Confirmed libertines, they distribute their homage far and wide,
but always return to take up the same chains again. Corinna and
Cynthia have womankind for rivals, but no woman in particular. The
Muse of these two poets is faithful, if their love is not, and no
other names besides those of Corinna and of Cynthia figure in their
verses. Tibullus, a tender lover and tender poet, less lively and
less headlong in his tastes, has not their constancy. Three beauties
are one after the other the objects of his love and of his verses.
Delia is the first, the most celebrated and also the best beloved.
Tibullus has lost his fortune, but he still has the country and Delia.
To enjoy her amid the peaceful fields; to be able, at his ease, to
press Delia's hand in his; to have her for his only mourner at his
funeral--he makes no other prayers. Delia is kept shut up by a jealous
husband; he will penetrate into her prison, in spite of any Argus and
triple bolts. He will forget all his troubles in her arms. He falls
ill and Delia alone fills his thoughts. He exhorts her to be always
chaste, to despise gold, and to grant none but him the love she has
granted him. But Delia does not follow his advice. He thought he could
put up with her infidelity; but it is too much for him and he begs
Delia and Venus for pity. He seeks in wine a remedy and does not find
it; he can neither soften his regret nor cure himself of his love. He
turns to Delia's husband, deceived like himself, and reveals to him
all the tricks she uses to attract and see her lovers. If the husband
does not know how to keep watch over her, let her be trusted to
himself; he will manage right enough to ward
[Pg 295]
the lovers off and to keep from their toils the author of their common
wrongs. He is appeased and returns to her; he remembers Delia's mother
who favoured their love; the memory of this good woman opens his heart
once more to tender thoughts, and all Delia's wrongs are forgotten.
But she is soon guilty of others more serious. She lets herself
be corrupted by gold and presents; she gives herself to another,
to others. At length Tibullus breaks his shameful chains and says
good-bye to her for ever.
He passes under the sway of Nemesis and is no happier; she loves only
gold and cares little for poetry and the gifts of genius. Nemesis is
a greedy woman who sells herself to the highest bidder; he curses her
avarice, but he loves her and cannot live unless she loves him. He
tries to move her with touching images. She has lost her young sister;
he will go and weep on her tomb and confide his grief to her dumb
ashes. The shade of her sister will take offence at the tears that
Nemesis causes to flow. She must not despise her anger. The sad image
of her sister might come at night to trouble her sleep.... But these
sad memories force tears from Nemesis--and at that price he could not
buy even happiness. Neaera is his third mistress. He has long enjoyed
her love; he only prays the gods that he may live and die with her;
but she leaves him, she is gone; he can only think of her, she is his
only prayer; he has seen in a dream Apollo, who announces to him that
Neaera is unfaithful. He refuses to believe this dream; he could not
survive his misfortune, and none the less the misfortune is there.
Neaera is faithless; once more Tibullus is deserted. Such was his
character and fortune, such is the triple and all unhappy story of his
loves.
In him particularly there is a sweet, all-pervading melancholy, that
gives even to his pleasures the tone of dreaminess and sadness which
constitutes his charm. If any poet of antiquity introduced moral
sensibility into love, it was Tibullus; but these fine shades of
feeling which he expresses so well, are in himself; he expects no more
than the other two to find them or engender them in his mistresses.
Their grace, their beauty is all that inflames him; their favours all
he desires or regrets; their perfidy, their venality, their loss, all
that torments him. Of all these women, celebrated in the verses of
three great poets, Cynthia seems the most lovable. The attraction of
talent is joined to all the others; she cultivates singing and poetry;
and yet all these talents, which were found
[Pg 296]
not infrequently in courtesans of a certain standing, were of no
avail--it was none the less pleasure, gold and wine which ruled her.
And Propertius, who boasts only once or twice of her artistic tastes,
in his passion for her is none the less seduced by a very different
power!
These great poets are apparently to be numbered among the most tender
and refined souls of their century--well! this is how they loved and
whom. We must here put literary considerations on one side. I only ask
of them evidence concerning their century; and in two thousand years a
novel by Ducray-Duminil(59) will be evidence concerning the annals of
ours.
[1] Mark Dido's look in the superb sketch by M. Guerin at the
Luxembourg.
[2] Everything that is beautiful in the world having become a part of
the beauty of the woman you love, you find yourself inclined to do
everything in the world that is beautiful.
[3] Guinguené's _Histoire littéraire de l'Italie_ (Vol. II, p. 490.)
XCIII(b)
One of my great regrets is not to have been able to see Venice in
1760.[1] A run of happy chances had apparently united, in so small a
space, both the political institutions and the public opinion that are
most favourable to the happiness of mankind. A soft spirit of luxury
gave everyone an easy access to happiness. There were no domestic
struggles and no crimes. Serenity was seen on every face; no one
thought about seeming richer than he was; hypocrisy had no point. I
imagine it must have been the direct contrary to London in 1822.
[1] _Travels in Italy_ of the President de Brosses, _Travels_ of
Eustace, Sharp, Smollett.
XCIV
If in the place of the want of personal security you put the natural
fear of economic want, you will see that the United States of America
bears a considerable resemblance to the ancient world as regards that
passion, on which we are attempting to write a monograph.
In speaking of the more or less imperfect sketches of passion-love
which the ancients have left us, I see that I have forgotten the Loves
of Medea in the _Argonautica_(60).
[Pg 297]
Virgil copied them in his picture of Dido. Compare that with love as
seen in a modern novel--_Le Doyen de Killerine_, for example.
XCV
The Roman feels the beauties of Nature and Art with amazing strength,
depth and justice; but if he sets out to try and reason on what he
feels so forcibly, it is pitiful.
The reason may be that his feelings come to him from Nature, but his
logic from government.
You can see at once why the fine arts, outside Italy, are only a farce;
men reason better, but the public has no feeling.
XCVI
London, _November 20th_, 1821.
A very sensible man, who arrived yesterday from Madras, told me in a
two hours' conversation what I reduce to the following few lines:--
This gloom, which from an unknown cause depresses the English
character, penetrates so deeply into their hearts, that at the end of
the world, at Madras, no sooner does an Englishman get a few days'
holiday, than he quickly leaves rich and flourishing Madras and comes
to revive his spirits in the little French town of Pondicherry,
which, without wealth and almost without commerce, flourishes under
the paternal administration of M. Dupuy. At Madras you drink Burgundy
that costs thirty-six francs a bottle; the poverty of the French in
Pondicherry is such that, in the most distinguished circles, the
refreshments consist of large glasses of water. But in Pondicherry
they laugh.
At present there is more liberty in England than in Prussia. The
climate is the same as that of Koenigsberg, Berlin or Warsaw, cities
which are far from being famous for their gloom. The working classes
in these towns have less security and drink quite as little wine as in
England; and they are much worse clothed.
[Pg 298]
The aristocracies of Venice and Vienna are not gloomy.
I can see only one point of difference: in gay countries the Bible is
little read, and there is gallantry. I am sorry to have to come back
so often to a demonstration with which I am unsatisfied. I suppress a
score of facts pointing in the same direction.
XCVII
I have just seen, in a fine country-house near Paris, a very
good-looking, very clever, and very rich young man of less than twenty;
he has been left there by chance almost alone, for a long time too,
with a most beautiful girl of eighteen, full of talent, of a most
distinguished mind, and also very rich. Who wouldn't have expected
a passionate love-affair? Not a bit of it--such was the affectation
of these two charming creatures that both were occupied solely with
themselves and the effect they were to produce.
XCVIII
I am ready to agree that on the morrow of a great action a savage pride
has made this people fall into all the faults and follies that lay open
to it. But you will see what prevents me from effacing my previous
praises of this representative of the Middle Ages.
The prettiest woman in Narbonne is a young Spaniard, scarcely twenty
years old, who lives there very retired with her husband, a Spaniard
also, and an officer on half-pay. Some time ago there was a fool
whom this officer was obliged to insult. The next day, on the field
of combat, the fool sees the young Spanish woman arrive. He begins a
renewed flow of affected nothings:--
"No, indeed, it's shocking! How could you tell your wife about it? You
see, she has come to prevent us fighting!" "I have come to bury you,"
she answered.
[Pg 299]
Happy the husband who can tell his wife everything! The result did not
belie this woman's haughty words. Her action would have been considered
hardly the thing in England. Thus does false decency diminish the
little happiness that exists here below.
XCIX
The delightful Donézan said yesterday: "In my youth, and well on in my
career--for I was fifty in '89--women wore powder in their hair.
"I own that a woman without powder gives me a feeling of repugnance;
the first impression is always that of a chamber-maid who hasn't had
time to get dressed."
Here we have the one argument against Shakespeare and in favour of the
dramatic unities.
While young men read nothing but La Harpe(61), the taste for great
powdered _toupées_, such as the late Queen Marie Antoinette used
to wear, can still last some years. I know people too, who despise
Correggio and Michael Angelo, and, to be sure, M. Donézan was extremely
clever.
C
Cold, brave, calculating, suspicious, contentious, for ever afraid
of being attracted by anyone who might possibly be laughing at them
in secret, absolutely devoid of enthusiasm, and a little jealous of
people who saw great events with Napoleon, such was the youth of that
age, estimable rather than lovable. They forced on the country that
Right-Centre form of government-to-the-lowest-bidder. This temper in
the younger generation was to be found even among the conscripts, each
of whom only longed to finish his time.
All systems of education, whether given expressly or by chance, form
men for a certain period in their life.
[Pg 300]
The education of the age of Louis XV made twenty-five the finest moment
in the lives of its pupils.[1]
It is at forty that the young men of this period will be at their best;
they will have lost their suspiciousness and pretensions, and have
gained ease and gaiety.
[1] M. de Francueil with too much powder: Memoirs of Madame d'Épinay.
CI
DISCUSSION BETWEEN AN HONEST MAN AND AN ACADEMIC
"In this discussion, the academic always saved himself by fixing on
little dates and other similar errors of small importance; but the
consequences and natural qualifications of things, these he always
denied, or seemed not to understand: for example, that Nero was a cruel
Emperor or Charles II a perjurer. Now, how are you to prove things of
this kind, or, even if you do, manage not to put a stop to the general
discussion or lose the thread of it?
"This, I have always remarked, is the method of discussion between such
folk, one of whom seeks only the truth and advancement thereto, the
other the favour of his master or his party and the glory of talking
well. And I always consider it great folly and waste of time for an
honest man to stop and talk with the said academics." (_Œuvres badines_
of Guy Allard de Voiron.)
CII
Only a small part of the art of being happy is an exact science, a sort
of ladder up which one can be sure of climbing a rung per century--and
that is the part which depends on government. (Still, this is only
theory. I
[Pg 301]
find the Venetians of 1770 happier than the people of Philadelphia
to-day.)
For the rest, the art of being happy is like poetry; in spite of the
perfecting of all things, Homer, two thousand seven hundred years ago,
had more talent than Lord Byron.
Reading Plutarch with attention, I think I can see that men were
happier in Sicily in the time of Dion than we manage to be to-day,
although they had no printing and no iced punch!
I would rather be an Arab of the fifth century than a Frenchman of the
nineteenth.
CIII
People go to the theatre, never for that kind of illusion which is
lost one minute and found again the next, but for an opportunity of
convincing their neighbour, or at least themselves, that they have
read their La Harpe and are people who know what's good. It is an old
pedant's pleasure that the younger generation indulges in.
CIV
A woman belongs by right to the man who loves her and is dearer to her
than life.
CV
Crystallisation cannot be excited by an understudy, and your most
dangerous rivals are those most unlike you.
CVI
In a very advanced state of society passion-love is as natural as
physical love among savages. (M.)
[Pg 302]
CVII
But for an infinite number of shades of feeling, to have a woman you
adore would be no happiness and scarcely a possibility. (L., _October
7th._)
CVIII
Whence comes the intolerance of Stoic philosophers? From the same
source as that of religious fanatics. They are put out because they are
struggling against nature, because they deny themselves, and because it
hurts them. If they would question themselves honestly on the hatred
they bear towards those who profess a code of morals less severe, they
would have to own that it springs from a secret jealousy of a bliss
which they envy and have renounced, without believing in the rewards
which would make up for this sacrifice. (Diderot.)
CIX
Women who are always taking offence might well ask themselves whether
they are following a line of conduct, which they think really and truly
is the road to happiness. Is there not a little lack of courage, mixed
with a little mean revenge, at the bottom of a prude's heart? Consider
the ill-humour of Madame de Deshoulières in her last days. (_Note by M.
