CHAPTER LVIIISTATE OF EUROPE WITH REGARD TO MARRIAGE

[1]Memoirs of Madame Roland. M. Grangeneuve, who goes out for a walk at eight o'clock in a certain street, in order to be killed by the Capuchin Chabot. A death was thought expedient in the cause of liberty.

So far we have only treated the question of marriage according to theory;[1]we are now to treat it according to the facts.

Which of all countries is that in which there are the most happy marriages? Without dispute, Protestant Germany(52).

I extract the following fragment from the diary of Captain Salviati, without changing a single word in it:—

"Halberstadt,June 23rd, 1807.... Nevertheless, M. de Bülow is absolutely and openly in love with Mademoiselle de Feltheim; he follows her about everywhere, always, talks to her unceasingly, and very often keeps her yards away from us. Such open marks of affection shock society, break it up—and on the banks of the Seine would pass for the height of indecency. The Germans think much less than we do about what breaks up society; indecency is little more than a conventional evil. For five years M. de Bülow has been paying court in this way to Mina, whom he has been unable to marry owing to the war. All the young ladies in society have their lover, and he is known to everyone. Among all the German acquaintances of my friend M. de Mermann(53)there is not a single one who has not married for love.

"Mermann, his brother George, M. de Voigt, M. deLazing, etc. He has just given me the names of a dozen of them.

"The open and passionate way in which these lovers pay their court to their mistresses would be the height of indecency, absurdity and shame in France.

"Mermann told me this evening, as we were returning from theChasseur Vert, that, among all the women of his very numerous family, he did not suppose there was a single one who had deceived her husband. Allowing that he is wrong about half of them, it is still a singular country.

"His shady proposal to his sister-in-law, Madame de Munichow, whose family is about to die out for want of male heirs and its very considerable possessions revert to the crown, coldly received, but merely with: 'Let's hear no more of that.'

"He tells the divine Philippine (who has just obtained a divorce from her husband, who only wanted to sell her to his Sovereign) something about it in very covert terms. Unfeigned indignation, toned down in its expression instead of being exaggerated: 'Have you, then, no longer any respect for our sex? I prefer to think, for the sake of your honour, that you're joking.'

"During a journey to the Brocken with this really beautiful woman, she reclined on his shoulder while asleep or pretending to sleep; a jolt threw her somewhat on to the top of him, and he put his arm round her waist; she threw herself into the other corner of the carriage. He doesn't think that she is incorruptible, but he believes that she would kill herself the day after her mistake. What is certain is that he loved her passionately and that he was similarly loved by her, that they saw each other continually and that she is without reproach. But the sun is very pale at Halberstadt, the Government very meddling, and these two persons very cold. In their most passionate interviews Kant and Klopstock were always of the party.

"Mermann told me that a married man, convicted of adultery, could be condemned by the courts of Brunswick to ten years' imprisonment; the law has fallen into disuse, but at least ensures that people do not joke about this sort of affair. The distinction of being a man with a past is very far from being such an advantage here as it is in France, where you can scarcely refuse it a married man in his presence without insulting him.

"Anyone who told my Colonel or Ch... that they no longer have women since their marriage would get a very poor reception.

"Some years ago a woman of this country, in a fit of religious fervour, told her husband, a gentleman of the Court of Brunswick, that she had deceived him for six years together. The husband, as big a fool as his wife, went to tell the news to the Duke; the gallant was obliged to resign all his employments and to leave the country in twenty-four hours, under a threat from the Duke to put the laws in motion. "

"Halberstadt,July 7th, 1807.

"Husbands are not deceived here, 'tis true—but ye gods, what women! Statues, masses scarcely organic! Before marriage they are exceedingly attractive, graceful as gazelles, with quick tender eyes that always understand the least hint of love. The reason is that they are on the look out for a husband. So soon as the husband is found, they become absolutely nothing but getters of children, in a state of perpetual adoration before the begetter. In a family of four or five children there must always be one of them ill, since half the children die before seven, and in this country, immediately one of the babies is ill, the mother goes out no more. I can see that they find an indescribable pleasure in being caressed by their children. Little by little they lose all their ideas. It is the same at Philadelphia. There girls of the wildest and most innocent gaiety become, in lessthan a year, the most boring of women. To have done with the marriages of Protestant Germany—a wife's dowry is almost nil because of the fiefs. Mademoiselle de Diesdorff, daughter of a man with an income of forty thousand francs, will have a dowry of perhaps two thousand crowns (seven thousand five hundred francs).

"M. de Mermann got four thousand crowns with his wife.

"The rest of the dowry is payable in vanity at the Court. 'One could find among the middle class,' Mermann told me, 'matches with a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand crowns (six hundred thousand francs instead of fifteen). But one could no longer be presented at Court; one would be barred all society in which a prince or princess appeared:it's terrible.' These were his words, and they came from the heart.

