great misfortune, it discourages crystallisation. Their merit being obvious to all and public property, they are bound to reckon more fools in the list of their lovers than princes, millionaires, etc.[1]
CHAPTER XXI
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT Imaginative souls are sensitive and also mistrustful, even the most ingenuous,[1]—I maintain. They may be suspicious without knowing it: they have had so many disappointments in life. Thus everything set-out and official, when a man is first introduced, scares the imagination and drives away the possibility of crystallisation; the romantic is then, on the contrary, love's triumph. Nothing simpler—for in the supreme astonishment, which keeps the thoughts busy for long upon something out of the ordinary, is already half the mental exercise necessary to crystallisation. I will quote the beginning of the Amours of SÉraphine (Gil Blas, Bk. IV, Chap. X). It is Don Fernando who tells the story of his flight, when pursued by the agents of the inquisition.... After crossing several walks I came to a drawing-room, the door of which was also left open. I entered, and when I had observed all its magnificence.... One side of the room a door stood ajar; I partly opened it and saw a suite of apartments whereof only the furthest was lighted. "What is to be done now?" I asked myself.... I could not resist my curiosity.... Advancing boldly, I went through all the rooms and reached one where there was a light—to wit, a taper upon a marble table in a silver-gilt candlestick.... But soon afterwards, casting my eyes upon a bed, the curtains of which were partly drawn on account of the heat, I perceived an object which at once engrossed my attention: a young lady, fast asleep in spite of the noise of the thunder, which had just been bursting forth. I softly drew near her. My mind was suddenly troubled at the sight. Whilst I feasted my eyes with the pleasure of beholding her, she awoke. Imagine her surprise at seeing in her room at midnight a man who was an utter stranger to her! She trembled on beholding me and shrieked aloud.... I took pains to reassure her and throwing myself on my knees before her, said—"Madam, have no fear." She called her women.... Grown a little braver by his (an old servant's) presence, she haughtily asked me who was, etc. etc."[2]
There is an introduction not easily to be forgotten! On the other hand, could there be anything sillier in our customs of to-day than the official, and at the same time almost sentimental, introduction of the young wooer to his future wife: such legal prostitution goes so far as to be almost offensive to modesty. "I have just been present this afternoon, February 17th, 1790," says Chamfort, "at a so-called family function. That is to say, men of respectable reputation and a decent company were congratulating on her good fortune Mlle. de Marille, a young person of beauty, wit and virtue, who is to be favoured with becoming the wife of M. R.—an unhealthy dotard, repulsive, dishonest, and mad, but rich: she has seen him for the third time to-day, when signing the contract. If anything characterises an age of infamy, it is the jubilation on an occasion like this, it is the folly of such joy and—looking ahead—the sanctimonious cruelty, with which the same society will heap contempt without reserve upon the pettiest imprudence of a poor young woman in love." Ceremony of all kinds, being in its essence something affected and set-out beforehand, in which the point is to act "properly," paralyses the imagination and leaves it awake only to that which is opposed to the object of the ceremony, e. g. something comical—whence the magic effect of the slightest joke. A poor girl, struggling against nervousness and attacks of modesty during the official introduction of her fiancÉ, can think of nothing but the part she is playing, and this again is a certain means of stifling the imagination. Modesty has far more to say against getting into bed with a man whom you have seen but twice, after three Latin words have been spoken in church, than against giving way despite yourself to the man whom for two years you have adored. But I am talking double Dutch. The fruitful source of the vices and mishaps, which follow our marriages nowadays, is the Church of Rome. It makes liberty for girls impossible before marriage, and divorce impossible, when once they have made their mistake, or rather when they find out the mistake of the choice forced on them. Compare Germany, the land of happy marriages: a delightful princess (Madame la Duchesse de Sa——) has just married in all good faith for the fourth time, and has not failed to ask to the wedding her three first husbands, with whom she is on the best terms. That is going too far; but a single divorce, which punishes a husband for his tyranny, prevents a thousand cases of unhappy wedded life. What is amusing is that Rome is one of the places where you see most divorces. Love goes out at first sight towards a face, which reveals in a man at once something to respect and something to pity.
CHAPTER XXII
OF INFATUATION The most fastidious spirits are very given to curiosity and prepossession: this is to be seen, especially, in beings in which that sacred fire, the source of the passions, is extinct—in fact it is one of the most fatal symptoms. There is also the infatuation of schoolboys just admitted to society. At the two poles of life, with too much or too little sensibility, there is little chance of simple people getting the right effect from things, or feeling the genuine sensation which they ought to give. These beings, either too ardent or excessive in their ardour, amorous on credit, if one may use the expression, throw themselves at objects instead of awaiting them. From afar off and without looking they enfold things in that imaginary charm, of which they find a perennial source within themselves, long before sensation, which is the consequence of the object's nature, has had time to reach them. Then, on coming to close quarters, they see these things not such as they are, but as they have made them; they think they are enjoying such and such an object, while, under cover of that object, they are enjoying themselves. But one fine day a man gets tired of keeping the whole thing going; he discovers that his idol is not playing the game; infatuation collapses and the resulting shock to his self-esteem makes him unfair to that which he appreciated too highly.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE THUNDERBOLT FROM THE BLUE(11) So ridiculous an expression ought to be changed, yet the thing exists. I have seen the amiable and noble Wilhelmina, the despair of the beaux of Berlin, making light of love and laughing at its folly. In the brilliance of youth, wit, beauty and all kinds of good luck—a boundless fortune, giving her the opportunity of developing all her qualities, seemed to conspire with nature to give the world an example, rarely seen, of perfect happiness bestowed upon an object perfectly worthy. She was twenty-three years old and, already some time at Court, had won the homage of the bluest blood. Her virtue, unpretentious but invulnerable, was quoted as a pattern. Henceforth the most charming men, despairing of their powers of fascination, aspired only to make her their friend. One evening she goes to a ball at Prince Ferdinand's: she dances for ten minutes with a young Captain. "From that moment," she writes subsequently to a friend,[1] "he was master of my heart and of me, and this to a degree that would have filled me with terror, if the happiness of seeing Herman had left me time to think of the rest of existence. My only thought was to observe whether he gave me a little notice. "To-day the only consolation that I might find for my fault is to nurse the illusion within me, that it is through a superior power that I am lost to reason and to myself. I have no word to describe, in a way that comes at all near the reality, the degree of disorder and turmoil to which the mere sight of him could bring my whole being. I blush to think of the rapidity and the violence with which I was drawn towards him. If his first word, when at last he spoke to me, had been 'Do you adore me?'—truly I should not have had the power to have answered anything but 'yes.' I was far from thinking that the effect of a feeling could be at once so sudden and so unforeseen. In fact, for an instant, I believed that I had been poisoned. "Unhappily you and the world, my dear friend, know how well I have loved Herman. Well, after quarter of an hour he was so dear to me that he cannot have become dearer since. I saw then all his faults and I forgave them all, provided only he would love me. "Soon after I had danced with him, the king left: Herman, who belonged to the suite, had to follow him. With him, everything in nature disappeared. It is no good to try to depict the excess of weariness with which I felt weighed down, as soon as he was out of my sight. It was equal only to the keenness of my desire to be alone with myself. "At last I got away. No sooner the door of my room shut and bolted than I wanted to resist my passion. I thought I should succeed. Ah, dear friend, believe me I paid dear that evening and the following days for the pleasure of being able to credit myself with some virtue." The preceding lines are the exact story of an event which was the topic of the day; for after a month or two poor Wilhelmina was unfortunate enough for people to take notice of her feelings. Such was the origin of that long series of troubles by which she perished so young and so tragically—poisoned by herself or her lover. All that we could see in this young Captain was that he was an excellent dancer; he had plenty of gaiety and still more assurance, a general air of good nature and spent his time with prostitutes; for the rest, scarcely a nobleman, quite poor and not seen at Court.In these cases it is not enough to have no misgivings—one must be sick of misgivings—have, so to speak, the impatience of courage to face life's chances. The soul of a woman, grown tired, without noticing it, of living without loving, convinced in spite of herself by the example of other women—all the fears of life surmounted and the sorry happiness of pride found wanting—ends in creating unconsciously a model, an ideal. One day she meets this model: crystallisation recognises its object by the commotion it inspires and consecrates for ever to the master of its fortunes the fruit of all its previous dreams.[2] Women, whose hearts are open to this misfortune, have too much grandeur of soul to love otherwise than with passion. They would be saved if they could stoop to gallantry. As "thunderbolts" come from a secret lassitude in what the catechism calls Virtue, and from boredom brought on by the uniformity of perfection, I should be inclined to think that it would generally be the privilege of what is known in the world as "a bad lot" to bring them down. I doubt very much whether rigidity À la Cato has ever been the occasion of a "thunderbolt." What makes them so rare is that if the heart, thus disposed to love beforehand, has the slightest inkling of its situation, there is no thunderbolt. The soul of a woman, whom troubles have made mistrustful, is not susceptible of this revolution. Nothing facilitates "a thunderbolt" like praise, given in advance and by women, to the person who is to occasion it. False "thunderbolts" form one of the most comic sources of love stories. A weary woman, but one without much feeling, thinks for a whole evening that she is in love for life. She is proud of having found at last one of those great commotions of the soul, which used to allure her imagination. The next day she no longer knows where to hide her face and, still more, how to avoid the wretched object she was adoring the night before. Clever people know how to spot, that is to say, make capital out of these "thunderbolts." Physical love also has its "thunderbolts." Yesterday in her carriage with the prettiest and most easy-going woman in Berlin, we saw her suddenly blush. She became deeply absorbed and preoccupied. Handsome Lieutenant Findorff had just passed. In the evening at the play, according to her own confession to me, she was out of her mind, she was beside herself, she could think of nothing but Findorff, to whom she had never spoken. If she had dared, she told me, she would have sent for him—that pretty face bore all the signs of the most violent passion. The next day it was still going on. After three days, Findorff having played the blockhead, she thought no more about it. A month later she loathed him.
