CHAPTER XXXII

OF INTIMATE INTERCOURSE

The greatest happiness that love can give--'tis first joining your hand to the hand of a woman you love.

The happiness of gallantry is quite otherwise--far more real, and far more subject to ridicule.

In passion-love intimate intercourse is not so much perfect delight itself, as the last step towards it.

But how depict a delight, which leaves no memories behind?

Mortimer returned from a long voyage in fear and trembling; he adored Jenny, but Jenny had not answered his letters. On his arrival in London, he mounts his horse and goes off to find her at her country home. When he gets there, she is walking in the park; he runs up to her, with beating heart, meets her and she offers him her hand and greets him with emotion; he sees that she loves him. Roaming together along the glades of the park, Jenny's dress became entangled in an acacia bush. Later on Mortimer won her; but Jenny was faithless. I maintain to him that Jenny never loved him and he quotes, as proof of her love, the way in which she received him at his return from the Continent; but he could never give me the slightest details of it. Only he shudders visibly directly he sees an acacia bush: really, it is the only distinct remembrance he succeeded in preserving of the happiest moment of his life.[1]

A sensitive and open man, a former _chevalier_, confided

[Pg 113] to me this evening (in the depth of our craft buffeted by a high sea on the Lago di Garda[2]) the history of his loves, which I in my turn shall not confide to the public. But I feel myself in a position to conclude from them that the day of intimate intercourse is like those fine days in May, a critical period for the fairest flowers, a moment which can be fatal and wither in an instant the fairest hopes.

* * * * *[3]

_Naturalness_ cannot be praised too highly. It is the only coquetry permissible in a thing so serious as love _à la_ Werther; in which a man has no idea where he is going, and in which at the same time by a lucky chance for virtue, that is his best policy. A man, really moved, says charming things unconsciously; he speaks a language which he does not know himself.

Woe to the man the least bit affected! Given he were in love, allow him all the wit in the world, he loses three-quarters of his advantages. Let him relapse for an instant into affectation--a minute later comes a moment of frost.

The whole art of love, as it seems to me, reduces itself to saying exactly as much as the degree of intoxication at the moment allows of, that is to say in other terms, to listen to one's heart. It must not be thought, that this is so easy; a man, who truly loves, has no longer strength to speak, when his mistress says anything to make him happy.

[Pg 114] Thus he loses the deeds which his words[4] would have given birth to. It is better to be silent than say things too tender at the wrong time, and what was in point ten seconds ago, is now no longer--in fact at this moment it makes a mess of things. Every time that I used to infringe this rule[5] and say something, which had come into my head three minutes earlier and which I thought pretty, Léonore never failed to punish me. And later I would say to myself, as I went away--"She is right." This is the sort of thing to upset women of delicacy extremely; it is indecency of sentiment. Like tasteless rhetoricians, they are readier to admit a certain degree of weakness and coldness. There being nothing in the world to alarm them but the falsity of their lover, the least little insincerity of detail, be it the most innocent in the world, robs them instantly of all delight and puts mistrust into their heart.

Respectable women have a repugnance to what is vehement and unlooked for--those being none the less characteristics of passion--and, furthermore, that vehemence alarms their modesty; they are on the defensive against it.

When a touch of jealousy or displeasure has occasioned some chilliness, it is generally possible to begin subjects, fit to give birth to the excitement favourable to love, and, after the first two or three phrases of introduction, as long as a man does not miss the opportunity of saying exactly what his heart suggests, the pleasure he will give to his loved one will be keen. The fault of most men is that they want to succeed in saying something, which they think either pretty or witty or touching--instead of

[Pg 115] releasing their soul from the false gravity of the world, until a degree of intimacy and _naturalness_ brings out in simple language what they are feeling at the moment. The man, who is brave enough for this, will have instantly his reward in a kind of peacemaking.

It is this reward, as swift as it is involuntary, of the pleasure one gives to the object of one's love, which puts this passion so far above the others.

If there is perfect _naturalness_ between them, the happiness of two individuals comes to be fused together.[6] This is simply the greatest happiness which can exist, by reason of sympathy and several other laws of human nature.

It is quite easy to determine the meaning of this word _naturalness_--essential condition of happiness in love.