Lemontey._)(62).
CX
Nothing more indulgent than virtue without hypocrisy--because nothing
happier; yet even Mistress Hutchinson might well be more indulgent.
CXI
Immediately below this kind of happiness comes that of a young, pretty
and easy-going woman, with a conscience
[Pg 303]
that does not reproach her. At Messina people used to talk scandal
about the Contessina Vicenzella. "Well, well!" she would say, "I'm
young, free, rich and perhaps not ugly. I wish the same to all the
ladies of Messina!" It was this charming woman, who would never be more
than a friend to me, who introduced me to the Abbé Melli's sweet poems
in Sicilian dialect. His poetry is delicious, though still disfigured
by mythology.
(Delfante.)
CXII
The public of Paris has a fixed capacity for attention--three
days: after which, bring to its notice the death of Napoleon or M.
Béranger(63) sent to prison for two months--the news is just as
sensational, and to bring it up on the fourth day just as tactless.
Must every great capital be like this, or has it to do with the good
nature and light heart of the Parisian? Thanks to aristocratic pride
and morbid reserve, London is nothing but a numerous collection of
hermits; it is not a capital. Vienna is nothing but an oligarchy of two
hundred families surrounded by a hundred and fifty thousand workpeople
and servants who wait on them. No more is that a capital.--Naples and
Paris, the only two capitals. (Extract from Birkbeck's _Travels_, p.
371.)
CXIII
According to common ideas, or reasonable-ideas, as they are called
by ordinary people, if any period of imprisonment could possibly be
tolerable, it would be after several years' confinement, when at last
the poor prisoner is only separated by a month or two from the moment
of his release. But the ways of crystallisation are otherwise. The last
month is more painful than the last three years. In the gaol at Melun,
M. d'Hotelans has seen several prisoners die of impatience within a few
months of the day of release.
[Pg 304]
CXIV
I cannot resist the pleasure of copying out a letter written in bad
English by a young German woman. It proves that, after all, constant
love exists, and that not every man of genius is a Mirabeau. Klopstock,
the great poet, passes at Hamburg for having been an attractive person.
Read what his young wife wrote to an intimate friend:
"After having seen him two hours, I was obliged to pass the evening
in a company, which never had been so wearisome to me. I could not
speak, I could not play; I thought I saw nothing but Klopstock; I
saw him the next day and the following and we were very seriously
friends. But the fourth day he departed. It was a strong hour the
hour of his departure! He wrote soon after; from that time our
correspondence began to be a very diligent one. I sincerely believed
my love to be friendship. I spoke with my friends of nothing but
Klopstock, and showed his letters. They raillied at me and said I
was in love. I raillied then again, and said that they must have a
very friendshipless heart, if they had no idea of friendship to a
man as well as to a woman. Thus it continued eight months, in which
time my friends found as much love in Klopstock's letters as in me.
I perceived it likewise, but I would not believe it. At the last
Klopstock said plainly that he loved; and I startled as for a wrong
thing; I answered that it was no love, but friendship, as it was
what I felt for him; we had not seen one another enough to love (as
if love must have more time than friendship). This was sincerely my
meaning, and I had this meaning till Klopstock came again to Hamburg.
This he did a year after we had seen one another the first time. We
saw, we were friends, we loved; and a short time after, I could even
tell Klopstock that I loved. But we were obliged to part again, and
wait two years for our wedding. My mother would not let me marry a
stranger. I could marry then without
[Pg 305]
her consent, as by the death of my father my fortune depended not on
her; but this was a horrible idea for me; and thank heaven that I have
prevailed by prayers! At this time knowing Klopstock, she loves him as
her lifely son, and thanks God that she has not persisted. We married
and I am the happiest wife in the world. In some few months it will be
four years that I am so happy...." (_Correspondence of Richardson_,
Vol. III, p. 147.)
CXV
The only unions legitimate for all time are those that answer to a real
passion.
CXVI
To be happy with laxity of morals, one wants the simplicity of
character that is found in Germany and Italy, but never in France. (The
Duchess de C----)
CXVII
It is their pride that makes the Turks deprive their women of
everything that can nourish crystallisation. I have been living for
the last three months in a country where the titled folk will soon be
carried just as far by theirs.
Modesty is the name given here by men to the exactions of aristocratic
pride run mad. Who would risk a lapse of modesty? Here also, as at
Athens, the intellectuals show a marked tendency to take refuge with
courtesans--that is to say, with the women whom a scandal shelters from
the need to affect modesty. (_Life of Fox._)
CXVIII
In the case of love blighted by too prompt a victory, I have seen in
very tender characters crystallisation trying
[Pg 306]
to form later. "I don't love you a bit," she says, but laughing.
CXIX
The present-day education of women--that odd mixture of works of
charity and risky songs ("Di piacer mi balza il cor," in _La Gazza
Ladra_)(64)--is the one thing in the world best calculated to keep
off happiness. This form of education produces minds completely
inconsequent. Madame de R----, who was afraid of dying, has just met
her death through thinking it funny to throw her medicines out of the
window. Poor little women like her take inconsequence for gaiety,
because, in appearance, gaiety is often inconsequent. 'Tis like the
German, who threw himself out of the window in order to be sprightly.
CXX
Vulgarity, by stifling imagination, instantly produces in me a deadly
boredom. Charming Countess K----, showing me this evening her lovers'
letters, which to my mind were in bad taste. (Forlì, _March 17th_,
Henri.)
Imagination was not stifled: it was only deranged, and very soon from
mere repugnance ceased to picture the unpleasantness of these dull
lovers.
CXXI
METAPHYSICAL REVERIE
Belgirate, _26th October_, 1816.
Real passion has only to be crossed for it to produce apparently more
unhappiness than happiness. This thought may not be true in the case of
gentle souls, but it is absolutely proved in the case of the majority
of men, and particularly of cold philosophers, who, as regards passion,
live, one might say, only on curiosity and self-love.
I said all this to the Contessina Fulvia yesterday
[Pg 307]
evening, as we were walking together near the great pine on the eastern
terrace of Isola Bella. She answered: "Unhappiness makes a much
stronger impression on a man's life than pleasure.
"The prime virtue in anything which claims to give us pleasure, is that
it strikes hard.
"Might we not say that life itself being made up only of sensation,
there is a universal taste in all living beings for the consciousness
that the sensations of their life are the keenest that can be? In the
North people are hardly alive--look at the slowness of their movements.
The Italian's _dolce far niente_ is the pleasure of relishing one's
soul and one's emotions, softly reclining on a divan. Such pleasure is
impossible, if you are racing all day on horseback or in a drosky, like
the Englishman or the Russian. Such people would die of boredom on a
divan. There is no reason to look into their souls.
"Love gives the keenest possible of all sensations--and the proof is
that in these moments of 'inflammation,' as physiologists would say,
the heart is open to those 'complex sensations' which Helvétius, Buffon
and other philosophers think so absurd. The other day, as you know,
Luizina fell into the lake; you see, her eye was following a laurel
leaf that had fallen from a tree on Isola-Madre (one of the Borromean
Islands). The poor woman owned to me that one day her lover, while
talking to her, threw into the lake the leaves of a laurel branch he
was stripping, and said: 'Your cruelty and the calumnies of your friend
are preventing me from turning my life to account and winning a little
glory.'
"It is a peculiar and incomprehensible fact that, when some
great passion has brought upon the soul moments of torture and
extreme unhappiness, the soul comes to despise the happiness of a
peaceful life, where everything seems framed to our desires. A fine
country-house in a picturesque position, substantial means, a good
wife, three pretty children, and friends charming
[Pg 308]
and numerous--this is but a mere outline of all our host. General
C----, possesses. And yet he said, as you know, he felt tempted to go
to Naples and take the command of a guerilla band. A soul made for
passion soon finds this happy life monotonous, and feels, perhaps,
that it only offers him commonplace ideas. 'I wish,' C. said to you,
'that I had never known the fever of high passion. I wish I could rest
content with the apparent happiness on which people pay me every day
such stupid compliments, which, to put the finishing touch to, I have
to answer politely.'"
I, a philosopher, rejoin: "Do you want the thousandth proof that we
are not created by a good Being? It is the fact that pleasure does not
make perhaps half as much impression on human life as pain...."[1] The
Contessina interrupted me. "In life there are few mental pains that
are not rendered sweet by the emotion they themselves excite, and, if
there is a spark of magnanimity in the soul, this pleasure is increased
a hundredfold. The man condemned to death in 1815 and saved by chance
(M. de Lavalette(65), for example), if he was going courageously to
his doom, must recall that moment ten times a month. But the coward,
who was going to die crying and yelling (the exciseman, Morris, thrown
into the lake, _Rob Roy_)--suppose him also saved by chance--can at
most recall that instant with pleasure because he was _saved_, not for
the treasures of magnanimity that he discovered with him, and that take
away for the future all his fears."
I: "Love, even unhappy love, gives a gentle soul, for whom a thing
imagined is a thing existent, treasures of this kind of enjoyment. He
weaves sublime visions of happiness and beauty about himself and his
beloved. How often has Salviati heard Léonore, with her enchanting
[Pg 309]
smile, say, like Mademoiselle Mars in _Les Fausses Confidences_: 'Well,
yes, I do love you!' No, these are never the illusions of a prudent
mind."
Fulvia (raising her eyes to heaven): "Yes, for you and me, love, even
unhappy love, if only our admiration for the beloved knows no limit, is
the supreme happiness."
(Fulvia is twenty-three,--the most celebrated beauty of ... Her eyes
were heavenly as she talked like this at midnight and raised them
towards the glorious sky above the Borromean Islands. The stars seemed
to answer her. I looked down and could find no more philosophical
arguments to meet her. She continued:)
"And all that the world calls happiness is not worth the trouble. Only
contempt, I think, can cure this passion; not contempt too violent, for
that is torture. For you men it is enough to see the object of your
adoration love some gross, prosaic creature, or sacrifice you in order
to enjoy pleasures of luxurious comfort with a woman friend."
[1] See the analysis of the ascetic principle in Bentham, _Principles
of Morals and Legislation_.
By giving oneself pain one pleases a _good_ Being.
CXXII
_To will_ means to have the courage to expose oneself to troubles; to
expose oneself is to take risks--to gamble. You find military men who
cannot exist without such gambling--that's what makes them intolerable
in home-life.
CXXIII
General Teulié told me this evening that he had found out why, as
soon as there were affected women in a drawing-room, he became so
horribly dry and floored for ideas. It was because he was sure to be
bitterly ashamed of having exposed his feelings with warmth before such
creatures. General Teulié had to speak from his heart, though the talk
were only of Punch and Judy; otherwise he had nothing to say. Moreover,
I could see he never knew the conventional phrase about
[Pg 310]
anything nor what was the right thing to say. That is really where he
made himself so monstrously ridiculous in the eyes of affected women.
Heaven had not made him for elegant society.
CXXIV
Irreligion is bad form at Court, because it is calculated to be
contrary to the interests of princes: irreligion is also bad form in
the presence of girls, for it would prevent their finding husbands.
It must be owned that, if God exists, it must be nice for Him to be
honoured from motives like these.
CXXV
For the soul of a great painter or a great poet, love is divine in that
it increases a hundredfold the empire and the delight of his art, and
the beauties of art are his soul's daily bread. How many great artists
are unconscious both of their soul and of their genius! Often they
reckon as mediocre their talent for the thing they adore, because they
cannot agree with the eunuchs of the harem, La Harpe and such-like. For
them even unhappy love is happiness.
CXXVI
The picture of first love is taken generally as the most touching. Why?
Because it is the same in all countries and in all characters. But for
this reason first love is not the most passionate.
CXXVII
Reason! Reason! Reason! That is what the world is always shouting at
poor lovers. In 1760, at the most thrilling moment in the Seven Years'
War, Grimm wrote: "... It is indubitable that the King of Russia, by
yielding Silesia, could have prevented the war from
[Pg 311]
ever breaking out. In so doing he would have done a very wise thing.
How many evils would he have prevented! And what can there be in common
between the possession of a province and the happiness of a king? Was
not the great Elector a very happy and highly respected prince without
possessing Silesia? It is also quite clear that a king might have taken
this course in obedience to the precepts of the soundest reason, and
yet--I know not how--that king would inevitably have been the object
of universal contempt, while Frederick, sacrificing everything to the
_necessity_ of keeping Silesia, has invested himself with immortal
glory.