CHAPTER XXIV
VOYAGE IN AN UNKNOWN LAND I advise the majority of people born in the North to skip the present chapter. It is an obscure dissertation upon certain phenomena relative to the orange-tree, a plant which does not grow or reach its full height except in Italy and Spain. In order to be intelligible elsewhere, I should have had to cut down the facts. I should have had no hesitation about this, if for a single moment I had intended to write a book to be generally appreciated. But Heaven having refused me the writer's gift, I have thought solely of describing with all the ill-grace of science, but also with all its exactitude, certain facts, of which I became involuntarily the witness through a prolonged sojourn in the land of the orange-tree. Frederick the Great, or some such other distinguished man from the North, who never had the opportunity of seeing the orange-tree growing in the open, would doubtless have denied the facts which follow—and denied in good faith. I have an infinite respect for such good faith and can see its wherefore. As this sincere declaration may seem presumption, I append the following reflexion:— We write haphazard, each one of us what we think true, and each gives the lie to his neighbour. I see in our books so many tickets in a lottery and in reality they have no more value. Posterity, forgetting some and reprinting others, declares the lucky numbers. And in so far, each one of us having written as best he can, what he thinks true, has no right to laugh at his neighbour—except where the satire is amusing. In that case he is always right, especially if he writes like M. Courrier to Del Furia(12). After this preamble, I am going bravely to enter into the examination of facts which, I am convinced, have rarely been observed at Paris. But after all at Paris, superior as of course it is to all other towns, orange-trees are not seen growing out in the open, as at Sorrento, and it is there that Lisio Visconti observed and noted the following facts—at Sorrento, the country of Tasso, on the Bay of Naples in a position half-way down to the sea, still more picturesque than that of Naples itself, but where no one reads the Miroir. When we are to see in the evening the woman we love, the suspense, the expectation of so great a happiness makes every moment, which separates us from it, unbearable. A devouring fever makes us take up and lay aside twenty different occupations. We look every moment at our watch—overjoyed when we see that we have managed to pass ten minutes without looking at the time. The hour so longed-for strikes at last, and when we are at her door ready to knock—we would be glad not to find her in. It is only on reflexion that we would be sorry for it. In a word, the suspense before seeing her produces an unpleasant effect. There you have one of the things which make good folk say that love drives men silly. The reason is that the imagination, violently withdrawn from dreams of delight in which every step forward brings happiness, is brought back face to face with severe reality. The gentle soul knows well that in the combat which is to begin the moment he sees her, the least inadvertency, the least lack of attention or of courage will be paid for by a defeat, poisoning, for a long time to come, the dreams of fancy and of passion, and humiliating to a man's pride, if he try to find consolation outside the sphere of passion. He says to himself: "I hadn't the wit, I hadn't the pluck"; but the only way to have pluck before the loved one is by loving her a little less. It is a fragment of attention, torn by force with so much trouble from the dreams of crystallisation, which allows the crowd of things to escape us during our first words with the woman we love—things which have no sense or which have a sense contrary to what we mean—or else, what is still more heartrending, we exaggerate our feelings and they become ridiculous in our own eyes. We feel vaguely that we are not paying enough attention to our words and mechanically set about polishing and loading our oratory. And, also, it is impossible to hold one's tongue—silence would be embarrassing and make it still less possible to give one's thoughts to her. So we say in a feeling way a host of things that we do not feel, and would be quite embarrassed to repeat, obstinately keeping our distance from the woman before us, in order more really to be with her. In the early hours of my acquaintance with love, this oddity which I felt within me, made me believe that I did not love. I understand cowardice and how recruits, to be delivered of their fear, throw themselves recklessly into the midst of the fire. The number of silly things I have said in the last two years, in order not to hold my tongue, makes me mad when I think of them. And that is what should easily mark in a woman's eyes the difference between passion-love and gallantry, between the gentle soul and the prosaic.[1] In these decisive moments the one gains as much as the other loses: the prosaic soul gets just the degree of warmth which he ordinarily wants, while excess of feeling drives mad the poor gentle heart, who, to crown his troubles, really means to hide his madness. Completely taken up with keeping his own transports in check, he is miles away from the self-possession necessary in order to seize opportunities, and leaves in a muddle after a visit, in which the prosaic soul would have made a great step forward. Directly it is a question of advancing his too violent passion, a gentle being with pride cannot be eloquent under the eye of the woman whom he loves: the pain of ill-success is too much for him. The vulgar being, on the contrary, calculates nicely the chances of success: he is stopped by no foretastes of the suffering of defeat, and, proud of that which makes him vulgar, laughs at the gentle soul, who, with all the cleverness he may have, is never quite enough at ease to say the simplest things and those most certain to succeed. The gentle soul, far from being able to grasp anything by force, must resign himself to obtaining nothing except through the charity of her whom he loves. If the woman one loves really has feelings, one always has reason to regret having wished to put pressure on oneself in order to make love to her. One looks shame-faced, looks chilly, would look deceitful, did not passion betray itself by other and surer signs. To express what we feel so keenly, and in such detail, at every moment of the day, is a task we take upon our shoulders because we have read novels; for if we were natural, we would never undertake anything so irksome. Instead of wanting to speak of what we felt a quarter of an hour ago, and of trying to make of it a general and interesting topic, we would express simply the passing fragment of our feelings at the moment. But no! we put the most violent pressure upon ourselves for a worthless success, and, as there is no evidence of actual sensation to back our words, and as our memory cannot be working freely, we approve at the time of things to say—and say them—comical to a degree that is more than humiliating. When at last, after an hour's trouble, this extremely painful effort has resulted in getting away from the enchanted gardens of the imagination, in order to enjoy quite simply the presence of what you love, it often happens—that you've got to take your leave.All this looks like extravagance, but I have seen better still. A woman, whom one of my friends loved to idolatry, pretending to take offence at some or other want of delicacy, which I was never allowed to learn, condemned him all of a sudden to see her only twice a month. These visits, so rare and so intensely desired, meant an attack of madness, and it wanted all Salviati's strength of character to keep it from being seen by outward signs. From the very first, the idea of the visit's end is too insistent for one to be able to take pleasure in the visit. One speaks a great deal, deaf to one's own thoughts, saying often the contrary of what one thinks. One embarks upon discourses which have got suddenly to be cut short, because of their absurdity—if one manage to rouse oneself and listen to one's thoughts within. The effort we make is so violent that we seem chilly. Love hides itself in its excess. Away from her, the imagination was lulled by the most charming dialogues: there were transports the most tender and the most touching. And thus for ten days or so you think you have the courage to speak; but two days before what should have been our day of happiness, the fever begins, and, as the terrible instant draws near, its force redoubles. Just as you come into her salon, in order not to do or say some incredible piece of nonsense, you clutch in despair at the resolution of keeping your mouth shut and your eyes on her—in order at least to be able to remember her face. Scarcely before her, something like a kind of drunkenness comes over your eyes; you feel driven like a maniac to do strange actions; it is as if you had two souls—one to act and the other to blame your actions. You feel, in a confused way, that to turn your strained attention to folly would temporarily refresh the blood, and make you lose from sight the end of the visit and the misery of parting for a fortnight.If some bore be there, who tells a pointless story, the poor lover, in his inexplicable madness, as if he were nervous of losing moments so rare, becomes all attention. That hour, of which he drew himself so sweet a picture, passes like a flash of lightning and yet he feels, with unspeakable bitterness, all the little circumstances which show how much a stranger he has become to her whom he loves. There he is in the midst of indifferent visitors and sees himself the only one who does not know her life of these past days, in all its details. At last he goes: and as he coldly says good-bye, he has the agonising feeling of two whole weeks before another meeting. Without a doubt he would suffer less never to see the object of his love again. It is in the style, only far blacker, of the Duc de Policastro, who every six months travelled a hundred leagues to see for a quarter of an hour at Lecce a beloved mistress guarded by a jealous husband. Here you can see clearly Will without influence upon Love. Out of all patience with one's mistress and oneself, how furious the desire to bury oneself in indifference! The only good of such visits is to replenish the treasure of crystallisation. Life for Salviati was divided into periods of two weeks, which took their colour from the last evening he had been allowed to see Madame ——. For example, he was in the seventh heaven of delight the 21st of May, and the 2nd of June he kept away from home, for fear of yielding to the temptation of blowing out his brains. I saw that evening how badly novelists have drawn the moment of suicide. Salviati simply said to me: "I'm thirsty, I must take this glass of water." I did not oppose his resolution, but said good-bye: then he broke down. Seeing the obscurity which envelops the discourse of lovers, it would not be prudent to push too far conclusions drawn from an isolated detail of their conversation. They give a fair glimpse of their feelings only in sudden expressions—then it is the cry of the heart. Otherwise it is from the complexion of the bulk of what is said that inductions are to be drawn. And we must remember that quite often a man, who is very moved, has no time to notice the emotion of the person who is the cause of his own. [1] The word was one of LÉonore's.
CHAPTER XXV
THE INTRODUCTION To see the subtlety and sureness of judgment with which women grasp certain details, I am lost in admiration: but a moment later, I see them praise a blockhead to the skies, let themselves be moved to tears by a piece of insipidity, or weigh gravely a fatuous affectation, as if it were a telling characteristic. I cannot conceive such simplicity. There must be some general law in all this, unknown to me. Attentive to one merit in a man and absorbed by one detail, women feel it deeply and have no eyes for the rest. All the nervous fluid is used up in the enjoyment of this quality: there is none left to see the others. I have seen the most remarkable men introduced to very clever women; it was always a particle of bias which decided the effect of the first inspection. If I may be allowed a familiar detail, I shall tell the story how charming Colonel L. B—— was to be introduced to Madame de Struve of Koenigsberg—she a most distinguished woman. "FarÀ colpo?"[1]—we asked each other; and a wager was made as a result. I go up to Madame de Struve, and tell her the Colonel wears his ties two days running—the second he turns them—she could notice on his tie the creases downwards. Nothing more palpably untrue! As I finish, the dear fellow is announced. The silliest little Parisian would have made more effect. Observe that Madame de Struve was one who could love. She is also a respectable woman and there could have been no question of gallantry between them. Never were two characters more made for each other. People blamed Madame de Struve for being romantic, and there was nothing could touch L. B. but virtue carried to the point of the romantic. Thanks to her, he had a bullet put through him quite young. It has been given to women admirably to feel the fine shades of affection, the most imperceptible variations of the human heart, the lightest movements of susceptibility. In this regard they have an organ which in us is missing: watch them nurse the wounded. But, perhaps, they are equally unable to see what mind consists in—as a moral composition. I have seen the most distinguished women charmed with a clever man, who was not myself, and, at the same time and almost with the same word, admire the biggest fools. I felt caught like a connoisseur, who sees the loveliest diamonds taken for paste, and paste preferred for being more massive. And so I concluded that with women you have to risk everything. Where General Lassale came to grief, a captain with moustaches and heavy oaths succeeded.[2] There is surely a whole side in men's merit which escapes them. For myself, I always come back to physical laws. The nervous fluid spends itself in men through the brain and in women through the heart: that is why they are more sensitive. Some great and obligatory work, within the profession we have followed all our life, is our consolation, but for them nothing can console but distraction. Appiani, who only believes in virtue as a last resort, and with whom this evening I went routing out ideas (exposing meanwhile those of this chapter) answered:— "The force of soul, which Eponina used with heroic devotion, to keep alive her husband in a cavern underground and to keep him from sinking into despair, would have helped her to hide from him a lover, if they had lived at Rome in peace. Strong souls must have their nourishment."
CHAPTER XXVI
OF MODESTY In Madagascar, a woman exposes without a thought what is here most carefully hidden, but would die of shame sooner than show her arm. Clearly three-quarters of modesty come from example. It is perhaps the one law, daughter of civilisation, which produces only happiness. People have noticed that birds of prey hide themselves to drink; the reason being that, obliged to plunge their head in the water, they are at that moment defenceless. After a consideration of what happens at Tahiti,[1] I see no other natural basis for modesty. Love is the miracle of civilisation. There is nothing but a physical love of the coarsest kind among savage or too barbarian peoples. And modesty gives love the help of imagination—that is, gives it life. Modesty is taught little girls very early by their mothers with such jealous care, that it almost looks like fellow-feeling; in this way women take measures in good time for the happiness of the lover to come. There can be nothing worse for a timid, sensitive woman than the torture of having, in the presence of a man, allowed herself something for which she thinks she ought to blush; I am convinced that a woman with a little pride would sooner face a thousand deaths. A slight liberty, which touches a soft corner in the lover's heart, gives her a moment of lively pleasure.[2] If he seem to blame it, or simply not to enjoy it to the utmost, it must leave in the soul an agonising doubt. And so a woman above the common sort has everything to gain by being very reserved in her manner. The game is not fair: against the chance of a little pleasure or the advantage of seeming a little more lovable, a woman runs the risk of a burning remorse and a sense of shame, which must make even the lover less dear. An evening gaily passed, in care-devil thoughtless fashion, is dearly paid for at the price. If a woman fears she has made this kind of mistake before her lover, he must become for days together hateful in her sight. Can one wonder at the force of a habit, when the lightest infractions of it are punished by such cruel shame? As for the utility of modesty—she is the mother of love: impossible, therefore, to doubt her claims. And for the mechanism of the sentiment—it's simple enough. The soul is busy feeling shame instead of busy desiring. You deny yourself desires and your desires lead to actions. Evidently every woman of feeling and pride—and, these two things being cause and effect, one can hardly go without the other—must fall into ways of coldness, which the people whom they disconcert call prudery. The accusation is all the more specious because of the extreme difficulty of steering a middle course: a woman has only to have little judgment and a lot of pride, and very soon she will come to believe that in modesty one cannot go too far. In this way, an Englishwoman takes it as an insult, if you pronounce before her the name of certain garments. An Englishwoman must be very careful, in the country, not to be seen in the evening leaving the drawing-room with her husband; and, what is still more serious, she thinks it an outrage to modesty, to show that she is enjoying herself a little in the presence of anyone but her husband.[3] It is perhaps due to such studied scrupulousness that the English, a people of judgment, betray signs of such boredom in their domestic bliss. Theirs the fault—why so much pride?[4] To make up for this—and to pass straight from Plymouth to Cadiz and Seville—I found in Spain that the warmth of climate and passions caused people to overlook a little the necessary measure of restraint. The very tender caresses, which I noticed could be given in public, far from seeming touching, inspired me with feelings quite the reverse: nothing is more distressing. We must expect to find incalculable the force of habits, which insinuate themselves into women under the pretext of modesty. A common woman, by carrying modesty to extremes, feels she is getting on a level with a woman of distinction. Such is the empire of modesty, that a woman of feeling betrays her sentiments for her lover sooner by deed than by word. The prettiest, richest and most easy-going woman of Bologna has just told me, how yesterday evening a fool of a Frenchman, who is here giving people a strange idea of his nation, thought good to hide under her bed. Apparently he did not want to waste the long string of absurd declarations, with which he has been pestering her for a month. But the great man should have had more presence of mind. He waited all right till Madame M—— sent away her maid and had got to bed, but he had not the patience to give the household time to go to sleep. She seized hold of the bell and had him thrown out ignominiously, in the midst of the jeers and cuffs of five or six lackeys. "And if he had waited two hours?" I asked her. "I should have been very badly off. 