CHAPTER XIII

OF THE FIRST STEP; OF THE FASHIONABLE WORLD; OF MISFORTUNES

That which is most surprising in the passion of love is the first step--the extravagance of the change, which comes over a man's brain.

The fashionable world, with its brilliant parties, is of service to love in favouring this first step.

It begins by changing simple admiration (i) into tender admiration (ii)--what pleasure to kiss her, etc.

In a _salon_ lit by thousands of candles a fast valse throws a fever upon young hearts, eclipses timidity, swells the consciousness of power--in fact, gives them the daring to love. For to see a lovable object is not enough: on the contrary, the fact that it is extremely lovable discourages a gentle soul--he must see it, if not in love with him,[1] at least despoiled of its majesty.

Who takes it into his head to become the paramour of a queen unless the advances are from her?[2]

Thus nothing is more favourable to the birth of love than a life of irksome solitude, broken now and again by a long-desired ball. This is the plan of wise mothers who have daughters.

The real fashionable world, such as was found at the

[Pg 48] Court of France,[3] and which since 1780,[4] I think, exists no more, was unfavourable to love, because it made the solitude and the leisure, indispensable to the work of crystallisation, almost impossible.

Court life gives the habit of observing and making a great number of subtle distinctions, and the subtlest distinction may be the beginning of an admiration and of a passion.[5]

When the troubles of love are mixed with those of another kind (the troubles of vanity--if your mistress offend your proper pride, your sense of honour or personal dignity--troubles of health, money and political persecution, etc.), it is only in appearance that love is increased by these annoyances. Occupying the imagination otherwise, they prevent crystallisation in love still hopeful, and in happy love the birth of little doubts. When these misfortunes have departed, the sweetness and the folly of love return.

Observe that misfortunes favour the birth of love in light and unsensitive characters, and that, after it is born, misfortunes, which existed before, are favourable to it; in as much as the imagination, recoiling from the gloomy impressions offered by all the other circumstances of life, throws itself wholly into the work of crystallisation.

[1] Hence the possibility of passions of artificial origin--those of Benedict and of Beatrice (Shakespeare).

[2] Cf. the fortunes of Struensee in Brown's _Northern Courts_, 3 vols., 1819.

[3] See the letters of Madame du Deffant, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, Bezenval, Lauzun, the Memoirs of Madame d'Épinay, the _Dictionnaire des Étiquettes_ of Madame de Genlis, the Memoirs of Danjeau and Horace Walpole.

[4] Unless, perhaps, at the Court of Petersburg.

[5] See Saint-Simon and Werther. However gentle and delicate are the solitary, their soul is distracted, and part of their imagination is busy in foreseeing the world of men. Force of character is one of the charms which most readily seduces the truly feminine heart. Hence the success of serious young officers. Women well know how to make the distinction between force of character and the violence of those movements of passion, the possibility of which they feel strongly in their own hearts. The most distinguished women are sometimes duped by a little charlatanism in this matter. It can be used without fear, as soon as crystallisation is seen to have begun.

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