Chapter 14

[1]Mark Dido's look in the superb sketch by M. Guerin at the Luxembourg.[2]Everything that is beautiful in the world having become a part of the beauty of the woman you love, you find yourself inclined to do everything in the world that is beautiful.[3]Guinguené'sHistoire littéraire de l'Italie(Vol. II, p. 490.)

[1]Mark Dido's look in the superb sketch by M. Guerin at the Luxembourg.

[2]Everything that is beautiful in the world having become a part of the beauty of the woman you love, you find yourself inclined to do everything in the world that is beautiful.

[3]Guinguené'sHistoire littéraire de l'Italie(Vol. II, p. 490.)

One of my great regrets is not to have been able to see Venice in 1760.[1]A run of happy chances had apparently united, in so small a space, both the political institutions and the public opinion that are most favourable to the happiness of mankind. A soft spirit of luxury gave everyone an easy access to happiness. There were no domestic struggles and no crimes. Serenity was seen on every face; no one thought about seeming richer than he was; hypocrisy had no point. I imagine it must have been the direct contrary to London in 1822.

[1]Travels in Italyof the President de Brosses,Travelsof Eustace, Sharp, Smollett.

If in the place of the want of personal security you put the natural fear of economic want, you will see that the United States of America bears a considerable resemblance to the ancient world as regards that passion, on which we are attempting to write a monograph.

In speaking of the more or less imperfect sketches of passion-love which the ancients have left us, I see that I have forgotten the Loves of Medea in theArgonautica(60).Virgil copied them in his picture of Dido. Compare that with love as seen in a modern novel—Le Doyen de Killerine, for example.

The Roman feels the beauties of Nature and Art with amazing strength, depth and justice; but if he sets out to try and reason on what he feels so forcibly, it is pitiful.

The reason may be that his feelings come to him from Nature, but his logic from government.

You can see at once why the fine arts, outside Italy, are only a farce; men reason better, but the public has no feeling.

London,November 20th, 1821.

A very sensible man, who arrived yesterday from Madras, told me in a two hours' conversation what I reduce to the following few lines:—

This gloom, which from an unknown cause depresses the English character, penetrates so deeply into their hearts, that at the end of the world, at Madras, no sooner does an Englishman get a few days' holiday, than he quickly leaves rich and flourishing Madras and comes to revive his spirits in the little French town of Pondicherry, which, without wealth and almost without commerce, flourishes under the paternal administration of M. Dupuy. At Madras you drink Burgundy that costs thirty-six francs a bottle; the poverty of the French in Pondicherry is such that, in the most distinguished circles, the refreshments consist of large glasses of water. But in Pondicherry they laugh.

At present there is more liberty in England than in Prussia. The climate is the same as that of Koenigsberg, Berlin or Warsaw, cities which are far from being famous for their gloom. The working classes in these towns have less security and drink quite as little wine as in England; and they are much worse clothed.

The aristocracies of Venice and Vienna are not gloomy.

I can see only one point of difference: in gay countries the Bible is little read, and there is gallantry. I am sorry to have to come back so often to a demonstration with which I am unsatisfied. I suppress a score of facts pointing in the same direction.

I have just seen, in a fine country-house near Paris, a very good-looking, very clever, and very rich young man of less than twenty; he has been left there by chance almost alone, for a long time too, with a most beautiful girl of eighteen, full of talent, of a most distinguished mind, and also very rich. Who wouldn't have expected a passionate love-affair? Not a bit of it—such was the affectation of these two charming creatures that both were occupied solely with themselves and the effect they were to produce.

I am ready to agree that on the morrow of a great action a savage pride has made this people fall into all the faults and follies that lay open to it. But you will see what prevents me from effacing my previous praises of this representative of the Middle Ages.

The prettiest woman in Narbonne is a young Spaniard, scarcely twenty years old, who lives there very retired with her husband, a Spaniard also, and an officer on half-pay. Some time ago there was a fool whom this officer was obliged to insult. The next day, on the field of combat, the fool sees the young Spanish woman arrive. He begins a renewed flow of affected nothings:—

"No, indeed, it's shocking! How could you tell your wife about it? You see, she has come to prevent us fighting!" "I have come to bury you," she answered.