"A German woman with the soul of Phi..., her intellect, her noble and sensitive face, the fire she must have had at eighteen (she is now twenty-seven), a woman such as this country produces, with her virtue, naturalness and no more than a useful little dose of religion—such a woman would no doubt make her husband very happy. But how flatter oneself that one would remain true to such insipid matrons?

"'But he was married,' she answered me this morning when I blamed the four years'silence of Corinne's lover, Lord Oswald. She sat up till three o'clock to readCorinne. The novel gave her profound emotion, and now she answers me with touching candour: 'But he was married.'

"Phi... is so natural, with so naive a sensibility, that even in this land of the natural, she seems a prude to the petty heads that govern petty hearts; their witticisms make her sick, and she in no way hides it.

"When she is in good company, she laughs like mad at the most lively jokes. It was she who told me the story of the young princess of sixteen, later on so well known.who often managed to make the officer on guard at her door come up into her rooms. "

Switzerland

I know few families happier than those of the Oberland, the part of Switzerland that lies round Berne; and it is a fact of public notoriety (1816) that the girls there spend Saturday to Sunday nights with their lovers.

The fools who know the world, after a voyage from Paris to Saint Cloud, will cry out; happily I find in a Swiss writer confirmation of what I myself[2]saw during four months.

"An honest peasant complained of certain losses he had sustained in his orchard; I asked him why he didn't keep a dog: 'My daughters would never get married.' I did not understand his answer; he told me he had had such a bad-tempered dog that none of the young men dared climb up to the windows any longer.

"Another peasant, mayor of his village, told me in praise of his wife, that when she was a girl no one had had moreKilterorWächterer—that is, had had more young men come to spend the night with her.

"A Colonel, widely esteemed, was forced, while crossing the mountains, to spend the night at the bottom of one of the most lonely and picturesque valleys in the country. He lodged with the first magistrate in the valley, a man rich and of good repute. On entering, the stranger noticed a young girl of sixteen, a model of gracefulness, freshness and simplicity: she was the daughter of the master of the house. That night there was a village ball; the stranger paid court to the girl, who was really strikingly beautiful. At last, screwing up courage, he ventured to ask her whether he couldn't 'keep watch' with her. 'No,' answered the girl, 'I share a room with my cousin, but I'll come myself to yours.' You can judgeof the confusion this answer gave him. They had supper, the stranger got up, the girl took a torch and followed him into his room; he imagined the moment was at hand. 'Oh no,' she said simply, 'I must first ask Mamma's permission.' He would have been less staggered by a thunderbolt! She went out; his courage revived; he slipped into these good folks' parlour, and listened to the girl begging her mother in a caressing tone to grant her the desired permission; in the end she got it. 'Eh, old man,' said the mother to her husband who was already in bed, 'd'you allow Trineli to spend the night with the Colonel?' 'With all my heart,' answers the father, 'I think I'd lend even my wife to such a man.' 'Right then, go,' says the mother to Trineli; 'but be a good girl, and don't take off your petticoat...' At day-break, Trineli, respected by the stranger, rose still virgin. She arranged the bedclothes, prepared coffee and cream for her partner and, after she had breakfasted with him, seated on his bed, cut off a little piece of herbroustpletz(a piece of velvet going over the breast). 'Here,' she said, 'keep this souvenir of a happy night; I shall never forget it.—Why are you a Colonel?' And giving him a last kiss, she ran away; he didn't manage to see her again.[3]Here you have the absolute opposite of French morals, and I am far from approving them."

Were I a legislator, I would have people adopt in France, as in Germany, the custom of evening dances. Three times a week girls would go with their mothers to a ball, beginning at seven and ending at midnight, and demanding no other outlay but a violin and a few glasses of water. In a neighbouring room the mothers, maybe a little jealous of their daughters' happy education,would play boston; in a third, the fathers would find papers and could talk politics. Between midnight and one o'clock all the families would collect together and return to the paternal roof. Girls would get to know young men; they would soon come to loathe fatuity and the indiscretions it is responsible for—in fact they would choose themselves husbands. Some girls would have unhappy love-affairs, but the number of deceived husbands and unhappy matches would diminish to an immense degree. It would then be less absurd to attempt to punish infidelity with dishonour. The law could say to young women: "You have chosen your husband—be faithful to him." In those circumstances I would allow the indictment and punishment by the courts of what the English call criminal conversation. The courts could impose, to the profit of prisons and hospitals, a fine equal to two-thirds of the seducer's fortune and imprisonment for several years.

A woman could be indicted for adultery before a jury. The jury should first declare that the husband's conduct had been irreproachable.

