[1]Danger of Henry Morton in the Clyde. (Old Mortality, Vol. IV, Chap. X.)[2]Of the over-extolled Lord Byron.[3]Merely in order to abbreviate, and with apologies for the new word.[4]Madame Dornal and Serigny.Confessions of le Comte... of Duclos. See the note to p.50: death of General Abdallah at Bologna.[5]I cried almost every day. (Precious words of the 10th of June.)[6]Salviati.
[1]Danger of Henry Morton in the Clyde. (Old Mortality, Vol. IV, Chap. X.)
[1]Danger of Henry Morton in the Clyde. (Old Mortality, Vol. IV, Chap. X.)
[2]Of the over-extolled Lord Byron.
[2]Of the over-extolled Lord Byron.
[3]Merely in order to abbreviate, and with apologies for the new word.
[3]Merely in order to abbreviate, and with apologies for the new word.
[4]Madame Dornal and Serigny.Confessions of le Comte... of Duclos. See the note to p.50: death of General Abdallah at Bologna.
[4]Madame Dornal and Serigny.Confessions of le Comte... of Duclos. See the note to p.50: death of General Abdallah at Bologna.
[5]I cried almost every day. (Precious words of the 10th of June.)
[5]I cried almost every day. (Precious words of the 10th of June.)
[6]Salviati.
[6]Salviati.
Her passion will die like a lamp for want of what the flame should feed upon. (Bride of Lammermoor, II, Chap. VI.)]
Thefriend in needmust 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.
Thefriend in needhas 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 thatslander 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 thefriend in needcan 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 theprecipice. 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.
Every kind of love and every kind of imagination, in the individual, takes its colour from one of these six temperaments:—
If the influence of temperament makes itself felt in ambition, avarice, friendship, etc. etc., what must it be in the case of love, in which the physical also is perforce an ingredient? Let us suppose that all kinds of love can be referred to the four varieties, which we have noted:—
We must submit these four kinds of love to the six different characters, with which habits, dependent upon the six kinds of temperament, stamp the imagination. Tiberius did not have the wild imagination of Henry VIII.
Then let us submit all these combinations, thus obtained, to the differences of habit which depend upon government or national character:—
After all these general ways of considering love, we have the differences of age, and come finally to individual peculiarities.
For example, we might say:—
I found at Dresden, in Count Woltstein, vanity-love, a melancholy temperament, monarchical habits, thirty years, and ... his individual peculiarities.
For anyone who is to form a judgment on love, this way of viewing things is conveniently short and cooling to the head—an essential, but difficult operation.
Now, as in physiology man has learnt scarcely anything about himself, except by means of comparative anatomy,so in the case of passions, through vanity and many other causes of illusion, we can only get enlightenment on what goes on in ourselves from the foibles we have observed in others. If by chance this essay has any useful effect, it will be by bringing the mind to make comparisons of this sort. To lead the way, I am going to attempt a sketch of some general traits in the character of love in different nations.
I beg for pardon if I often come back to Italy; in the present state of manners in Europe, it is the only country where the plant, which I describe, grows in all freedom. In France, vanity; in Germany, a pretentious and highly comical philosophy; in England, pride, timid, painful and rancorous, torture and stifle it, or force it into a crooked channel.[3]
[1]See Cabanis, influence of the physical, etc.[2]The laces missing from Minister Roland's shoes: "Ah, Monsieur, all is lost," answers Dumouriez. At the royal sitting, the President of the Assembly crosses his legs.[3]The reader will have perceived only too easily that this treatise is made up of Lisio's Visconti's fragmentary account of events, written in the order that they were presented to him on his travels. All these events may be found related at length in the journal of his life; perhaps I ought to have inserted them—but they might have been found scarcely suitable. The oldest notes bear the date, Berlin 1807, and the last are some days before his death, June 1819. Some dates have been altered expressly to avoid indiscretion; but the changes, which I have made, go no further than that. I have not thought myself authorised to recast the style. This book was written in a hundred different places—so may it be read!
[1]See Cabanis, influence of the physical, etc.
[1]See Cabanis, influence of the physical, etc.
[2]The laces missing from Minister Roland's shoes: "Ah, Monsieur, all is lost," answers Dumouriez. At the royal sitting, the President of the Assembly crosses his legs.
[2]The laces missing from Minister Roland's shoes: "Ah, Monsieur, all is lost," answers Dumouriez. At the royal sitting, the President of the Assembly crosses his legs.
[3]The reader will have perceived only too easily that this treatise is made up of Lisio's Visconti's fragmentary account of events, written in the order that they were presented to him on his travels. All these events may be found related at length in the journal of his life; perhaps I ought to have inserted them—but they might have been found scarcely suitable. The oldest notes bear the date, Berlin 1807, and the last are some days before his death, June 1819. Some dates have been altered expressly to avoid indiscretion; but the changes, which I have made, go no further than that. I have not thought myself authorised to recast the style. This book was written in a hundred different places—so may it be read!
[3]The reader will have perceived only too easily that this treatise is made up of Lisio's Visconti's fragmentary account of events, written in the order that they were presented to him on his travels. All these events may be found related at length in the journal of his life; perhaps I ought to have inserted them—but they might have been found scarcely suitable. The oldest notes bear the date, Berlin 1807, and the last are some days before his death, June 1819. Some dates have been altered expressly to avoid indiscretion; but the changes, which I have made, go no further than that. I have not thought myself authorised to recast the style. This book was written in a hundred different places—so may it be read!
I mean to put aside my natural affections and be only a cold philosopher. French women, fashioned by their amiable men, themselves creatures only of vanity and physical desires, are less active, less energetic, less feared, and, what's more, less loved and less powerful, than Spanish and Italian women.
