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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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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