Happy the husband who can tell his wife everything! The result did not belie this woman's haughty words. Her action would have been considered hardly the thing in England. Thus does false decency diminish the little happiness that exists here below.

The delightful Donézan said yesterday: "In my youth, and well on in my career—for I was fifty in '89—women wore powder in their hair.

"I own that a woman without powder gives me a feeling of repugnance; the first impression is always that of a chamber-maid who hasn't had time to get dressed."

Here we have the one argument against Shakespeare and in favour of the dramatic unities.

While young men read nothing but La Harpe(61), the taste for great powderedtoupées, such as the late Queen Marie Antoinette used to wear, can still last some years. I know people too, who despise Correggio and Michael Angelo, and, to be sure, M. Donézan was extremely clever.

Cold, brave, calculating, suspicious, contentious, for ever afraid of being attracted by anyone who might possibly be laughing at them in secret, absolutely devoid of enthusiasm, and a little jealous of people who saw great events with Napoleon, such was the youth of that age, estimable rather than lovable. They forced on the country that Right-Centre form of government-to-the-lowest-bidder. This temper in the younger generation was to be found even among the conscripts, each of whom only longed to finish his time.

All systems of education, whether given expressly or by chance, form men for a certain period in their life.The education of the age of Louis XV made twenty-five the finest moment in the lives of its pupils.[1]

It is at forty that the young men of this period will be at their best; they will have lost their suspiciousness and pretensions, and have gained ease and gaiety.

[1]M. de Francueil with too much powder: Memoirs of Madame d'Épinay.

Discussion between an Honest Man and an Academic

"In this discussion, the academic always saved himself by fixing on little dates and other similar errors of small importance; but the consequences and natural qualifications of things, these he always denied, or seemed not to understand: for example, that Nero was a cruel Emperor or Charles II a perjurer. Now, how are you to prove things of this kind, or, even if you do, manage not to put a stop to the general discussion or lose the thread of it?

"This, I have always remarked, is the method of discussion between such folk, one of whom seeks only the truth and advancement thereto, the other the favour of his master or his party and the glory of talking well. And I always consider it great folly and waste of time for an honest man to stop and talk with the said academics." (Œuvres badinesof Guy Allard de Voiron.)

Only a small part of the art of being happy is an exact science, a sort of ladder up which one can be sure of climbing a rung per century—and that is the part which depends on government. (Still, this is only theory. Ifind the Venetians of 1770 happier than the people of Philadelphia to-day.)

For the rest, the art of being happy is like poetry; in spite of the perfecting of all things, Homer, two thousand seven hundred years ago, had more talent than Lord Byron.

Reading Plutarch with attention, I think I can see that men were happier in Sicily in the time of Dion than we manage to be to-day, although they had no printing and no iced punch!

I would rather be an Arab of the fifth century than a Frenchman of the nineteenth.

People go to the theatre, never for that kind of illusion which is lost one minute and found again the next, but for an opportunity of convincing their neighbour, or at least themselves, that they have read their La Harpe and are people who know what's good. It is an old pedant's pleasure that the younger generation indulges in.

A woman belongs by right to the man who loves her and is dearer to her than life.

Crystallisation cannot be excited by an understudy, and your most dangerous rivals are those most unlike you.

In a very advanced state of society passion-love is as natural as physical love among savages. (M.)

But for an infinite number of shades of feeling, to have a woman you adore would be no happiness and scarcely a possibility. (L.,October 7th.)

Whence comes the intolerance of Stoic philosophers? From the same source as that of religious fanatics. They are put out because they are struggling against nature, because they deny themselves, and because it hurts them. If they would question themselves honestly on the hatred they bear towards those who profess a code of morals less severe, they would have to own that it springs from a secret jealousy of a bliss which they envy and have renounced, without believing in the rewards which would make up for this sacrifice. (Diderot.)

Women who are always taking offence might well ask themselves whether they are following a line of conduct, which they think really and truly is the road to happiness. Is there not a little lack of courage, mixed with a little mean revenge, at the bottom of a prude's heart? Consider the ill-humour of Madame de Deshoulières in her last days. (Note by M. Lemontey.)(62).