'Who is to doubt,' he would have said, 'that I am here by your orders?'"[5] After leaving this pretty woman's house, I went to see a woman more worthy of being loved than any I know. Her extremely delicate nature is something greater, if possible, than her touching beauty. I found her alone, told the story of Madame M—— and we discussed it. "Listen," was what she said; "if the man, who will go as far as that, was lovable in the eyes of that woman beforehand, he'll have her pardon, and, all in good time, her love." I own I was dumbfounded by this unexpected light thrown on the recesses of the human heart. After a short silence I answered her—"But will a man, who loves, dare go to such violent extremities?" There would be far less vagueness in this chapter had a woman written it. Everything relating to women's haughtiness or pride, to their habits of modesty and its excesses, to certain delicacies, for the most part dependent wholly on associations of feelings,[6] which cannot exist for men, and often delicacies not founded on Nature—all these things, I say, can only find their way here so far as it is permissible to write from hearsay. A woman once said to me, in a moment of philosophical frankness, something which amounts to this:— "If ever I sacrificed my liberty, the man whom I should happen to favour would appreciate still more my affection, by seeing how sparing I had always been of favours—even of the slightest." It is out of preference for this lover, whom perhaps she will never meet, that a lovable woman will offer a cold reception to the man who is speaking to her at the moment. That is the first exaggeration of modesty; that one can respect. The second comes from women's pride. The third source of exaggeration is the pride of husbands. To my idea, this possibility of love presents itself often to the fancy of even the most virtuous woman—and why not? Not to love, when given by Heaven a soul made for love, is to deprive yourself and others of a great blessing. It is like an orange-tree, which would not flower for fear of committing a sin. And beyond doubt a soul made for love can partake fervently of no other bliss. In the would-be pleasures of the world it finds, already at the second trial, an intolerable emptiness. Often it fancies that it loves Art and Nature in its grander aspects, but all they do for it is to hold out hopes of love and magnify it, if that is possible; until, very soon, it finds out that they speak of a happiness which it is resolved to forego. The only thing I see to blame in modesty is that it leads to untruthfulness, and that is the only point of vantage, which light women have over women of feeling. A light woman says to you: "As soon, my friend, as you attract me, I'll tell you and I'll be more delighted than you; because I have a great respect for you." The lively satisfaction of Constance's cry after her lover's victory! "How happy I am, not to have given myself to anyone, all these eight years that I've been on bad terms with my husband!" However comical I find the line of thought, this joy seems to me full of freshness. Here I absolutely must talk about the sort of regrets, felt by a certain lady of Seville who had been deserted by her lover. I ought to remind the reader that, in love. everything is a sign, and, above all, crave the benefit of a little indulgence for my style.[7]
As a man, I think my eye can distinguish nine points in modesty. 1. Much is staked against little; hence extreme reserve; hence often affectation. For example, one doesn't laugh at what amuses one the most. Hence it needs a great deal of judgment to have just the right amount of modesty.[8] That is why many women have not enough in intimate gatherings, or, to put it more exactly, do not insist on the stories told them being sufficiently disguised, and only drop their veils according to the degree of their intoxication or recklessness.[9] Could it be an effect of modesty and of the deadly dullness it must impose on many women, that the majority of them respect nothing in a man so much as impudence? Or do they take impudence for character? 2. Second law: "My lover will think the more of me for it." 3. Force of habit has its way, even at the moments of greatest passion. 4. To the lover, modesty offers very flattering pleasures; it makes him feel what laws are broken for his sake. 5. And to women it offers more intoxicating pleasures, which, causing the fall of a strongly established habit, throw the soul into greater confusion. The Comte de Valmont finds himself in a pretty woman's bedroom at midnight. The thing happens every week to him; to her perhaps every other year. Thus continence and modesty must have pleasures infinitely more lively in store for women.[10] 6. The drawback of modesty is that it is always leading to falsehood. 7. Excess of modesty, and its severity, discourages gentle and timid hearts from loving[11]—just those made for giving and feeling the sweets of love. 8. In sensitive women, who have not had several lovers, modesty is a bar to ease of manner, and for this reason they are rather apt to let themselves be led by those friends, who need reproach themselves with no such failing.[12] They go into each particular case, instead of falling back blindly on habit. Delicacy and modesty give their actions a touch of restraint; by being natural they make themselves appear unnatural; but this awkwardness is akin to heavenly grace. If familiarity in them sometimes resembles tenderness, it is because these angelic souls are coquettes without knowing it. They are disinclined to interrupt their dreams, and, to save themselves the trouble of speaking and finding something both pleasant and polite to say to a friend (which would end in being nothing but polite), they finish by leaning tenderly on his arm.[13] 9. Women only dare be frank by halves; which is the reason why they very rarely reach the highest, when they become authors, but which also gives a grace to their shortest note. For them to be frank means going out without a fichu. For a man nothing more frequent than to write absolutely at the dictate of his imagination, without knowing where he is going. RÉsumÉ The usual fault is to treat woman as a kind of man, but more generous, more changeable and with whom, above all, no rivalry is possible. It is only too easy to forget that there are two new and peculiar laws, which tyrannise over these unstable beings, in conflict with all the ordinary impulses of human nature—I mean:— Feminine pride and modesty, and those often inscrutable habits born of modesty.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE GLANCE This is the great weapon of virtuous coquetry. With a glance, one may say everything, and yet one can always deny a glance; for it cannot be repeated textually. This reminds me of Count G——, the Mirabeau of Rome. The delightful little government of that land has taught him an original way of telling stories by a broken string of words, which say everything—and nothing. He makes his whole meaning clear, but repeat who will his sayings word for word, it is impossible to compromise him. Cardinal Lante told him he had stolen this talent from women—yes, and respectable women, I add. This roguery is a cruel, but just, reprisal on man's tyranny.
CHAPTER XXVIII
OF FEMININE PRIDE All their lives women hear mention made by men of things claiming importance—large profits, success in war, people killed in duels, fiendish or admirable revenges, and so on. Those of them, whose heart is proud, feel that, being unable to reach these things, they are not in a position to display any pride remarkable for the importance of what it rests on. They feel a heart beat in their breast, superior by the force and pride of its movements to all which surrounds them, and yet they see the meanest of men esteem himself above them. They find out, that all their pride can only be for little things, or at least for things, which are without importance except for sentiment, and of which a third party cannot judge. Maddened by this desolating contrast between the meanness of their fortune and the conscious worth of their soul, they set about making their pride worthy of respect by the intensity of its fits or by the relentless tenacity with which they hold by its dictates. Before intimate intercourse women of this kind imagine, when they see their lover, that he has laid siege to them. Their imagination is absorbed in irritation at his endeavours, which, after all, cannot do otherwise than witness to his love—seeing that he does love. Instead of enjoying the feelings of the man of their preference, their vanity is up in arms against him; and it comes to this, that, with a soul of the tenderest, so long as its sensibility is not centred on a special object, they have only to love, in order, like a common flirt, to be reduced to the barest vanity. A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride—for the opening or shutting of a door. Therein lies their point of honour. Well! Napoleon came to grief rather than yield a village. I have seen a quarrel of this kind last longer than a year. It was a woman of the greatest distinction who sacrificed all her happiness, sooner than give her lover the chance of entertaining the slightest possible doubt of the magnanimity of her pride. The reconciliation was the work of chance, and, on my friend's side, due to a moment of weakness, which, on meeting her lover, she was unable to overcome. She imagined him forty miles away, and found him in a place, where certainly he did not expect to see her. She could not hide the first transports of delight; her lover was more overcome than she; they almost fell at each other's feet and never have I seen tears flow so abundantly—it was the unlooked-for appearance of happiness. Tears are the supreme smile. The Duke of Argyll gave a fine example of presence of mind, in not drawing Feminine Pride into a combat, in the interview he had at Richmond with Queen Caroline.[1] The more nobility in a woman's character, the more terrible are these storms— As the blackest sky
Foretells the heaviest tempest.
(Don Juan.)
Can it be that the more fervently, in the normal course of life, a woman delights in the rare qualities of her lover, the more she tries, in those cruel moments, when sympathy seems turned to the reverse, to wreak her vengeance on what usually she sees in him superior to other people? She is afraid of being confounded with them. It is a precious long time since I read that boring Clarissa; but I think it is through feminine pride that she lets herself die, and does not accept the hand of Lovelace. Lovelace's fault was great; but as she did love him a little, she could have found pardon in her heart for a crime, of which the cause was love. Monime, on the contrary, seems to me a touching model of feminine delicacy. What cheek does not blush with pleasure to hear from the lips of an actress worthy of the part:— That fatal love which I had crushed and conquered,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Your wiles detected, and I cannot now
Disown what I confess'd; you cannot raze
Its memory; the shame of that avowal,
To which you forced me, will abide for ever
Present before my mind, and I should think
That you were always of my faith uncertain.
The grave itself to me were less abhorrent
Than marriage bed shared with a spouse, who took
Cruel advantage of my simple trust,
And, to destroy my peace for ever, fann'd
A flame that fired my cheek for other love
Than his.[2]
I can picture to myself future generations saying: "So that's what Monarchy[3] was good for—to produce that sort of character and their portrayal by great artists. " And yet I find an admirable example of this delicacy even in the republics of the Middle Ages; which seems to destroy my system of the influence of governments on the passions, but which I shall cite in good faith.The reference is to those very touching verses of Dante: Deh! quando tu sarai tomato al mondo
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ricordati di me, che son la Pia;
Siena mi fÈ; disfecemi Maremma;
Salsi colui, che inanellata pria
Disposando, m'avea con la sua gemma.
The woman, who speaks with so much restraint, had suffered in secret the fate of Desdemona, and, by a word, could make known her husband's crime to the friends, whom she had left on earth. Nello della Pietra won the hand of Madonna Pia(14), sole heiress of the Tolomei, the richest and noblest family of Sienna. Her beauty, which was the admiration of Tuscany, sowed in her husband's heart the seed of jealousy, which, envenomed by false reports and suspicions ever and anon rekindled, led him to a heinous project. It is difficult, at this hour, to decide whether his wife was altogether innocent, but Dante represents her as such. Her husband carried her off into the fens of Volterra, famous then, as now, for the effects of the aria cattiva. Never would he tell his unhappy wife the reason of her exile in so dangerous a place. His pride did not deign to utter complaint or accusation. He lived alone with her in a deserted tower, the ruins of which by the edge of the sea I have been myself to visit. There he never broke his scornful silence, never answered his young wife's questions, never listened to her prayers. Coldly he waited at her side for the pestilential air to have its effect. The exhalations of these morasses were not long in withering those features—the loveliest, it is said, which, in that century, the world had seen. In a few months she died. Some chroniclers of those remote times report that Nello used the dagger to hasten her end. She died in the fens in some horrible way; but the kind of death was a mystery even to her contemporaries. Nello della Pietra survived to pass the rest of his days in a silence which he never broke. Nothing nobler and more delicate than the way in which young la Pia addresses Dante. She wishes to be recalled to the memory of the friends, whom she had left on earth so young; and yet, telling who she is and giving the name of her husband, she will not allow herself the slightest complaint against a piece of cruelty unheard of, but for the future irreparable; she only points out that he knows the story of her death. This constancy in pride's revenge is not met, I think, except in the countries of the South. In Piedmont I happened to be the involuntary witness of something very nearly parallel; though at the time I did not know the details. I was sent with twenty-five dragoons into the woods along the Sesia, to intercept contraband. Arriving in the evening at this wild and desolate spot, I caught sight between the trees of the ruins of an old castle. I went up to it and to my great surprise—it was inhabited. I found within a nobleman of the country, of sinister appearance, a man six foot high and forty years old. He gave me two rooms with a bad grace. I passed my time playing music with my quartermaster; after some days, we discovered that our friend kept a woman in the background, whom we used to call Camille, laughingly; but we were far from suspecting the fearful truth. Six weeks later she was dead. I had the morbid curiosity to see her in the coffin, paying a monk, who was watching, to introduce me into the chapel towards midnight, under pretext of going to sprinkle holy water. There I found one of those superb faces, which are beautiful even in the arms of death; she had a large aquiline nose—the nobility and delicacy of its outline I shall never forget. Then I left that deadly spot. Five years later, a detachment of my regiment accompanying the Emperor to his coronation as King of Italy(15), I had the whole story told me. I learnt that the jealous husband, Count ——, had found one morning fastened to his wife's bed an English watch, belonging to a young man of the small town in which they lived. That very day he carried her off to the ruined castle in the midst of the woods of the Sesia. Like Nello della Pietra, he never uttered a single word. If she made him any request, he coldly and silently presented to her the English watch, which he carried always with him. Almost three years passed, spent thus alone with her. At last she died of despair, in the flower of life. Her husband tried to put a knife into the proprietor of the watch, missed him, passed on to Genoa, took ship and no one has heard of him since. His property has been divided. As for these women with feminine pride, if you take their injuries with a good grace, which the habits of a military life make easy, you annoy these proud souls; they take you for a coward, and very soon become outrageous. Such lofty characters yield with pleasure to men whom they see overbearing with other men. That is, I fancy, the only way—you must often pick a quarrel with your neighbour in order to avoid one with your mistress. One day Miss Cornel, the celebrated London actress, was surprised by the unexpected appearance of the rich colonel, whom she found useful. She happened to be with a little lover, whom she just liked—and nothing more. "Mr. So-and-so," says she in great confusion to the colonel, "has come to see the pony I want to sell." "I am here for something very different," put in proudly the little lover who was beginning to bore her, but whom, from the moment of that answer, she started to love again madly.[5] Women of that kind sympathise with their lover's haughtiness, instead of exercising at his expense their own disposition to pride. The character of the Duc de Lauzun (that of 1660[6]), if they can forgive the first day its want of grace, is very fascinating for such women, and perhaps for all women of distinction. Grandeur on a higher plane escapes them; they take for coldness the calm gaze which nothing escapes, but which a detail never disturbs. Have I not heard women at the Court of Saint-Cloud maintain that Napoleon had a dry and prosaic character?[7] A great man is like an eagle: the higher he rises the less he is visible, and he is punished for his greatness by the solitude of his soul. From feminine pride arises what women call want of refinement. I fancy, it is not at all unlike what kings call lÈse majestÉ, a crime all the more dangerous, because one slips into it without knowing. The tenderest lover may be accused of wanting refinement, if he is not very sharp, or, what is sadder, if he dares give himself up to the greatest charm of love—the delight of being perfectly natural with the loved one and of not listening to what he is told. These are the sort of things, of which a well-born heart could have no inkling; one must have experience, in order to believe in them; for we are misled by the habit of dealing justly and frankly with our men friends. It is necessary to keep in mind incessantly that we have to do with beings, who can, however wrongly, think themselves inferior in vigour of character, or, to put it better, can think that others believe they are inferior. Should not a woman's true pride reside in the power of the feeling she inspires? A maid of honour to the queen and wife of Francis I was chaffed about the fickleness of her lover, who, it was said, did not really love her. A little time after, this lover had an illness and reappeared at Court—dumb. Two years later, people showing surprise one day that she still loved him, she turned to him, saying: "Speak." And he spoke.
