OF WOMEN'S COURAGE
I tell thee, proud Templar, that not in thy fiercest battles hast thou
displayed more of thy vaunted courage than has been shewn by women,
when called upon to suffer by affection or duty. (_Ivanhoe_.)
I remember meeting the following phrase in a book of history: "All
the men lost their head: that is the moment when women display an
incontestable superiority."
Their courage has a reserve which that of their lover wants; he acts
as a spur to their sense of worth. They find so much pleasure in being
able, in the fire of danger, to dispute the first place for firmness
with the man, who often wounds them by the proudness of his protection
and his strength, that the vehemence of that enjoyment raises them
above any kind of fear, which at the moment is the man's weak point.
A man, too, if the same help were given him at the same moment, would
show himself superior to everything; for fear never resides in the
danger, but in ourselves.
Not that I mean to depreciate women's courage--I have seen them, on
occasions, superior to the bravest men. Only they must have a man to
love. Then they no longer feel except through him; and so the most
obvious and personal danger becomes, as it were, a rose to gather in
his presence.[1]
I have found also in women, who did not love, intrepidity,
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the coldest, the most surprising and the most exempt from nerves.
It is true, I have always imagined that they are so brave, only because
they do not know the tiresomeness of wounds!
As for moral courage, so far superior to the other, the firmness of a
woman who resists her love is simply the most admirable thing, which
can exist on earth. All other possible marks of courage are as nothing
compared to a thing so strongly opposed to nature and so arduous.
Perhaps they find a source of strength in the habit of sacrifice, which
is bred in them by modesty.
Hard on women it is that the proofs of this courage should always
remain secret and be almost impossible to divulge.
Still harder that it should always be employed against their own
happiness: the Princesse de Clèves would have done better to say
nothing to her husband and give herself to M. de Nemours.
Perhaps women are chiefly supported by their pride in making a fine
defence, and imagine that their lover is staking his vanity on having
them--a petty and miserable idea. A man of passion, who throws himself
with a light heart into so many ridiculous situations, must have a lot
of time to be thinking of vanity! It is like the monks who mean to
catch the devil and find their reward in the pride of hair-shirts and
macerations.
I should think that Madame de Clèves would have repented, had she come
to old age,--to the period at which one judges life and when the joys
of pride appear in all their meanness. She would have wished to have
lived like Madame de la Fayette.[2]
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I have just re-read a hundred pages of this essay: and a pretty poor
idea I have given of true love, of love which occupies the entire
soul, fills it with fancies, now the happiest, now heart-breaking--but
always sublime--and makes it completely insensible to all the rest
of creation. I am at a loss to express what I see so well; I have
never felt more painfully the want of talent. How bring into relief
the simplicity of action and of character, the high seriousness, the
glance that reflects so truly and so ingenuously the passing shade
of feeling, and above all, to return to it again, that inexpressible
_What care I?_ for all that is not the woman we love? A yes or a no
spoken by a man in love has an _unction_ which is not to be found
elsewhere, and is not found in that very man at other times. This
morning (August 3rd) I passed on horseback about nine o'clock in front
of the lovely English garden of Marchese Zampieri, situated on the
last crests of those tree-capped hills, on which Bologna rests, and
from which so fine a view is enjoyed over Lombardy rich and green--the
fairest country in the world. In a copse of laurels, belonging to the
Giardino Zampieri, which dominates the path I was taking, leading to
the cascade of the Reno at Casa Lecchio, I saw Count Delfante. He was
absorbed in thought and scarcely returned my greeting, though we had
passed the night together till two o'clock in the morning. I went to
the cascade, I crossed the Reno; after which, passing again, at least
three hours later, under the copse of the Giardino Zampieri, I saw him
still there. He was precisely in the same position, leaning against a
great pine, which rises above the copse of laurels--but this detail I
am afraid will be found too simple and pointless. He came up to me with
tears in his eyes, asking me not to go telling people of his trance.
I was touched, and suggested retracing my steps and going with him to
spend the day in the country. At the end of two hours he had told me
everything. His is a fine soul,
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but oh! the coldness of these pages, compared to his story.
Furthermore, he thinks his love is not returned--which is not my
opinion. In the fair marble face of the Contessa Ghigi, with whom we
spent the evening, one can read nothing. Only now and then a light and
sudden blush, which she cannot check, just betrays the emotions of
that soul, which the most exalted feminine pride disputes with deeper
emotions. You see the colour spread over her neck of alabaster and as
much as one catches of those lovely shoulders, worthy of Canova. She
somehow finds a way of diverting her black and sombre eyes from the
observation of those, whose penetration alarms her woman's delicacy;
but last night, at something which Delfante was saying and of which she
disapproved, I saw a sudden blush spread all over her. Her lofty soul
found him less worthy of her.
But when all is said, even if I were mistaken in my conjectures on
the happiness of Delfante, vanity apart, I think him happier than I,
in my indifference, although I am in a thoroughly happy position, in
appearance and in reality.
Bologna, _August 3rd_, 1818.
[1] Mary Stuart speaking of Leicester, after the interview with
Elizabeth, where she had just met her doom. (Schiller.)
[2] It is well known that that celebrated woman was the author,
probably in company with M. de la Rochefoucauld, of the novel, _La
Princesse de Clèves_, and that the two authors passed together in
perfect friendship the last twenty years of their life. That is exactly
love _à l'Italienne_.
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