Nothing more indulgent than virtue without hypocrisy—because nothing happier; yet even Mistress Hutchinson might well be more indulgent.

Immediately below this kind of happiness comes that of a young, pretty and easy-going woman, with a consciencethat does not reproach her. At Messina people used to talk scandal about the Contessina Vicenzella. "Well, well!" she would say, "I'm young, free, rich and perhaps not ugly. I wish the same to all the ladies of Messina!" It was this charming woman, who would never be more than a friend to me, who introduced me to the Abbé Melli's sweet poems in Sicilian dialect. His poetry is delicious, though still disfigured by mythology.

(Delfante.)

The public of Paris has a fixed capacity for attention—three days: after which, bring to its notice the death of Napoleon or M. Béranger(63)sent to prison for two months—the news is just as sensational, and to bring it up on the fourth day just as tactless. Must every great capital be like this, or has it to do with the good nature and light heart of the Parisian? Thanks to aristocratic pride and morbid reserve, London is nothing but a numerous collection of hermits; it is not a capital. Vienna is nothing but an oligarchy of two hundred families surrounded by a hundred and fifty thousand workpeople and servants who wait on them. No more is that a capital.—Naples and Paris, the only two capitals. (Extract from Birkbeck'sTravels, p. 371.)

According to common ideas, or reasonable-ideas, as they are called by ordinary people, if any period of imprisonment could possibly be tolerable, it would be after several years' confinement, when at last the poor prisoner is only separated by a month or two from the moment of his release. But the ways of crystallisation are otherwise. The last month is more painful than the last three years. In the gaol at Melun, M. d'Hotelans has seen several prisoners die of impatience within a few months of the day of release.

I cannot resist the pleasure of copying out a letter written in bad English by a young German woman. It proves that, after all, constant love exists, and that not every man of genius is a Mirabeau. Klopstock, the great poet, passes at Hamburg for having been an attractive person. Read what his young wife wrote to an intimate friend:

"After having seen him two hours, I was obliged to pass the evening in a company, which never had been so wearisome to me. I could not speak, I could not play; I thought I saw nothing but Klopstock; I saw him the next day and the following and we were very seriously friends. But the fourth day he departed. It was a strong hour the hour of his departure! He wrote soon after; from that time our correspondence began to be a very diligent one. I sincerely believed my love to be friendship. I spoke with my friends of nothing but Klopstock, and showed his letters. They raillied at me and said I was in love. I raillied then again, and said that they must have a very friendshipless heart, if they had no idea of friendship to a man as well as to a woman. Thus it continued eight months, in which time my friends found as much love in Klopstock's letters as in me. I perceived it likewise, but I would not believe it. At the last Klopstock said plainly that he loved; and I startled as for a wrong thing; I answered that it was no love, but friendship, as it was what I felt for him; we had not seen one another enough to love (as if love must have more time than friendship). This was sincerely my meaning, and I had this meaning till Klopstock came again to Hamburg. This he did a year after we had seen one another the first time. We saw, we were friends, we loved; and a short time after, I could even tell Klopstock that I loved. But we were obliged to part again, and wait two years for our wedding. My mother would not let me marry a stranger. I could marry then withouther consent, as by the death of my father my fortune depended not on her; but this was a horrible idea for me; and thank heaven that I have prevailed by prayers! At this time knowing Klopstock, she loves him as her lifely son, and thanks God that she has not persisted. We married and I am the happiest wife in the world. In some few months it will be four years that I am so happy...." (Correspondence of Richardson, Vol. III, p. 147.)

The only unions legitimate for all time are those that answer to a real passion.

To be happy with laxity of morals, one wants the simplicity of character that is found in Germany and Italy, but never in France. (The Duchess de C——)

It is their pride that makes the Turks deprive their women of everything that can nourish crystallisation. I have been living for the last three months in a country where the titled folk will soon be carried just as far by theirs.