CHAPTER XXIX
OF WOMEN'S COURAGE I tell thee, proud Templar, that not in thy fiercest battles hast thou displayed more of thy vaunted courage than has been shewn by women, when called upon to suffer by affection or duty. (Ivanhoe.) I remember meeting the following phrase in a book of history: "All the men lost their head: that is the moment when women display an incontestable superiority." Their courage has a reserve which that of their lover wants; he acts as a spur to their sense of worth. They find so much pleasure in being able, in the fire of danger, to dispute the first place for firmness with the man, who often wounds them by the proudness of his protection and his strength, that the vehemence of that enjoyment raises them above any kind of fear, which at the moment is the man's weak point. A man, too, if the same help were given him at the same moment, would show himself superior to everything; for fear never resides in the danger, but in ourselves. Not that I mean to depreciate women's courage—I have seen them, on occasions, superior to the bravest men. Only they must have a man to love. Then they no longer feel except through him; and so the most obvious and personal danger becomes, as it were, a rose to gather in his presence.[1] I have found also in women, who did not love, intrepidity, the coldest, the most surprising and the most exempt from nerves. It is true, I have always imagined that they are so brave, only because they do not know the tiresomeness of wounds! As for moral courage, so far superior to the other, the firmness of a woman who resists her love is simply the most admirable thing, which can exist on earth. All other possible marks of courage are as nothing compared to a thing so strongly opposed to nature and so arduous. Perhaps they find a source of strength in the habit of sacrifice, which is bred in them by modesty. Hard on women it is that the proofs of this courage should always remain secret and be almost impossible to divulge. Still harder that it should always be employed against their own happiness: the Princesse de ClÈves would have done better to say nothing to her husband and give herself to M. de Nemours. Perhaps women are chiefly supported by their pride in making a fine defence, and imagine that their lover is staking his vanity on having them—a petty and miserable idea. A man of passion, who throws himself with a light heart into so many ridiculous situations, must have a lot of time to be thinking of vanity! It is like the monks who mean to catch the devil and find their reward in the pride of hair-shirts and macerations. I should think that Madame de ClÈves would have repented, had she come to old age,—to the period at which one judges life and when the joys of pride appear in all their meanness. She would have wished to have lived like Madame de la Fayette.[2]I have just re-read a hundred pages of this essay: and a pretty poor idea I have given of true love, of love which occupies the entire soul, fills it with fancies, now the happiest, now heart-breaking—but always sublime—and makes it completely insensible to all the rest of creation. I am at a loss to express what I see so well; I have never felt more painfully the want of talent. How bring into relief the simplicity of action and of character, the high seriousness, the glance that reflects so truly and so ingenuously the passing shade of feeling, and above all, to return to it again, that inexpressible What care I? for all that is not the woman we love? A yes or a no spoken by a man in love has an unction which is not to be found elsewhere, and is not found in that very man at other times. This morning (August 3rd) I passed on horseback about nine o'clock in front of the lovely English garden of Marchese Zampieri, situated on the last crests of those tree-capped hills, on which Bologna rests, and from which so fine a view is enjoyed over Lombardy rich and green—the fairest country in the world. In a copse of laurels, belonging to the Giardino Zampieri, which dominates the path I was taking, leading to the cascade of the Reno at Casa Lecchio, I saw Count Delfante. He was absorbed in thought and scarcely returned my greeting, though we had passed the night together till two o'clock in the morning. I went to the cascade, I crossed the Reno; after which, passing again, at least three hours later, under the copse of the Giardino Zampieri, I saw him still there. He was precisely in the same position, leaning against a great pine, which rises above the copse of laurels—but this detail I am afraid will be found too simple and pointless. He came up to me with tears in his eyes, asking me not to go telling people of his trance. I was touched, and suggested retracing my steps and going with him to spend the day in the country. At the end of two hours he had told me everything. His is a fine soul, but oh! the coldness of these pages, compared to his story. Furthermore, he thinks his love is not returned—which is not my opinion. In the fair marble face of the Contessa Ghigi, with whom we spent the evening, one can read nothing. Only now and then a light and sudden blush, which she cannot check, just betrays the emotions of that soul, which the most exalted feminine pride disputes with deeper emotions. You see the colour spread over her neck of alabaster and as much as one catches of those lovely shoulders, worthy of Canova. She somehow finds a way of diverting her black and sombre eyes from the observation of those, whose penetration alarms her woman's delicacy; but last night, at something which Delfante was saying and of which she disapproved, I saw a sudden blush spread all over her. Her lofty soul found him less worthy of her. But when all is said, even if I were mistaken in my conjectures on the happiness of Delfante, vanity apart, I think him happier than I, in my indifference, although I am in a thoroughly happy position, in appearance and in reality. Bologna, August 3rd, 1818. [1] Mary Stuart speaking of Leicester, after the interview with Elizabeth, where she had just met her doom. (Schiller.)
CHAPTER XXX
A PECULIAR AND MOURNFUL SPECTACLE Women with their feminine pride visit the iniquities of the fools upon the men of sense, and those of the prosaic, prosperous and brutal upon the noble-minded. A very pretty result—you'll agree! The petty considerations of pride and worldly proprieties are the cause of many women's unhappiness, for, through pride, their parents have placed them in their abominable position. Destiny has reserved for them, as a consolation far superior to all their misfortunes, the happiness of loving and being loved with passion, when suddenly one fine day they borrow from the enemy this same mad pride, of which they were the first victims—all to kill the one happiness which is left them, to work their own misfortune and the misfortune of him, who loves them. A friend, who has had ten famous intrigues (and by no means all one after another), gravely persuades them that if they fall in love, they will be dishonoured in the eyes of the public, and yet this worthy public, who never rises above low ideas, gives them generously a lover a year; because that, it says, "is the thing." Thus the soul is saddened by this odd spectacle: a woman of feeling, supremely refined and an angel of purity, on the advice of a low t——, runs away from the boundless, the only happiness which is left to her, in order to appear in a dress of dazzling white, before a great fat brute of a judge, whom everyone knows has been blind a hundred years, and who bawls out at the top of his voice: "She is dressed in black!"
CHAPTER XXXI
EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF SALVIATI Ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit.
(Propertius, II, i.) Bologna, April 29th, 1818. Driven to despair by the misfortune to which love has reduced me, I curse existence. I have no heart for anything. The weather is dull; it is raining, and a late spell of cold has come again to sadden nature, who after a long winter was hurrying to meet the spring. Schiassetti, a half-pay colonel, my cold and reasonable friend, came to spend a couple of hours with me "You should renounce your love." "How? Give me back my passion for war." "It is a great misfortune for you to have known her." I agree very nearly—so low-spirited and craven do I feel—so much has melancholy taken possession of me to-day. We discuss what interest can have led her friend to libel me, but find nothing but that old Neapolitan proverb: "Woman, whom love and youth desert, a nothing piques." What is certain is that that cruel woman is enraged with me—it is the expression of one of her friends. I could revenge myself in a fearful way, but, against her hatred, I am without the smallest means of defence. Schiassetti leaves me. I go out into the rain, not knowing what to do with myself. My rooms, this drawing-room, which I lived in during the first days of our acquaintance, and when I saw her every evening, have become insupportable to me. Each engraving, each piece of furniture, brings up again the happiness I dreamed of in their presence—which now I have lost for ever. I tramped the streets through a cold rain: chance, if I can call it chance, made me pass under her windows. Night was falling and I went along, my eyes full of tears fixed on the window of her room. Suddenly the curtains were just drawn aside, as if to give a glimpse into the square, then instantly closed again. I felt within me a physical movement about the heart. I was unable to support myself and took refuge under the gateway of the next house. A thousand feelings crowd upon my soul. Chance may have produced this movement of the curtains; but oh! if it was her hand that had drawn them aside. There are two misfortunes in the world: passion frustrated and the "dead blank." In love—I feel that two steps away from me exists a boundless happiness, something beyond all my prayers, which depends upon nothing but a word, nothing but a smile. Passionless like Schiassetti, on gloomy days I see happiness nowhere, I come to doubt if it exists for me, I fall into depression. One ought to be without strong passions and have only a little curiosity or vanity. It is two o'clock in the morning; I have seen that little movement of the curtain; at six o'clock I paid some calls and went to the play, but everywhere, silent and dreaming, I passed the evening examining this question: "After so much anger with so little foundation (for after all did I wish to offend her and is there a thing on earth which the intention does not excuse?)—has she felt a moment of love?" Poor Salviati, who wrote the preceding lines on his Petrarch, died a short time after. He was the intimate friend of Schiassetti and myself; we knew all his thoughts, and it is from him that I have all the tearful part of this essay. He was imprudence incarnate; moreover, the woman, for whom he went to such wild lengths, is the most interesting creature that I have met. Schiassetti said to me: "But do you think that that unfortunate passion was without advantages for Salviati? To begin with, the most worrying of money troubles that can be imagined came upon him. These troubles, which reduced him to a very middling fortune after his dazzling youth, and would have driven him mad with anger in any other circumstances, crossed his mind not once in two weeks. "And then—a matter of importance of a quite different kind for a mind of his range—that passion is the first true course of logic, which he ever had. That may seem peculiar in a man who has been at Court; but the fact is explained by his extreme courage. For example, he passed without winking the day of ——, the day of his undoing; he was surprised then, as in Russia(16), not to feel anything extraordinary. It is an actual fact, that his fear of anything had never gone so far as to make him think about it for two days together. Instead of this callousness, the last two years he was trying every minute to be brave. Before he had never seen danger. "When as a result of his imprudence and his faith in the generosity of critics,[1] he had managed to get condemned to not seeing the woman he was in love with, except twice a month, we would see him pass those evenings, talking to her as if intoxicated with joy, because he had been received with that noble frankness which he worshipped. He held that Madame —— and he were two souls without their like, who should understand each other with a glance. It was beyond him to grasp that she should pay the least attention to petty bourgeois comments, which tried to make a criminal of him. The result of this fine confidence in a woman, surrounded by his enemies, was to find her door closed to him. "'With M——,' I used to say to him, 'you forget your maxim—that you mustn't believe in greatness of soul, except in the last extremity.' "'Do you think,' he answered, 'that the world contains another heart which is more suited to hers? True, I pay for this passionate way of being, which LÉonore, in anger, made me see on the horizon in the line of the rocks of Poligny, with the ruin of all the practical enterprises of my life—a disaster which comes from my lack of patient industry and imprudence due to the force of momentary impressions.'" One can see the touch of madness! For Salviati life was divided into periods of a fortnight, which took their hue from the last interview, which he had been granted. But I noticed often, that the happiness he owed to a welcome, which he thought less cold, was far inferior in intensity to the unhappiness with which a hard reception overwhelmed him.[2] At times Madame ---- failed to be quite honest with him; and these are the only two criticisms I ever dared offer him. Beyond the more intimate side of his sorrow, of which he had the delicacy never to speak even to the friends dearest to him and most devoid of envy, he saw in a hard reception from LÉonore the triumph of prosaic and scheming beings over the open-hearted and the generous. At those times he lost faith in virtue and, above all, in glory. It was his way to talk to his friends only of sad notions, to which it is true his passion led up, but notions capable besides of having some interest in the eyes of philosophy. I was curious to observe that uncommon soul. Ordinarily passion-love is found in people, a little simple in the German way.