A woman, if convicted, could be condemned to imprisonment for life. If the husband had been absent more than two years, the woman could not be condemned to more than some years' imprisonment. Public morals would soon model themselves on these laws and would perfect them.[4]

And then the nobles and the priests, still regretting bitterly the proper times of Madame de Montespan or Madame du Barry, would be forced to allow divorce.[5]

There would be in a village within sight of Paris an asylum for unfortunate women, a house of refuge into which, under pain of the galleys, no man besides the doctor and the almoner should enter. A woman who wished to get a divorce would be bound, first of all, to go and place herself as prisoner in this asylum; there she would spend two years without going out once. She could write, but never receive an answer.

A council composed of peers of France and certain magistrates of repute would direct, in the woman's name, the proceedings for a divorce and would regulate the pension to be paid to the institution by the husband. A woman who failed in her plea before the courts would be allowed to spend the rest of her life in the asylum. The Government would compensate the administration of the asylum with a sum of two thousand francs for each woman who sought its refuge. To be received in the asylum, a woman must have had a dowry of over twenty thousand francs. The moralrégimewould be one of extreme severity.

After two years of complete seclusion from the world, a divorced woman could marry again.

Once arrived at this point, Parliament could considerwhether, in order to infuse in girls a spirit of emulation, it would not be advisable to allow the sons a share of the paternal heritage double that of their sisters. The daughters who did not find husbands would have a share equal to that of the male children. It may be remarked, by the way, that this system would, little by little, destroy the only too inconvenient custom of marriages of convenience. The possibility of divorce would render useless such outrageous meanness.

At various points in France, and in certain poor villages, thirty abbeys for old maids should be established. The Government should endeavour to surround these establishments with consideration, in order to console a little the sorrows of the poor women who were to end their lives there. They should be given all the toys of dignity.

But enough of such chimeras!

[1]The author had read a chapter called "Dell' amore," in the Italian translation of theIdéologieof M. de Tracy(51). In that chapter the reader will find ideas incomparable, in philosophical importance, with anything he can find here.[2]Principes philosophiques du Colonel Weiss, 7 ed.,Vol. II. p. 245.[3]I am fortunate to be able to describe in the words of another some extraordinary facts that I have had occasion to observe. Certainly, but for M. de Weiss, I shouldn't have related this glimpse of foreign customs. I have omitted others equally characteristic of Valencia and Vienna.[4]The Examiner, an English paper, when giving a report of the Queen's case (No. 662, September 3rd, 1820), adds:—"We have a system of sexual morality, under which thousands of women become mercenary prostitutes whom virtuous women are taught to scorn, while virtuous men retain the privilege of frequenting these very women, without its being regarded as anything more than a venial offence."In the land of Cant there is something noble in the courage that dares speak the truth on this subject, however trivial and obvious it be; it is all the more meritorious in a poor paper, which can only hope for success if bought by the rich—and they look on the bishops and the Bible as the one safeguard of their fine feathers.[5]Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter, December 23rd, 1671: "I don't know if you have heard that Villarceaux, when talking to the king of a post for his son, adroitly took the occasion to tell him, that there were people busy telling his niece (Mademoiselle de Rouxel) that his Majesty had designs on her; that if it were so, he begged his Majesty to make use of him; said that the affair would be better in his hands than in others, and that he would discharge it with success. The King began to laugh and said: 'Villarceaux, we are too old, you and I, to attack young ladies of fifteen.' And like a gallant man, he laughed at him and told the ladies what he had said." See Memoirs of Lauzun, Bezenval, Madame d'Épinay, etc., etc, I beg my readers not to condemn me altogether without re-reading these Memoirs.

[2]Principes philosophiques du Colonel Weiss, 7 ed.,Vol. II. p. 245.

[3]I am fortunate to be able to describe in the words of another some extraordinary facts that I have had occasion to observe. Certainly, but for M. de Weiss, I shouldn't have related this glimpse of foreign customs. I have omitted others equally characteristic of Valencia and Vienna.

[4]The Examiner, an English paper, when giving a report of the Queen's case (No. 662, September 3rd, 1820), adds:—"We have a system of sexual morality, under which thousands of women become mercenary prostitutes whom virtuous women are taught to scorn, while virtuous men retain the privilege of frequenting these very women, without its being regarded as anything more than a venial offence."In the land of Cant there is something noble in the courage that dares speak the truth on this subject, however trivial and obvious it be; it is all the more meritorious in a poor paper, which can only hope for success if bought by the rich—and they look on the bishops and the Bible as the one safeguard of their fine feathers.

[4]The Examiner, an English paper, when giving a report of the Queen's case (No. 662, September 3rd, 1820), adds:—

"We have a system of sexual morality, under which thousands of women become mercenary prostitutes whom virtuous women are taught to scorn, while virtuous men retain the privilege of frequenting these very women, without its being regarded as anything more than a venial offence."

