OF JEALOUSY
When you are in love, as each new object strikes your eye or your
memory, whether crushed in a gallery and patiently listening to a
parliamentary debate, or galloping to the relief of an outpost under
the enemy's fire, you never fail to add a new perfection to the idea
you have of your mistress, or discover a new means (which at first
seems excellent) of winning her love still more.
Each step the imagination takes is repaid by a moment of sweet delight.
No wonder that existence, such as this, takes hold of one.
Directly jealousy comes into existence, this turn of feelings
continues in itself the same, though the effect it is to produce is
contrary. Each perfection that you add to the crown of your beloved,
who now perhaps loves someone else, far from promising you a heavenly
contentment, thrusts a dagger into your heart. A voice cries out: "This
enchanting pleasure is for my rival to enjoy."[1]
Even the objects which strike you, without producing this effect,
instead of showing you, as before, a new way of winning her love, cause
you to see a new advantage for your rival.
You meet a pretty woman galloping in the park[2]; your rival is famous
for his fine horses which can do ten miles in fifty minutes.
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In this state, rage is easily fanned into life; you no longer
remember that in love possession is nothing, enjoyment everything.
You exaggerate the happiness of your rival, exaggerate the insolence
happiness produces in him, and you come at last to the limit of
tortures, that is to say to the extremest unhappiness, poisoned still
further by a lingering hope.
The only remedy is, perhaps, to observe your rival's happiness at close
quarters. Often you will see him fall peacefully asleep in the same
_salon_ as the woman, for whom your heart stops beating, at the mere
sight of a hat like hers some way off in the street.
To wake him up you have only to show your jealousy. You may have,
perhaps, the pleasure of teaching him the price of the woman who
prefers him to you, and he will owe to you the love he will learn to
have for her.
Face to face with a rival there is no mean--you must either banter with
him in the most off-hand way you can, or frighten him.
Jealousy being the greatest of all evils, endangering one's life will
be found an agreeable diversion. For then not all our fancies are
embittered and blackened (by the mechanism explained above)--sometimes
it is possible to imagine that one kills this rival.
According to this principle, that it is never right to add to the
enemy's forces, you must hide your love from your rival, and, under
some pretext of vanity as far as possible removed from love, say to
him very quietly, with all possible politeness, and in the calmest,
simplest tone: "Sir, I cannot think why the public sees good to make
little So-and-so mine; people are even good enough to believe that I am
in love with her. As for you, if you want her, I would hand her over
with all my heart, if unhappily there were not the risk of placing
myself into a ridiculous position. In six months, take her as much as
ever you like, but at the present moment, honour, such as people attach
(why, I don't know) to these things,
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forces me to tell you, to my great regret, that, if by chance you have
not the justice to wait till your turn comes round, one of us must die."
Your rival is very likely a man without much passion, and perhaps a
man of much prudence, who once convinced of your resolution, will
make haste to yield you the woman in question, provided he can find
any decent pretext. For that reason you must give a gay tone to your
challenge, and keep the whole move hidden with the greatest secrecy.
What makes the pain of jealousy so sharp is that vanity cannot help you
to bear it. But, according to the plan I have spoken of, your vanity
has something to feed on; you can respect yourself for bravery, even if
you are reduced to despising your powers of pleasing.
If you would rather not carry things to such tragic lengths, you must
pack up and go miles away, and keep a chorus-girl, whose charms people
will think have arrested you in your flight.
Your rival has only to be an ordinary person and he will think you are
consoled.
Very often the best way is to wait without flinching, while he wears
himself out in the eyes of the loved one through his own stupidity.
For, except in a serious passion formed little by little and in early
youth, a clever woman does not love an undistinguished man for long.[3]
In the case of jealousy after intimate intercourse, there must follow
also apparent indifference or real inconstancy. Plenty of women,
offended with a lover whom they still love, form an attachment with
the man, of whom he has shown himself jealous, and the play becomes a
reality.[4]
I have gone into some detail, because in these moments of jealousy one
often loses one's head. Counsels, made in writing a long time ago, are
useful, and, the essential
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thing being to feign calmness, it is not out of place in a
philosophical piece of writing, to adopt that tone.
As your adversaries' power over you consists in taking away from you or
making you hope for things, whose whole worth consists in your passion
for them, once manage to make them think you are indifferent, and
suddenly they are without a weapon.
