CHAPTER XLIII

ITALY(27)

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: What

[Pg 167] will 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 the _salons_ openly 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 have

[Pg 168] but little authority over those, who are only trying to escape the notice of their "pacha"(29). The _blasés_ censure 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 mot_ in 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.

[Pg 169] 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.

[1] G. Pecchio, in his very lively _Letters_ to 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 calls _conventions_. 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 the _Edinburgh Review_ for 1821. See the German and Italian literary journals, and the _Scimiatigre_ of Alfieri.

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