In the land of Cant there is something noble in the courage that dares speak the truth on this subject, however trivial and obvious it be; it is all the more meritorious in a poor paper, which can only hope for success if bought by the rich—and they look on the bishops and the Bible as the one safeguard of their fine feathers.

[5]Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter, December 23rd, 1671: "I don't know if you have heard that Villarceaux, when talking to the king of a post for his son, adroitly took the occasion to tell him, that there were people busy telling his niece (Mademoiselle de Rouxel) that his Majesty had designs on her; that if it were so, he begged his Majesty to make use of him; said that the affair would be better in his hands than in others, and that he would discharge it with success. The King began to laugh and said: 'Villarceaux, we are too old, you and I, to attack young ladies of fifteen.' And like a gallant man, he laughed at him and told the ladies what he had said." See Memoirs of Lauzun, Bezenval, Madame d'Épinay, etc., etc, I beg my readers not to condemn me altogether without re-reading these Memoirs.

Among young people, when they have done with mocking at some poor lover, and he has left the room, the conversation generally ends by discussing the question, whether it is better to deal with women like Mozart's Don Juan or like Werther. The contrast would be more exact, if I had said Saint-Preux, but he is so dull a personage, that in making him their representative, I should be wronging feeling hearts.

Don Juan's character requires the greater number of useful and generally esteemed virtues—admirable daring, resourcefulness, vivacity, a cool head, a witty mind, etc.

The Don Juans have great moments of bitterness and a very miserable old age—but then most men do not reach old age.

The lover plays a poor rôle in the drawing-room in the evening, because to be a success and a power among women a man must show just as much keenness on winning them as on a game of billiards. As everybody knows that the lover has a great interest in life, he exposes himself, for all his cleverness, to mockery. Only, next morning he wakes, not to be in a bad temper until something piquant or something nasty turns up to revive him, but to dream of her he loves and build castles in the air for love to dwell in.

Loveà laWerther opens the soul to all the arts, to all sweet and romantic impressions, to the moonlight, to the beauty of the forest, to the beauty of pictures—in a word, to the feeling and enjoyment of the beautiful,under whatever form it be found, even under the coarsest cloak. It causes man to find happiness even without riches.[1]Such souls, instead of growing weary like Mielhan, Bezenval, etc., go mad, like Rousseau, from an excess of sensibility. Women endowed with a certain elevation of soul, who, after their first youth, know how to recognise love, both where it is and what it is, generally escape the Don Juan—he is remarkable in their eyes rather by the number than the quality of his conquests. Observe, to the prejudice of tender hearts, that publicity is as necessary to Don Juan's triumph as secrecy is to Werther's. Most of the men who make women the business of their life are born in the lap of luxury; that is to say, they are, as a result of their education and the example set by everything that surrounded them in youth, hardened egoists.[2]

The real Don Juan even ends by looking on women as the enemy, and rejoicing in their misfortunes of every sort.

On the other hand, the charming Duke delle Pignatelle showed us the proper way to find happiness in pleasures,even without passion. "I know that I like a woman," he told me one evening, "when I find myself completely confused in her company, and don't know what to say to her." So far from letting his self-esteem be put to shame or take its revenge for these embarrassing moments, he cultivated them lovingly as the source of his happiness. With this charming young man gallant-love was quite free from the corroding influence of vanity; his was a shade of true love, pale, but innocent and unmixed; and he respected all women, as charming beings, towards whom we are far from just. (February 20, 1820.)

As a man does not choose himself a temperament, that is to say, a soul, he cannot play a part above him. J. J. Rousseau and the Duc de Richelieu might have tried in vain; for all their cleverness, they could never have exchanged their fortunes with respect to women. I could well believe that the Duke never had moments such as those that Rousseau experienced in the park de la Chevrette with Madame d'Houdetot; at Venice, when listening to the music of theScuole; and at Turin at the feet of Madame Bazile. But then he never had to blush at the ridicule that overwhelmed Rousseau in his affair with Madame de Larnage, remorse for which pursued him during the rest of his life.

A Saint-Preux's part is sweeter and fills up every moment of existence, but it must be owned that that of a Don Juan is far more brilliant. Saint-Preux's tastes may change at middle age: solitary and retired, and of pensive habits, he takes a back place on the stage of life, while Don Juan realises the magnificence of his reputation among men, and could yet perhaps please a woman of feeling by making sincerely the sacrifice of his libertine's tastes.

After all the reasons offered so far, on both sides of the question, the balance still seems to be even. What makes me think that the Werthers are the happier, isthat Don Juan reduces love to the level of an ordinary affair. Instead of being able, like Werther, to shape realities to his desires, he finds, in love, desires which are imperfectly satisfied by cold reality, just as in ambition, avarice or other passions. Instead of losing himself in the enchanting reveries of crystallisation, he thinks, like a general, of the success of his manoeuvres[3]and, in a word, he kills love, instead of enjoying it more keenly than other men, as ordinary people imagine.

