CHAPTER XVI

In a small port, the name of which I forget, near Perpignan, 25th February, 1822.[1]

This evening I have just found out that music, when it is perfect, puts the heart into the same state as it enjoys in the presence of the loved one—that is to say, it gives seemingly the keenest happiness existing on the face of the earth.

If this were so for all men, there would be no more favourable incentive to love.

But I had already remarked at Naples last year that perfect music, like perfect pantomime, makes me think of that which is at the moment the object of my dreams, and that the ideas, which it suggests to me, are excellent: at Naples, it was on the means of arming the Greeks.

Now this evening I cannot deceive myself—I have the misfortune of being too great an admirer of milady L.[2]

And perhaps the perfect music, which I have had the luck to hear again, after two or three months of privation, although going nightly to the Opera, has simply had the effect, which I recognised long ago—I mean that of producing lively thoughts on what is already in the heart.

March 4th—eight days later.

I dare neither erase nor approve the preceding observation. Certain it is that, as I wrote it, I read it in my heart. If to-day I bring it into question, it is because I have lost the memory of what I saw at that time.

The habit of hearing music and dreaming its dreams disposes towards love. A sad and gentle air, provided it is not too dramatic, so that the imagination is forced to dwell on the action, is a direct stimulant to dreams of love and a delight for gentle and unhappy souls: for example, the drawn-out passage on the clarionet at the beginning of the quartet in Bianca and Faliero[(10)], and the recitative of La Camporesi towards the middle of the quartet.

A lover at peace with his mistress enjoys to distraction Rossini's famous duet in Armida and Rinaldo, depicting so justly the little doubts of happy love and the moments of delight which follow its reconciliations. It seems to him that the instrumental part, which comes in the middle of the duet, at the moment when Rinaldo wishes to fly, and represents in such an amazing way the conflict of the passions, has a physical influence upon his heart and touches it in reality. On this subject I dare not say what I feel; I should pass for a madman among people of the north.

[1] Copied from the diary of Lisio.

[2] [Written thus in English by Stendhal,—Tr.]

CHAPTER XVII
BEAUTY DETHRONED BY LOVE

Alberic meets in a box at the theatre a woman more beautiful than his mistress (I beg to be allowed here a mathematical valuation)—that is to say, her features promise three units of happiness instead of two, supposing the quantity of happiness given by perfect beauty to be expressed by the number four.

Is it surprising that he prefers the features of his mistress, which promise a hundred units of happiness for him? Even the minor defects of her face, a small-pox mark, for example, touches the heart of the man who loves, and, when he observes them even in another woman, sets him dreaming far away. What, then, when he sees them in his mistress? Why, he has felt a thousand sentiments in presence of that small-pox mark, sentiments for the most part sweet, and all of the greatest interest; and now, such as they are, they are evoked afresh with incredible vividness by the sight of this sign, even in the face of another woman.

If ugliness thus comes to be preferred and loved, it is because in this case ugliness is beauty.[1] A man was passionately in love with a woman, very thin and scarred with small-pox: death bereft him of her. At Rome, three years after, he makes friends with two women, one more lovely than the day, the other thin, scarred with small-pox, and thereby, if you will, quite ugly. There he is, at the end of a week, in love with the ugly one—and this week he employs in effacing her ugliness with his memories; and with a very pardonable coquetry the lesser beauty did not fail to help him in the operation with a slight whip-up of the pulse.[2] A man meets a woman and is offended by her ugliness; soon, if she is unpretentious, her expression makes him forget the defects of her features; he finds her amiable—he conceives that one could love her. A week later he has hopes; another week and they are taken from him; another and he's mad.

[1] Beauty is only the promise of happiness. The happiness of a Greek was different to that of a Frenchman of 1822. See the eyes of the Medici Venus and compare them with the eyes of the Magdalen of Pordenone (in the possession of M. de Sommariva.)

[2] If one is sure of the love of a woman, one examines to see if she is more or less beautiful; if one is uncertain of her heart, there is no time to think of her face.