Modesty is the name given here by men to the exactions of aristocratic pride run mad. Who would risk a lapse of modesty? Here also, as at Athens, the intellectuals show a marked tendency to take refuge with courtesans—that is to say, with the women whom a scandal shelters from the need to affect modesty. (Life of Fox.)

In the case of love blighted by too prompt a victory, I have seen in very tender characters crystallisation tryingto form later. "I don't love you a bit," she says, but laughing.

The present-day education of women—that odd mixture of works of charity and risky songs ("Di piacer mi balza il cor," inLa Gazza Ladra)(64)—is the one thing in the world best calculated to keep off happiness. This form of education produces minds completely inconsequent. Madame de R——, who was afraid of dying, has just met her death through thinking it funny to throw her medicines out of the window. Poor little women like her take inconsequence for gaiety, because, in appearance, gaiety is often inconsequent. 'Tis like the German, who threw himself out of the window in order to be sprightly.

Vulgarity, by stifling imagination, instantly produces in me a deadly boredom. Charming Countess K——, showing me this evening her lovers' letters, which to my mind were in bad taste. (Forlì,March 17th, Henri.)

Imagination was not stifled: it was only deranged, and very soon from mere repugnance ceased to picture the unpleasantness of these dull lovers.

Metaphysical Reverie

Belgirate,26th October, 1816.

Real passion has only to be crossed for it to produce apparently more unhappiness than happiness. This thought may not be true in the case of gentle souls, but it is absolutely proved in the case of the majority of men, and particularly of cold philosophers, who, as regards passion, live, one might say, only on curiosity and self-love.

I said all this to the Contessina Fulvia yesterdayevening, as we were walking together near the great pine on the eastern terrace of Isola Bella. She answered: "Unhappiness makes a much stronger impression on a man's life than pleasure.

"The prime virtue in anything which claims to give us pleasure, is that it strikes hard.

"Might we not say that life itself being made up only of sensation, there is a universal taste in all living beings for the consciousness that the sensations of their life are the keenest that can be? In the North people are hardly alive—look at the slowness of their movements. The Italian'sdolce far nienteis the pleasure of relishing one's soul and one's emotions, softly reclining on a divan. Such pleasure is impossible, if you are racing all day on horseback or in a drosky, like the Englishman or the Russian. Such people would die of boredom on a divan. There is no reason to look into their souls.

"Love gives the keenest possible of all sensations—and the proof is that in these moments of 'inflammation,' as physiologists would say, the heart is open to those 'complex sensations' which Helvétius, Buffon and other philosophers think so absurd. The other day, as you know, Luizina fell into the lake; you see, her eye was following a laurel leaf that had fallen from a tree on Isola-Madre (one of the Borromean Islands). The poor woman owned to me that one day her lover, while talking to her, threw into the lake the leaves of a laurel branch he was stripping, and said: 'Your cruelty and the calumnies of your friend are preventing me from turning my life to account and winning a little glory.'

"It is a peculiar and incomprehensible fact that, when some great passion has brought upon the soul moments of torture and extreme unhappiness, the soul comes to despise the happiness of a peaceful life, where everything seems framed to our desires. A fine country-house in a picturesque position, substantial means, a good wife, three pretty children, and friends charmingand numerous—this is but a mere outline of all our host. General C——, possesses. And yet he said, as you know, he felt tempted to go to Naples and take the command of a guerilla band. A soul made for passion soon finds this happy life monotonous, and feels, perhaps, that it only offers him commonplace ideas. 'I wish,' C. said to you, 'that I had never known the fever of high passion. I wish I could rest content with the apparent happiness on which people pay me every day such stupid compliments, which, to put the finishing touch to, I have to answer politely.'"

I, a philosopher, rejoin: "Do you want the thousandth proof that we are not created by a good Being? It is the fact that pleasure does not make perhaps half as much impression on human life as pain...."[1]The Contessina interrupted me. "In life there are few mental pains that are not rendered sweet by the emotion they themselves excite, and, if there is a spark of magnanimity in the soul, this pleasure is increased a hundredfold. The man condemned to death in 1815 and saved by chance (M. de Lavalette(65), for example), if he was going courageously to his doom, must recall that moment ten times a month. But the coward, who was going to die crying and yelling (the exciseman, Morris, thrown into the lake,Rob Roy)—suppose him also saved by chance—can at most recall that instant with pleasure because he wassaved, not for the treasures of magnanimity that he discovered with him, and that take away for the future all his fears."