"Without any doubt the action of Cromwell's son was the wisest a man
could take: he preferred obscurity and repose to the bother and danger
of ruling over a people sombre, fiery and proud. This wise man won the
contempt of his own time and of posterity; while his father, to this
day, has been held a great man by the wisdom of nations.
"The _Fair Penitent_ is a sublime subject on the Spanish[1] stage,
but spoilt by Otway and Colardeau in England and France. Calista has
been dishonoured by a man she adores; he is odious from the violence
of his inborn pride, but talent, wit and a handsome face--everything,
in fact--combine to make him seductive. Indeed, Lothario would have
been too charming could he have moderated these criminal outbursts.
Moreover, an hereditary and bitter feud separates his family from that
of the woman he loves. These families are at the head of two factions
dividing a Spanish town during the horrors of the Middle Age. Sciolto,
Calista's father, is the chief of the faction, which at the moment has
the upper hand; he knows that Lothario has had the insolence to try to
seduce his daughter. The weak Calista is weighed down by the torment of
shame and passion. Her father has
[Pg 312]
succeeded in getting his enemy appointed to the command of a naval
armament that is setting out on a distant and perilous expedition,
where Lothario will probably meet his death. In Colardeau's tragedy,
he has just told his daughter this news. At his words Calista can no
longer hide her passion:
O dieux!
Il part!... Vous l'ordonnez!... Il a pu s'y résoudre?[2]
"Think of the danger she is placed in. Another word, and Sciolto will
learn the secret of his daughter's passion for Lothario. The father is
confounded and cries:--
Qu'entends-je? Me trompé-je? Où s'égarent tes voeux?[3]
"At this Calista recovers herself and answers:--
Ce n'est pas son exile, c'est sa mort que je veux,
Qu'il périsse![4]
"By these words Calista stifles her father's rising suspicions; yet
there is no deceit, for the sentiment she utters is true. The existence
of a man, who has succeeded after winning her love in dishonouring her,
must poison her life, were he even at the ends of the earth. His death
alone could restore her peace of mind, if for unfortunate lovers peace
of mind existed.... Soon after Lothario is killed and, happily for her,
Calista dies.
"'There's a lot of crying and moaning over nothing!' say the chilly
folk who plume themselves on being philosophers. 'Somebody with an
enterprising and violent nature abuses a woman's weakness for him--that
is nothing to tear our hair over, or at least there is nothing in
Calista's troubles to concern us. She must console herself with having
satisfied her lover, and she will not be the first woman of merit who
has made the best of her misfortune in that way.'"[5]
[Pg 313]
Richard Cromwell, the King of Prussia and Calista, with the souls given
them by Heaven, could only find peace and happiness by acting as they
did. The conduct of the two last is eminently unreasonable and yet it
is those two that we admire. (Sagan, 1813.)
[1] See the Spanish and Danish romances of the thirteenth century.
French taste would find them dull and coarse.
[2] [ "My God!
He is gone.... You have sent him.... And he had the heart?"--Tr.]
[3] ["What do I hear? I am deceived? Where now are all your vows?"--Tr.]
[4] ["It is not his banishment I desire; it is his death. Let him
die!"--Tr.]
[5] Grimm, Vol. III, p. 107.
CXXVIII
The likelihood of constancy when desire is satisfied can only be
foretold from the constancy displayed, in spite of cruel doubts and
jealousy and ridicule, in the days before intimate intercourse.
CXXIX
A woman is in despair at the death of her lover, who has been killed
in the wars--of course she means to follow him. Now first make quite
sure that it is not the best thing for her to do; then, if you
decide it is not, attack her on the side of a very primitive habit
of the human kind--the desire to survive. If the woman has an enemy,
one may persuade her that her enemy has obtained a warrant for her
imprisonment. Unless that threat only increases her desire of death,
she may think about hiding herself in order to escape imprisonment. For
three weeks she will lie low, escaping from refuge to refuge. She must
be caught, but must get away after three days.
Then people must arrange for her to withdraw under a false name to
some very remote town, as unlike as possible the one in which she
was so desperately unhappy. But who is going to devote himself to
the consolation of a being so unfortunate and so lost to friendship?
(Warsaw, 1808).
CXXX
Academical wise-heads can see a people's habits in its language. In
Italy, of all the countries in the world, the
[Pg 314]
word love is least often spoken--always "amicizia" and "avvicinar"
(_amicizia_ or friendship, for love; _avvicinar_, to approach, for
courtship that succeeds).
CXXXI
A dictionary of music has never been achieved, nor even begun. It is
only by chance that you find the phrase for: "I am angry" or "I love
you," and the subtler feelings involved therein. The composer finds
them only when passion, present in his heart or memory, dictates
them to him. Well! that is why people, who spend the fire of youth
studying instead of feeling, cannot be artists--the way _that_ works is
perfectly simple.
CXXXII
In France far too much power is given to Women, far too little to Woman.
CXXXIII
The most flattering thing that the most exalted imagination could
find to say to the generation now arising among us to take possession
of life, of public opinion and of power, happens to be a piece of
truth plainer than the light of day. This generation has nothing to
_continue_, it has everything to _create_. Napoleon's great merit is to
have left the road clear.
CXXXIV
I should like to be able to say something on consolation. Enough is not
done to console.
The main principle is that you try to form a kind of crystallisation as
remote as possible from the source of present suffering.
In order to discover an unknown principle, we must bravely face a
little anatomy.
[Pg 315]
If the reader will consult Chapter II of M. Villermé's work on prisons
(Paris, 1820), he will see that the prisoners "si maritano fra di loro"
(it is the expression in the prisoners' language). The women also "si
maritano fra di loro," and in these unions, generally speaking, much
fidelity is shown. That is an outcome of the principle of modesty, and
is not observed among the men.
"At Saint-Lazare," says M. Villermé, page 96, "a woman, seeing a
new-comer preferred to her, gave herself several wounds with a knife.
(_October_, 1818.)
"Usually it is the younger woman who is more fond than the other."
CXXXV
Vivacità, leggerezza, soggettissima a prendere puntiglio, occupazione
di ogni momento delle apparenze della propria esistenza agli occhi
altrui: Ecco i tre gran caratteri di questa pianta che risveglia Europa
nell 1808.[1]
Of Italians, those are preferable who still preserve a little savagery
and taste for blood--the people of the Romagna, Calabria, and, among
the more civilised, the Brescians, Piedmontese and Corsicans.
The Florentine bourgeois has more sheepish docility than the Parisian.
Leopold's spies have degraded him. See M. Courier's(12) letter on the
Librarian Furia and the Chamberlain Puccini.
[1] ["Vivacity, levity, very subject to pique, and unflagging
preoccupation with other people's view's of its own existence--these
are the three distinguishing points in the stock which is stirring the
life of Europe in 1808."--Tr.]
CXXXVI
I smile when I see earnest people never able to agree, saying quite
unconcernedly the most abusive things of each other--and thinking still
worse. To live is to feel life--to have strong feelings. But strength
must be rated for each individual, and what is painful--that is, too
strong--for
[Pg 316]
one man is exactly enough to stir another's interest. Take, for
example, the feeling of just being spared by the cannon shot in the
line of fire, the feeling of penetrating into Russia in pursuit
of Parthian hordes.... And it is the same with the tragedies of
Shakespeare and those of Racine, etc., etc.... (Orcha, _August_ 13,
1812.)
CXXXVII
Pleasure does not produce half so strong an impression as pain--that
is the first point. Then, besides this disadvantage in the quantity
of emotion, it is certainly not half as easy to excite sympathy by
the picture of happiness as by that of misfortune. Hence poets cannot
depict unhappiness too forcibly. They have only one shoal to fear,
namely, things that disgust. Here again, the force of feeling must be
rated differently for monarchies and republics. A Lewis XIV increases a
hundredfold the number of disgusting things. (Crabbe's Poems.)
By the mere fact of its existence a monarchy _à la_ Lewis XIV, with
its circle of nobles, makes everything simple in Art become coarse.
The noble personage for whom the thing is exposed feels insulted; the
feeling is sincere--and in so far worthy.
See what the gentle Racine has been able to make of the heroic
friendship, so sacred to antiquity, of Orestes and Pylades. Orestes
addresses Pylades with the familiar "thou."[1] Pylades answers him "My
Lord."[1] And then people pretend Racine is our most touching writer!
If they won't give in after this example, we must change the subject.
[1] ["_Tu_" and "_Seigneur_."]
CXXXVIII
Directly the hope of revenge is possible, the feeling of hatred
returns. Until the last weeks of my imprisonment it never entered my
head to run away and break the solemn oath I had sworn to my friend. Two
[Pg 317]
confidences these--made this morning in my presence by a gentleman
cut-throat who favoured us with the history of his life. (Faenza, 1817.)
CXXXIX
All Europe, put together, could never make one French book of the
really good type--the _Lettres Persanes_, for example.
CXL
I call pleasure every impression which the soul would rather receive
than not receive.[1]
I call pain every impression which the soul would rather not receive
than receive.
If I want to go to sleep rather than be conscious of my feelings, they
are undoubtedly pain. Hence the desire of love is not pain, for the
lover will leave the most agreeable society in order to day-dream in
peace.
Time weakens pleasures of the body and aggravates its pains.
As for spiritual pleasures--they grow weaker or stronger according
to the passion. For example, after six months passed in the study of
astronomy you like astronomy all the more, and after a year of avarice
money is still sweeter.
Spiritual pains are softened by time--how many widows, really
inconsolable, console themselves with time!--_Vide_ Lady
Waldegrave--Horace Walpole.
Given a man in a state of indifference--now let him have a pleasure;
Given another man in a state of poignant suffering--suddenly let the
suffering cease;
Now is the pleasure this man feels of the same nature as that of the
other? M. Verri(66) says Yes, but, to my mind--No.
Not all pleasures come from cessation of pain.
[Pg 318]
A man had lived for a long time on an income of six thousand francs--he
wins five hundred thousand in the lottery. He had got out of the way
of having desires which wealth alone can satisfy.--And that, by the
bye, is one of my objections to Paris--it is so easy to lose this habit
there.
The latest invention is a machine for cutting quills. I bought one this
morning and it's a great joy to me, as I cannot stand cutting them
myself. But yesterday I was certainly not unhappy for not knowing of
this machine. Or was Petrarch unhappy for not taking coffee?
What is the use of defining happiness? Everyone knows it--the first
partridge you kill on the wing at twelve, the first battle you come
through safely at seventeen....
Pleasure which is only the cessation of pain passes very quickly, and
its memory, after some years, is even distasteful. One of my friends
was wounded in the side by a bursting shell at the battle of Moscow,
and a few days later mortification threatened. After a delay of some
hours they managed to get together M. Béclar, M. Larrey and some
surgeons of repute, and the result of their consultation was that my
friend was informed that mortification had not set up. At the moment I
could see his happiness--it was a great happiness, but not unalloyed.
In the secret depth of his heart he could not believe that it was
really all over, he kept reconsidering the surgeons' words and debating
whether he could rely on them entirely. He never lost sight completely
of the possibility of mortification. Nowadays, after eight years, if
you speak to him of that consultation, it gives him pain--it brings to
mind unexpectedly a passed unhappiness.
Pleasure caused by the cessation of pain consists in:--
1. Defeating the continual succession of one's own misgivings:
2. Reviewing all the advantages one was on the point of losing.
Pleasure caused by winning five hundred thousand
[Pg 319]
francs consists in foreseeing all the new and unusual pleasures one is
going to indulge in.
There is this peculiar reservation to be made. You have to take into
account whether a man is too used, or not used enough, to wishing for
wealth. If he is not used enough, if his mind is closely circumscribed,
for two or three days together he will feel embarrassed; while if he is
inclined very often to wish for great riches, he will find he has used
up their enjoyments in advance by too frequently foretasting them.
This misfortune is unknown to passion-love.
A soul on fire pictures to itself not the last favour, but the
nearest--perhaps just her hand to press, if, for example, your mistress
is unkind to you. Imagination does not pass beyond that of its own
accord; you may force it, but a moment later it is gone--for fear of
profaning its idol.
When pleasure has run through the length of its career, we fall again,
of course, into indifference, but this is not the same indifference as
we felt before. The second state differs from the first in that we are
no longer in a position to relish with such delight the pleasure that
we have just tasted. The organs we use for plucking pleasures are worn
out. The imagination is no longer so inclined to offer fancies for the
enjoyment of desire--desire is satisfied.
In the midst of enjoyment to be torn from pleasure produces pain.
[1] Maupertius.