This seems to me unanswerable. And there is another reason, which is no less so in my eyes, though, thanks to the malignity of Providence, we must pardon men for not recognising it. The habit of justice is, to my thinking, apart from accidents, the most assured way of arriving at happiness—and a Werther is no villain.[4]

To be happy in crime, it is absolutely necessary to have no remorse. I do not know whether such a creature can exist;[5]I have never seen him. I would bet that the affair of Madame Michelin disturbed the Duc de Richelieu's nights.

One ought either to have absolutely no sympathy or be able to put the human race to death—which is impossible.[6]

People who only know love from novels will experiencea natural repugnance in reading these words in favour of virtue in love. The reason is that, by the laws of the novel, the portraiture of a virtuous love is essentially tiresome and uninteresting. Thus the sentiment of virtue seems from a distance to neutralise that of love, and the words "a virtuous love" seem synonymous with a feeble love. But all this comes from weakness in the art of painting, and has nothing to do with passion such as it exists in nature.[7]

I beg to be allowed to draw a picture of my most intimate friend.

Don Juan renounces all the duties which bind him to the rest of men. In the great market of life he is a dishonest merchant, who is always buying and never paying. The idea of equality inspires the same rage in him as water in a man with hydrophobia; it is for this reason that pride of birth goes so well with the character of Don Juan. With the idea of the equality of rights disappears that of justice, or, rather, if Don Juan is sprung from an illustrious family, such common ideas have never come to him. I could easily believe that a man with an historic name is sooner disposed than another to set fire to the town in order to get his egg cooked.[8]We must excuse him; he is so possessed withself-love that he comes to the point of losing all idea of the evil he causes, and of seeing no longer anything in the universe capable of joy or sorrow except himself. In the fire of youth, when passion fills our own hearts with the pulse of life and keeps us from mistrust of others, Don Juan, all senses and apparent happiness, applauds himself for thinking only of himself, while he sees other men pay their sacrifices to duty. He imagines that he has found out the great art of living. But, in the midst of his triumph, while still scarcely thirty years of age, he perceives to his astonishment that life is wanting, and feels a growing disgust for what were all his pleasures. Don Juan told me at Thorn, in an access of melancholy: "There are not twenty different sorts of women, and once you have had two or three of each sort, satiety sets in." I answered: "It is only imagination that can for ever escape satiety. Each woman inspires a different interest, and, what is more, if chance throws the same woman in your way two or three years earlier or later in the course of life, and if chance means you to love, you can love the same woman in different manners. But a woman of gentle heart, even when she loved you, would produce in you, because of her pretensions to equality, only irritation to your pride. Your way of having women kills all the other pleasures of life; Werther's increases them a hundredfold."

This sad tragedy reaches the last act. You see Don Juan in old age, turning on this and that, never on himself, as the cause of his own satiety. You see him, tormented by a consuming poison, flying from this to that in a continual change of purpose. But, however brilliant the appearances may be, in the end he only changes one misery for another. He tries the boredom of inaction, he tries the boredom of excitement—there is nothing else for him to choose.

At last he discovers the fatal truth and confesses it to himself; henceforward he is reduced for all his enjoymentto making display of his power, and openly doing evil for evil's sake. In short, 'tis the last degree of settled gloom; no poet has dared give us a faithful picture of it—the picture, if true, would strike horror. But one may hope that a man, above the ordinary, will retrace his steps along this fatal path; for at the bottom of Don Juan's character there is a contradiction. I have supposed him a man of great intellect, and great intellect leads us to the discovery of virtue by the road that runs to the temple of glory.[9]

La Rochefoucauld, who, however, was a master of self-love, and who in real life was nothing but a silly man of letters,[10]says(267): "The pleasure of love consists in loving, and a man gets more happiness from the passion he feels than from the passion he inspires."

Don Juan's happiness consists in vanity, based, it is true, on circumstances brought about by great intelligence and activity; but he must feel that the most inconsiderable general who wins a battle, the most inconsiderable prefect who keeps his department in order, realises a more signal enjoyment than his own. The Duc de Nemours' happiness when Madame de Clèves tells him that she loves him, is, I imagine, above Napoleon's happiness at Marengo.

Loveà laDon Juan is a sentiment of the same kind as a taste for hunting. It is a desire for activity which must be kept alive by divers objects and by putting a man's talents continually to the test.