If you have no active course to take, but can distract yourself in
looking for consolation, you will find some pleasure in reading
_Othello_; it will make you doubt the most conclusive appearances. You
will feast your eyes on these words:--
Trifles light as air
Seem to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs from Holy Writ. (_Othello_, Act III.)
It is my experience that the sight of a fine sea is consoling.
The morning which had arisen calm and bright gave a pleasant effect
to the waste mountain view, which was seen from the castle on looking
to the landward, and the glorious ocean crisped with a thousand
rippling waves of silver extended on the other side in awful, yet
complacent majesty to the verge of the horizon. With such scenes of
calm sublimity the human heart sympathises even in its most disturbed
moods, and deeds of honour and virtue are inspired by their majestic
influence. (_The Bride of Lammermoor_, Chap. VII.)
I find this written by Salviati:--
_July 20th_, 1818.--I often--and I think unreasonably--apply to life
as a whole the feelings of a man of ambition or a good citizen, if he
finds himself set in battle to guard the baggage or in any other post
without danger or action. I should have felt regret at forty to have
passed the age of loving without deep passion. I should have had that
bitter and humiliating displeasure, to have found out too late that I
had been fool enough to let life pass, without living.
Yesterday I spent three hours with the woman I love and a rival, whom
she wants to make me think she favours. Certainly,
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there were moments of bitterness, in watching her lovely eyes fixed
on him, and, on my departure, there were wild transports from utter
misery to hope. But what changes, what sudden lights, what swift
thoughts, and, in spite of the apparent happiness of my rival, with
what pride and what delight my love felt itself superior to his! I
went away saying to myself: The most vile fear would bleach those
cheeks at the least of the sacrifices, which my love would make for
the fun of it, nay, with delight--for example, to put this hand into a
hat and draw one of these two lots: "Be loved by her," the other--"Die
on the spot." And this feeling in me is so much second nature, that it
did not prevent me being amiable and talkative.
If someone had told me all that two years ago, I should have laughed.
I find in the _Travels to the Source of the Missouri River ... in_
1804-6 of Captains Lewis and Clarke (p. 215):--
The Ricaras are poor and generous; we stayed some time in three of
their villages. Their women are more beautiful than those of the other
tribes we came across; they are also not in the least inclined to let
their lover languish. We found a new example of the truth that you
only have to travel to find out that there is variety everywhere.
Among the Ricaras, for a woman to grant her favours without the
consent of her husband or her brother, gives great offence. But then
the brothers and the husband are only too delighted to have the
opportunity of showing this courtesy to their friends.
There was a negro in our crew; he created a great sensation among a
people who had never seen a man of his colour before. He was soon a
favourite with the fair sex, and we noticed that the husbands, instead
of being jealous, were overjoyed to see him come to visit them. The
funny part was that the interior of the huts was so narrow that
everything was visible.[5]
[1] Here you see one of love's follies; for this perfection, seen by
your eyes, is not one for him.
[2] Montaguola, 13th April, 1819.
[3] _La Princesse de Tarente_. Story by Scarron.
[4] As in the _Curieux-impertinent_, story by Cervantes.
[5] There ought to be instituted at Philadelphia an academy, whose sole
occupation would be the collection of materials for the study of man in
the savage state, instead of waiting till these curious peoples have
been exterminated.
I know quite well that such academies exist--but apparently regulated
in a way worthy of our academies in Europe. (Memoir and Discussion on
the Zodiac of Denderah at the Académie des Sciences of Paris, 1821.) I
notice that the academy of, I fancy, Massachusetts wisely charges a
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member of the clergy (Mr. Jarvis) to make a report on the religion of
the savage. The priest, of course, refutes energetically an impious
Frenchman, called Volney. According to the priest, the savage has
the most exact and noble ideas of the Divinity, etc. If he lived in
England, such a report would bring the worthy academician a preferment
of three or four hundred pounds and the protection of all the noble
lords in the county. But in America! For the rest, the absurdity of
this academy reminds me of the free Americans, who set the greatest
store on seeing fine coats-of-arms painted on the panels of their
carriages; what upsets them is that, through their carriage-painter's
want of instruction, the blazoning is often wrong.
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