A woman is powerful only according to the degree of unhappiness, which she can inflict as punishment on her lover. Where men have nothing but vanity, every woman is useful, but none is indispensable. It is success in winning a woman's love, not in keeping it, which flatters a man. When men have only physical desires, they go to prostitutes, and that is why the prostitutes of France are charming and those of Spain the very reverse. In France, to a great many men prostitutes can give as much happiness as virtuous women—happiness, that is to say, without love. There is always one thing for which a Frenchman has much more respect than for his mistress—his vanity.
In Paris a young man sees in his mistress a kind of slave, whose destiny it is, before everything, to please his vanity. If she resist the orders of this dominating passion, he leaves her—and is only the better pleased with himself, when he can tell his friends in what a piquant way, with how smart a gesture, he waved her off.
A Frenchman, who knew his own country well (Meilhan), said: "In France, great passions are as rare as great men."
No language has words to express how impossible it is for a Frenchman to play the role of a deserted and desperate lover, in full view of a whole town—yet no sight is commoner at Venice or Bologna.
To find love at Paris, we must descend to those classes, in which the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle against real want, have left more energy.
To let oneself be seen with a great and unsatisfied desire, is to let oneself be seen in a position of inferiority—and that is impossible in France, except for people of no position at all. It means exposing oneself to all kinds of sneers—hence come the exaggerated praises bestowed on prostitutes by young men who mistrust their own hearts. A vulgar susceptibility and dread of appearing in a position of inferiority forms the principle of conversation among provincial people. Think of the man who only lately, when told of the assassination of H. R. H. the Duke of Berri(25), answered: "I knew it."[1]
In the Middle Ages hearts were tempered by the presence of danger, and therein, unless I am mistaken, lies another cause of the astonishing superiority of the men of the sixteenth century. Originality, which among us is rare, comical, dangerous and often affected, was then of everyday and unadorned. Countries where even to-day danger often shows its iron hand, such as Corsica,[2]Spain or Italy, can still produce great men. In those climates, where men's gall cooks for three months under the burning heat, it is activity's direction that is to seek; at Paris, I fear, it is activity itself.[3]
Many young men, fine enough to be sure at Montmirail or the Bois de Boulogne, are afraid of love; and when you see them, at the age of twenty, fly the sight of a young girl who has struck them as pretty, you may know that cowardice is the real cause. When they remember what they have read in novels is expected of a lover, their blood runs cold. These chilly spirits cannot conceive how the storm of passion, which lashes the sea to waves, also fills the sails of the ship and gives her the power of riding over them.
Love is a delicious flower, but one must have the courage to go and pick it on the edge of a frightful precipice. Besides ridicule, love has always staring it in the face the desperate plight of being deserted by the loved one, and in her place only adead blankfor all the rest of one's life.
Civilisation would be perfect, if it could continue the delicate pleasures of the nineteenth century with a more frequent presence of danger.[4]
It ought to be possible to augment a thousandfold the pleasures of private life by exposing it frequently to danger. I do not speak only of military danger. I would have this danger present at every instant, in every shape, and threatening all the interests of existence, such as formed the essence of life in the Middle Ages. Such danger as our civilisation has trained and refined, goes hand in hand quite naturally with the most insipid feebleness of character.
I hear the words of a great man inA Voice from St Helenaby Mr. O'Meara:—
Order Murat to attack and destroy four or five thousand men in such a direction, it was done in a moment; but leave him to himself, he was an imbecile without judgment. I cannot conceive how so brave a man could be so "lâche." He was nowhere brave unless before the enemy. There he was probably the bravest man in the world.... He was a paladin, in fact a Don Quixote in the field; but take him into the Cabinet, he was a poltroon without judgment or decision. Murat and Ney were the bravest men I ever witnessed. (O'Meara, Vol. II, p. 95.)
Order Murat to attack and destroy four or five thousand men in such a direction, it was done in a moment; but leave him to himself, he was an imbecile without judgment. I cannot conceive how so brave a man could be so "lâche." He was nowhere brave unless before the enemy. There he was probably the bravest man in the world.... He was a paladin, in fact a Don Quixote in the field; but take him into the Cabinet, he was a poltroon without judgment or decision. Murat and Ney were the bravest men I ever witnessed. (O'Meara, Vol. II, p. 95.)
[1]This is historical. Many people, though very curious, are annoyed at being told news; they are frightened of appearing inferior to him who tells them the news.[2]Memoirs of M. Realier-Dumas. Corsica, which, as regards its population of one hundred and eighty thousand souls, would not form a half of most French Departments, has produced in modern times Salliceti, Pozzo di Borgo, General Sebastiani, Cervioni, Abbatucci, Lucien and Napoleon Bonaparte and Aréna. The Département du Nord, with its nine hundred thousand inhabitants, is far from being able to show a similar list. The reason is that in Corsica anyone, on leaving his house, may be greeted by a bullet; and the Corsican, instead of submitting like a good Christian, tries to defend himself and still more to be revenged. That is the way spirits like Napoleon are forged. It's a long cry from such surroundings to a palace with its lords-in-waiting and chamberlains, and a Fénelon obliged to find reasons for his respect to His Royal Highness, when speaking to H. R. H. himself, aged twelve years. See the works of that great writer.[3]At Paris, to get on, you must pay attention to a million little details. None the less there is this very powerful objection. Statistics show many more women who commit suicide from love at Paris than in all the towns of Italy together. This fact gives me great difficulty; I do not know what to say to it for the moment, but it doesn't change my opinion. It may be that our ultra-civilised life is so wearisome, that death seems a small matter to the Frenchman of to-day—or more likely, overwhelmed by the wreck of his vanity, he blows out his brains.[4]I admire the manners of the time of Lewis XIV: many a man might pass in three days from the salons of Marly to the battlefield of Senet or Ramillies. Wives, mothers, sweethearts, were all in a continual state of apprehension. See the Letters of Madame de Sévigné. The presence of danger had kept in the language an energy and a freshness that we would not dare to hazard nowadays; and yet M. de Lameth killed his wife's lover. If a Walter Scott were to write a novel of the times of Lewis XIV, we should be a good deal surprised.