CXLI
With regard to physical love and, in fact, physical pleasure, the
disposition of the two sexes is not the same. Unlike men, practically
all women are at least susceptible in secret to one kind of love. Ever
after opening her first novel at fifteen, a woman is silently waiting
for the coming of passion-love, and towards twenty, when she is just
over the irresponsibility of life's first flush, the suspense
[Pg 320]
redoubles. As for men, they think love impossible or ridiculous, almost
before they are thirty.
CXLII
From the age of six we grow used to run after pleasure in our parents'
footsteps.
The pride of Contessina Nella's mother was the starting-point of that
charming woman's troubles, and by the same insane pride she now makes
them hopeless. (Venice, 1819.)
CXLIII
ROMANTICISM
I hear from Paris that there are heaps and heaps of pictures to be seen
there (Exhibition of 1822), representing subjects taken from the Bible,
painted by artists who hardly believe in it, admired and criticised
by people who don't believe, and finally paid for by people who don't
believe.
After that--you ask why art is decadent.
The artist who does not believe what he is saying is always afraid of
appearing exaggerated or ridiculous. How is he to touch the sublime?
Nothing uplifts him. (_Lettera di Roma_, Giugno, 1822.)
CXLIV
One of the greatest poets the world has seen in modern times is, to
my mind, Robert Burns, a Scotch peasant, who died of want. He had
a salary of seventy pounds as exciseman--for himself, his wife and
four children. One cannot help saying, by the way, that Napoleon was
more liberal towards his enemy Chénier. Burns had none of the English
prudery about him. His was a Roman genius, without chivalry and without
honour. I have no space here to tell of his love-affairs with Mary
Campbell and their
[Pg 321]
mournful ending. I shall merely point out that Edinburgh is on the same
latitude as Moscow--a fact which perhaps upsets my system of climates a
little.
"One of Burns' remarks, when he first came to Edinburgh, was that
between the men of rustic life and those of the polite world he
observed little difference; that in the former, though unpolished by
fashion and unenlightened by science, he had found much observation
and much intelligence; but that a refined and accomplished woman was
a being almost new to him, and of which he had formed but a very
inadequate idea." (London, _November 1st_, 1821, Vol. V, p. 69.)
CXLV
Love is the only passion that mints the coin to pay its own expenses.
CXLVI
The compliments paid to little girls of three furnish exactly the right
sort of education to imbue them with the most pernicious vanity. To
look pretty is the highest virtue, the greatest advantage on earth. To
have a pretty dress is to look pretty.
These idiotic compliments are not current except in the middle class.
Happily they are bad form outside the suburbs--being too easy to pay.
CXLVII
Loretto, _September 11th_, 1811.
I have just seen a very fine battalion composed of natives of this
country--the remains, in fact, of four thousand who left for Vienna
in 1809. I passed along the ranks with the Colonel, and asked several
of the soldiers to tell me their story. Theirs is the virtue of the
republics of the Middle Age, though more or less debased by the
[Pg 322]
Spaniards,[1] the Roman Church,[2] and two centuries of the cruel,
treacherous governments, which, one after another, have spoiled the
country.
Flashing, chivalrous honour, sublime but senseless, is an exotic plant
introduced here only a very few years back.
In 1740 there was no trace of it. _Vide_ de Brosses. The officers of
Montenotte(67) and of Rivoli(67) had too many chances of showing their
comrades true virtue to go and _imitate_ a kind of honour unknown to
the cottage homes from which the soldiery of 1796 was drawn--indeed, it
would have seemed to them highly fantastic.
In 1796 there was no Legion of Honour, no enthusiasm for one man,
but plenty of simple truth and virtue _à la_ Desaix. We may conclude
that honour was imported into Italy by people too reasonable and too
virtuous to cut much of a figure. One is sensible of a large gap
between the soldiers of '96, often shoeless and coatless, the victors
of twenty battles in one year, and the brilliant regiments of Fontenoy,
taking off their hats and saying to the English politely: _Messieurs,
tirez les premiers_--gentlemen, pray begin.
[1] The Spaniards abroad, about 1580, were nothing but energetic agents
of despotism or serenaders beneath the windows of Italian beauties. In
those days Spaniards dropped into Italy just in the way people come
nowadays to Paris. For the rest, they prided themselves on nothing
but upholding the honour of the king, _their master_. They ruined
Italy--ruined and degraded it.
In 1626 the great poet Calderon was an officer at Milan.
[2] See _Life of S. Carlo Borromeo_, who transformed Milan and debased
it, emptied its drill halls and filled its chapels, Merveilles kills
Castiglione, 1533.
CXLVIII
I am ready to agree that one must judge the soundness of a system of
life by the perfect representative of its supporters. For example,
Richard Cœur-de-Lion is the perfect pattern on the throne of heroism
and chivalrous valour, and as a king was a ludicrous failure.
[Pg 323]
CXLIX
Public opinion in 1822: A man of thirty seduces a girl of fifteen--the
girl loses her reputation.
CL
Ten years later I met Countess Ottavia again; on seeing me once
more she wept bitterly. I reminded her of Oginski. "I can no longer
love," she told me. I answered in the poet's words: "How changed, how
saddened, yet how elevated was her character!"
CLI
French morals will be formed between 1815 and 1880, just as English
morals were formed between 1668 and 1730. There will be nothing finer,
juster or happier than moral France about the year 1900. At the
present day it does not exist. What is considered infamous in Rue de
Belle-Chasse is an act of heroism in Rue du Mont-Blanc, and, allowing
for all exaggeration, people really worthy of contempt escape by a
change of residence. One remedy we did have--the freedom of the Press.
In the long run the Press gives each man his due, and when this due
happens to fall in with public opinion, so it remains. This remedy
is now torn from us--and it will somewhat retard the regeneration of
morals.
CLII
The Abbé Rousseau was a poor young man (1784), reduced to running all
over the town, from morn till night, giving lessons in history and
geography. He fell in love with one of his pupils, like Abelard with
Héloïse or Saint-Preux with Julie. Less happy than they, no doubt--yet,
probably, pretty nearly so--as full of passion as Saint-Preux, but with
a heart more virtuous, more refined and also more courageous, he seems
to have sacrificed himself to the object of his passion. After dining
in a
[Pg 324]
restaurant at the Palais-Royal with no outward sign of distress or
frenzy, this is what he wrote before blowing out his brains. The
text of his note is taken from the enquiry held on the spot by the
commissary and the police, and is remarkable enough to be preserved.
"The immeasurable contrast that exists between the nobility of
my feelings and the meanness of my birth, my love, as violent
as it is invincible, for this adorable girl[1] and my fear of
causing her dishonour, the necessity of choosing between crime and
death--everything has made me decide to say good-bye to life. Born for
virtue, I was about to become a criminal; I preferred death." (Grimm,
Part III, Vol. II, p. 395.)
This is an admirable case of suicide, but would be merely silly
according to the morals of 1880.
[1] The girl in question appears to have been Mademoiselle Gromaire,
daughter of M. Gromaire, expeditionary at the Court of Rome.
CLIII
Try as they may, the French, in Art, will never get beyond the pretty.
The comic presupposes "go" in the public, and _brio_ in the actor.
The delicious foolery of Palomba, played at Naples by Casaccia, is an
impossibility at Paris. There we have the pretty--always and only the
pretty--cried up sometimes, it is true, as the sublime.
I don't waste much thought, you see, on general considerations of
national honour.
CLIV
We are very fond of a beautiful picture, say the French--and quite
truly--but we exact, as the essential condition of beauty, that it
be produced by a painter standing on one leg the whole time he is
working.--Verse in dramatic art.
[Pg 325]
CLV
Much less envy in America than in France, and much less intellect.
CLVI
Since 1530 tyranny _à la_ Philip II has so degraded men's intellect,
has so overshadowed the garden of the world, that the poor Italian
writers have not yet plucked up enough courage to _invent_ a national
novel. Yet, thanks to the naturalness which reigns there, nothing could
be simpler. They need only copy faithfully what stares the world in the
face. Think of Cardinal Gonzalvi, for three hours gravely looking for
flaws in the libretto of an opera-bouffe, and saying uneasily to the
composer: "But you're continually repeating this word _Cozzar, cozzar_."
CLVII
Héloïse speaks of love, a coxcomb of _his_ love--don't you see that
these things have really nothing but their name in common? Just so,
there is the love of concerts and the love of music: the love of
successes that tickle your vanity--successes your harp may bring you in
the midst of a brilliant society--or the love of a tender day-dream,
solitary and timid.
CLVIII
When you have just seen the woman you love, the sight of any other
woman spoils your vision, gives your eyes physical pain. I know why.
CLIX
Reply to an objection:--
Perfect naturalness in intimate intercourse can find no place but
in passion-love, for in all the other kinds of love a man feels the
possibility of a favoured rival.
[Pg 326]
CLX
In a man who, to be released from life, has taken poison, the moral
part of his being is dead. Dazed by what he has done and by what he is
about to experience, he no longer attends to anything. There are some
rare exceptions.
CLXI
An old sea captain, to whom I respectfully offered my manuscript,
thought it the silliest thing in the world to honour with six hundred
pages so trivial a thing as love. But, however trivial, love is still
the only weapon which can strike strong souls, and strike home.
What was it prevented M. de M----, in 1814, from despatching Napoleon
in the forest of Fontainebleau? The contemptuous glance of a pretty
woman coming into the Bains-Chinois.[1] What a difference in the
destiny of the world if Napoleon and his son had been killed in 1814!
[1] Memoirs, p. 88. (London edition.)
CLXII
I quote the following lines from a French letter received from Znaim,
remarking at the same time that there is not a man in the provinces
capable of understanding my brilliant lady correspondent:--
"... Chance means a lot in love. When for a whole year I have read no
English, I find the first novel I pick up delicious. One who is used
to the love of a prosaic being--slow, shy of all that is refined,
and passionately responsive to none but material interests, the love
of shekels, the glory of a fine stable and bodily desires, etc.--can
easily feel disgust at the behaviour of impetuous genius, ardent and
uncurbed in fancy, mindful of love, forgetful of all the rest, always
active and always headlong, just where the other let himself be led and
never acted for himself. The shock, which genius causes, may offend
what, last
[Pg 327]
year at Zithau, we used to call feminine pride, _l'orgueil
féminin_--(is that French?) With the man of genius comes the startling
feeling which with his predecessor was unknown--and, remember, this
predecessor came to an untimely end in the wars and remains a synonym
for perfection. This feeling may easily be mistaken for repulsion by a
soul, lofty but without that assurance which is the fruit of a goodly
number of intrigues."
CLXIII
"Geoffry Rudel, of Blaye, was a very great lord, prince of Blaye, and
he fell in love, without knowing her, with the Princess of Tripoli,
for the great goodness and great graciousness, which he heard tell of
her from the pilgrims, who came from Antioch. And he made for her many
fair songs, with good melodies and suppliant words, and, for the desire
he had to see her, he took the cross and set out upon the sea to go to
her. And it happened that in the ship a grievous malady took him, in
such wise that those that were with him believed him to be dead, but
they contrived to bring him to Tripoli into a hostelry, like one dead.
They sent word to the countess and she came to his bed and took him in
her arms. Then he knew that she was the countess and he recovered his
sight and his hearing and he praised God, giving Him thanks that He
had sustained his life until he had seen her. And thus he died in the
arms of the countess, and she gave him noble burial in the house of
the Temple at Tripoli. And then the same day she took the veil for the
sorrow she had for him and for his death."[1]
[1] Translated from a Provençal MS. of the thirteenth century.
CLXIV
Here is a singular proof of the madness called crystallisation, to be
found in Mistress Hutchinson's Memoirs:
"He told to M. Hutchinson a very true story of a gentleman who not long
before had come for some time
[Pg 328]
to lodge in Richmond, and found all the people he came in company with
bewailing the death of a gentlewoman that had lived there. Hearing her
so much deplored, he made enquiry after her, and grew so in love with
the description, that no other discourse could at first please him nor
could he at last endure any other; he grew desperately melancholy and
would go to a mount where the print of her foot was cut and lie there
pining and kissing it all the day long, till at length death in some
months' space concluded his languishment. This story was very true."
(Vol. I, p. 83.)
CLXV
Lisio Visconti was anything but a great reader. Not to mention what he
may have seen while knocking about the world, his essay is based on the
Memoirs of some fifteen or twenty persons of note. In case it happens
that the reader thinks such trifling points worthy of a moment's
attention, I give the books from which Lisio drew his reflexions and
conclusions:--
The _Autobiography_ of Benvenuto Cellini.