[3] Salviati, on the contrary, was among the firmest and sharpest men I have known. I seemed to notice that, after these cruel visits, he had no peace until he had found a justification for LÉonore's severities. So long as he felt that she might have been wrong in ill-using him, he was unhappy. Love, so devoid of vanity, I should never have thought possible. He was incessantly singing us the praises of love. "If a supernatural power said to me: Break the glass of that watch and LÉonore will be for you, what she was three years ago, an indifferent friend—really I believe I would never as long as I live have the courage to break it." I saw in these discourses such signs of madness, that I never had the courage to offer my former objections. He would add: "Just as Luther's Reformation at the end of the Middle Ages, shaking society to its base, renewed and reconstructed the world on reasonable foundations, so is a generous character renewed and retempered by love. "It is only then, that he casts off all the baubles of life; without this revolution he would always have had in him a pompous and theatrical something. It is only since I began to love that I have learnt to put greatness into my character—such is the absurdity of education at our military academy. "Although I behaved well, I was a child at the Court of Napoleon and at Moscow. I did my duty, but I knew nothing of that heroic simplicity, the fruit of entire and whole-hearted sacrifice. For example, it is only this last year, that my heart takes in the simplicity of the Romans in Livy. Once upon a time, I thought them cold compared to our brilliant colonels. What they did for their Rome, I find in my heart for LÉonore. If I had the luck to be able to do anything for her, my first desire would be to hide it. The conduct of a Regulus or a Decius was something confirmed beforehand, which had no claim to surprise them. Before I loved, I was small, precisely because I was tempted sometimes to think myself great; I felt a certain effort, for which I applauded myself."And, on the side of affection, what do we not owe to love? After the hazards of early youth, the heart is closed to sympathy. Death and absence remove our early companions, and we are reduced to passing our life with lukewarm partners, measure in hand, for ever calculating ideas of interest and vanity. Little by little all the sensitive and generous region of the soul becomes waste, for want of cultivation, and at less than thirty a man finds his heart steeled to all sweet and gentle sensations. In the midst of this arid desert, love causes a well of feelings to spring up, fresher and more abundant even than that of earliest youth. In those days it was a vague hope, irresponsible and incessantly distracted[4]—no devotion to one thing, no deep and constant desire; the soul, at all times light, was athirst for novelty and forgot to-day its adoration of the day before. But, than the crystallisation of love nothing is more concentrated, more mysterious, more eternally single in its object. In those days only agreeable things claimed to please and to please for an instant: now we are deeply touched by everything which is connected with the loved one—even by objects the most indifferent. Arriving at a great town, a hundred miles from that which LÉonore lives in, I was in a state of fear and trembling; at each street corner I shuddered to meet Alviza, the intimate friend of Madame ——, although I did not know her. For me everything took a mysterious and sacred tint. My heart beat fast, while talking to an old scholar; for I could not hear without blushing the name of the city gate, near which the friend of LÉonore lives. "Even the severities of the woman we love have an infinite grace, which the most flattering moments in the company of other women cannot offer. It is like the great shadows in Correggio's pictures, which far from being, as in other painters, passages less pleasant, but necessary in order to give effect to the lights and relief to the figures, have graces of their own which charm and throw us into a gentle reverie.[5] "Yes, half and the fairest half of life is hidden from the man, who has not loved with passion." Salviati had need of the whole force of his dialectic powers, to hold his own against the wise Schiassetti, who was always saying to him: "You want to be happy, then be content with a life exempt from pains and with a small quantity of happiness every day. Keep yourself from the lottery of great passions." "Then give me your curiosity," was Salviati's answer. I imagine there were not a few days, when he would have liked to be able to follow the advice of our sensible colonel; he made a little struggle and thought he was succeeding; but this line of action was absolutely beyond his strength. And yet what strength was in that soul! A white satin hat, a little like that of Madame ——, seen in the distance in the street, made his heart stop beating, and forced him to rest against the wall. Even in his blackest moments, the happiness of meeting her gave him always some hours of intoxication, beyond the reach of all misfortune and all reasoning.[6] For the rest, at the time of his death[7] his character had certainly contracted more than one noble habit, after two years of this generous and boundless passion; and, in so far at least, he judged himself correctly. Had he lived, and circumstances helped him a little, he would have made a name for himself. Maybe also, just through his simplicity, his merit would have passed on this earth unseen. O lasso
Quanti dolci pensier, quanto desio
MenÒ costui al doloroso passo!
Biondo era, e bello, e di gentile aspetto;
Ma l'un de' cigli un colpo avea diviso.
CHAPTER XXXII
OF INTIMATE INTERCOURSE The greatest happiness that love can give—'tis first joining your hand to the hand of a woman you love. The happiness of gallantry is quite otherwise—far more real, and far more subject to ridicule. In passion-love intimate intercourse is not so much perfect delight itself, as the last step towards it. But how depict a delight, which leaves no memories behind? Mortimer returned from a long voyage in fear and trembling; he adored Jenny, but Jenny had not answered his letters. On his arrival in London, he mounts his horse and goes off to find her at her country home. When he gets there, she is walking in the park; he runs up to her, with beating heart, meets her and she offers him her hand and greets him with emotion; he sees that she loves him. Roaming together along the glades of the park, Jenny's dress became entangled in an acacia bush. Later on Mortimer won her; but Jenny was faithless. I maintain to him that Jenny never loved him and he quotes, as proof of her love, the way in which she received him at his return from the Continent; but he could never give me the slightest details of it. Only he shudders visibly directly he sees an acacia bush: really, it is the only distinct remembrance he succeeded in preserving of the happiest moment of his life.[1] A sensitive and open man, a former chevalier, confided to me this evening (in the depth of our craft buffeted by a high sea on the Lago di Garda[2]) the history of his loves, which I in my turn shall not confide to the public. But I feel myself in a position to conclude from them that the day of intimate intercourse is like those fine days in May, a critical period for the fairest flowers, a moment which can be fatal and wither in an instant the fairest hopes. [3] Naturalness cannot be praised too highly. It is the only coquetry permissible in a thing so serious as love À la Werther; in which a man has no idea where he is going, and in which at the same time by a lucky chance for virtue, that is his best policy. A man, really moved, says charming things unconsciously; he speaks a language which he does not know himself. Woe to the man the least bit affected! Given he were in love, allow him all the wit in the world, he loses three-quarters of his advantages. Let him relapse for an instant into affectation—a minute later comes a moment of frost. The whole art of love, as it seems to me, reduces itself to saying exactly as much as the degree of intoxication at the moment allows of, that is to say in other terms, to listen to one's heart. It must not be thought, that this is so easy; a man, who truly loves, has no longer strength to speak, when his mistress says anything to make him happy.Thus he loses the deeds which his words[4] would have given birth to. It is better to be silent than say things too tender at the wrong time, and what was in point ten seconds ago, is now no longer—in fact at this moment it makes a mess of things. Every time that I used to infringe this rule[5] and say something, which had come into my head three minutes earlier and which I thought pretty, LÉonore never failed to punish me. And later I would say to myself, as I went away—"She is right." This is the sort of thing to upset women of delicacy extremely; it is indecency of sentiment. Like tasteless rhetoricians, they are readier to admit a certain degree of weakness and coldness. There being nothing in the world to alarm them but the falsity of their lover, the least little insincerity of detail, be it the most innocent in the world, robs them instantly of all delight and puts mistrust into their heart. Respectable women have a repugnance to what is vehement and unlooked for—those being none the less characteristics of passion—and, furthermore, that vehemence alarms their modesty; they are on the defensive against it. When a touch of jealousy or displeasure has occasioned some chilliness, it is generally possible to begin subjects, fit to give birth to the excitement favourable to love, and, after the first two or three phrases of introduction, as long as a man does not miss the opportunity of saying exactly what his heart suggests, the pleasure he will give to his loved one will be keen. The fault of most men is that they want to succeed in saying something, which they think either pretty or witty or touching—instead of releasing their soul from the false gravity of the world, until a degree of intimacy and naturalness brings out in simple language what they are feeling at the moment. The man, who is brave enough for this, will have instantly his reward in a kind of peacemaking. It is this reward, as swift as it is involuntary, of the pleasure one gives to the object of one's love, which puts this passion so far above the others. If there is perfect naturalness between them, the happiness of two individuals comes to be fused together.[6] This is simply the greatest happiness which can exist, by reason of sympathy and several other laws of human nature. It is quite easy to determine the meaning of this word naturalness—essential condition of happiness in love. We call natural that which does not diverge from an habitual way of acting. It goes without saying that one must not merely never lie to one's love, but not even embellish the least bit or tamper with the simple outline of truth. For if a man is embellishing, his attention is occupied in doing so and no longer answers simply and truly, as the keys of a piano, to the feelings mirrored in his eye. The woman finds it out at once by a certain chilliness within her, and she, in her turn, falls back on coquetry. Might not here be found hidden the cause why it is impossible to love a woman with a mind too far below one's own—the reason being that, in her case, one can make pretence with impunity, and, as that course is more convenient, one abandons oneself to unnaturalness by force of habit? From that moment love is no longer love; it sinks to the level of an ordinary transaction—the only difference being that, instead of money, you get pleasure or flattery or a mixture of both. It is hard not to feel a shade of contempt for a woman, before whom one can with impunity act a part, and consequently, in order to throw her over, one only needs to come across something better in her line. Habit or vow may hold, but I am speaking of the heart's desire, whose nature it is to fly to the greatest pleasure. To return to this word natural—natural and habitual are two different things. If one takes these words in the same sense, it is evident that the more sensibility in a man, the harder it is for him to be natural, since the influence of habit on his way of being and acting is less powerful, and he himself is more powerful at each new event. In the life-story of a cold heart every page is the same: take him to-day or take him to-morrow, it is always the same dummy. A man of sensibility, so soon as his heart is touched, loses all traces of habit to guide his action; and how can he follow a path, which he has forgotten all about? He feels the enormous weight attaching to every word which he says to the object of his love—it seems to him as if a word is to decide his fate. How is he not to look about for the right word? At any rate, how is he not to have the feeling that he is trying to say "the right thing"? And then, there is an end of candour. And so we must give up our claim to candour, that quality of our being, which never reflects upon itself. We are the best we can be, but we feel what we are. I fancy this brings us to the last degree of naturalness, to which the most delicate heart can pretend in love. A man of passion can but cling might and main, as his only refuge in the storm, to the vow never to change a jot or tittle of the truth and to read the message of his heart correctly. If the conversation is lively and fragmentary, he may hope for some fine moments of naturalness: otherwise he will only be perfectly natural in hours when he will be a little less madly in love. In the presence of the loved one, we hardly retain naturalness even in our movements, however deeply such habits are rooted in the muscles. When I gave my arm to LÉonore, I always felt on the point of stumbling, and I wondered if I was walking properly. The most one can do is never to be affected willingly: it is enough to be convinced that want of naturalness is the greatest possible disadvantage, and can easily be the source of the greatest misfortunes. For the heart of the woman, whom you love, no longer understands your own; you lose that nervous involuntary movement of sincerity, which answers the call of sincerity. It means the loss of every way of touching, I almost said of winning her. Not that I pretend to deny, that a woman worthy of love may see her fate in that pretty image of the ivy, which "dies if it does not cling"—that is a law of Nature; but to make your lover's happiness is none the less a step that will decide your own. To me it seems that a reasonable woman ought not to give in completely to her lover, until she can hold out no longer, and the slightest doubt thrown on the sincerity of your heart gives her there and then a little strength—enough at least to delay her defeat still another day.[7] Is it necessary to add that to make all this the last word in absurdity you have only to apply it to gallant-love?
CHAPTER XXXIII Always a little doubt to allay—that is what whets our appetite every moment, that is what makes the life of happy love. As it is never separated from fear, so its pleasures can never tire. The characteristic of this happiness is its high seriousness.