We call _natural_ that which does not diverge from an habitual way of acting. It goes without saying that one must not merely never lie to one's love, but not even embellish the least bit or tamper with the simple outline of truth. For if a man is embellishing, his attention is occupied in doing so and no longer answers simply and truly, as the keys of a piano, to the feelings mirrored in his eye. The woman finds it out at once by a certain chilliness within her, and she, in her turn, falls back on coquetry. Might not here be found hidden the cause why it is impossible to love a woman with a mind too far below one's own--the reason being that, in her case, one can make pretence with impunity, and, as that course is more convenient, one abandons oneself to unnaturalness by force of habit? From that moment love is no longer love; it sinks to the level of an ordinary transaction--the only difference being that, instead of money, you get pleasure or flattery or a mixture of both. It is hard not to feel a shade of contempt for a woman, before whom one can with impunity act a part, and

[Pg 116] consequently, in order to throw her over, one only needs to come across something better in her line. Habit or vow may hold, but I am speaking of the heart's desire, whose nature it is to fly to the greatest pleasure.

To return to this word _natural_--natural and habitual are two different things. If one takes these words in the same sense, it is evident that the more sensibility in a man, the harder it is for him to be natural, since the influence of _habit_ on his way of being and acting is less powerful, and he himself is more powerful at each new event. In the life-story of a cold heart every page is the same: take him to-day or take him to-morrow, it is always the same dummy.

A man of sensibility, so soon as his heart is touched, loses all traces of habit to guide his action; and how can he follow a path, which he has forgotten all about?

He feels the enormous weight attaching to every word which he says to the object of his love--it seems to him as if a word is to decide his fate. How is he not to look about for the right word? At any rate, how is he not to have the feeling that he is trying to say "the right thing"? And then, there is an end of candour. And so we must give up our claim to candour, that quality of our being, which never reflects upon itself. We are the best we can be, but we feel what we are.

I fancy this brings us to the last degree of _naturalness_, to which the most delicate heart can pretend in love.

A man of passion can but cling might and main, as his only refuge in the storm, to the vow never to change a jot or tittle of the truth and to read the message of his heart correctly. If the conversation is lively and fragmentary, he may hope for some fine moments of _naturalness_: otherwise he will only be perfectly natural in hours when he will be a little less madly in love.

In the presence of the loved one, we hardly retain _naturalness_ even in our movements, however deeply such habits are rooted in the muscles. When I gave my

[Pg 117] arm to Léonore, I always felt on the point of stumbling, and I wondered if I was walking properly. The most one can do is never to be affected willingly: it is enough to be convinced that want of _naturalness_ is the greatest possible disadvantage, and can easily be the source of the greatest misfortunes. For the heart of the woman, whom you love, no longer understands your own; you lose that nervous involuntary movement of sincerity, which answers the call of sincerity. It means the loss of every way of touching, I almost said of winning her. Not that I pretend to deny, that a woman worthy of love may see her fate in that pretty image of the ivy, which "dies if it does not cling"--that is a law of Nature; but to make your lover's happiness is none the less a step that will decide your own. To me it seems that a reasonable woman ought not to give in completely to her lover, until she can hold out no longer, and the slightest doubt thrown on the sincerity of your heart gives her there and then a little strength--enough at least to delay her defeat still another day.[7]

Is it necessary to add that to make all this the last word in absurdity you have only to apply it to gallant-love?

[1] _Life of Haydn_(18).

[2] 20 September, 1811.

[3] At the first quarrel Madame Ivernetta gave poor Bariac his _congé_. Bariac was truly in love and this _congé_ threw him into despair; but his friend Guillaume Balaon, whose life we are writing, was of great help to him and managed, finally, to appease the severe Ivernetta. Peace was restored, and the reconciliation was accompanied by circumstances so delicious, that Bariac swore to Balaon that the hour of the first favours he had received from his mistress had not been as sweet as that of this voluptuous peacemaking. These words turned Balaon's head; he wanted to know this pleasure, of which his friend had just given him a description, etc. etc. (_Vie de quelques Troubadours_, by Nivernois, Vol. I, p. 32.)

[4] It is this kind of timidity which is decisive, and which is proof of passion-love in a clever man.

[5] Remember that, if the author uses sometimes the expression "I," it is an attempt to give the form of this essay a little variety. He does not in the least pretend to fill the readers' ears with the story of his own feelings. His aim is to impart, with as little monotony as possible, what he has observed in others.

[6] Resides in exactly the same actions.

[7] Haec autem ad acerbam rei memoriam, amara quadam dulcedine, scribere visum est--ut cogitem nihil esse debere quod amplius mihi placeat in hac vita. (_Petrarch_, Ed. Marsand.) [These things, to be a painful reminder, yet not without a certain bitter charm, I have seen good to write--to remind me that nothing any longer can give me pleasure in this life.--Tr.

15 January, 1819.

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