I: "Love, even unhappy love, gives a gentle soul, for whom a thing imagined is a thing existent, treasures of this kind of enjoyment. He weaves sublime visions of happiness and beauty about himself and his beloved. How often has Salviati heard Léonore, with her enchantingsmile, say, like Mademoiselle Mars inLes Fausses Confidences: 'Well, yes, I do love you!' No, these are never the illusions of a prudent mind."

Fulvia (raising her eyes to heaven): "Yes, for you and me, love, even unhappy love, if only our admiration for the beloved knows no limit, is the supreme happiness."

(Fulvia is twenty-three,—the most celebrated beauty of ... Her eyes were heavenly as she talked like this at midnight and raised them towards the glorious sky above the Borromean Islands. The stars seemed to answer her. I looked down and could find no more philosophical arguments to meet her. She continued:)

"And all that the world calls happiness is not worth the trouble. Only contempt, I think, can cure this passion; not contempt too violent, for that is torture. For you men it is enough to see the object of your adoration love some gross, prosaic creature, or sacrifice you in order to enjoy pleasures of luxurious comfort with a woman friend."

[1]See the analysis of the ascetic principle in Bentham,Principles of Morals and Legislation.By giving oneself pain one pleases agoodBeing.

[1]See the analysis of the ascetic principle in Bentham,Principles of Morals and Legislation.

By giving oneself pain one pleases agoodBeing.

To willmeans to have the courage to expose oneself to troubles; to expose oneself is to take risks—to gamble. You find military men who cannot exist without such gambling—that's what makes them intolerable in home-life.

General Teulié told me this evening that he had found out why, as soon as there were affected women in a drawing-room, he became so horribly dry and floored for ideas. It was because he was sure to be bitterly ashamed of having exposed his feelings with warmth before such creatures. General Teulié had to speak from his heart, though the talk were only of Punch and Judy; otherwise he had nothing to say. Moreover, I could see he never knew the conventional phrase aboutanything nor what was the right thing to say. That is really where he made himself so monstrously ridiculous in the eyes of affected women. Heaven had not made him for elegant society.

Irreligion is bad form at Court, because it is calculated to be contrary to the interests of princes: irreligion is also bad form in the presence of girls, for it would prevent their finding husbands. It must be owned that, if God exists, it must be nice for Him to be honoured from motives like these.

For the soul of a great painter or a great poet, love is divine in that it increases a hundredfold the empire and the delight of his art, and the beauties of art are his soul's daily bread. How many great artists are unconscious both of their soul and of their genius! Often they reckon as mediocre their talent for the thing they adore, because they cannot agree with the eunuchs of the harem, La Harpe and such-like. For them even unhappy love is happiness.

The picture of first love is taken generally as the most touching. Why? Because it is the same in all countries and in all characters. But for this reason first love is not the most passionate.

Reason! Reason! Reason! That is what the world is always shouting at poor lovers. In 1760, at the most thrilling moment in the Seven Years' War, Grimm wrote: "... It is indubitable that the King of Russia, by yielding Silesia, could have prevented the war fromever breaking out. In so doing he would have done a very wise thing. How many evils would he have prevented! And what can there be in common between the possession of a province and the happiness of a king? Was not the great Elector a very happy and highly respected prince without possessing Silesia? It is also quite clear that a king might have taken this course in obedience to the precepts of the soundest reason, and yet—I know not how—that king would inevitably have been the object of universal contempt, while Frederick, sacrificing everything to thenecessityof keeping Silesia, has invested himself with immortal glory.

"Without any doubt the action of Cromwell's son was the wisest a man could take: he preferred obscurity and repose to the bother and danger of ruling over a people sombre, fiery and proud. This wise man won the contempt of his own time and of posterity; while his father, to this day, has been held a great man by the wisdom of nations.