The novels of Cervantes and Scarron.
_Manon Lescaut_ and _Le Doyen de Killerine_, by the Abbé Prévôt.
The Latin Letters of Héloïse to Abelard.
_Tom Jones._
_Letters of a Portuguese Nun._
Two or three stories by Auguste La Fontaine.
Pignotti's _History of Tuscany_.
Werther.
Brantôme.
_Memoirs_ of Carlo Gozzi (Venice, 1760)--only the eighty pages on the
history of his love affairs.
The _Memoirs_ of Lauzun, Saint-Simon, d'Épinay, de Staël, Marmontel,
Bezenval, Roland, Duclos, Horace Walpole, Evelyn, Hutchinson.
Letters of Mademoiselle Lespinasse.
[Pg 329]
CLXVI
One of the most important persons of our age, one of the most prominent
men in the Church and in the State, related to us this evening
(January, 1822), at Madame de M----'s, the very real dangers he had
gone through under the Terror.
"I had the misfortune to be one of the most prominent members of the
Constituent Assembly. I stayed in Paris, trying to hide myself as
best I could, so long as there was any hope of success there for the
good cause. At last, as the danger grew greater and greater, while
the foreigner made no energetic move in our favour, I decided to
leave--only I had to leave without a passport. Everyone was going off
to Coblentz, so I determined to make for Calais. But my portrait had
been so widely circulated eighteen months before, that I was recognised
at the last post. However, I was allowed to pass and arrived at an inn
at Calais, where, you can imagine, I did not sleep a wink--and very
lucky it was, since at four o'clock in the morning I heard someone
pronounce my name quite distinctly. While I got up and was dressing
in all haste I could clearly distinguish, in spite of the darkness,
the National Guards with their rifles; the people had opened the
main door for them and they were entering the courtyard of the inn.
Fortunately it was raining in torrents--a winter morning, very dark and
with a high wind. The darkness and the noise of the wind enabled me to
escape by the back courtyard and stables. There I stood in the street
at seven o'clock in the morning, utterly resourceless! i I imagined
they were following me from my inn. Hardly knowing what I was doing,
I went down to the port, on to the jetty. I own I had rather lost my
head--everywhere the vision of the guillotine floated before my eyes.
A packet-boat was leaving the port in a very rough sea--it was already
a hundred yards from the jetty. Suddenly
[Pg 330]
I heard a shout from out at sea, as if I were being called. I saw a
small boat approaching. "Hi! sir, come on! We're waiting for you!"
Mechanically I got into the boat. A man was in it. "I saw you walking
on the jetty with a scared look," he whispered, "I thought you might be
some poor fugitive. I've told them you are a friend I was expecting;
pretend to be sea-sick and go and hide below in a dark corner of the
cabin."
"Oh, what a fine touch!" cried our hostess. She was almost speechless
and had been moved to tears by the Abbé's long and excellently
told story of his perils. "How you must have thanked your unknown
benefactor! What was his name?"
"I do not know his name," the Abbé answered, a little confused.
And there was a moment of profound silence in the room.
CLXVII
THE FATHER AND THE SON
(A dialogue of 1787)
_The Father_ (Minister of ----): "I congratulate you, my son; it's
a splendid thing for you to be invited to the Duke of ----; it's a
distinction for a man of your age. Don't fail to be at the Palace
punctually at six o'clock."
_The Son:_ "I believe, sir, you are dining there also."
_The Father:_ "The Duke of ---- is always more than kind to our family,
and, as he's asking you for the first time, he has been pleased to
invite me as well."
The son, a young man of high birth and most distinguished intellect,
does not fail to be at the Palace punctually at six o'clock. Dinner was
at seven. The son found himself placed opposite his father. Each guest
had a naked woman next to him. The dinner was served by a score of
lackeys in full livery.[1]
[1] From December 27, 1819, till 3 June, 1820, Mil. [This note is
written thus in English by Stendhal.--Tr.]
[Pg 331]
CLXVIII
London, _August_, 1817.
Never in my life have I been so struck or intimidated by the presence
of beauty as to-night, at a concert given by Madame Pasta.
She was surrounded, as she sang, by three rows of young women, so
beautiful--of a beauty so pure and heavenly--that I felt myself lower
my eyes, out of respect, instead of raising them to admire and enjoy.
This has never happened to me in any other land, not even in my beloved
Italy.
CLXIX
In France one-thing is absolutely impossible in the arts, and that is
"go." A man really carried away would be too much laughed at--he would
look too happy. See a Venetian recite Buratti's satires.
[Pg 332]
APPENDIX
ON THE COURTS OF LOVE(68)
There were Courts of Love in France from the year 1150 to the year
1200. So much has been proved. The existence of these Courts probably
goes back to a more remote period.
The ladies, sitting together in the Courts of Love, gave out their
decrees either on questions of law--for example: Can love exist between
married people?--
Or on the particular cases which lovers submitted to them.[1]
So far as I can picture to myself the moral side of this jurisprudence,
it must have resembled the Courts of the Marshals of France established
for questions of honour by Louis XIV--that is, as they would have been,
if only public opinion had upheld that institution.
André, chaplain to the King of France, who wrote about the year 1170,
mentions the Courts of Love
of the ladies of Gascony,
of Ermengarde, Viscountess of Narbonne (1144-1194),
of Queen Eléonore,
of the Countess of Flanders,
of the Countess of Champagne (1174).
André mentions nine judgments pronounced by the Countess of Champagne.
He quotes two judgments pronounced by the Countess of Flanders.
Jean de Nostradamus, _Life of the Provençal Poets_, says (p. 15):--
"The '_tensons_' were disputes of Love, which took place between
poets, both knights and ladies, arguing together on some fair and
sublime question of love. Where they could not agree,
[Pg 333]
they sent them, that they might get a decision thereon, to the
illustrious ladies president who held full and open Court of Love at
Signe and Pierrefeu, or at Romanin, or elsewhere, and they gave out
decrees thereon which were called '_Lous Arrests d'Amours_.'"
These are the names of some of the ladies who presided over the Courts
of Love of Pierrefeu and Signe:--
"Stephanette, Lady of Brulx, daughter of the Count of Provence.
Adalarie, Viscountess of Avignon;
Alalète, Lady of Ongle;
Hermissende, Lady of Posquières;
Bertrane, Lady of Urgon;
Mabille, Lady of Yères;
The Countess of Dye;
Rostangue, Lady of Pierrefeu;
Bertrane, Lady of Signe;
Jausserande of Claustral."--(Nostradamus, p. 27.)
It is probable that the same Court of Love met sometimes at the Castle
of Pierrefeu, sometimes at that of Signe. These two villages are just
next to each other, and situated at an almost equal distance from
Toulon and Brignoles.
In his _Life of Bertrand d'Alamanon_, Nostradamus says:
"This troubadour was in love with Phanette or Estephanette of Romanin,
Lady of the said place, of the house of Gantelmes, who held in her
time full and open Court of Love in her castle of Romanin, near the
town of Saint-Remy, in Provence, aunt of Laurette of Avignon, of the
house of Sado, so often celebrated by the poet Petrarch."
Under the heading Laurette, we read that Laurette de Sade, celebrated
by Petrarch, lived at Avignon about the year 1341; that she was
instructed by Phanette of Gantelmes, her aunt, Lady of Romanin; that
"both of them improvised in either kind of Provençal rhythm, and
according to the account of the monk of the Isles d'Or(69), their works
give ample witness to their learning.... It is true (says the monk)
that Phanette or Estephanette, as being most excellent in poetry, had
a divine fury or inspiration, which fury was esteemed a true gift from
God. They were accompanied by many illustrious and high-born[2]
[Pg 334]
ladies of Provence, who flourished at that time at Avignon, when the
Roman court resided there, and who gave themselves up to the study of
letters, holding open Court of Love, and therein deciding the questions
of love which had been proposed and sent to them....
"Guillen and Pierre Balbz and Loys des Lascaris, Counts of Ventimiglia,
of Tende and of Brigue, persons of great renown, being come at
this time to visit Pope Innocent VI of that name, went to hear the
definitions and sentences of love pronounced by these ladies; and
astonished and ravished with their beauty and learning, they were taken
with love of them."
At the end of their "_tensons_" the troubadours often named the ladies
who were to pronounce on the questions in dispute between them.
A decree of the Ladies of Gascony runs:--
"The Court of ladies, assembled in Gascony, have laid down, with the
consent of the whole Court, this perpetual constitution, etc., etc."
The Countess of Champagne in a decree of 1174, says:--
"This judgment, that we have carried with extreme caution, is
supported by the advice of a very great number of ladies..."
In another judgment is found:--
"The knight, for the fraud that has been done him, denounced this
whole affair to the Countess of Champagne, and humbly begged that this
crime might be submitted to the judgment of the Countess of Champagne
and the other ladies."
"The Countess, having summoned around her sixty ladies, gave this
judgment, etc."
[Pg 335]
André le Chapelain, from whom we derive this information, relates that
the Code of Love had been published by a Court composed of a large
number of ladies and knights.
André has preserved for us the petition, which was addressed to the
Countess of Champagne, when she decided the following question in the
negative: "Can real love exist between husband and wife?"
But what was the penalty that was incurred by disobedience to the
decrees of the Courts of Love?
We find the Court of Gascony ordering that such or such of its
judgments should be observed as a perpetual institution, and that those
ladies who did not obey should incur the enmity of every honourable
lady.
Up to what point did public opinion sanction the decrees of the Courts
of Love?
Was there as much disgrace in drawing back from them, as there would be
to-day in an affair dictated by honour?
I can find nothing in André or Nostradamus that puts me in a position
to solve this question.
Two troubadours, Simon Boria and Lanfranc Cigalla, disputed the
question: "Who is worthier of being loved, he who gives liberally, or
he who gives in spite of himself in order to pass for liberal?"
This question was submitted to the ladies of the Court of Pierrefeu and
Signe; but the two troubadours, being discontented with the verdict,
had recourse to the supreme Court of Love of the ladies of Romanin.[3]
The form of the verdicts is conformable to that of the judicial
tribunals of this period.
Whatever may be the reader's opinion as to the degree of importance
which the Courts of Love occupied in the attention of their
contemporaries, I beg him to consider what to-day, in 1822, are the
subjects of conversation among the most considerable and richest ladies
of Toulon and Marseilles.
Were they not more gay, more witty, more happy in 1174 than in 1882?
Nearly all the decrees of the Courts of Love are based on the
provisions of the Code of Love.
This Code of Love is found complete in the work of André le Chapelain.
[1] André le Chapelain, Nostradamus, Raynouard, Crescimbeni, d'Arétin.
[2] Jehanne, Lady of Baulx,
Hugnette of Forcarquier, Lady of Trects,
Briande d'Agoult, Countess de la Lune,
Mabille de Villeneufve, Lady of Vence,
Beatrix d'Agoult, Lady of Sault,
Ysoarde de Roquefueilh, Lady of Ansoys,
Anne, Viscountess of Tallard,
Blanche of Flassans, surnamed Blankaflour,
Doulce of Monestiers, Lady of Clumane,
Antonette of Cadenet, Lady of Lambesc,
Magdalene of Sallon, Lady of the said place,
Rixende of Puyvard, Lady of Trans."
(Nostradamus, p. 217.)
[3] Nostradamus, p. 131.
[Pg 336]
There are thirty-one articles and here they are:--
CODE OF LOVE OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY
I. The allegation of marriage is not a valid plea against love.
II. Who can dissemble cannot love.
III. No one can bind himself to two loves at once.
IV. Love grows continually or wanes.
V. That which a lover takes from another by force has no savour.
VI. Generally the male does not love except in full puberty.
VII. A widowhood of two years is prescribed to one lover for the
death of the other.
VIII. Without over-abundant reason no one ought to be deprived of his
rights in love.
IX. No one can love, unless urged thereto by the persuasion of love
(by the hope of being loved).
X. Love will be driven out by avarice.
XI. It is not right to love her whom you would be ashamed to ask in
marriage.
XII. True love has no desire for caresses except from the beloved.
XIII. Love once divulged is rarely lasting.
XIV. Success too easy takes away the charm of love; obstacles give it
worth.