CHAPTER XXXIV
OF CONFIDENCES There is no form of insolence so swiftly punished as that which leads you, in passion-love, to take an intimate friend into your confidence. He knows that, if what you say is true, you have pleasures a thousand times greater than he, and that your own make you despise his. It is far worse between women—their lot in life being to inspire a passion, and the confidante having commonly also displayed her charms for the advantage of the lover. On the other hand, for anyone a prey to this fever, there is no moral need more imperative than that of a friend, before whom to dilate on the fearful doubts which at every instant beset his soul; for in this terrible passion, always a thing imagined is a thing existent. "A great fault in Salviati's character," he writes in 1817, "—in this point how opposed to Napoleon's!—is that when, in the discussion of interests in which passion is concerned, something is at last morally proved, he cannot resolve to take that as a fact once and for all established and as a point to start from. In spite of himself and greatly to his hurt, he brings it again and again under discussion." The reason is that, in the field of ambition, it is easy to be brave. Crystallisation, not being subjected to the desire of the thing to be won, helps to fortify our courage; in love it is wholly in the service of the object against which our courage is wanted. A woman may find an unfaithful friend, she also may find one with nothing to do.A princess of thirty-five,[1] with nothing to do and dogged by the need of action, of intrigue, etc. etc., discontented with a lukewarm lover and yet unable to hope to sow the seeds of another love, with no use to make of the energy which is consuming her, with no other distraction than fits of black humour, can very well find an occupation, that is to say a pleasure, and a life's work, in accomplishing the misfortune of a true passion—passion which someone has the insolence to feel for another than herself, while her own lover falls to sleep at her side. It is the only case in which hate produces happiness; the reason being that it procures occupation and work. Just at first, the pleasure of doing something, and, as soon as the design is suspected by society, the prick of doubtful success add a charm to this occupation. Jealousy of the friend takes the mask of hatred for the lover; otherwise how would it be possible to hate so madly a man one has never set eyes on? You cannot recognise the existence of envy, or, first, you would have to recognise the existence of merit; and there are flatterers about you who only hold their place at Court by poking fun at your good friend. The faithless confidante, all the while she is indulging in villainies of the deepest dye, may quite well think herself solely animated by the desire not to lose a precious friendship. A woman with nothing to do tells herself that even friendship languishes in a heart devoured by love and its mortal anxieties. Friendship can only hold its own, by the side of love, by the exchange of confidences; but then what is more odious to envy than such confidences? The only kind of confidences well received between women are those accompanied in all its frankness by a statement of the case such as this:—"My dear friend, in this war, as absurd as it is relentless, which the prejudices, brought into vogue by our tyrants, wage upon us, you help me to-day—to-morrow it will be my turn."[2] Beyond this exception there is another—that of true friendship born in childhood and not marred since by any jealousy...
The confidences of passion-love are only well received between schoolboys in love with love, and girls eaten up with unemployed curiosity and tenderness or led on perhaps by the instinct,[3] which whispers to them that there lies the great business of their life, and that they cannot look after it too early. We have all seen little girls of three perform quite creditably the duties of gallantry. Gallant-love is inflamed, passion-love chilled by confidences. Apart from the danger, there is the difficulty of confidences. In passion-love, things one cannot express (because the tongue is too gross for such subtleties) exist none the less; only, as these are things of extreme delicacy, we are more liable in observing them to make mistakes. Also, an observer in a state of emotion is a bad observer; he won't allow for chance. Perhaps the only safe way is to make yourself your own confidant. Write down this evening, under borrowed names, but with all the characteristic details, the dialogue you had just now with the woman you care for, and the difficulty which troubles you. In a week, if it is passion-love, you will be a different man, and then, rereading your consultation, you will be able to give a piece of good advice to yourself. In male society, as soon as there are more than two together, and envy might make its appearance, politeness allows none but physical love to be spoken of—think of the end of dinners among men. It is Baffo's sonnets[4] that are quoted and which give such infinite pleasure; because each one takes literally the praises and excitement of his neighbour, who, quite often, merely wants to appear lively or polite. The sweetly tender words of Petrarch or French madrigals would be out of place.
CHAPTER XXXV
OF JEALOUSY When you are in love, as each new object strikes your eye or your memory, whether crushed in a gallery and patiently listening to a parliamentary debate, or galloping to the relief of an outpost under the enemy's fire, you never fail to add a new perfection to the idea you have of your mistress, or discover a new means (which at first seems excellent) of winning her love still more. Each step the imagination takes is repaid by a moment of sweet delight. No wonder that existence, such as this, takes hold of one. Directly jealousy comes into existence, this turn of feelings continues in itself the same, though the effect it is to produce is contrary. Each perfection that you add to the crown of your beloved, who now perhaps loves someone else, far from promising you a heavenly contentment, thrusts a dagger into your heart. A voice cries out: "This enchanting pleasure is for my rival to enjoy."[1] Even the objects which strike you, without producing this effect, instead of showing you, as before, a new way of winning her love, cause you to see a new advantage for your rival. You meet a pretty woman galloping in the park[2]; your rival is famous for his fine horses which can do ten miles in fifty minutes.In this state, rage is easily fanned into life; you no longer remember that in love possession is nothing, enjoyment everything. You exaggerate the happiness of your rival, exaggerate the insolence happiness produces in him, and you come at last to the limit of tortures, that is to say to the extremest unhappiness, poisoned still further by a lingering hope. The only remedy is, perhaps, to observe your rival's happiness at close quarters. Often you will see him fall peacefully asleep in the same salon as the woman, for whom your heart stops beating, at the mere sight of a hat like hers some way off in the street. To wake him up you have only to show your jealousy. You may have, perhaps, the pleasure of teaching him the price of the woman who prefers him to you, and he will owe to you the love he will learn to have for her. Face to face with a rival there is no mean—you must either banter with him in the most off-hand way you can, or frighten him. Jealousy being the greatest of all evils, endangering one's life will be found an agreeable diversion. For then not all our fancies are embittered and blackened (by the mechanism explained above)—sometimes it is possible to imagine that one kills this rival. According to this principle, that it is never right to add to the enemy's forces, you must hide your love from your rival, and, under some pretext of vanity as far as possible removed from love, say to him very quietly, with all possible politeness, and in the calmest, simplest tone: "Sir, I cannot think why the public sees good to make little So-and-so mine; people are even good enough to believe that I am in love with her. As for you, if you want her, I would hand her over with all my heart, if unhappily there were not the risk of placing myself into a ridiculous position. In six months, take her as much as ever you like, but at the present moment, honour, such as people attach (why, I don't know) to these things, forces me to tell you, to my great regret, that, if by chance you have not the justice to wait till your turn comes round, one of us must die." Your rival is very likely a man without much passion, and perhaps a man of much prudence, who once convinced of your resolution, will make haste to yield you the woman in question, provided he can find any decent pretext. For that reason you must give a gay tone to your challenge, and keep the whole move hidden with the greatest secrecy. What makes the pain of jealousy so sharp is that vanity cannot help you to bear it. But, according to the plan I have spoken of, your vanity has something to feed on; you can respect yourself for bravery, even if you are reduced to despising your powers of pleasing. If you would rather not carry things to such tragic lengths, you must pack up and go miles away, and keep a chorus-girl, whose charms people will think have arrested you in your flight. Your rival has only to be an ordinary person and he will think you are consoled. Very often the best way is to wait without flinching, while he wears himself out in the eyes of the loved one through his own stupidity. For, except in a serious passion formed little by little and in early youth, a clever woman does not love an undistinguished man for long.[3] In the case of jealousy after intimate intercourse, there must follow also apparent indifference or real inconstancy. Plenty of women, offended with a lover whom they still love, form an attachment with the man, of whom he has shown himself jealous, and the play becomes a reality.[4] I have gone into some detail, because in these moments of jealousy one often loses one's head. Counsels, made in writing a long time ago, are useful, and, the essential thing being to feign calmness, it is not out of place in a philosophical piece of writing, to adopt that tone. As your adversaries' power over you consists in taking away from you or making you hope for things, whose whole worth consists in your passion for them, once manage to make them think you are indifferent, and suddenly they are without a weapon. If you have no active course to take, but can distract yourself in looking for consolation, you will find some pleasure in reading Othello; it will make you doubt the most conclusive appearances. You will feast your eyes on these words:— It is my experience that the sight of a fine sea is consoling. The morning which had arisen calm and bright gave a pleasant effect to the waste mountain view, which was seen from the castle on looking to the landward, and the glorious ocean crisped with a thousand rippling waves of silver extended on the other side in awful, yet complacent majesty to the verge of the horizon. With such scenes of calm sublimity the human heart sympathises even in its most disturbed moods, and deeds of honour and virtue are inspired by their majestic influence. (The Bride of Lammermoor, Chap. VII.)
I find this written by Salviati:— July 20th, 1818.—I often—and I think unreasonably—apply to life as a whole the feelings of a man of ambition or a good citizen, if he finds himself set in battle to guard the baggage or in any other post without danger or action. I should have felt regret at forty to have passed the age of loving without deep passion. I should have had that bitter and humiliating displeasure, to have found out too late that I had been fool enough to let life pass, without living. Yesterday I spent three hours with the woman I love and a rival, whom she wants to make me think she favours. Certainly, there were moments of bitterness, in watching her lovely eyes fixed on him, and, on my departure, there were wild transports from utter misery to hope. But what changes, what sudden lights, what swift thoughts, and, in spite of the apparent happiness of my rival, with what pride and what delight my love felt itself superior to his! I went away saying to myself: The most vile fear would bleach those cheeks at the least of the sacrifices, which my love would make for the fun of it, nay, with delight—for example, to put this hand into a hat and draw one of these two lots: "Be loved by her," the other—"Die on the spot." And this feeling in me is so much second nature, that it did not prevent me being amiable and talkative. If someone had told me all that two years ago, I should have laughed.
I find in the Travels to the Source of the Missouri River ... in 1804–6 of Captains Lewis and Clarke (p. 215):— The Ricaras are poor and generous; we stayed some time in three of their villages. Their women are more beautiful than those of the other tribes we came across; they are also not in the least inclined to let their lover languish. We found a new example of the truth that you only have to travel to find out that there is variety everywhere. Among the Ricaras, for a woman to grant her favours without the consent of her husband or her brother, gives great offence. But then the brothers and the husband are only too delighted to have the opportunity of showing this courtesy to their friends. There was a negro in our crew; he created a great sensation among a people who had never seen a man of his colour before. He was soon a favourite with the fair sex, and we noticed that the husbands, instead of being jealous, were overjoyed to see him come to visit them. The funny part was that the interior of the huts was so narrow that everything was visible.[5]
CHAPTER XXXVI
OF JEALOUSY—(continued) Now for the woman suspected of inconstancy! She leaves you, because you have discouraged crystallisation, but it is possible that in her heart you have habit to plead for you. She leaves you, because she is too sure of you. You have killed fear, and there is nothing left to give birth to the little doubts of happy love. Just make her uneasy, and, above all, beware of the absurdity of protestations! During all the time you have lived in touch with her, you will doubtless have discovered what woman, in society or outside it, she is most jealous or most afraid of. Pay court to that woman, but so far from blazoning it about, do your best to keep it secret, and do your best sincerely; trust to the eyes of anger to see everything and feel everything. The strong aversion you will have felt for several months to all women ought to make this easy.[1] Remember that in the position you are in, everything is spoiled by a show of passion: avoid seeing much of the woman you love, and drink champagne with the wits. In order to judge of your mistress' love, remember:— 1. The more physical pleasure counts for in the basis of her love and in what formerly determined her to yield, the more prone it is to inconstancy, and, still more, to infidelity. This applies especially to love in which crystallisation has been favoured by the fire of sweet seventeen. 2. Two people in love are hardly ever equally in love:[2] passion-love has its phases, during which now one, now the other is more impassioned. Often, too, it is merely gallantry or vain love which responds to passion-love, and it is generally the woman who is carried away by passion. But whatever the love may be that either of them feels, directly one of them is jealous, he insists on the other fulfilling all the conditions of passion-love; vanity pretends to all the claims of a heart that feels. Furthermore, nothing wearies gallant-love like passion-love from the other side. Often a clever man, paying court to a woman, just sets her thinking of love in a sentimental frame of mind. She receives this clever man kindly for giving her this pleasure—he conceives hopes. But one fine day that woman meets the man, who makes her feel what the other has described. I do not know what are the effects of a man's jealousy on the heart of the woman he loves. Displayed by an admirer who wearies her, jealousy must inspire a supreme disgust, and it may even turn to hatred, if the man he is jealous of is nicer than the jealous one; for we want jealousy, said Madame de Coulanges, only from those of whom we could be jealous. If the jealous one is liked, but has no real claims, his jealousy may offend that feminine pride so hard to keep in humour or even to recognise. Jealousy may please women of pride, as a new way of showing them their power. Jealousy can please as a new way of giving proof of love. It can also offend the modesty of a woman who is over-refined.It can please as a sign of the lover's hot blood—ferrum est quod amant. But note that it is hot blood they love, and not courage À la Turenne, which is quite compatible with a cold heart. One of the consequences of crystallisation is that a woman can never say "yes" to the lover, to whom she has been unfaithful, if she ever means to make anything of him. Such is the pleasure of continuing to enjoy the perfect image we have formed of the object of our attachment, that until that fatal "yes"— L'on va chercher bien loin, plutot que de mourir,
Quelque prÉtexte ami pour vivre et pour souffrir.