"TheFair Penitentis a sublime subject on the Spanish[1]stage, but spoilt by Otway and Colardeau in England and France. Calista has been dishonoured by a man she adores; he is odious from the violence of his inborn pride, but talent, wit and a handsome face—everything, in fact—combine to make him seductive. Indeed, Lothario would have been too charming could he have moderated these criminal outbursts. Moreover, an hereditary and bitter feud separates his family from that of the woman he loves. These families are at the head of two factions dividing a Spanish town during the horrors of the Middle Age. Sciolto, Calista's father, is the chief of the faction, which at the moment has the upper hand; he knows that Lothario has had the insolence to try to seduce his daughter. The weak Calista is weighed down by the torment of shame and passion. Her father hassucceeded in getting his enemy appointed to the command of a naval armament that is setting out on a distant and perilous expedition, where Lothario will probably meet his death. In Colardeau's tragedy, he has just told his daughter this news. At his words Calista can no longer hide her passion:

O dieux!Il part!... Vous l'ordonnez!... Il a pu s'y résoudre?[2]

"Think of the danger she is placed in. Another word, and Sciolto will learn the secret of his daughter's passion for Lothario. The father is confounded and cries:—

Qu'entends-je? Me trompé-je? Où s'égarent tes voeux?[3]

"At this Calista recovers herself and answers:—

Ce n'est pas son exile, c'est sa mort que je veux,Qu'il périsse![4]

"By these words Calista stifles her father's rising suspicions; yet there is no deceit, for the sentiment she utters is true. The existence of a man, who has succeeded after winning her love in dishonouring her, must poison her life, were he even at the ends of the earth. His death alone could restore her peace of mind, if for unfortunate lovers peace of mind existed.... Soon after Lothario is killed and, happily for her, Calista dies.

"'There's a lot of crying and moaning over nothing!' say the chilly folk who plume themselves on being philosophers. 'Somebody with an enterprising and violent nature abuses a woman's weakness for him—that is nothing to tear our hair over, or at least there is nothing in Calista's troubles to concern us. She must console herself with having satisfied her lover, and she will not be the first woman of merit who has made the best of her misfortune in that way.'"[5]

Richard Cromwell, the King of Prussia and Calista, with the souls given them by Heaven, could only find peace and happiness by acting as they did. The conduct of the two last is eminently unreasonable and yet it is those two that we admire. (Sagan, 1813.)

[1]See the Spanish and Danish romances of the thirteenth century. French taste would find them dull and coarse.[2][ "My God!He is gone.... You have sent him.... And he had the heart?"—Tr.][3]["What do I hear? I am deceived? Where now are all your vows?"—Tr. ][4]["It is not his banishment I desire; it is his death. Let him die!"—Tr.][5]Grimm, Vol. III, p. 107.

[1]See the Spanish and Danish romances of the thirteenth century. French taste would find them dull and coarse.

[2][ "My God!He is gone.... You have sent him.... And he had the heart?"—Tr.]

[2]

[ "My God!He is gone.... You have sent him.... And he had the heart?"—Tr.]

[3]["What do I hear? I am deceived? Where now are all your vows?"—Tr. ]

[3]

["What do I hear? I am deceived? Where now are all your vows?"—Tr. ]

[4]["It is not his banishment I desire; it is his death. Let him die!"—Tr.]

[4]

["It is not his banishment I desire; it is his death. Let him die!"—Tr.]

[5]Grimm, Vol. III, p. 107.

The likelihood of constancy when desire is satisfied can only be foretold from the constancy displayed, in spite of cruel doubts and jealousy and ridicule, in the days before intimate intercourse.

A woman is in despair at the death of her lover, who has been killed in the wars—of course she means to follow him. Now first make quite sure that it is not the best thing for her to do; then, if you decide it is not, attack her on the side of a very primitive habit of the human kind—the desire to survive. If the woman has an enemy, one may persuade her that her enemy has obtained a warrant for her imprisonment. Unless that threat only increases her desire of death, she may think about hiding herself in order to escape imprisonment. For three weeks she will lie low, escaping from refuge to refuge. She must be caught, but must get away after three days.