Loveà laWerther is like the feeling of a schoolboy writing a tragedy—and a thousand times better; it is a new goal, to which everything in life is referred and which changes the face of everything. Passion-love casts all nature in its sublimer aspects before the eyes of aman, as a novelty invented but yesterday. He is amazed that he has never seen the singular spectacle that is now discovered to his soul. Everything is new, everything is alive, everything breathes the most passionate interest.[11]A lover sees the woman he loves on the horizon of every landscape he comes across, and, while he travels a hundred miles to go and catch a glimpse of her for an instant, each tree, each rock speaks to him of her in a different manner and tells him something new about her. Instead of the tumult of this magic spectacle, Don Juan finds that external objects have for him no value apart from their degree of utility, and must be made amusing by some new intrigue.

Loveà laWerther has strange pleasures; after a year or two, the lover has now, so to speak, but one heart with her he loves; and this, strange to say, even independent of his success in love—even under a cruel mistress. Whatever he does, whatever he sees, he asks himself: "What would she say if she were with me? What would I say to her about this view of Casa-Lecchio?" He speaks to her, he hears her answer, he smiles at her fun. A hundred miles from her, and under the weight of her anger, he surprises himself, reflecting: "Léonore was very gay that night." Then he wakes up: "Good God!" he says to himself with a sigh, "there are madmen in Bedlam less mad than I."

"You make me quite impatient," said a friend of mine, to whom I read out this remark: "you are continually opposing the passionate man to the Don Juan, and that is not the point in dispute. You would be right, if a man could provide himself with passion at will. But what about indifference—what is to be done then?"—Gallant-love without horrors. Its horrors always come from a little soul, that needs to be reassured as to its own merit.

To continue.—The Don Juans must find great difficultyin agreeing with what I was saying just now of this state of the soul. Besides the fact that they can neither see nor feel this state, it gives too great a blow to their vanity. The error of their life is expecting to win in a fortnight what a timid lover can scarcely obtain in six months. They base their reckoning on experience got at the expense of those poor devils, who have neither the soul to please a woman of feeling by revealing its ingenuous workings, nor the necessary wit for the part of a Don Juan. They refuse to see that the same prize, though granted by the same woman, is not the same thing.

L'homme prudent sans cesse se méfie.C'est pour cela que des amants trompeursLe nombre est grand. Les dames que l'on prieFont soupirer longtemps des serviteursQui n'ont jamais été faux de leur vie.Mais du trésor qu'elles donnent enfinLe prix n'est su que du cœur qui le goûte;Plus on l'achète et plus il est divin:Le los d'amour ne vaut pas ce qu'il coûte.[12](Nivernais,Le Troubadour Guillaume de la Tour, III, 342.)

(Nivernais,Le Troubadour Guillaume de la Tour, III, 342.)

Passion-love in the eyes of a Don Juan may be compared to a strange road, steep and toilsome, that begins, 'tis true, amidst delicious copses, but is soon lost among sheer rocks, whose aspect is anything but inviting to the eyes of the vulgar. Little by little the road penetrates into the mountain-heights, in the midst of a dark forest, where the huge trees, intercepting the daylight with their shaggy tops that seem to touch the sky, throw a kind of horror into souls untempered by dangers.

After wandering with difficulty, as in an endless maze, whose multiple turnings try the patience of our self-love, on a sudden we turn a corner and find ourselves in a new world, in the delicious valley of Cashmire of Lalla Rookh. How can the Don Juans, who never venture along this road, or at most take but a few steps along it, judge of the views that it offers at the end of the journey?...

So you see inconstancy is good:

"Il me faut du nouveau, n'en fût-il plus au monde."[13]

Very well, I reply, you make light of oaths and justice, and what can you look for in inconstancy? Pleasure apparently.

But the pleasure to be got from a pretty woman, desired a fortnight and loved three months, is different from the pleasure to be found in a mistress, desired three years and loved ten.

If I do not insert the word "always" the reason is that I have been told old age, by altering our organs, renders us incapable of loving; myself, I don't believe it. When your mistress has become your intimate friend, she can give you new pleasures, the pleasures of old age. 'Tis a flower that, after it has been a rose in the morning—the season of flowers—becomes a delicious fruit in the evening, when the roses are no longer in season.[14]

A mistress desired three years is really a mistress in every sense of the word; you cannot approach her without trembling; and let me tell the Don Juans that a man who trembles is not bored. The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fear.

The evil of inconstancy is weariness; the evil of passion is despair and death. The cases of despair are noted and become legend. No one pays attention to theweary old libertines dying of boredom, with whom the streets of Paris are lined.

"Love blows out more brains than boredom." I have no doubt of it: boredom robs a man of everything, even the courage to kill himself.

There is a certain type of character which can find pleasure only in variety. A man who cries up Champagne at the expense of Bordeaux is only saying, with more or less eloquence: "I prefer Champagne."