[1]This is historical. Many people, though very curious, are annoyed at being told news; they are frightened of appearing inferior to him who tells them the news.
[1]This is historical. Many people, though very curious, are annoyed at being told news; they are frightened of appearing inferior to him who tells them the news.
[2]Memoirs of M. Realier-Dumas. Corsica, which, as regards its population of one hundred and eighty thousand souls, would not form a half of most French Departments, has produced in modern times Salliceti, Pozzo di Borgo, General Sebastiani, Cervioni, Abbatucci, Lucien and Napoleon Bonaparte and Aréna. The Département du Nord, with its nine hundred thousand inhabitants, is far from being able to show a similar list. The reason is that in Corsica anyone, on leaving his house, may be greeted by a bullet; and the Corsican, instead of submitting like a good Christian, tries to defend himself and still more to be revenged. That is the way spirits like Napoleon are forged. It's a long cry from such surroundings to a palace with its lords-in-waiting and chamberlains, and a Fénelon obliged to find reasons for his respect to His Royal Highness, when speaking to H. R. H. himself, aged twelve years. See the works of that great writer.
[2]Memoirs of M. Realier-Dumas. Corsica, which, as regards its population of one hundred and eighty thousand souls, would not form a half of most French Departments, has produced in modern times Salliceti, Pozzo di Borgo, General Sebastiani, Cervioni, Abbatucci, Lucien and Napoleon Bonaparte and Aréna. The Département du Nord, with its nine hundred thousand inhabitants, is far from being able to show a similar list. The reason is that in Corsica anyone, on leaving his house, may be greeted by a bullet; and the Corsican, instead of submitting like a good Christian, tries to defend himself and still more to be revenged. That is the way spirits like Napoleon are forged. It's a long cry from such surroundings to a palace with its lords-in-waiting and chamberlains, and a Fénelon obliged to find reasons for his respect to His Royal Highness, when speaking to H. R. H. himself, aged twelve years. See the works of that great writer.
[3]At Paris, to get on, you must pay attention to a million little details. None the less there is this very powerful objection. Statistics show many more women who commit suicide from love at Paris than in all the towns of Italy together. This fact gives me great difficulty; I do not know what to say to it for the moment, but it doesn't change my opinion. It may be that our ultra-civilised life is so wearisome, that death seems a small matter to the Frenchman of to-day—or more likely, overwhelmed by the wreck of his vanity, he blows out his brains.
[3]At Paris, to get on, you must pay attention to a million little details. None the less there is this very powerful objection. Statistics show many more women who commit suicide from love at Paris than in all the towns of Italy together. This fact gives me great difficulty; I do not know what to say to it for the moment, but it doesn't change my opinion. It may be that our ultra-civilised life is so wearisome, that death seems a small matter to the Frenchman of to-day—or more likely, overwhelmed by the wreck of his vanity, he blows out his brains.
[4]I admire the manners of the time of Lewis XIV: many a man might pass in three days from the salons of Marly to the battlefield of Senet or Ramillies. Wives, mothers, sweethearts, were all in a continual state of apprehension. See the Letters of Madame de Sévigné. The presence of danger had kept in the language an energy and a freshness that we would not dare to hazard nowadays; and yet M. de Lameth killed his wife's lover. If a Walter Scott were to write a novel of the times of Lewis XIV, we should be a good deal surprised.
[4]I admire the manners of the time of Lewis XIV: many a man might pass in three days from the salons of Marly to the battlefield of Senet or Ramillies. Wives, mothers, sweethearts, were all in a continual state of apprehension. See the Letters of Madame de Sévigné. The presence of danger had kept in the language an energy and a freshness that we would not dare to hazard nowadays; and yet M. de Lameth killed his wife's lover. If a Walter Scott were to write a novel of the times of Lewis XIV, we should be a good deal surprised.
I beg leave to speak ill of France a little longer. The reader need have no fear of seeing my satire remain unpunished; if this essay finds readers, I shall pay for my insults with interest. Our national honour is wide awake.
France fills an important place in the plan of this book, because Paris, thanks to the superiority of its conversation and its literature, is, and will always be, thesalonof Europe.
Three-quarters of thebilletsin Vienna, as in London, are written in French or are full of French allusions and quotations—Lord knows what French![1]
As regards great passions, France, in my opinion, is void of originality from two causes:—
1. True honour—the desire to resemble Bayard(26)—in order to be honoured in the world and there, every day, to see your vanity satisfied.
2. The fool's honour, or the desire to resemble the upper classes, the fashionable world of Paris. The art of entering a drawing-room, of showing aversion to a rival, of breaking with your mistress, etc.
The fool's honour is much more useful than true honour in ministering to the pleasures of our vanity,both in itself, as being intelligible to fools, and also as being applicable to the actions of every day and every hour. We see people, with only this fool's honour and without true honour, very well received in society; but the contrary is impossible.
This is the way of the fashionable world:—
1. To treat all great interests ironically. 'Tis natural enough. Formerly people, really in society, could not be profoundly affected by anything; they hadn't the time. Residence in the country has altered all this. Besides, it is contrary to a Frenchman's nature to let himself be seen in a posture of admiration,[2]that is to say, in a position of inferiority, not only in relation to the object of his admiration—that goes without saying—but also in relation to his neighbour, if his neighbour choose to mock at what he admires.
