BEAUTY DETHRONED BY LOVE
Alberic meets in a box at the theatre a woman more beautiful than his
mistress (I beg to be allowed here a mathematical valuation)--that
is to say, her features promise three units of happiness instead of
two, supposing the quantity of happiness given by perfect beauty to be
expressed by the number four.
Is it surprising that he prefers the features of his mistress, which
promise a hundred units of happiness _for him_? Even the minor defects
of her face, a small-pox mark, for example, touches the heart of the
man who loves, and, when he observes them even in another woman, sets
him dreaming far away. What, then, when he sees them in his mistress?
Why, he has felt a thousand sentiments in presence of that small-pox
mark, sentiments for the most part sweet, and all of the greatest
interest; and now, such as they are, they are evoked afresh with
incredible vividness by the sight of this sign, even in the face of
another woman.
If ugliness thus comes to be preferred and loved, it is because in
this case ugliness is beauty.[1] A man was passionately in love with a
woman, very thin and scarred with small-pox: death bereft him of her.
At Rome, three years after, he makes friends with two women, one more
lovely than the day, the other thin, scarred with
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small-pox, and thereby, if you will, quite ugly. There he is,
at the end of a week, in love with the ugly one--and this week he
employs in effacing her ugliness with his memories; and with a very
pardonable coquetry the lesser beauty did not fail to help him in the
operation with a slight whip-up of the pulse.[2] A man meets a woman
and is offended by her ugliness; soon, if she is unpretentious, her
expression makes him forget the defects of her features; he finds her
amiable--he conceives that one could love her. A week later he has
hopes; another week and they are taken from him; another and he's mad.
[1] Beauty is only the promise of happiness. The happiness of a
Greek was different to that of a Frenchman of 1822. See the eyes of
the Medici Venus and compare them with the eyes of the Magdalen of
Pordenone (in the possession of M. de Sommariva.)
[2] If one is sure of the love of a woman, one examines to see if she
is more or less beautiful; if one is uncertain of her heart, there is
no time to think of her face.
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