Each of these wines has its partisans, and they are all right, so long as they quite understand themselves, and run after the kind of happiness best suited to their organs[15]and their habits. What ruins the case for inconstancy is that all fools range themselves on that side from lack of courage.

But after all, everyone, if he will take the trouble to look into himself, has his ideal, and there always seems to me something a little ridiculous in wanting to convert your neighbour.

[1]See the first volume of theNouvelle Héloïse. I should say every volume, if Saint-Preux had happened to have the ghost of a character, but he was a real poet, a babbler without resolution, who had no courage until he had made a peroration—yes, a very dull man. Such men have an immense advantage, in not upsetting feminine pride, and in never giving their mistress a fright. Weigh the word well; it contains perhaps the whole secret of the success of dull men with distinguished women. Nevertheless love is only a passion in so far as it makes one forget one's self-love. Thus they do not completely know love, these women, who, like L., ask of it the pleasures of pride. Unconsciously, they are on the same level as the prosaic man, the object of their contempt, who in love seeks love plus vanity. And they too, they want love and pride; but love goes out with flaming cheeks; he is the proudest of despots; he will be all, or nothing.[2]See a certain page of André Chénier (Works, p. 370); or rather look at life, though that's much harder. "In general, those whom we call patricians are much further than other men from loving anything," says the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. (Meditations.)[3]Compare Lovelace and Tom Jones.[4]See theVie privée du duc de Richelieu, nine volumes in 8vo. Why, at the moment that an assassin kills a man, does he not fall dead at his victim's feet? Why is there illness? And, if there is illness, why does not a Troistaillons die of the colic? Why does Henry IV reign twenty-one years and Lewis XV fifty-nine? Why is not the length of life in exact proportion to the degree of virtue in each man? These and other "infamous questions," English philosophers will say there is certainly no merit in posing; but there would be some merit in answering them otherwise than with insults and "cant."[5]Note Nero after the murder of his mother, in Suetonius, and yet with what a fine lot of flattery was he surrounded.[6]Cruelty is only a morbid kind of sympathy. Power is, after love, the first source of happiness, only because one believes oneself to be in a position to command sympathy.[7]If you offer the spectator a picture of the sentiment of virtue side by side with the sentiment of love, you will find that you have represented a heart divided between two sentiments. In novels the only good of virtue is to be sacrificed;videJulie d'Étanges.[8]VideSaint-Simon,fausse coucheof the Duchesse de Bourgoyne; and Madame de Motteville,passim: That princess, who was surprised to find that other women had five fingers on their hands like herself; that Gaston, Duke of Orleans, brother of Lewis XIII, who found it quite easy to understand why his favourites went to the scaffold just to please him. Note, in 1820, these fine gentlemen putting forward an electoral law that may bring back your Robespierres into France, etc., etc. And observe Naples in 1799. (I leave this note written in 1820. A list of the great nobles in 1778, with notes on their morals, compiled by General Laclos, seen at Naples in the library of the Marchese Berio—a very scandalous manuscript of more than three hundred pages.)[9]The character of the young man of the privileged classes in 1820 is pretty correctly represented by the brave Bothwell ofOld Mortality.[10]See Memoirs of de Retz and the unpleasant minute he gave the coadjutor at the Parliament between two doors.[11]Vol. 1819. Honeysuckle on the slopes.[12][A prudent man continually mistrusts himself. 'Tis the reason why the number of false lovers is great. The women whom men worship, make their servants, who have never been false in their life, sigh a long time. But the value of the prize that they give them in the end, can only be known to the heart that tastes it; the greater the cost, the more divine it is. The praises of love are not worth its pains.—Tr.][13][I must have novelty, even if there were none left in the world.—Tr. ][14]See the Memoirs of Collé—his wife.[15]Physiologists, who understand our organs, tell you: "Injustice, in the relations of social life, produces harshness, diffidence and misery."

[2]See a certain page of André Chénier (Works, p. 370); or rather look at life, though that's much harder. "In general, those whom we call patricians are much further than other men from loving anything," says the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. (Meditations.)

[3]Compare Lovelace and Tom Jones.

[4]See theVie privée du duc de Richelieu, nine volumes in 8vo. Why, at the moment that an assassin kills a man, does he not fall dead at his victim's feet? Why is there illness? And, if there is illness, why does not a Troistaillons die of the colic? Why does Henry IV reign twenty-one years and Lewis XV fifty-nine? Why is not the length of life in exact proportion to the degree of virtue in each man? These and other "infamous questions," English philosophers will say there is certainly no merit in posing; but there would be some merit in answering them otherwise than with insults and "cant."

[5]Note Nero after the murder of his mother, in Suetonius, and yet with what a fine lot of flattery was he surrounded.

[6]Cruelty is only a morbid kind of sympathy. Power is, after love, the first source of happiness, only because one believes oneself to be in a position to command sympathy.