In Germany, Italy and Spain, on the contrary, admiration is genuine and happy; there the admirer is proud of his transports and pities the man who turns up his nose. I don't say the mocker, for that's an impossible rôle in countries, where it is not in failing in the imitation of a particular line of conduct, but in failing to strike the road to happiness, that the only ridicule exists. In the South, mistrust and horror at being troubled in the midst of pleasures vividly felt, plants in men an inborn admiration of luxury and pomp. See the Courts of Madrid and Naples; see afunzioneat Cadiz—things are carried to a point of delirium.[3]
2. A Frenchman thinks himself the most miserable of men, and almost the most ridiculous, if he is obliged to spend his time alone. But what is love without solitude?
3. A passionate man thinks only of himself; a manwho wants consideration thinks only of others. Nay more: before 1789, individual security was only found in France by becoming one of a body, the Robe, for example,[4]and by being protected by the members of that body. The thoughts of your neighbour were then an integral and necessary part of your happiness. This was still truer at the Court than in Paris. It is easy tosee how far such manners, which, to say the truth, are every day losing their force, but which Frenchmen will retain for another century, are favourable to great passions.
Try to imagine a man throwing himself from a window, and at the same time trying to reach the pavement in a graceful position.
In France, the passionate man, merely as such, and in no other light, is the object of general ridicule. Altogether, he offends his fellow-men, and that gives wings to ridicule.
[1]In England, the gravest writers think they give themselves a smart tone by quoting French words, which, for the most part, have never been French, except in English grammars. See the writers for theEdinburgh Review; see the Memoirs of the Comtesse de Lichtnau, mistress of the last King of Prussia but one.[2]The fashionable admiration of Hume in 1775, for example, or of Franklin in 1784, is no objection to what I say.[3]Voyage en Espagne, by M. Semple; he gives a true picture, and the reader will find a description of the Battle of Trafalgar, heard in the distance which sticks in the memory.[4]Correspondanceof Grimm, January, 1783. "Comte de N——, Captain commanding the guards of the Duke of Orleans, being piqued at finding no place left in the balcony, the day of the opening of the new hall, was so ill-advised as to dispute his place with an honest Procureur; the latter, one Maître Pernot, was by no means willing to give it up.—'You've taken my place.'—'I'm in my own.'—'Who are you?'—'I'm Mr. Six Francs'... (that is to say, the price of these places). Then, angrier words, insults, jostling. Comte de N—— pushed his indiscretion so far as to treat the poor joker as a thief, and finally took it upon himself to order the sergeant on duty to arrest the person of the Procureur, and to conduct him to the guard-room. Maître Pernot surrendered with great dignity, and went out, only to go and depose his complaint before a Commissary. The redoubtable body, of which he had the honour to be a member, had no intention of letting the matter drop. The affair came up before the Parlement. M. de N—— was condemned to pay all the expenses, to make reparation to the Procureur, to pay him two thousand crowns damages and interest, which were to be applied, with the Procureur's consent, to the poor prisoners of the Conciergerie; further, the said Count was very expressly enjoined never again, under pretext of the king's orders, to interfere with a performance, etc. This adventure made a lot of noise, and great interests were mixed up in it: the whole Robe has considered itself insulted by an outrage done to a man who wears its livery, etc. M. de N——, that his affair may be forgotten, has gone to seek his laurels at the Camp of St. Roch. He couldn't do better, people say, for no one can doubt of his talent for carrying places by sheer force. Now suppose an obscure philosopher in the place of Maître Pernot. Use of the Duel. (Grimm, Part III, Vol. II, p. 102.)See further on, p. 496, a most sensible letter of Beaumarchais refusing a closed box (loge grillée) for Figaro, which one of his friends had asked of him. So long as people thought that his answer was addressed to a Duke, there was great excitement, and they talked about severe punishment. But it turned to laughter when Beaumarchais declared that his letter was addressed to Monsieur le Président du Paty. It is a far cry from 1785 to 1822! We no longer understand these feelings. And yet people pretend that the same tragedies that touched those generations are still good for us!
[1]In England, the gravest writers think they give themselves a smart tone by quoting French words, which, for the most part, have never been French, except in English grammars. See the writers for theEdinburgh Review; see the Memoirs of the Comtesse de Lichtnau, mistress of the last King of Prussia but one.
[1]In England, the gravest writers think they give themselves a smart tone by quoting French words, which, for the most part, have never been French, except in English grammars. See the writers for theEdinburgh Review; see the Memoirs of the Comtesse de Lichtnau, mistress of the last King of Prussia but one.
[2]The fashionable admiration of Hume in 1775, for example, or of Franklin in 1784, is no objection to what I say.
[2]The fashionable admiration of Hume in 1775, for example, or of Franklin in 1784, is no objection to what I say.
[3]Voyage en Espagne, by M. Semple; he gives a true picture, and the reader will find a description of the Battle of Trafalgar, heard in the distance which sticks in the memory.
[3]Voyage en Espagne, by M. Semple; he gives a true picture, and the reader will find a description of the Battle of Trafalgar, heard in the distance which sticks in the memory.
