In proof of crystallisation I shall content myself with recalling the
following anecdote. A young woman hears that Edward, her relation, who
is to return from the Army, is a youth of great distinction; she is
assured that he loves her on her reputation; but he will want probably
to see her, before making a proposal and asking her of her parents. She
notices a young stranger at church, she hears him called Edward, she
thinks of nothing but him--she is in love with him. Eight days later
the real Edward arrives; he is not the Edward of church. She turns pale
and will be unhappy for ever, if she is forced to marry him.
That is what the poor of understanding call an example of the
senselessness of love.
A man of generosity lavishes the most delicate benefits upon a girl
in distress. No one could have more virtues, and love was about to be
born; but he wears a shabby hat, and she notices that he is awkward in
the saddle. The girl confesses with a sigh that she cannot return the
warm feelings, which he evidently has for her.
A man pays his attentions to a lady of the greatest respectability.
She hears that this gentleman has had physical troubles of a comical
nature: she finds him intolerable. And yet she had no intention of
giving herself to him, and these secret troubles in no way blighted his
understanding or amiability. It is simply that crystallisation was made
impossible.
In order that a human being may delight in deifying an object to be
loved, be it taken from the Ardennes forest or picked up at a Bal de
Coulon, that it seems to
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him perfect is the first necessity--perfect by no means in every
relation, but in every relation in which it is seen at the time.
Perfect in all respects it will seem only after several days of the
second crystallisation. The reason is simple--then it is enough to have
the idea of a perfection in order to see it in the object of our love.
Beauty is only thus far necessary to the birth of love--ugliness
must not form an obstacle. The lover soon comes to find his mistress
beautiful, such as she is, without thinking of ideal beauty.
The features which make up the ideally beautiful would promise, if he
could see them, a quantity of happiness, if I may use the expression,
which I would express by the number one; whereas the features of his
mistress, such as they are, promise him one thousand units of happiness.
Before the birth of love beauty is necessary as advertisement: it
predisposes us towards that passion by means of the praises, which we
hear given to the object of our future love. Very eager admiration
makes the smallest hope decisive.
In gallant-love, and perhaps in passion-love during the first five
minutes, a woman, considering a possible lover, gives more weight to
the way in which he is seen by other women, than to the way in which
she sees him herself.
Hence the success of princes and officers.[1] The pretty women of the
Court of old king Lewis XIV were in love with that sovereign.
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Great care should be taken not to offer facilities to hope, before it
is certain that admiration is there. It might give rise to dullness,
which makes love for ever impossible, and which, at any rate, is only
to be cured by the sting of wounded pride.
No one feels sympathy for the simpleton, nor for a smile which
is always there; hence the necessity in society of a veneer of
rakishness--that is, the privileged manner. From too debased a plant we
scorn to gather even a smile. In love, our vanity disdains a victory
which is too easy; and in all matters man is not given to magnifying
the value of an offering.
[1] Those who remarked in the countenance of this young hero a
dissolute audacity mixed with extreme haughtiness and indifference to
the feelings of others, could not yet deny to his countenance that sort
of comeliness, which belongs to an open set of features well formed
by nature, modelled by art to the usual rules of courtesy, yet so far
frank and honest that they seemed as if they disclaimed to conceal the
natural working of the soul. Such an expression is often mistaken for
manly frankness, when in truth it arises from the reckless indifference
of a libertine disposition, conscious of superiority of birth and
wealth, or of some other adventitious advantage totally unconnected
with personal merit.
_Ivanhoe_, Chap. VIII
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