CHAPTER XXI

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

Imaginative souls are sensitive and also mistrustful, even the most ingenuous,[1]--I maintain. They may be suspicious without knowing it: they have had so many disappointments in life. Thus everything set-out and official, when a man is first introduced, scares the imagination and drives away the possibility of crystallisation; the romantic is then, on the contrary, love's triumph.

Nothing simpler--for in the supreme astonishment, which keeps the thoughts busy for long upon something out of the ordinary, is already half the mental exercise necessary to crystallisation.

I will quote the beginning of the Amours of Séraphine (_Gil Blas_, Bk. IV, Chap. X). It is Don Fernando who tells the story of his flight, when pursued by the agents of the inquisition....

After crossing several walks I came to a drawing-room, the door of which was also left open. I entered, and when I had observed all its magnificence.... One side of the room a door stood ajar; I partly opened it and saw a suite of apartments

[Pg 64] whereof only the furthest was lighted. "What is to be done now?" I asked myself.... I could not resist my curiosity.... Advancing boldly, I went through all the rooms and reached one where there was a light--to wit, a taper upon a marble table in a silver-gilt candlestick.... But soon afterwards, casting my eyes upon a bed, the curtains of which were partly drawn on account of the heat, I perceived an object which at once engrossed my attention: a young lady, fast asleep in spite of the noise of the thunder, which had just been bursting forth. I softly drew near her. My mind was suddenly troubled at the sight. Whilst I feasted my eyes with the pleasure of beholding her, she awoke.

Imagine her surprise at seeing in her room at midnight a man who was an utter stranger to her! She trembled on beholding me and shrieked aloud.... I took pains to reassure her and throwing myself on my knees before her, said--"Madam, have no fear." She called her women.... Grown a little braver by his (an old servant's) presence, she haughtily asked me who was, etc. etc."[2]

There is an introduction not easily to be forgotten! On the other hand, could there be anything sillier in our customs of to-day than the official, and at the same time almost sentimental, introduction of the young wooer to his future wife: such legal prostitution goes so far as to be almost offensive to modesty.

"I have just been present this afternoon, February 17th, 1790," says Chamfort, "at a so-called family function. That is to say, men of respectable reputation and a decent company were congratulating on her good fortune Mlle. de Marille, a young person of beauty, wit and virtue, who is to be favoured with becoming the wife of M. R.--an unhealthy dotard, repulsive, dishonest, and mad, but rich: she has seen him for the third time to-day, when signing the contract. If anything characterises an age of infamy, it is the jubilation on an occasion like this, it is the folly of such joy and--looking ahead--the sanctimonious cruelty, with which the same society will heap contempt without reserve upon

[Pg 65] the pettiest imprudence of a poor young woman in love."

Ceremony of all kinds, being in its essence something affected and set-out beforehand, in which the point is to act "properly," paralyses the imagination and leaves it awake only to that which is opposed to the object of the ceremony, e. g. something comical--whence the magic effect of the slightest joke. A poor girl, struggling against nervousness and attacks of modesty during the official introduction of her _fiancé_, can think of nothing but the part she is playing, and this again is a certain means of stifling the imagination.

Modesty has far more to say against getting into bed with a man whom you have seen but twice, after three Latin words have been spoken in church, than against giving way despite yourself to the man whom for two years you have adored. But I am talking double Dutch.

The fruitful source of the vices and mishaps, which follow our marriages nowadays, is the Church of Rome. It makes liberty for girls impossible before marriage, and divorce impossible, when once they have made their mistake, or rather when they find out the mistake of the choice forced on them. Compare Germany, the land of happy marriages: a delightful princess (Madame la Duchesse de Sa----) has just married in all good faith for the fourth time, and has not failed to ask to the wedding her three first husbands, with whom she is on the best terms. That is going too far; but a single divorce, which punishes a husband for his tyranny, prevents a thousand cases of unhappy wedded life. What is amusing is that Rome is one of the places where you see most divorces.

Love goes out at first sight towards a face, which reveals in a man at once something to respect and something to pity.

[1] _The Bride of Lammermoor_, Miss Ashton.

A man who has lived finds in his memory numberless examples of "affairs," and his only trouble is to make his choice. But if he wishes to write, he no longer knows where to look for support. The anecdotes of the particular circles he has lived in are unknown to the public, and it would require an immense number of pages to recount them with the necessary circumstantiality. I quote for that reason from generally-known novels, but the ideas which I submit to the reader I do not ground upon such empty fictions, calculated for the most part with an eye to the picturesque rather than the true effect.

[2] [Translation of Henri van Laun.--Tr.]

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