[7]If you offer the spectator a picture of the sentiment of virtue side by side with the sentiment of love, you will find that you have represented a heart divided between two sentiments. In novels the only good of virtue is to be sacrificed;videJulie d'Étanges.

[8]VideSaint-Simon,fausse coucheof the Duchesse de Bourgoyne; and Madame de Motteville,passim: That princess, who was surprised to find that other women had five fingers on their hands like herself; that Gaston, Duke of Orleans, brother of Lewis XIII, who found it quite easy to understand why his favourites went to the scaffold just to please him. Note, in 1820, these fine gentlemen putting forward an electoral law that may bring back your Robespierres into France, etc., etc. And observe Naples in 1799. (I leave this note written in 1820. A list of the great nobles in 1778, with notes on their morals, compiled by General Laclos, seen at Naples in the library of the Marchese Berio—a very scandalous manuscript of more than three hundred pages.)

[9]The character of the young man of the privileged classes in 1820 is pretty correctly represented by the brave Bothwell ofOld Mortality.

[10]See Memoirs of de Retz and the unpleasant minute he gave the coadjutor at the Parliament between two doors.

[11]Vol. 1819. Honeysuckle on the slopes.

[12][A prudent man continually mistrusts himself. 'Tis the reason why the number of false lovers is great. The women whom men worship, make their servants, who have never been false in their life, sigh a long time. But the value of the prize that they give them in the end, can only be known to the heart that tastes it; the greater the cost, the more divine it is. The praises of love are not worth its pains.—Tr.]

[13][I must have novelty, even if there were none left in the world.—Tr. ]

[14]See the Memoirs of Collé—his wife.

[15]Physiologists, who understand our organs, tell you: "Injustice, in the relations of social life, produces harshness, diffidence and misery."

Under this title, which I would willingly have made still more modest, I have brought together, without excessive severity, a selection made from three or four hundred playing cards, on which I found a few lines scrawled in pencil. That which, I suppose, must be called the original manuscript, for want of a simpler name, was in many places made up of pieces of paper of all sizes, written on in pencil, and joined together by Lisio with sealing-wax, to save him the trouble of copying them afresh. He told me once that nothing he ever noted down seemed to him worth the trouble of recopying an hour later. I have entered so fully into all this in the hope that it may serve as an excuse for repetitions.

Everything can be acquired in solitude, except character.

1821. Hatred, love and avarice, the three ruling passions at Rome, and with gambling added, almost the only ones.

At first sight the Romans seem ill-natured, but they are only very much on their guard and blessed with an imagination which flares up at the least suggestion.

If they give a gratuitous proof of ill-nature, it is the case of a man, gnawed by fear, and testing his gun to reassure himself.

If I were to say, as I believe, that good-nature is the keynote of the Parisian's character, I should be very frightened of having offended him.—"I won't be good!"

A proof of love comes to light, when all the pleasures and all the pains, which all the other passions and wants of man can produce, in a moment cease working.

Prudery is a kind of avarice—the worst of all.

To have a solid character is to have a long and tried experience of life's disillusions and misfortunes. Then it is a question of desiring constantly or not at all.

Love, such as it exists in smart society, is the love of battle, the love of gambling.

Nothing kills gallant love like gusts of passion-love from the other side. (Contessina L. Forlì—1819).

A great fault in women, and the most offensive of all to a man a little worthy of that name: The public, in matters of feeling, never soars above mean ideas, and women make the public the supreme judge of their lives—even the most distinguished women, I maintain, often unconsciously, and even while believing and saying the contrary. (Brescia, 1819).

Prosaic is a new word, which once I thought absurd, for nothing could be colder than our poetry. If there has been any warmth in France for the last fifty years, it is assuredly to be found in its prose.

But anyhow, the little Countess L—— used the word and I like writing it.

The definition of prosaic is to be got fromDon Quixote, and "the complete contrast of Knight and Squire." The Knight tall and pale; the Squire fat and fresh. The former all heroism and courtesy; the latter all selfishness and servility. The former always full of romantic and touching fancies; the latter a model of worldly wisdom, a compendium of wise saws. The one always feeding his soul on dreams of heroism and daring; the other ruminating some really sensible scheme in which, never fear, he will take into strict account all the shameful, selfish little movements the human heart is prone to.

At the very moment when the former should be brought to his senses by the non-success of yesterday's dreams, he is already busy on his castles in Spain for to-day.

You ought to have a prosaic husband and to choose a romantic lover.

Marlborough had a prosaic soul: Henry IV, in love at fifty-five with a young princess, who could not forget his age, a romantic heart.[1]

There are fewer prosaic beings among the nobility than in the middle-class.

This is the fault of trade, it makes people prosaic.

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