XV. Everyone who loves turns pale at the sight of the beloved.
XVI. At the unexpected sight of the beloved the lover trembles.
XVII. New love banishes old.
XVIII. Merit alone makes man worthy of love.
XIX. Love that wanes is quickly out and rarely rekindled.
XX. The lover is always timid.
XXI. Real jealousy always increases love's warmth.
XXII. Suspicion, and the jealousy it kindles, increases love's warmth.
XXIII. He sleeps less and he eats less who is beset with thoughts of
love.
XXIV. Every act of the lover ends in thought of the beloved.
[Pg 337]
XXV. The true lover thinks nothing good but what he knows will please
the beloved.
XXVI. Love can deny love nothing.
XXVII. The lover cannot have satiety of delight in the beloved.
XXVIII. The slightest presumption causes the lover to suspect the
beloved of sinister things.
XXIX. The habit of too excessive pleasure hinders the birth of love.
XXX. The true lover is occupied with the image of the beloved
assiduously and without interruption.
XXXI. Nothing prevents a woman from being loved by two men, nor a man
by two women.[1]
[Pg 338]
Here is the preamble of a judgment given by a Court of Love.
_Question:_ Can true love exist between married people?
_Judgment_ of the Countess of Champagne: We pronounce and determine by
the tenour of these presents, that love cannot extend its powers over
two married persons; for lovers must grant everything, mutually and
gratuitously, the one to the other without being constrained thereto
by any motive of necessity, while husband and wife are bound by duty
to agree the one with the other and deny each other in nothing.... Let
this judgment, which we have passed with extreme caution and with the
advice of a great number of other ladies, be held by you as the truth,
unquestionable and unalterable.
In the year 1174, the third day from the Calends of May, the VIIth:
indiction.[2]
[1] I. Causa conjugii ab amore non est excusatio recta.
II. Qui non celat amare non potest.
III. Nemo duplici potest amore ligari.
IV. Semper amorem minui vel crescere constat.
V. Non est sapidum quod amans ab invito sumit amante.
VI. Masculus non solet nisi in plena pubertate amare.
VII. Biennalis viduitas pro amante defuncto superstiti praescribitur
amanti.
VIII. Nemo, sine rationis excessu, suo debet amore privari.
IX. Amare nemo potest, nisi qui amoris suasione compellitur.
X. Amor semper ab avaritia consuevit domiciliis exulare.
XI. Non decet amare quarum pudor est nuptias affectare.
XII. Verus amans alterius nisi suae coamantis ex affectu non cupit
amplexus.
XIII. Amor raro consuevit durare vulgatus.
XIV. Facilis perceptio contemptibilem reddit amorem, difficilis eum
parum facit haberi.
XV. Omnis consuevit amans in coamantis aspectu pallescere.
XVI. In repertina coamantis visione, cor tremescit amantis.
XVII. Novus amor veterem compellit abire.
XVIII. Probitas sola quemcumque dignum facit amore.
XIX. Si amor minuatur, cito deficit et raro convalescit.
XX. Amorosus semper est timorosus.
XXI. Ex vera zelotypia affectus semper crescit amandi.
XXII. De coamante suspicione percepta zelus interea et affectus
crescit amandi.
XXIII. Minus dormit et edit quem amoris cogitatio vexat.
XXIV. Quilibet amantis actus in coamantis cogitatione finitur.
XXV. Verus amans nihil beatum credit, nisi quod cogitat amanti
placere.
XXVI. Amor nihil posset amori denegare.
XXVII. Amans coamantis solatiis satiari non potest.
XXVIII. Modica praesumptio cogit amantem de coamante suspicari sinistra.
XXIX. Non solet amare quem nimia voluptatis abundantia vexat.
XXX. Verus amans assidua, sine intermissione, coamantis imagine
detinetur.
XXXI. Unam feminam nihil prohibet a duobus amari, et a duabus
mulieribus unum. (Fol. 103.)
[2] Utrum inter conjugatos amor possit habere locum?
Dicimus enim et stabilito tenore firmamus amorem non posse inter duos
jugales suas extendere vires, nam amantes sibi invicem gratis omnia
largiuntur, nullius necessitatis ratione cogente; jugales vero mutuis
tenentur ex debito voluntatibus obedire et in nullo seipsos sibi ad
invicem denegare....
Hoc igitur nostrum judicium, cum nimia moderatione prolatum, et aliarum
quamplurium dominarum consilio roboratum, pro indubitabili vobis sit ac
veritate constanti.
Ab anno M.C.LXXIV, tertio calend. maii, indictione VII. (Fol. 56.)
This judgment conforms to the first provision of the Code of Love;
"Causa conjugii non est ab amore excusatio recta."
[Pg 339]
NOTE ON ANDRÉ LE CHAPELAIN(70)
ANDRÉ LE CHAPELAIN appears to have written about the year 1176.
In the Bibliothèque du Roi may be found a manuscript (No. 8758) of
the work of André, which was formerly in the possession of Baluze.
Its first title is as follows: "Hic incipiunt capitula libri de Arte
amatoria et reprobatione amoris."
This title is followed by the table of chapters.
Then we have the second title:--
"Incipit liber de Arte amandi et de reprobatione amoris editus et
compillatus a magistro Andrea, Francorum aulae regiæ capellano, ad
Galterium amicum suum, cupientem in amoris exercitu militari: in quo
quidem libro, cujusque gradus et ordinis mulier ab homine cujusque
conditionis et status ad amorem sapientissime invitatur; et ultimo in
fine ipsius libri de amoris reprobatione subjungitur."
Crescimbeni, _Lives of the Provençal Poets_, sub voce Percivalle Boria,
cites a manuscript in the library of Nicolo Bargiacchi, at Florence,
and quotes various passages from it. This manuscript is a translation
of the treatise of André le Chapelain. The Accademia della Crusca
admitted it among the works which furnished examples for its dictionary.
There have been various editions of the original Latin. Frid. Otto
Menckenius, in his _Miscellanea Lipsiensia nova, Leipsic_ 1751, Vol.
VIII, part I, pp. 545 and ff., mentions a very old edition without date
or place of printing, which he considers must belong to the first age
of printing: "Tractatus amoris et de amoris remedio Andreae cappellani
Innocentii papae quarti."
A second edition of 1610 bears the following title:--
"_Erotica seu amatoria_ Andreae capellani regii, vetustissimi
scriptoris ad venerandum suum amicum Guualterium scripta, nunquam ante
hac edita, sed saepius a multis desiderata; nunc tandem fide diversorum
MSS. codicum in publicum emissa a Dethmaro Mulhero, Dorpmundae, typis
Westhovianis, anno Una Caste et Vere amanda."
A third edition reads: "Tremoniae, typis Westhovianis, anno 1614.".
[Pg 340]
André divides thus methodically the subjects which he proposes to
discuss:--
1. Quid sit amor et unde dicatur.[1]
2. Quis sit effectus amoris.
3. Inter quos possit esse amor.
4. Qualiter amor acquiratur, retineatur, augmentetur, minuatur,
finiatur.
5. De notitia mutui amoris, et quid unus amantium agere debeat, altero
fidem fallente.
Each of these questions is discussed in several paragraphs.
Andreas makes the lover and his lady speak alternately. The lady raises
objections, the lover tries to convince her with reasons more or less
subtle. Here is a passage which the author puts into the mouth of the
lover:--
"... Sed si forte horum sermonum te perturbet obscuritas," eorum tibi
sententiam indicabo[2]
Ab antiquo igitur quatuor sunt in amore gradus distincti:
_Primus_, in spei datione consistit.
_Secundus_, in osculi exhibitione.
_Tertius_, in amplexus fruitione.
_Quartus_, in totius concessione personae finitur."
[1] 1. What love is and whence it is so-called.
2. What are the effects of love?
3. Between whom love can exist.
4. In what way love is won, kept, made to increase, to wane or to end.
5. The way to know if love is returned, and what one of the lovers
should do when the other proves faithless.]
[2] But lest perchance you are troubled by the obscurity of this
discourse, I shall give you the argument:--
From all antiquity there are four different degrees of love:
The first consists in giving hope.
The second in the offer of a kiss.
The third in the enjoyment of the most intimate caresses.
The fourth in the surrender of body and soul.]
[Pg 341]
TRANSLATORS' NOTES
1. The Portuguese Nun, Marianna Alcaforado, was born of a distinguished
Portuguese family in the second half of the seventeenth century. About
1662, while still a nun, she fell in love with a French officer, the
Chevalier de Chamilly, to whom she addressed her famous letters. The
worthiness of the object of her passion may be judged by the fact that,
on his return to Paris, the Chevalier handed over these letters to
Sublingy, a lawyer, to be translated and published. They appeared in
1669, published by Barbin, under the title _Lettres Portuguaises_, and
have since been often reprinted. Marianna Alcaforado died at the end of
the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth century.
There are only five original letters, though many editions contain the
seven spurious letters, attributed to a "femme du monde"--they are
already in Barbin's second edition.
There is an admirable seventeenth-century English translation of her
letters by Sir Roger L'Estrange.
The passion of Héloïse for Abelard hardly calls for commentary. There
is no clue to the identity of Captain de Vésel and Sergeant de Cento.
A note in Calmann-Lévy's edition tells us that, in reply to enquiries
about these two mysterious people, Stendhal said that he had forgotten
their stories.
2. _Justine ou les Malheurs de la Vertu_, by the famous Marquis de
Sade, was published in Holland, 1791.
3. Cf. Coleridge, _Love's Apparition and Evanishment_:--
... Genial Hope,
Love's eldest sister.
4. Cf. Chapter VIII, p. 35 below. The ideas contained in these two
passages are the germ of a story written by Stendhal with the obvious
intention of illustrating his theories. The story--"Ernestine"--is
included in the Calmann-Lévy edition of _De l'Amour_.
[Pg 342]
5. Cf. a letter of Sir John Suckling "_to a Friend to dissuade him from
marrying a widow, which he formerly had been in love with_":--
"Love is a natural distemper, a kind of Small Pox: Every one either
hath had it or is to expect it, and the sooner the better."
6. Léonore: under this name Stendhal refers to Métilde Dembowski
(_née_ Viscontini). His passion for the wife of General Dembowski,
with whom he became intimate during his stay in Milan (1814-1821),
forms one of the most important chapters in Stendhal's life, but it
is a little disappointing to enquire too deeply into the object of
this passion. At any rate, as far as one can see, the great qualities
which Stendhal discovered in Métilde Dembowski had their existence
rather in his expert crystallisation than in reality. It was an unhappy
affair. Métilde's cousin used her influence to injure Stendhal, and
in 1819 she cut off all communication with him. Stendhal was still
bemoaning his fate on his arrival in England, 1821. There is, none
the less, something unconvincing in certain points in the history
of this attachment; in spite of his sorrow, Stendhal seems to have
consoled himself in the Westminster Road with "little Miss Appleby."
It is worth noticing that Métilde Dembowski had been the confidante of
Signora Pietra Grua, his former mistress, and it was from the date of
Stendhal's discovery of the latter's shameless infidelity to himself
and other lovers, that his admiration for Métilde seems to have started.
7. It is here worth turning to a passage from Baudelaire--which is
given in the Translators' note (11) below. Liberty in love, he says,
consists in avoiding the kind of woman dangerous to oneself. He
points out that a natural instinct prompts one to this spontaneous
self-preservation. Stendhal here gives a more exact explanation of
the operation of this instinctive selection in love. Schopenhauer's
conception of the utilitarian nature of bodily beauty is a more general
application of the same idea. The breasts of a woman _à la_ Titian
are a pledge of fitness for maternity--therefore they are beautiful.
Stendhal would have said a pledge of fitness for giving pleasure.
8. The well-known Dr. Edwards, in whose house Stendhal was introduced
to one side of English life--and a very bourgeois side. He was
introduced by a brother of Dr. Edwards, a
[Pg 343]
man given to the peculiarly gloomy kind of debauch of which Stendhal
gives such an exaggerated picture in his account of England. See note
31 below.
9. This brings to mind Blake's view of imagination and "the rotten
rags" of memory.
10. _Bianca e Faliero ossia il consiglio di tre_--opera by Rossini
(1819).
11. Cf. Baudelaire, _Choix de maximes consolantes sur l'amour_ in _Le
Corsaire Satan_ (March 3, 1846) and reprinted in _Œuvres Posthumes_,
Paris, 1908.
"Sans nier les coups de foudre, ce qui est impossible--voyez
Stendhal...--il faut que la fatalité jouit d'une certaine élasticité
qui s'appelle liberté humaine.... En amour la liberté consiste à éviter
les catégories de femmes dangereuses, c'est-à-dire dangereuses pour
vous."