Everyone in France knows the anecdote of Mademoiselle de Sommery, who, caught in flagrant delict by her lover, flatly denied the fact. On his protesting, she replied: "Very well, I see you don't love me any more: you believe what you see before what I tell you." To make it up with an idol of a mistress, who has been unfaithful, is to set yourself to undo with the point of a dagger a crystallisation incessantly forming afresh. Love has got to die, and your heart will feel the cruel pang of every stage in its agony. It is one of the saddest dispositions of this passion and of life. You must be strong enough to make it up only as friends.
CHAPTER XXXVII
ROXANA As for women's jealousy—they are suspicious, they have infinitely more at stake than we, they have made a greater sacrifice to love, have far fewer means of distraction and, above all, far fewer means of keeping a check on their lover's actions. A woman feels herself degraded by jealousy; she thinks her lover is laughing at her, or, still worse, making fun of her tenderest transports. Cruelty must tempt her—and yet, legally, she cannot kill her rival! For women, jealousy must be a still more abominable evil than it is for men. It is the last degree of impotent rage and self-contempt[1] which a heart can bear without breaking. I know no other remedy for so cruel an evil, than the death of the one who is the cause of it or of the one who suffers. An example of French jealousy is the story of Madame de la Pommeraie in Jacques le Fataliste(19). La Rochefoucauld says: "We are ashamed of owning we are jealous, but pride ourselves on having been and of being capable of jealousy."[2] Poor woman dares not own even to having suffered this torture, so much ridicule does it bring upon her. So painful a wound can never quite heal up. If cold reason could be unfolded before the fire of imagination with the merest shade of success, I would say to those wretched women, who are unhappy from jealousy: "There is a great difference between infidelity in man and in you. In you, the importance of the act is partly direct, partly symbolic. But, as an effect of the education of our military schools, it is in man the symbol of nothing at all. On the contrary, in women, through the effect of modesty, it is the most decisive of all the symbols of devotion. Bad habit makes it almost a necessity to men. During all our early years, the example set by the so-called 'bloods' makes us set all our pride on the number of successes of this kind—as the one and only proof of our worth. For you, your education acts in exactly the opposite direction." As for the value of an action as symbol—in a moment of anger I upset a table on to the foot of my neighbour; that gives him the devil of a pain, but can quite easily be fixed up—or again, I make as if to give him a slap in the face.... The difference between infidelity in the two sexes is so real, that a woman of passion may pardon it, while for a man that is impossible. Here we have a decisive ordeal to show the difference between passion-love and love from pique: infidelity in women all but kills the former and doubles the force of the latter. Haughty women disguise their jealousy from pride. They will spend long and dreary evenings in silence with the man whom they adore, and whom they tremble to lose, making themselves consciously disagreeable in his eyes. This must be one of the greatest possible tortures, and is certainly one of the most fruitful sources of unhappiness in love. In order to cure these women, who merit so well all our respect, it needs on the man's side a strong and out-of-the-way line of action—but, mind, he must not seem to notice what is going on—for example, a long journey with them undertaken at a twenty-four hours' notice.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
OF SELF-ESTEEM PIQUED[1] Pique is a manifestation of vanity; I do not want my antagonist to go higher than myself and I take that antagonist himself as judge of my worth. I want to produce an effect on his heart. It is this that carries us so far beyond all reasonable limits. Sometimes, to justify our own extravagance, we go so far as to tell ourselves that this rival has a mind to dupe us. Pique, being an infirmity of honour, is far more common in monarchies; it must, surely, be exceedingly rare in countries, where the habit is rampant of valuing things according to their utility—for example, in the United States. Every man, and a Frenchman sooner than any other, loathes being taken for a dupe; and yet the lightness of the French character under the old monarchic rÉgime[2], prevented pique from working great havoc beyond the domains of gallantry and gallant-love. Pique has produced serious tragedies only in monarchies, where, through the climate, the shade of character is darker (Portugal, Piedmont). The provincial in France forms a ludicrous idea of what is considered a gentleman in good society—and then he takes cover behind his model, and waits there all his life to see that no one trespasses. And so good-bye naturalness! He is always in a state of pique, a mania which gives a laughable character even to his love affairs. This enviousness is what makes it most unbearable to live in small towns, and one should remind oneself of this, when one admires the picturesque situation of any of them. The most generous and noble emotions are there paralysed by contact with all that is most low in the products of civilisation. In order to put the finishing touch to their awfulness, these bourgeois talk of nothing but the corruption of great cities.[3] Pique cannot exist in passion-love; it is feminine pride. "If I let my lover treat me badly, he will despise me and no longer be able to love me." It may also be jealousy in all its fury. Jealousy desires the death of the object it fears. The man in a state of pique is miles away from that—he wants his enemy to live, and, above all, be witness of his triumph. He would be sorry to see his rival renounce the struggle, for the fellow may have the insolence to say in the depth of his heart: "If I had persevered in my original object, I should have outdone him." With pique, there is no interest in the apparent purpose—the point of everything is victory. This is well brought out in the love affairs of chorus-girls; take away the rival, and the boasted passion, which threatened suicide from the fifth-floor window, instantly subsides. Love from pique, contrary to passion-love, passes in a moment; it is enough for the antagonist by an irrevocable step to own that he renounces the struggle. I hesitate, however, to advance this maxim, having only one example, and that leaves doubts in my mind. Here are the facts—the reader will judge. Dona Diana is a young person of twenty-three, daughter of one of the richest and proudest citizens of Seville. She is beautiful, without any doubt, but of a peculiar type of beauty, and is credited with ever so much wit and still more pride. She was passionately in love, to all appearances at least, with a young officer, with whom her family would have nothing to do. The officer left for America with Morillo, and they corresponded continuously. One day in the midst of a lot of people, assembled round the mother of Dona Diana, a fool announced the death of the charming officer. All eyes are turned upon Dona Diana; Dona Diana says nothing but these words: "What a pity—so young." Just that day we had been reading a play of old Massinger, which ends tragically, but in which the heroine takes the death of her lover with this apparent tranquillity. I saw the mother shudder in spite of her pride and dislike; the father went out of the room to hide his joy. In the midst of this scene and the dismay of all present, who were making eyes at the fool who had told the story, Dona Diana, the only one at ease, proceeded with the conversation, as if nothing had happened. Her mother, in apprehension, set her maid to watch her, but nothing seemed to be altered in her behaviour. Two years later, a very fine young man paid his attentions to her. This time again, and, still for the same reason, Dona Diana's parents violently opposed the marriage, because the aspirant was not of noble birth. She herself declared it should take place. A state of pique ensues between the daughter's sense of honour and the father's. The young man is forbidden the house. Dona Diana is no longer taken to the country and hardly ever to church. With scrupulous care, every means of meeting her lover is taken from her. He disguises himself and sees her secretly at long intervals. She becomes more and more resolute, and refuses the most brilliant matches, even a title and a great establishment at the Court of Ferdinand VII. The whole town is talking of the misfortunes of the two lovers and of their heroic constancy. At last the majority of Dona Diana draws near. She gives her father to understand that she means to make use of her right of disposing of her own hand. The family, driven back on its last resources, opens negotiations for the marriage. When it is half concluded, at an official meeting of the two families, the young man, after six years' constancy, refuses Dona Diana.[4] A quarter of an hour later no trace of anything—she was consoled. Did she love from pique? Or are we face to face with a great soul, that disclaims to parade its sorrow before the eyes of the world? In passion-love satisfaction, if I can call it such, is often only to be won by piquing the loved one's self-esteem. Then, in appearance, the lover realises all that can be desired; complaints would be ridiculous and seem senseless. He cannot speak of his misfortune, and yet how constantly he knows and feels its prick! Its traces are inwoven, so to speak, with circumstances, the most flattering and the most fit to awaken illusions of enchantment. This misfortune rears its monstrous head at the tenderest moments, as if to taunt the lover and make him feel, at one and the same instant, all the delight of being loved by the charming and unfeeling creature in his arms, and the impossibility of this delight being his. Perhaps after jealousy, this is the cruellest unhappiness. The story is still fresh in a certain large town[5] of a man of soft and gentle nature, who was carried away by a rage of this kind to spill the blood of his mistress, who only loved him from pique against her sister. He arranged with her, one evening, to come for a row on the sea by themselves, in a pretty little boat he had devised himself. Once well out to sea, he touches a spring, the boat divides and disappears for ever. I have seen a man of sixty set out to keep an actress, the most capricious, irresponsible, delightful and wonderful on the London stage—Miss Cornel. "And you expect that she'll be faithful?" people asked him. "Not in the least. But she'll be in love with me—perhaps madly in love." And for a whole year she did love him—often to distraction. For three whole months together she never even gave him subject for complaint. He had put a state of pique, disgraceful in many ways, between his mistress and his daughter. Pique wins the day in gallant-love, being its very life and blood. It is the ordeal best fitted to differentiate between gallant-love and passion-love. There is an old maxim of war, given to young fellows new to their regiment, that if you are billeted on a house, where there are two sisters, and you want to have one, you must pay your attentions to the other. To win the majority of Spanish women, who are still young and ready for love affairs, it is enough to give out, seriously and modestly, that you have no feelings whatever for the lady of the house. I have this useful maxim from dear General Lassale. This is the most dangerous way of attacking passion-love. Piqued self-esteem is the bond which ties the happiest marriages, after those formed by love. Many husbands make sure of their wives' love for many years, by taking up with some little woman a couple of months after their marriage.[6] In this way the habit is engendered of thinking only of one man, and family ties succeed in making the habit invincible.If in the past century at the Court of Louis XV a great lady (Madame de Choiseul) was seen to worship her husband,[7] the reason is that he seemed to take a keen interest in her sister, the Duchesse de Grammont. The most neglected mistress, once she makes us see that she prefers another man, robs us of our peace and afflicts our heart with all the semblance of passion. The courage of an Italian is an access of rage; the courage of a German a moment of intoxication; that of a Spaniard an outburst of pride. If there were a nation, in which courage were generally a matter of piqued self-esteem between the soldiers of each company and the regiments of each division, in the case of a rout there would be no support, and consequently there would be no means of rallying the armies of such a nation. To foresee the danger and try to remedy it, would be the greatest of all absurdities with such conceited runaways. "It is enough to have opened any single description of a voyage among the savages of North America," says one of the most delightful philosophers of France,[8] "to know that the ordinary fate of prisoners of war is not only to be burnt alive and eaten, but first to be bound to a stake near a flaming bonfire and to be tortured there for several hours, by all the most ferocious and refined devices that fury can imagine. Read what travellers, who have witnessed these fearful scenes, tell of the cannibal joy of the assistants, above all, of the fury of the women and children, and of their gruesome delight in this competition of cruelty. See also what they add about the heroic firmness and immutable self-possession of the prisoner, who not only gives no sign of pain, but taunts and defies his torturers, by all that pride can make most haughty, irony most bitter, and sarcasm most insulting—singing his own glorious deeds, going through the number of the relations and friends of the onlookers whom he has killed, detailing the sufferings he has inflicted on them, and accusing all that stand around him of cowardice, timidity and ignorance of the methods of torture; until falling limb from limb, devoured alive under his own eyes by enemies drunk with fury, he gasps out his last whisper and his last insult together with his life's breath.[9] All this would be beyond belief in civilised nations, will look like fable to the most fearless captains of our grenadiers, and will one day be brought into doubt by posterity."
This physiological phenomenon is closely connected with a particular moral state in the prisoner, which constitutes, between him on the one side and all his torturers on the other, a combat of self-esteem—of vanity against vanity, as to who can hold out longer. Our brave military doctors have often observed that wounded soldiers, who, in a calm state of mind and senses, would have shrieked out, during certain operations, display, on the contrary, only calmness and heroism, if they are prepared for it in a certain manner. It is a matter of piquing their sense of honour; you have to pretend, first in a roundabout way, and then with irritating persistence, that it is beyond their present power to bear the operation without shrieking.
CHAPTER XXXIX
OF QUARRELSOME LOVE It is of two kinds: - In which the originator of the quarrel loves.