[4]Correspondanceof Grimm, January, 1783. "Comte de N——, Captain commanding the guards of the Duke of Orleans, being piqued at finding no place left in the balcony, the day of the opening of the new hall, was so ill-advised as to dispute his place with an honest Procureur; the latter, one Maître Pernot, was by no means willing to give it up.—'You've taken my place.'—'I'm in my own.'—'Who are you?'—'I'm Mr. Six Francs'... (that is to say, the price of these places). Then, angrier words, insults, jostling. Comte de N—— pushed his indiscretion so far as to treat the poor joker as a thief, and finally took it upon himself to order the sergeant on duty to arrest the person of the Procureur, and to conduct him to the guard-room. Maître Pernot surrendered with great dignity, and went out, only to go and depose his complaint before a Commissary. The redoubtable body, of which he had the honour to be a member, had no intention of letting the matter drop. The affair came up before the Parlement. M. de N—— was condemned to pay all the expenses, to make reparation to the Procureur, to pay him two thousand crowns damages and interest, which were to be applied, with the Procureur's consent, to the poor prisoners of the Conciergerie; further, the said Count was very expressly enjoined never again, under pretext of the king's orders, to interfere with a performance, etc. This adventure made a lot of noise, and great interests were mixed up in it: the whole Robe has considered itself insulted by an outrage done to a man who wears its livery, etc. M. de N——, that his affair may be forgotten, has gone to seek his laurels at the Camp of St. Roch. He couldn't do better, people say, for no one can doubt of his talent for carrying places by sheer force. Now suppose an obscure philosopher in the place of Maître Pernot. Use of the Duel. (Grimm, Part III, Vol. II, p. 102.)See further on, p. 496, a most sensible letter of Beaumarchais refusing a closed box (loge grillée) for Figaro, which one of his friends had asked of him. So long as people thought that his answer was addressed to a Duke, there was great excitement, and they talked about severe punishment. But it turned to laughter when Beaumarchais declared that his letter was addressed to Monsieur le Président du Paty. It is a far cry from 1785 to 1822! We no longer understand these feelings. And yet people pretend that the same tragedies that touched those generations are still good for us!
[4]Correspondanceof Grimm, January, 1783. "Comte de N——, Captain commanding the guards of the Duke of Orleans, being piqued at finding no place left in the balcony, the day of the opening of the new hall, was so ill-advised as to dispute his place with an honest Procureur; the latter, one Maître Pernot, was by no means willing to give it up.—'You've taken my place.'—'I'm in my own.'—'Who are you?'—'I'm Mr. Six Francs'... (that is to say, the price of these places). Then, angrier words, insults, jostling. Comte de N—— pushed his indiscretion so far as to treat the poor joker as a thief, and finally took it upon himself to order the sergeant on duty to arrest the person of the Procureur, and to conduct him to the guard-room. Maître Pernot surrendered with great dignity, and went out, only to go and depose his complaint before a Commissary. The redoubtable body, of which he had the honour to be a member, had no intention of letting the matter drop. The affair came up before the Parlement. M. de N—— was condemned to pay all the expenses, to make reparation to the Procureur, to pay him two thousand crowns damages and interest, which were to be applied, with the Procureur's consent, to the poor prisoners of the Conciergerie; further, the said Count was very expressly enjoined never again, under pretext of the king's orders, to interfere with a performance, etc. This adventure made a lot of noise, and great interests were mixed up in it: the whole Robe has considered itself insulted by an outrage done to a man who wears its livery, etc. M. de N——, that his affair may be forgotten, has gone to seek his laurels at the Camp of St. Roch. He couldn't do better, people say, for no one can doubt of his talent for carrying places by sheer force. Now suppose an obscure philosopher in the place of Maître Pernot. Use of the Duel. (Grimm, Part III, Vol. II, p. 102.)
See further on, p. 496, a most sensible letter of Beaumarchais refusing a closed box (loge grillée) for Figaro, which one of his friends had asked of him. So long as people thought that his answer was addressed to a Duke, there was great excitement, and they talked about severe punishment. But it turned to laughter when Beaumarchais declared that his letter was addressed to Monsieur le Président du Paty. It is a far cry from 1785 to 1822! We no longer understand these feelings. And yet people pretend that the same tragedies that touched those generations are still good for us!
Italy's good fortune is that it has been left to the inspiration of the moment, a good fortune which it shares, up to a certain point, with Germany and England.
Furthermore, Italy is a country where Utility, which was the guiding principle of the mediæval republic,[1]has not been dethroned by Honour or Virtue, disposed to the advantages of monarchy.[2]True honour leads the way to the fool's honour. It accustoms men to ask themselves: Whatwill my neighbour think of my happiness? But how can happiness of the heart be an object of vanity, since no one can see it.?[3]In proof of all this, France is the country, where there are fewer marriages from inclination than anywhere else in the world.[4]
And Italy has other advantages. The Italian has undisturbed leisure and an admirable climate, which makes men sensible to beauty under every form. He is extremely, yet reasonably, mistrustful, which increases the aloofness of intimate love and doubles its charms. He reads no novels, indeed hardly any books, and this leaves still more to the inspiration of the moment. He has a passion for music, which excites in the soul a movement very similar to that of love.
In France, towards 1770, there was no mistrust.; on the contrary, it was good form to live and die before the public. As the Duchess of Luxemburg was intimate with a hundred friends, there was no intimacy and no friendship, properly so-called.
In Italy, passion, since it is not a very rare distinction, is not a subject of ridicule,[5]and you may hear people in thesalonsopenly quoting general maxims of love. The public knows the symptoms and periods of this illness, and is very much concerned with it. They say to a man who has been deserted: "You'll be in despair for six months, but you'll get over it in the end, like So-and-so, etc."
In Italy, public opinion is the very humble attendant on passion. Real pleasure there exercises the power, which elsewhere is in the hands of society. 'Tis quite simple—for society can give scarcely any pleasure to a people, who has no time to be vain, and can havebut little authority over those, who are only trying to escape the notice of their "pacha"(29). Theblaséscensure the passionate—but who cares for them? South of the Alps, society is a despot without a prison.