["Without denying the possibility of 'thunderbolts,' for that is
impossible (see Stendhal)--one may yet believe that fatality enjoys
a certain elasticity, called human liberty.... In love human liberty
consists in avoiding the categories of dangerous women--that is, women
dangerous for you."]
12. Paul Louis Courier (1772-1825) served with distinction as an
officer in Napoleon's army. He resigned his commission in 1809, in
order to devote himself to literature, and especially to the study
of Greek. His translation of _Daphnis and Chloe_, from the Greek of
Longus, is well known, and was the cause of his long controversy
with Del Furia, the under-librarian of the Laurentian Library at
Florence, to which Stendhal here refers. Courier had discovered
a complete manuscript of this romance in the famous Florentine
Library. By mistake, he soiled with a blot of ink the page of the
manuscript containing the all-important passage, which was wanting
in all previously known manuscripts. Del Furia, jealous of Courier's
discovery, accused him of having blotted the passage on purpose, in
order to monopolise the discovery. A lively controversy followed, in
which the authorities entered. Courier was guilty of nothing worse than
carelessness, and, needless to say, got the better of his adversaries,
when it came to a trial with the pen.
[Pg 344]
13. The Viscomte de Valmont and the Présidente de Tourvel are the two
central figures in Choderlos de Laclos' _Liaisons Dangereuses_ (1782).
14. Modern criticism has made it uncertain who Dante's la Pia really
was. The traditional identification is now given up, but there seems no
reason to doubt the historical fact of the story.
15. Napoleon crowned himself with the Iron Crown of the old Lombard
kings at Milan in 1805.
16. The reader is aware by now that Salviati is none other than
Stendhal. The passage refers to the campaign of 1812, in which Stendhal
played a prominent part, being present at the burning of Moscow.
17. _Don Carlos_, Tragedy of Schiller (1787); Saint-Preux--from
Rousseau's _Nouvelle Héloïse_.
18. Stendhal's first book. For the history of this work, which is an
admirable example of Stendhal's bold method of plagiarism, see the
introduction to the work in the complete edition of Stendhal now in
course of publication by Messrs. Champion (Paris, 1914) or Lumbroso,
_Vingt jugements inédits sur Henry Beyle_ (1902), pp. 10 and ff.
19. _Jacques le Fataliste_--by Diderot (1773).
20. The note, as it stands, in the French text, against the word
"pique," runs as follows:--
"I think the word is none too French in this sense, but I can find
no better substitute. In Italian it is 'puntiglio,' and in English
'pique.'"
21. The _Lettres à Sophie_ were written by Mirabeau (1749-1791) during
his imprisonment at Vincennes (1777-1780). They were addressed to
Sophie de Monnier; it was his relations with her which had brought
him into prison. They were published in 1792, after Mirabeau's death,
under the title: _Lettres originales de Mirabeau écrites du donjon de
Vincennes_.
[Pg 345]
22. Catherine Marie, Duchesse de Montpensier, was the daughter of
the Duc de Guise, assassinated in 1563. In 1570 she married the Duc
de Montpensier. She was lame, but she had other reasons besides his
scoffing at her infirmity for her undying hatred of Henry III; for she
could lay at his door the death of her brother Henry, the third Duke.
She died in 1596.
23. Julie d'Étanges--the heroine of Rousseau's _Nouvelle Héloïse_.
24. Stendhal, we must remember, is writing as a staunch liberal in the
period of reaction which followed the fall of Napoleon and the end of
the revolutionary period. Stendhal had been one of Napoleon's officers,
and the Bourbon restoration put an end to his career. His liberalism
and his pride at having been one of those who followed Napoleon's
glorious campaigns, colour everything he writes about the state of
Europe in his time. In reading Stendhal's criticisms of France, England
and Italy, we must put ourselves back in 1822--remember that in France
we have the Royalist restoration, in England the cry for reform always
growing greater and beginning to penetrate even into the reactionary
government of Lord Liverpool (Peel, Canning, Huskisson), in Italy
the rule of the "Pacha" (see below, note 29) and the beginning of
Carbonarism (of which Stendhal was himself suspected, see below, note
27), and the long struggle for unity and independence.
25. Charles Ferdinand, Duke de Berri (1778-1820), married a Bourbon
Princess and was assassinated by a fanatic enemy of the Bourbons.
26. Bayard. Pierre Bayard (1476-1524), the famous French knight
"without fear or reproach."
27. Of all foreign countries then to which Stendhal went Italy was not
only his favourite, but also the one he knew and understood best. He
was pleased in later years to discover Italian blood in his own family
on the maternal side. The Gagnon family, from which his mother came,
had, according to him, crossed into France about 1650.
He was in Italy with little interruption from 1814-1821, and again from
1830-1841 as consul at Civita Vecchia, during which time he became
intimately acquainted with the best, indeed every
[Pg 346]
kind of Italian society. He tells us that fear of being implicated in
the _Carbonari_ troubles drove him from Italy in 1821.
One can well believe that a plain speaker and daring thinker like
Stendhal would have been looked upon by the Austrian police with
considerable suspicion.
28. Racine and Shakespeare. Very early in life Stendhal refused to
accept the conventional literary valuations. Racine he put below
Corneille--Racine, like Voltaire, he says, fills his works with
"bavardage éternel." Shakespeare became for Stendhal the master
dramatist, and he is never tired of the comparison between him and
Racine. Cf. _Rome, Naples et Florence_ (1817), and _Histoire de la
Peinture en Italie_ (1817). Finally he published his work on the
subject: _Racine et Shakespeare par M. de Stendhal_ (1823).
29. Stendhal knew Italy and was writing in Italy in the dark period
that followed the fall of Napoleon. The "Pacha" is, of course, the
repressive and reactionary government, whether that of the Austrians
in Lombardy, of the Pope in Rome, or of the petty princes in the minor
Italian states. See above, note 27.
30. Count Almaviva--character from Beaumarchais' _Marriage de Figaro_,
first acted April, 1784. The play was censored by Louis XVI and
produced none the less six months later. Its production is an event
in the history of the French Revolution. Almaviva stands for the
aristocracy and cuts a sad figure beside Figaro, a poor barber.
STENDHAL'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH ENGLAND
31. Baretti, Dr. Johnson's friend, has the reputation of having learnt
English better than any other foreigner. Stendhal might well claim a
similar distinction for having acquired in a short stay a grasp so
singularly comprehensive of England--of English people and their ways.
He was four times in England--in 1817, 1821, 1826, and 1838--never
for a whole year in succession, and on the first occasion merely on a
flying trip. But Stendhal had not only a great power of observing and
assimilating ideas; he was also capable of accommodating himself to
association with the most varied types. Stendhal was as appreciative of
Miss Appleby--his
[Pg 347]
little mistress in the Westminster Road--as of Lord Byron and Shelley:
he was at home in the family circle of the Edwards and the Clarkes.
From the first he was sensible of the immense value of his friendship
with the lawyer, Sutton Sharpe (1797-1843). Sharpe was one of those
Englishmen who seem made for the admiration of foreigners--possessing
all the Englishman's sense and unaffected dignity and none of his
morbid reserve or insularity. Porson, Opie, Flaxman, Stothard were
familiar figures in the house of Sharpe's father, and Sharpe and his
charming sister continued to be the centre of a large and intelligent
circle. In 1826 Sharpe took Stendhal with him on circuit. Stendhal was
often present in court and learnt from his friend, who in 1841 became
Q. C., to admire the real character, so rarely appreciated abroad, of
English justice. He took this opportunity of visiting also Manchester,
York, and the Lake district. Likewise to Sharpe he owed the privilege
of meeting Hook, the famous wit and famous bibber, at the Athenaeum.
He was present even at one of Almack's balls--the most select
entertainment of that time.
With an acquaintance with England at once so varied, so full and yet
so short, as regards direct intercourse with the country and people,
it is rather natural that Stendhal was wary of subscribing to any
one very settled conception of the English. He felt the incongruity
of their character. At one time he called them "la nation la plus
civilisée et la plus puissante du monde entier"--the most civilised and
powerful people on the face of the earth; at another they were only
"les premiers hommes pour le steam-engine"; and then, he merely felt a
sorrowful affection for them--as for a people who just missed getting
the profit of their good qualities by shutting their eyes to their bad.
As for Stendhal's knowledge of English literature--of that the
foundations were laid early in life. His enthusiasm for Shakespeare
was a very early passion (cf. Translators' note 28). As years went on,
his acquaintance with English thought and English literature became
steadily wider. Significant is his familiarity with Bentham, whose
views were congenial to Stendhal: Stendhal quotes him more than once.
Hobbes he was ready to class with Condillac, Helvétius, Cabanis and
Destutt de Tracy, as one of the philosophers most congenial and useful
to his mind. For the rest, the notes and quotations in this book leave
no doubt of the extent of his English reading--they
[Pg 348]
give one a poorer opinion of his purely linguistic capacities;
Stendhal's own English is often most comical. For a very complete
consideration of his connexion with England see _Stendhal et
l'Angleterre_, by Doris Gunnell (Paris, 1909). Cf. also Chuquet's
_Stendhal-Beyle_ (Paris, 1902), Chap. IX, pp. 178 and ff.
32. Of the three Englishmen referred to here, James Beattie
(1735--1803), the author of _The Minstrel_ (published 1771-1774), and
Richard Watson (1737-1816), Bishop of Llandaff (1782), a distinguished
chemist and a man of liberal political views, will both be familiar to
readers of Boswell. The third, John Chetwode Eustace (1762?-1815) was
a friend of Burke and a Roman Catholic, who seems to have given some
trouble to the Catholic authorities in England and Ireland. His _Tour
through Italy_, to which Stendhal refers, was published in 1813.
33. The Divorce Bill, introduced in 1820 into the House of Lords by
George IV's ministers, to annul his marriage with Queen Caroline, but
abandoned on account of its unpopularity both in Parliament and in the
country generally.
34. The Whiteboys were a secret society, which originated in Ireland
about 1760 and continued spasmodically till the end of the century.
In 1821 it reappeared and gave great trouble to the authorities; in
1823 the society adopted another name. The yeomanry was embodied in
Ulster in September 1796, and was mainly composed of Orangemen and
Protestants. The body was instrumental in disarming Ulster and in
suppressing the rebellion of 1798--not, it has been maintained, without
unnecessary cruelty.
35. Sir Benjamin Bloomfield (1786-1846), a distinguished soldier,
ultimately did get his peerage in 1825. In 1822 he had resigned his
office of receiver of the duchy of Cornwall, having lost the King's
confidence after many years of favour.
STENDHAL'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH SPAIN
36. Stendhal's personal knowledge of Spain was less extensive than that
of Italy, England and Germany. He was early interested in the country
and its literature. In 1808 at Richemont he was reading a _Histoire de
la guerre de la succession d'Espagne_, and the same year speaks of his
plan of going to Spain to study the
[Pg 349]
language of Cervantes and Calderon. In 1810 he actually took Spanish
lessons and the next year applied from Germany for an official
appointment in Spain. In 1837 he made his way as far as Barcelona.
STENDHAL'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH GERMANY
37. In 1806 Stendhal returned to Paris from Marseilles whither he
had followed the actress Melanie Guilbert and taken up a commercial
employment in order to support himself at her side. He now again put
himself under the protection of Daru, and followed him into Germany,
though at first without any fixed title. He was not at Jena, as he
pretends (being still in Paris the 7th October), but on the 27th of the
month he witnessed Napoleon's triumphal entry into Berlin. Two days
later he was nominated by Daru to the post of assistant _commissaire
des guerres_.
Stendhal arrived in Brunswick in 1806 to take up his official duties.
Although his time was occupied with a considerable amount of business,
he found leisure also for visiting the country at ease. In 1807 he
went as far as Hamburg. His observations on the country and people are
occurring continually in his works, particularly in his letters and in
his _Voyage à Brunswick_ (in _Napoléon_, ed. de Mitty, Paris, 1897),
pp. 92-125. In 1808 he left Brunswick, but soon returned with Daru to
Germany. This time he was employed at Strasbourg--whence he passed to
Ingolstadt, Landshut, etc., etc. Facts prove that he was not at the
battle of Wagram, as he says in his _Life of Napoleon_. He was at the
time at Vienna, where he managed to remain for the _Te Deum_ sung in
honour of the Emperor Francis II after the evacuation by the French.
He returned in 1810, after the peace of Schonnbrunn, to Paris. It was
during his stay in Brunswick that Stendhal made the acquaintance of
Baron von Strombeck, for whom he always preserved a warm affection.