- In which he does not love.
If one of the lovers is too superior in advantages which both value, the love of the other must die; for sooner or later comes the fear of contempt, to cut short crystallisation. Nothing is so odious to the mediocre as mental superiority. There lies the source of hatred in the world of to-day, and if we do not have to thank this principle for desperate enmities, it is solely due to the fact that the people it comes between are not forced to live together. What then of love? For here, everything being natural, especially on the part of the superior being, superiority is not masked by any social precaution. For the passion to be able to survive, the inferior must ill-treat the other party; otherwise the latter could not shut a window, without the other taking offence. As for the superior party, he deludes himself: the love he feels is beyond the reach of danger, and, besides, almost all the weaknesses in that which we love, make it only the dearer to us. In point of duration, directly after passion-love reciprocated between people on the same level, one must put quarrelsome love, in which the quarreller does not love. Examples of this are to be found in the anecdotes, relative to the Duchesse de Berri (Memoirs of Duclos). Partaking, as it does, of the nature of set habits, which are rooted in the prosaic and egoistic side of life and follow man inseparably to the grave, this love can last longer than passion-love itself. But it is no longer love, it is a habit engendered by love, which has nothing of that passion but memories and physical pleasure. This habit necessarily presupposes a less noble kind of being. Each day a little scene is got ready—"Will he make a fuss?"—which occupies the imagination, just as, in passion-love, every day a new proof of affection had to be found. See the anecdotes about Madame d'Houdetot and Saint-Lambert.[1] It is possible that pride refuses to get used to this kind of occupation; in which case, after some stormy months, pride kills love. But we see the nobler passion make a long resistance before giving in. The little quarrels of happy love foster a long time the illusion of a heart that still loves and sees itself badly treated. Some tender reconciliations may make the transition more bearable. A woman excuses the man she has deeply loved, on the score of a secret sorrow or a blow to his prospects. At last she grows used to being scolded. Where, really, outside passion-love, outside gambling or the possession of power,[2] can you find any other unfailing entertainment to be compared with it for liveliness? If the scolder happens to die, the victim who survives proves inconsolable. This is the principle which forms the bond of many middle-class marriages; the scolded can listen to his own voice all day long talking of his favourite subject. There is a false kind of quarrelsome love. I took from the letters of a woman of extraordinary brilliance this in Chapter XXXIII:— "Always a little doubt to allay—that is what whets our appetite in passion-love every moment.... As it is never separated from fear, so its pleasures can never tire."
With rough and ill-mannered people, or those with a very violent nature, this little doubt to calm, this faint misgiving shows itself in the form of a quarrel. If the loved one has not the extreme susceptibility, which comes of a careful education, she may find that love of this kind has more life in it, and consequently is more enjoyable. Even with all the refinement in the world, it is hard not to love "your savage" all the more, if you see him the first to suffer for his transports. What Lord Mortimer thinks back on, perhaps, with most regret for his lost mistress, are the candlesticks she threw at his head. And, really, if pride forgives and permits such sensations, it must also be allowed that they do wage implacable warfare upon boredom—that arch-enemy of the happy! Saint-Simon, the one historian France has had, says:— After several passing fancies, the Duchesse de Berri had fallen in love, in real earnest, with Riom, cadet of the house of d'Aydie, son of a sister of Madame de Biron. He had neither looks nor sense: a stout, short youth, with a puffy white face, who with all his spots looked like one big abscess—though, true, he had fine teeth. He had no idea of having inspired a passion, which in less than no time went beyond all limits and lasted ever after, without, indeed, preventing passing fancies and cross-attachments. He had little property, and many brothers and sisters who had no more. M. and Madame de Pons, lady-in-waiting to the Duchesse de Berri, were related to them and of the same province, and they sent for the young man, who was a lieutenant in the dragoons, to see what could be made of him. He had scarcely arrived before the Duchess's weakness for him became public and Riom was master of the Luxembourg. M. de Lauzun, whose grand-nephew he was, laughed in his sleeve; he was delighted to see in Riom a reincarnation at the Luxembourg of himself from the time of Mademoiselle. He gave Riom instructions which were listened to by him, as befitted a mild and naturally polite and respectful young fellow, well behaved and straightforward. But before long Riom began to feel the power of his own charms, which could only captivate the incomprehensible humour of this princess. Without abusing his power with others, he made himself liked by everyone, but he treated his duchess as M. de Lauzun had treated Mademoiselle. He was soon dressed in the richest laces, the richest suits, furnished with money, buckles, jewels. He made himself an object of admiration and took a delight in making the princess jealous or pretending to be jealous himself—bringing her often to tears. Little by little he reduced her to the state of doing nothing without his permission, not even in matters of indifference. At one time, ready to go out to the Opera, he made her stay at home; at another he made her go against her will. He forced her to do favours to ladies she disliked, or of whom she was jealous, and to injure people she liked, or of whom he pretended to be jealous. Even as far as dress, she was not allowed the smallest liberty. He used to amuse himself by making her have her hair done all over again, or have her dress changed when she was completely ready—and this happened so often and so publicly, that he had accustomed her to take in the evening his orders for dress and occupation for the next day. The next day he would change it all and make the princess cry still more. At last she came to sending him messages by trusted valets—for he lived in the Luxembourg almost from the day of his arrival—and the messages had often to be repeated during her toilet for her to know what ribbons to wear and about her frock and other details of dress; and nearly always he made her wear what she disliked. If sometimes she gave herself some liberty in the smallest matter without leave, he treated her like a servant, and often her tears lasted several days. This haughty princess, who was so fond of display and indulging her boundless pride, could bring herself so low as to partake of obscene parties with him and unmentionable people—she with whom no one could dine unless he were prince of the blood. The Jesuit Riglet, whom she as a child had known, and who had brought her up, was admitted to these private meals, without feeling ashamed himself or the Duchess being embarrassed. Madame de Mouchy was admitted into the secret of all these strange events; she and Riom summoned the company and chose the days. This lady was the peacemaker between the two lovers, and the whole of this existence was a matter of general knowledge at the Luxembourg. Riom was there looked to, as the centre of everything, while on his side he was careful to live on good terms with all, honouring them with a show of respect, which he refused in public only to his princess. Before everybody he would give her curt answers, which would make the whole company lower their eyes and bring blushes to the cheeks of the Duchess, who put no constraint upon her idolatry of him."
Riom was a sovereign remedy, for the Duchess, against the monotony of life. A famous woman said once off-hand to General Bonaparte, then a young hero covered with glory and with no crimes against liberty on his conscience: "General, a woman could only be a wife or a sister to you." The hero did not understand the compliment, which the world has made up for with some pretty slanders. The women, of whom we are speaking, like to be despised by their lover, whom they only love in his cruelty.
CHAPTER XXXIX
(Part II)
REMEDIES AGAINST LOVE The leap of Leucas was a fine image of antiquity. It is true, the remedy of love is almost impossible. A danger is needed to call man's attention back sharply to look to his own preservation.[1] But that is not all. What is harder to realise—a pressing danger must continue, and one that can only be averted with care, in order that the habit of thinking of his own preservation may have time to take root. I can see nothing that will do but a storm of sixteen days, like that in Don Juan[2] or the shipwreck of M. Cochelet among the Moors. Otherwise, one gets soon used to the peril, and even drops back into thoughts of the loved one with still more charm—when reconnoitring at twenty yards' range from the enemy. We have repeated over and over again that the love of a man, who loves well, delights in and vibrates to every movement of his imagination, and that there is nothing in nature which does not speak to him of the object of his love. Well, this delight and this vibration form a most interesting occupation, next to which all others pale. A friend who wants to work the cure of the patient, must, first of all, be always on the side of the woman the patient is in love with—and all friends, with more zeal than sense, are sure to do exactly the opposite. It is attacking with forces too absurdly inferior that combination of sweet illusions, which earlier we called crystallisation.[3] The friend in need should not forget this fact, that, if there is an absurdity to be believed, as the lover has either to swallow it or renounce everything which holds him to life, he will swallow it. With all the cleverness in the world, he will deny in his mistress the most palpable vices and the most villainous infidelities. This is how, in passion-love, everything is forgiven after a little. In the case of reasonable and cold characters, for the lover to swallow the vices of a mistress, he must only find them out after several months of passion.[4] Far from trying bluntly and openly to distract the lover, the friend in need ought to tire him with talking of his love and his mistress, and at the same time manage that a host of little events force themselves upon his notice. Even if travel isolates,[5] it is still no remedy, and in fact nothing recalls so tenderly the object of our love as change of scene. It was in the midst of the brilliant Paris salons, next to women with the greatest reputation for charm, that I was most in love with my poor mistress, solitary and sad in her little room in the depth of the Romagna.[6] I looked at the superb clock in the brilliant salon, where I was exiled, for the hour she goes out on foot, even in the rain, to call on her friend. Trying to forget her, I have found that change of scene is the source of memories of one's love, less vivid but far more heavenly than those one goes in search for in places, where once upon a time one met her. In order that absence may prove useful, the friend in need must be always at hand, and suggest to the lover's mind all possible reflections on the history of his love, trying to make these reflections tiresome through their length and importunity. In this way he gives them the appearance of commonplaces. For example, tender sentimental talk after a dinner enlivened with good wine. It is hard to forget a woman, with whom one has been happy; for, remember, that there are certain moments the imagination can never be tired of evoking and beautifying. I leave out all mention of pride, cruel but sovereign remedy, which, however, is not to be applied to sensitive souls. The first scenes of Shakespeare's Romeo form an admirable picture; there is so vast a gap between the man who says sorrowfully to himself: "She hath forsworn to love," and he who cries out in the height of happiness: "Come what sorrow can!" [1] Danger of Henry Morton in the Clyde. (Old Mortality, Vol. IV, Chap. X.)
CHAPTER XXXIX
(Part III) Her passion will die like a lamp for want of what the flame should feed upon. (Bride of Lammermoor, II, Chap. VI.)] The friend in need must beware of faulty reasoning—for example, of talking about ingratitude. You are giving new life to crystallisation, by procuring it a victory and a new enjoyment. In love there is no such thing as ingratitude; the actual pleasure always repays, and more than repays, sacrifices that seem the greatest. In love no other crime but want of honesty seems to me possible: one should be scrupulous as to the state of one's heart. The friend in need has only to attack fair and square, for the lover to answer:— "To be in love, even while enraged with the loved one, is nothing less, to bring myself down to your £ s. d. style, than having a ticket in a lottery, in which the prize is a thousand miles above all that you can offer me, in your world of indifference and selfish interests. One must have plenty of vanity—and precious petty vanity—to be happy, because people receive you well. I do not blame men for going on like this, in their world, but in the love of LÉonore I found a world where everything was heavenly, tender and generous. The most lofty and almost incredible virtue of your world counted, between her and me, only as any ordinary and everyday virtue. Let me at all events dream of the happiness of passing my life close to such a creature. Although I understand that slander has ruined me, and that I have nothing to hope for, at least I shall make her the sacrifice of my vengeance." It is quite impossible to put a stop to love except in its first stages. Besides a prompt departure, and the forced distractions of society (as in the case of the Comtesse Kalember), there are several other little ruses, which the friend in need can bring into play. For example, he can bring to your notice, as if by chance, the fact that the woman you love, quite outside the disputed area, does not even observe towards you the same amount of politeness and respect, with which she honours your rival. The smallest details are enough; for in love everything is a sign. For example, she does not take your arm to go up to her box. This sort of nonsense, taken tragically by a passionate heart, couples a pang of humiliation to every judgment formed by crystallisation, poisons the source of love and may destroy it. One way against the woman, who is behaving badly to our friend, is to bring her under suspicion of some absurd physical defect, impossible to verify. If it were possible for the lover to verify the calumny, and even if he found it substantiated, it would be disqualified by his imagination, and soon have no place with him at all. It is only imagination itself which can resist imagination: Henry III knew that very well when he scoffed at the famous Duchesse de Montpensier(22). Hence it is the imagination you must look to—above all, in a girl whom you want to keep safe from love. And the less her spirit has of the common stuff, the more noble and generous her soul, in a word the worthier she is of our respect, just so much greater the danger through which she must pass. It is always perilous, for a girl, to suffer her memories to group themselves too repeatedly and too agreeably round the same individual. Add gratitude, admiration or curiosity to strengthen the bonds of memory, and she is almost certainly on the edge of the precipice. The greater the monotony of her everyday life, the more active are those poisons called gratitude, admiration and curiosity. The only thing, then, is a swift, prompt and vigorous distraction. Just so, a little roughness and "slap-dash" in the first encounter, is an almost infallible means of winning the respect of a clever woman, if only the drug be administered in a natural and simple manner.
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