As in Paris honour challenges, sword in hand, or, if possible,bon motin the mouth, every approach to every recognised great interest, it is much more convenient to take refuge in irony. Many young men have taken up a different attitude, and become disciples of J. J. Rousseau and Madame de Staël. As irony had become vulgar, one had to fall back on feelings. A. de Pezai in our days writes like M. Darlincourt. Besides, since 1789, everything tends to favour utility or individual sensibility, as opposed to honour or the empire of opinion. The sight of the two Chambers teaches people to discuss everything, even mere nonsense. The nation is becoming serious, and gallantry is losing ground.
As a Frenchman, I ought to say that it is not a small number of colossal fortunes, but the multiplicity of middling ones, that makes up the riches of a country. In every country passion is rare, and gallantry is more graceful and refined: in France, as a consequence, it has better fortune. This great nation, the first in the world,[6]has the same kind of aptitude for love as for intellectual achievements. In 1822 we have, to be sure, no Moore, no Walter Scott, no Crabbe, no Byron, no Monti, no Pellico; but we have among us more men of intellect, clear-sighted, agreeable and up to the level of the lights of this century, than England has, or Italy. It is for this reason that the debates in our Chamber of Deputies in 1822, are so superior to those in the English Parliament, and that when a Liberal from England comes to France, we are quite surprised to find in him several opinions which are distinctly feudal.
A Roman artist wrote from Paris:—
I am exceedingly uncomfortable here; I suppose it's because I have no leisure for falling in love at my ease. Here, sensibility is spent drop by drop, just as it forms, in such a way, at least so I find it, as to be a drain on the source. At Rome, owing to the little interest created by the events of every day and the somnolence of the outside world, sensibility accumulates to the profit of passion.
I am exceedingly uncomfortable here; I suppose it's because I have no leisure for falling in love at my ease. Here, sensibility is spent drop by drop, just as it forms, in such a way, at least so I find it, as to be a drain on the source. At Rome, owing to the little interest created by the events of every day and the somnolence of the outside world, sensibility accumulates to the profit of passion.
[1]G. Pecchio, in his very livelyLettersto a beautiful young English woman, says on the subject of free Spain, where the Middle Ages are not a revival, but have never ceased to exist (p. 60): "The aim of the Spaniards was not glory, but independence. If the Spaniards had only fought for honour, the war had ended with the battle of Tudela. Honour is a thing of an odd nature—once soiled, it loses all its power of action. ... The Spanish army of the line, having become imbued in its turn with prejudices in favour of honour (that means having become modern-European) disbanded, once beaten, with the thought that, with honour, all was lost, etc."[2]In 1620 a man was honoured by saying unceasingly and as servilely as he could: "The King my Master" (See the Memoirs of Noailles, Torcy and all Lewis XIV's ambassadors). Quite simple—by this turn of phrase, he proclaims the rank he occupies among subjects. This rank, dependent on the King, takes the place, in the eyes and esteem of these subjects, of the rank which in ancient Rome depended on the good opinion of his fellow-citizens, who had seen him fighting at Trasimene and speaking in the Forum. You can batter down absolute monarchy by destroying vanity and its advance works, which it callsconventions. The dispute between Shakespeare and Racine(28)is only one form of the dispute between Louis XIV and constitutional government.[3]It can only be estimated in unpremeditated actions.[4]Miss O'Neil, Mrs. Couts, and most of the great English actresses, leave the stage in order to marry rich husbands.[5]One can allow women gallantry, but love makes them laughed at, wrote the judicious Abbé Girard in Paris in 1740.[6]I want no other proof than the world's envy. See theEdinburgh Reviewfor 1821. See the German and Italian literary journals, and theScimiatigreof Alfieri.
[1]G. Pecchio, in his very livelyLettersto a beautiful young English woman, says on the subject of free Spain, where the Middle Ages are not a revival, but have never ceased to exist (p. 60): "The aim of the Spaniards was not glory, but independence. If the Spaniards had only fought for honour, the war had ended with the battle of Tudela. Honour is a thing of an odd nature—once soiled, it loses all its power of action. ... The Spanish army of the line, having become imbued in its turn with prejudices in favour of honour (that means having become modern-European) disbanded, once beaten, with the thought that, with honour, all was lost, etc."
[1]G. Pecchio, in his very livelyLettersto a beautiful young English woman, says on the subject of free Spain, where the Middle Ages are not a revival, but have never ceased to exist (p. 60): "The aim of the Spaniards was not glory, but independence. If the Spaniards had only fought for honour, the war had ended with the battle of Tudela. Honour is a thing of an odd nature—once soiled, it loses all its power of action. ... The Spanish army of the line, having become imbued in its turn with prejudices in favour of honour (that means having become modern-European) disbanded, once beaten, with the thought that, with honour, all was lost, etc."
[2]In 1620 a man was honoured by saying unceasingly and as servilely as he could: "The King my Master" (See the Memoirs of Noailles, Torcy and all Lewis XIV's ambassadors). Quite simple—by this turn of phrase, he proclaims the rank he occupies among subjects. This rank, dependent on the King, takes the place, in the eyes and esteem of these subjects, of the rank which in ancient Rome depended on the good opinion of his fellow-citizens, who had seen him fighting at Trasimene and speaking in the Forum. You can batter down absolute monarchy by destroying vanity and its advance works, which it callsconventions. The dispute between Shakespeare and Racine(28)is only one form of the dispute between Louis XIV and constitutional government.