He was a frequent guest at the house of von Strombeck and a great
admirer of his sister-in-law, Phillippine von Bülow--who died Abbess
of Steterburg--_la celeste Phillippine_. Baron von Strombeck is
referred to in this work as M. de Mermann. See generally Chuquet,
_Stendhal-Beyle_, Chap. V.
38. Triumph of the Cross. In Arthur Schuig's sprightly, but inaccurate,
German edition of _De l'Amour--Über die Liebe_ (Jena, 1911)--occurs
this note:--
"Stendhal names the piece _Le Triomphe de la Croix_, but must
[Pg 350]
mean either _Das Kruez an der Ostsee_ (1806), or _Martin Luther oder
die Weihe der Kraft_ (1807)--both tragedies by Zacharias Werner."
39. The Provencal story in this chapter, and the Arabic anecdotes in
the next, were translated for Stendhal by his friend Claude Fauriel
(1772-1806)--"the only savant in Paris who is not a pedant," he calls
him in a letter written in 1829 (_Correspondance de Stendhal_, Paris,
Charles Brosse, 1908, Vol. II, p. 516). A letter of 1822 (Vol. II, p.
247) thanks M. Fauriel for his translations. "If I were not so old,"
he writes, "I should learn Arabic, so charmed am I to find something
at last that is not a mere academic copy of the antique.... My little
ideological treatise on Love will now have some variety. The reader
will be carried beyond the circle of European ideas." Saint-Beuve
relates that he was present when Fauriel showed Stendhal, then engaged
on his _De l'Amour_, an Arab story which he had translated. Stendhal
seized on it, and Fauriel was only able to recover his story by
promising two more like it in exchange. M. Fauriel is referred to p.
188, note 3, above.
40. The reference is to a piece by Scribe (1791-1861).
41. Stendhal had no first-hand knowledge of America.
42. Stendhal was writing before Whitman and Whistler; yet he had read
Poe.
43. The entire material for these three chapters, and to a very great
extent their language too, is taken straight from an article in the
_Edinburgh Review_--January 1810--by Thomas Broadbent. See for a full
comparison of the English and French, Doris Gunnell--_Stendhal et
l'Angleterre_, Appendix B.
Stendhal has not only adapted the ideas--he has to a great extent
translated the words of Thomas Broadbent. He has changed the order of
ideas here and there--not the ideas themselves--and in some cases he
has enlarged their application. Where he has translated the English
word for word, it has often been possible in this translation to
restore the original English, which Stendhal borrowed and turned into
French. Where we have done this, we have printed the words, which
belong to Thomas Broadbent, in italics.
[Pg 351]
However, as Stendhal often introduced slight, but important, changes
of language, we also give below, as an example of his methods, longer
passages chosen from the article in the _Edinburgh Review_, to compare
with the corresponding passages literally translated by us from
Stendhal.
These are the passages:--
P. 225, l. 2:
"As if women were more quick and men more judicious, as if women were
more remarkable for delicacy of expression and men for stronger powers
of attention."
P. 228, l. 9:
"Knowledge, where it produces any bad effects at all, does as much
mischief to one sex as to the other.... Vanity and conceit we shall of
course witness in men and women, as long as the world endures.... The
best way to make it more tolerable is to give it as high and dignified
an object as possible."
P. 229, l. 21:
"Women have, of course, all ignorant men for enemies to their
instruction, who being bound (as they think) in point of sex to know
more, are not well pleased in point of fact to know less."
P. 230, l. 24:
"The same desire of pleasing, etc.... We are quite astonished in
hearing men converse on such subjects to find them attributing such
beautiful effects to ignorance."
P. 232, l. 31:
"We do not wish a lady to write books any more than we wish her to
dance at the opera."
P. 237, l. 13:
"A merely accomplished woman cannot infuse her tastes into the minds
of her sons....
"By having gained information a mother may inspire her sons with
valuable tastes, which may abide by them through life and carry him up
to all the sublimities of knowledge."
P. 237, l. 27:
"Mankind are much happier for the discovery of barometers,
thermometers, steam-engines and all the innumerable inventions in the
arts and the sciences.... The same observation is true of such works
as those of Dryden, Pope, Milton and Shakespeare."
[Pg 352]
Stendhal's habit of quoting without acknowledgment from all kinds of
writings is so curious, that it demands a word to itself. His wholesale
method of plagiarism has been established in other works beside the
present one; almost the whole of his first work--_La Vie de Haydn_
(1814)--is stolen property. See above, note 18. Goethe was amused to
find his own experiences transferred to the credit of the author of
_Rome, Naples et Florence!_
If there is any commentary necessary on this literary piracy--it is to
be found in a note by Stendhal (_vide_ above, Chapter XXXVII, p. 132)
on a passage where, for once, he actually acknowledges a thought from
La Rochefoucauld:--
"The reader will have recognised, without my marking it each time,
several other thoughts of celebrated writers. It is history which I am
attempting to write, and such thoughts are the facts."
44. The monitorial system (_Enseignement mutuel_) was introduced into
France soon after the Bourbon Restoration; but it was not, like our
monitorial system, designed with a view primarily to the maintenance of
discipline, but rather to supplying the want of schools and masters and
remedying the official indifference to popular education, which then
existed in France. As such, it was warmly espoused by the liberals, and
as warmly opposed by the reactionaries. The monitors, it was thought,
could hand on to the younger pupils the knowledge they had already
received; after the Revolution of 1830, when no longer the object
of political controversy, the system gave way to more practical and
efficient methods of public instruction.
45. Porlier (Don Juan Diaz), born in 1783, was publicly hanged in
1815 as the result of a conspiracy against Ferdinand VII of Spain.
After having been one of the most active and bravest supporters of
Ferdinand's cause in the effort to re-establish his throne and the
national honour, he now sacrificed his life to an unsuccessful attempt
to set up a constitutional government.
Antonio Quiroga (born 1784), also after having distinguished himself in
the national struggle against Napoleon, was tried for complicity in the
conspiracy, after the fall of Porlier. After a series of adventures, in
which he was more lucky than Riego, his
[Pg 353]
subaltern, to whom he owed so much, he again distinguished himself,
after a temporary withdrawal from active service in 1822, by the stout
opposition he offered to the French invasion of 1823. His efforts,
however, were of no avail and he escaped to England, and thence made
his way to South America. Some years later he returned to Spain, was
nominated Captain General of Grenada, and died in 1841.
Rafael del Riego (born 1785), after serving against the French,
first became prominent in connexion with the effort to restore the
constitution which Ferdinand had abolished in 1812. He was elected by
his troops second in command to Quiroga, whom he himself proposed as
their leader. This rising was a failure and Riego was exiled to Oviedo,
his birthplace. After being repeatedly recalled and re-exiled, he ended
by being one of the first victims of Ferdinand's restoration in 1823,
and was dragged to the place of execution at the back of a donkey, amid
the outrages of the mob.
46. Father Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), the famous historian of the
Council of Trent, a Servite monk, and the ecclesiastical adviser of
the Venetian Government, at a time when it seemed not impossible that
Venice would break away, like Northern Europe, from the Roman Catholic
Church.
47. Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) was, according to Stendhal, our only
philosopher. It is on Tracy, one of the Ideologists, that Stendhal,
one might say, modelled his philosophic attitude. Tracy's _Idéologie_
(1801), he says, gave him "milles germes de pensées nouvelles"--gave
him also his worship of logic. He was equally impressed by the _Traité
de la Volonté_ (1815). Cf. Picavet's Sorbonne Thesis (Paris, 1891)
_Les Idéologues_, pp. 489-92, in which he speaks of Stendhal as "a
successor and a defender, _mutatis mutandis_, of the eighteenth-century
'Idéologues.'"
48. Giovanni Luigi Fiescho (15 23-1547), a great Genoese noble, formed
a conspiracy in 1547 against the all-powerful Admiral of the Republic,
Andrea Doria. The state fleet in the harbour was to be seized, but in
attempting this Fiescho was drowned, and the conspiracy collapsed.
[Pg 354]
49. Henri Grégoire (1750-1831), one of the most original fearless and
sincere of the Revolutionary leaders, was the constitutional Bishop
of Blois, who refused to lay down his episcopal office under the
Terror, and when the Reign of Terror was over, took an active part in
restoring Religion and the Church. He resigned his bishopric in 1801.
Napoleon made him a count but he was always hostile to the Empire. He
was a staunch Gallican, and never forgave Napoleon his concordat with
the Papacy. He was naturally hated and feared by the Royalists at the
Restoration, but he remained popular with the people, and was elected
a member of the lower chamber in 1819, though he was prevented by the
Government from sitting.
50. _La Génie du Christianisme_, by Chateaubriand (1802).
51. See note 47.
52. See note 37.
53. See note 37.
54. Johannes von Müller--the German historian (1752-1809).
55. La Trappe--the headquarters (near Mortagna) of a monastic body, the
Trappists, a branch of the Cistercian order. The word is used for all
Trappist monasteries.
56. Samuel Bernard (1651-1739), son of the painter and engraver of
the same name, was a man of immense wealth and the foremost French
financier of his day. He was born a Protestant, not, as has been
thought, a Jew, but became a Catholic after the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes (1685). He was ennobled and became the Comte de Coubert
(1725).
57. Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813), a celebrated mathematician and
scientist.
58. Hazlitt, in a note to his essay on _Self-Love and Benevolence_,
remarked on Stendhal's absurdly exaggerated praise of Helvétius. After
quoting this passage, he adds: "My friend Mr. Beyle here lays too much
stress on a borrowed verbal fallacy."
[Pg 355]
Hobbes and Mandeville, he says, had long before stated, and Butler
answered, this fallacy, which not unfrequently vitiates Stendhal's
psychological views.
59. Francois Guillaume Ducray-Duminil (1761-1819), the author of
numerous sentimental and popular novels.
60. The _Argonautica_ of Apollonius of Rhodes (222-181 B. C.).
61. Jean Francois de la Harpe (born 1739) is frequently mentioned by
Stendhal in this hostile spirit. After winning considerable notoriety,
without very much merit, La Harpe in 1786 became professor of
literature at the newly founded Lycée. Having started as a Voltairian
philosopher, and still apparently favourable to the Revolution, he
was none the less arrested in 1794 as a suspect and put into prison.
There he was converted from his former Voltairian principles to Roman
Catholicism. He died in 1803.
62. _Notices sur Mme. de la Fayette, Mme. et Mlle. Deshoulières, lues à
l'Académie française_, Paris, 1822.
63. Pierre Jean de Béranger (born 1780): The bold patriotic songs,
which had made Béranger's name, brought him in 1828, for the second
time, into prison. He refused office after the revolution (1830), for
the principles of which he had already suffered; he died in 1848.
64. _La Gazza Ladra_, an opera by Rossini.
65. Antoine Marie, Comte de Lavalette (1769-1830) was one of Napoleon's
generals. After the Bourbon restoration of 1815 he was condemned to
death, but escaped, chiefly owing to his wife's help.
66. Alessandro, Conte Verri, the contemporary of Stendhal and a
distinguished _littérateur_ (1741-1816).
67. Montenotte (April, 1796), and Rivoli (January, 1797), two victories
in Bonaparte's Italian campaign.
[Pg 356]
68. The existence of these Courts of Love has been denied by many
modern historians. For a brief statement of the arguments against
their historical existence the English reader may be referred to
Chaytor, _The Troubadours_ (in the _Cambridge Manuals of Science and
Literature_, 1912), pp. 19-21. But while the direct evidence for their
existence is very flimsy, the direct evidence against them is no less
so.
69. The monk of the Isles d'Or, on whose manuscript Nostradamus
professed to rely, is now considered to be a purely fictitious person,
an anagram on a friend's name.
70. The date of André le Chapelain's treatise is a disputed point.
Stendhal gives its date as 1176; Reynouard and others, 1170. Others
again have placed it as late as the fourteenth century, though this has
been proved impossible, since thirteenth-century writers refer to the
book. The probability is that it was written at the beginning of the
thirteenth or end of the twelfth century--there is no evidence to fix
the date with precision. For a full discussion of the question see the
preface to the best modern edition of the work--_Andreae Capellani ...
De Amore_ (recensuit E. Trojel), 1892.
71. Cf. Montesquieu, _Lettres Persanes_, passim, and especially Letter
48: ".... Our foreign demeanour no longer gives offence. We even profit
by people's surprise at finding us quite polite. Frenchmen cannot
imagine that Persia produces men.