Then people must arrange for her to withdraw under a false name to some very remote town, as unlike as possible the one in which she was so desperately unhappy. But who is going to devote himself to the consolation of a being so unfortunate and so lost to friendship? (Warsaw, 1808).

Academical wise-heads can see a people's habits in its language. In Italy, of all the countries in the world, theword love is least often spoken—always "amicizia" and "avvicinar" (amiciziaor friendship, for love;avvicinar, to approach, for courtship that succeeds).

A dictionary of music has never been achieved, nor even begun. It is only by chance that you find the phrase for: "I am angry" or "I love you," and the subtler feelings involved therein. The composer finds them only when passion, present in his heart or memory, dictates them to him. Well! that is why people, who spend the fire of youth studying instead of feeling, cannot be artists—the waythatworks is perfectly simple.

In France far too much power is given to Women, far too little to Woman.

The most flattering thing that the most exalted imagination could find to say to the generation now arising among us to take possession of life, of public opinion and of power, happens to be a piece of truth plainer than the light of day. This generation has nothing tocontinue, it has everything tocreate. Napoleon's great merit is to have left the road clear.

I should like to be able to say something on consolation. Enough is not done to console.

The main principle is that you try to form a kind of crystallisation as remote as possible from the source of present suffering.

In order to discover an unknown principle, we must bravely face a little anatomy.

If the reader will consult Chapter II of M. Villermé's work on prisons (Paris, 1820), he will see that the prisoners "si maritano fra di loro" (it is the expression in the prisoners' language). The women also "si maritano fra di loro," and in these unions, generally speaking, much fidelity is shown. That is an outcome of the principle of modesty, and is not observed among the men.

"At Saint-Lazare," says M. Villermé, page 96, "a woman, seeing a new-comer preferred to her, gave herself several wounds with a knife. (October, 1818.)

"Usually it is the younger woman who is more fond than the other."

Vivacità, leggerezza, soggettissima a prendere puntiglio, occupazione di ogni momento delle apparenze della propria esistenza agli occhi altrui: Ecco i tre gran caratteri di questa pianta che risveglia Europa nell 1808.[1]

Of Italians, those are preferable who still preserve a little savagery and taste for blood—the people of the Romagna, Calabria, and, among the more civilised, the Brescians, Piedmontese and Corsicans.

The Florentine bourgeois has more sheepish docility than the Parisian. Leopold's spies have degraded him. See M. Courier's(12)letter on the Librarian Furia and the Chamberlain Puccini.

[1]["Vivacity, levity, very subject to pique, and unflagging preoccupation with other people's view's of its own existence—these are the three distinguishing points in the stock which is stirring the life of Europe in 1808."—Tr.]

I smile when I see earnest people never able to agree, saying quite unconcernedly the most abusive things of each other—and thinking still worse. To live is to feel life—to have strong feelings. But strength must be rated for each individual, and what is painful—that is, too strong—forone man is exactly enough to stir another's interest. Take, for example, the feeling of just being spared by the cannon shot in the line of fire, the feeling of penetrating into Russia in pursuit of Parthian hordes.... And it is the same with the tragedies of Shakespeare and those of Racine, etc., etc.... (Orcha,August13, 1812.)

Pleasure does not produce half so strong an impression as pain—that is the first point. Then, besides this disadvantage in the quantity of emotion, it is certainly not half as easy to excite sympathy by the picture of happiness as by that of misfortune. Hence poets cannot depict unhappiness too forcibly. They have only one shoal to fear, namely, things that disgust. Here again, the force of feeling must be rated differently for monarchies and republics. A Lewis XIV increases a hundredfold the number of disgusting things. (Crabbe's Poems.)

By the mere fact of its existence a monarchyà laLewis XIV, with its circle of nobles, makes everything simple in Art become coarse. The noble personage for whom the thing is exposed feels insulted; the feeling is sincere—and in so far worthy.

See what the gentle Racine has been able to make of the heroic friendship, so sacred to antiquity, of Orestes and Pylades. Orestes addresses Pylades with the familiar "thou."[1] Pylades answers him "My Lord."[1]And then people pretend Racine is our most touching writer! If they won't give in after this example, we must change the subject.