[2]In 1620 a man was honoured by saying unceasingly and as servilely as he could: "The King my Master" (See the Memoirs of Noailles, Torcy and all Lewis XIV's ambassadors). Quite simple—by this turn of phrase, he proclaims the rank he occupies among subjects. This rank, dependent on the King, takes the place, in the eyes and esteem of these subjects, of the rank which in ancient Rome depended on the good opinion of his fellow-citizens, who had seen him fighting at Trasimene and speaking in the Forum. You can batter down absolute monarchy by destroying vanity and its advance works, which it callsconventions. The dispute between Shakespeare and Racine(28)is only one form of the dispute between Louis XIV and constitutional government.
[3]It can only be estimated in unpremeditated actions.
[3]It can only be estimated in unpremeditated actions.
[4]Miss O'Neil, Mrs. Couts, and most of the great English actresses, leave the stage in order to marry rich husbands.
[4]Miss O'Neil, Mrs. Couts, and most of the great English actresses, leave the stage in order to marry rich husbands.
[5]One can allow women gallantry, but love makes them laughed at, wrote the judicious Abbé Girard in Paris in 1740.
[5]One can allow women gallantry, but love makes them laughed at, wrote the judicious Abbé Girard in Paris in 1740.
[6]I want no other proof than the world's envy. See theEdinburgh Reviewfor 1821. See the German and Italian literary journals, and theScimiatigreof Alfieri.
[6]I want no other proof than the world's envy. See theEdinburgh Reviewfor 1821. See the German and Italian literary journals, and theScimiatigreof Alfieri.
Only at Rome[1]can a respectable woman, seated in her carriage, say effusively to another woman, a mere acquaintance, what I heard this morning: "Ah, my dear, beware of love with Fabio Vitteleschi; better for you to fall in love with a highwayman! For all his soft and measured air, he is capable of stabbing you to the heart with a knife, and of saying with the sweetest smile, while he plunged the knife into your breast: 'Poor child, does it hurt?'" And this conversation took place in the presence of a pretty young lady of fifteen, daughter of the woman who received the advice, and a very wide-awake young lady.
If a man from the North has the misfortune not to be shocked at first by the candour of this southern capacity for love, which is nothing but the simple product of a magnificent nature, favoured by the twofold absence ofgood formand of all interesting novelty, after a stay of one year the women of all other countries will become intolerable to him.
He will find Frenchwomen, perfectly charming, with their little graces,[2]seductive for the first three days, but boring the fourth—fatal day, when one discovers that all these graces, studied beforehand, and learned byrote, are eternally the same, every day and for every lover.
He will see German women, on the contrary, so very natural, and giving themselves up with so much ardour to their imagination, but often with nothing to show in the end, for all their naturalness, but barrenness, insipidity, and blue-stocking tenderness. The phrase of Count Almaviva(30)seems made for Germany: "And one is quite astonished, one fine evening, to find satiety, where one went to look for happiness."
At Rome, the foreigner must not forget that, if nothing is tedious in countries where everything is natural, the bad is there still more bad than elsewhere. To speak only of the men,[3]we can see appearing here in society a kind of monster, who elsewhere lies low—a man passionate, clear-sighted and base, all in an equal degree. Suppose evil chance has set him near a woman in some capacity or other: madly in love with her, suppose, he will drink to the very dregs the misery of seeing her prefer a rival. There he is to oppose her happier lover. Nothing escapes him, and everyone sees that nothing escapes him; but he continues none the less, in despite of every honourable sentiment, to trouble the woman, her lover and himself. No one blames him—"That's his way of getting pleasure."—"He is doing what gives him pleasure." One evening, the lover, at the end of his patience, gives him a kick. The next day the wretch is full of excuses, and begins again to torment, constantly and imperturbably, the woman, the lover and himself. One shudders, when one thinks of the amount of unhappiness that these base spirits have every day to swallow—and doubtless there is but one grain less of cowardice between them and a poisoner.
It is also only in Italy that you can see young and elegant millionaires entertaining with magnificence, infull view of a whole town, ballet girls from a big theatre, at a cost of thirty halfpence a day.[4]
Two brothers X——, fine young fellows, always hunting and on horseback, are jealous of a foreigner. Instead of going and laying their complaint before him, they are sullen, and spread abroad unfavourable reports of this poor foreigner. In France, public opinion would force such men to prove their words or give satisfaction to the foreigner. Here public opinion and contempt mean nothing. Riches are always certain of being well received everywhere. A millionaire, dishonoured and excluded from every house in Paris, can go quite securely to Rome; there he will be estimated just according to the value of his dollars.
[1]September 30th, 1819.[2]Not only had the author the misfortune not to be born at Paris, but he had also lived there very little. (Editor's note.)[3]Heu! male nunc artes miseras haec secula tractant;Jam tener assuevit munera velle puer. (Tibull., I, iv.)[4]See in the manners of the age of Lewis XV how Honour and Aristocracy load with profusion such ladies as Duthé, La Guerre and others. Eighty or a hundred thousand francs a year was nothing extraordinary; with less, a man of fashion would have lowered himself.
[1]September 30th, 1819.
[1]September 30th, 1819.
[2]Not only had the author the misfortune not to be born at Paris, but he had also lived there very little. (Editor's note.)
[2]Not only had the author the misfortune not to be born at Paris, but he had also lived there very little. (Editor's note.)
[3]Heu! male nunc artes miseras haec secula tractant;Jam tener assuevit munera velle puer. (Tibull., I, iv.)
[3]
Heu! male nunc artes miseras haec secula tractant;Jam tener assuevit munera velle puer. (Tibull., I, iv.)
Heu! male nunc artes miseras haec secula tractant;Jam tener assuevit munera velle puer. (Tibull., I, iv.)
[4]See in the manners of the age of Lewis XV how Honour and Aristocracy load with profusion such ladies as Duthé, La Guerre and others. Eighty or a hundred thousand francs a year was nothing extraordinary; with less, a man of fashion would have lowered himself.
[4]See in the manners of the age of Lewis XV how Honour and Aristocracy load with profusion such ladies as Duthé, La Guerre and others. Eighty or a hundred thousand francs a year was nothing extraordinary; with less, a man of fashion would have lowered himself.
I have lived a good deal of late with the ballet-girls of the Teatro Del Sol, at Valencia. People assure me that many of them are very chaste; the reason being that their profession is too fatiguing. Vigano makes them rehearse his ballet, theJewess of Toledo, every day, from ten in the morning to four, and from midnight to three in the morning. Besides this, they have to dance every evening in both ballets.
This reminds me that Rousseau prescribes a great deal of walking for Émile. This evening I was strolling at midnight with these little ballet girls out along the seashore, and I was thinking especially how unknown to us, in our sad lands of mist, is this superhuman delight in the freshness of a sea breeze under this Valencian sky, under the eyes of these resplendent stars that seem close above us. This alone repays the journey of four hundred leagues; this it is that banishes thought, for feeling is too strong. I thought that the chastity of my little ballet girls gives the explanation of the course adopted by English pride, in order, little by little, to bring back the morals of the harem into the midst of a civilised nation. One sees how it is that some of these young English girls, otherwise so beautiful and with so touching an expression, leave something to be desired as regards ideas. In spite of liberty, which has only just been banished from their island, and the admirable originality of their national character, they lack interesting ideas and originality. Often there is nothingremarkable in them but the extravagance of their refinements. It's simple enough—in England the modesty of the women is the pride of their husbands. But, however submissive a slave may be, her society becomes sooner or later a burden. Hence, for the men, the necessity of getting drunk solemnly every evening,[1]instead of as in Italy, passing the evening with their mistresses. In England, rich people, bored with their homes and under the pretext of necessary exercise, walk four or five leagues a day, as if man were created and put into the world to trot up and down it. They use up their nervous fluid by means of their legs, not their hearts; after which, they may well talk of female refinement and look down on Spain and Italy.
No life, on the other hand, could be less busy than that of young Italians; to them all action is importunate, if it take away their sensibility. From time to time they take a walk of half a league for health's sake, as an unpleasant medicine. As for the women, a Roman woman in a whole year does not walk as far as a young Miss in a week.
It seems to me that the pride of an English husband exalts very adroitly the vanity of his wretched wife. He persuades her, first of all, that one must not be vulgar, and the mothers, who are getting their daughters ready to find husbands, are quick enough to seize upon this idea. Hence fashion is far more absurd and despotic in reasonable England than in the midst of light-hearted France: in Bond Street was invented the idea of the "carefully careless." In England fashion is a duty, at Paris it is a pleasure. In London fashion raises a wall of bronze between New Bond Street and Fenchurch Street far different from that between the Chaussée d'Antin and the rue Saint-Martin at Paris. Husbands are quitewilling to allow their wives this aristocratic nonsense, to make up for the enormous amount of unhappiness, which they impose on them. I recognise a perfect picture of women's society in England, such as the taciturn pride of its men produces, in the once celebrated novels of Miss Burney. Since it is vulgar to ask for a glass of water, when one is thirsty, Miss Burney's heroines do not fail to let themselves die of thirst. While flying from vulgarity, they fall into the most abominable affectation.
Compare the prudence of a young Englishman of twenty-two with the profound mistrust of a young Italian of the same age. The Italian must be mistrustful to be safe, but this mistrust he puts aside, or at least forgets, as soon as he becomes intimate, while it is apparently just in his most tender relationships that you see the young Englishman redouble his prudence and aloofness. I once heard this:—
"In the last seven months I haven't spoken to her of the trip to Brighton." This was a question of a necessary economy of twenty-four pounds, and a lover of twenty-two years speaking of a mistress, a married woman, whom he adored. In the transports of his passion prudence had not left him: far less had he let himself go enough to say to his mistress: "I shan't go to Brighton, because I should feel the pinch."
Note that the fate of Gianone de Pellico, and of a hundred others, forces the Italian to be mistrustful, while the young Englishbeauis only forced to be prudent by the excessive and morbid sensibility of his vanity. A Frenchman, charming enough with his inspirations of the minute, tells everything to her he loves. It is habit. Without it he would lack ease, and he knows that without ease there is no grace.
It is with difficulty and with tears in my eyes that I have plucked up courage to write all this; but, since I would not, I'm sure, flatter a king, why should I say of a country anything but what seems to me thetruth? Of course it may be all very absurd, for the simple reason that this country gave birth to the most lovable woman that I have known.
It would be another form of cringing before a monarch. I will content myself with adding that in the midst of all this variety of manners, among so many Englishwomen, who are the spiritual victims of Englishmen's pride, a perfect form of originality does exist, and that a family, brought up aloof from these distressing restrictions (invented to reproduce the morals of the harem) may be responsible for charming characters. And how insufficient, in spite of its etymology,—and how common—is this word "charming" to render what I would express. The gentle Imogen, the tender Ophelia might find plenty of living models in England; but these models are far from enjoying the high veneration that is unanimously accorded to the true accomplished Englishwoman, whose destiny is to show complete obedience to every convention and to afford a husband full enjoyment of the most morbid aristocratic pride and a happiness that makes him die of boredom.[2]
In the great suites of fifteen or twenty rooms, so fresh and so dark, in which Italian women pass their lives softly propped on low divans, they hear people speak of love and of music for six hours in the day. At night, at the theatre, hidden in their boxes for four hours, they hear people speak of music and love.
Then, besides the climate, the whole way of living is in Spain or Italy as favourable to music and love, as it is the contrary in England.
I neither blame nor approve; I observe.