[1]["Tu" and "Seigneur."]

Directly the hope of revenge is possible, the feeling of hatred returns. Until the last weeks of my imprisonment it never entered my head to run away and break the solemn oath I had sworn to my friend. Twoconfidences these—made this morning in my presence by a gentleman cut-throat who favoured us with the history of his life. (Faenza, 1817.)

All Europe, put together, could never make one French book of the really good type—theLettres Persanes, for example.

I call pleasure every impression which the soul would rather receive than not receive.[1]

I call pain every impression which the soul would rather not receive than receive.

If I want to go to sleep rather than be conscious of my feelings, they are undoubtedly pain. Hence the desire of love is not pain, for the lover will leave the most agreeable society in order to day-dream in peace.

Time weakens pleasures of the body and aggravates its pains.

As for spiritual pleasures—they grow weaker or stronger according to the passion. For example, after six months passed in the study of astronomy you like astronomy all the more, and after a year of avarice money is still sweeter.

Spiritual pains are softened by time—how many widows, really inconsolable, console themselves with time!—VideLady Waldegrave—Horace Walpole.

Given a man in a state of indifference—now let him have a pleasure;

Given another man in a state of poignant suffering—suddenly let the suffering cease;

Now is the pleasure this man feels of the same nature as that of the other? M. Verri(66)says Yes, but, to my mind—No.

Not all pleasures come from cessation of pain.

A man had lived for a long time on an income of six thousand francs—he wins five hundred thousand in the lottery. He had got out of the way of having desires which wealth alone can satisfy.—And that, by the bye, is one of my objections to Paris—it is so easy to lose this habit there.

The latest invention is a machine for cutting quills. I bought one this morning and it's a great joy to me, as I cannot stand cutting them myself. But yesterday I was certainly not unhappy for not knowing of this machine. Or was Petrarch unhappy for not taking coffee?

What is the use of defining happiness? Everyone knows it—the first partridge you kill on the wing at twelve, the first battle you come through safely at seventeen....

Pleasure which is only the cessation of pain passes very quickly, and its memory, after some years, is even distasteful. One of my friends was wounded in the side by a bursting shell at the battle of Moscow, and a few days later mortification threatened. After a delay of some hours they managed to get together M. Béclar, M. Larrey and some surgeons of repute, and the result of their consultation was that my friend was informed that mortification had not set up. At the moment I could see his happiness—it was a great happiness, but not unalloyed. In the secret depth of his heart he could not believe that it was really all over, he kept reconsidering the surgeons' words and debating whether he could rely on them entirely. He never lost sight completely of the possibility of mortification. Nowadays, after eight years, if you speak to him of that consultation, it gives him pain—it brings to mind unexpectedly a passed unhappiness.

Pleasure caused by the cessation of pain consists in:—

1. Defeating the continual succession of one's own misgivings:

2. Reviewing all the advantages one was on the point of losing.

Pleasure caused by winning five hundred thousandfrancs consists in foreseeing all the new and unusual pleasures one is going to indulge in.

There is this peculiar reservation to be made. You have to take into account whether a man is too used, or not used enough, to wishing for wealth. If he is not used enough, if his mind is closely circumscribed, for two or three days together he will feel embarrassed; while if he is inclined very often to wish for great riches, he will find he has used up their enjoyments in advance by too frequently foretasting them.

This misfortune is unknown to passion-love.

A soul on fire pictures to itself not the last favour, but the nearest—perhaps just her hand to press, if, for example, your mistress is unkind to you. Imagination does not pass beyond that of its own accord; you may force it, but a moment later it is gone—for fear of profaning its idol.

When pleasure has run through the length of its career, we fall again, of course, into indifference, but this is not the same indifference as we felt before. The second state differs from the first in that we are no longer in a position to relish with such delight the pleasure that we have just tasted. The organs we use for plucking pleasures are worn out. The imagination is no longer so inclined to offer fancies for the enjoyment of desire—desire is satisfied.

In the midst of enjoyment to be torn from pleasure produces pain.

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