CHAPTER XVIII
LIMITATIONS OF BEAUTY

An analogy is to be seen at the theatre in the reception of the public's favourite actors: the spectators are no longer conscious of the beauty or ugliness which the actors have in reality. Lekain, for all his remarkable ugliness, had a harvest of broken hearts—Garrick also. There are several reasons for this; the principal being that it was no longer the actual beauty of their features or their ways which people saw, but emphatically that which imagination was long since used to lend them, as a return for, and in memory of, all the pleasure they had given it. Why, take a comedian—his face alone raises a laugh as he first walks on.

A girl going for the first time to the Français would perhaps feel some antipathy to Lekain during the first scene; but soon he was making her weep or shiver—and how resist him as Tancrède[1] or Orosmane?

If his ugliness were still a little visible to her eyes, the fervour of an entire audience, and the nervous effect produced upon a young heart,[2] soon managed to eclipse it. If anything was still heard about his ugliness, it was mere talk; but not a word of it—Lekain's lady enthusiasts could be heard to exclaim "He's lovely!"

Remember that beauty is the expression of character, or, put differently, of moral habits, and that consequently it is exempt from all passion. Now it is passion that we want. Beauty can only supply us with probabilities about a woman, and probabilities, moreover, based on her capacity for self-possession; while the glances of your mistress with her small-pox scars are a delightful reality, which destroys all the probabilities in the world.

[1] See Madame de Staël in Delphine, I think; there you have the artifice of plain women.

[2] I should be inclined to attribute to this nervous sympathy the prodigious and incomprehensible effect of fashionable music. (Sympathy at Dresden for Rossini, 1821.) As soon as it is out of fashion, it becomes no worse for that, and yet it ceases to have any effect upon perfectly ingenuous girls. Perhaps it used to please them, as also stimulating young men to fervour.

Madame de Sévigné says to her daughter (Letter 202, May 6, 1672): "Lully surpassed himself in his royal music; that beautiful Miserere was still further enlarged: there was a Libera at which all eyes were full of tears."

It is as impossible to doubt the truth of this effect, as to refuse wit or refinement to Madame de Sévigné. Lully's music, which charmed her, would make us run away at present; in her day, his music encouraged crystallisation—it makes it impossible in ours.

CHAPTER XIX
LIMITATIONS OF BEAUTY—(continued)

A woman of quick fancy and tender heart, but timid and cautious in her sensibility, who the day after she appears in society, passes in review a thousand times nervously and painfully all that she may have said or given hint of—such a woman, I say, grows easily used to want of beauty in a man: it is hardly an obstacle in rousing her affection.

It is really on the same principle that you care next to nothing for the degree of beauty in a mistress, whom you adore and who repays you with harshness. You have very nearly stopped crystallising her beauty, and when your friend in need tells you that she isn't pretty, you are almost ready to agree. Then he thinks he has made great way.

My friend, brave Captain Trab, described to me this evening his feelings on seeing Mirabeau once upon a time. No one looking upon that great man felt a disagreeable sensation in the eyes—that is to say, found him ugly. People were carried away by his thundering words; they fixed their attention, they delighted in fixing their attention, only on what was beautiful in his face. As he had practically no beautiful features (in the sense of sculpturesque or picturesque beauty) they minded only what beauty he had of another kind, the beauty of expression.[1]

While attention was blind to all traces of ugliness, picturesquely speaking, it fastened on the smallest passable details with fervour—for example, the beauty of his vast head of hair. If he had had horns, people would have thought them lovely.[2]

The appearance every evening of a pretty dancer forces a little interest from those poor souls, blasé or bereft of imagination, who adorn the balcony of the opera. By her graceful movements, daring and strange, she awakens their physical love and procures them perhaps the only crystallisation of which they are still capable. This is the way by which a young scarecrow, who in the street would not have been honoured with a glance, least of all from people the worse for wear, has only to appear frequently on the stage, and she manages to get herself handsomely supported. Geoffroy used to say that the theatre is the pedestal of woman. The more notorious and the more dilapidated a dancer, the more she is worth; hence the green-room proverb: "Some get sold at a price who wouldn't be taken as a gift." These women steal part of their passions from their lovers, and are very susceptible of love from pique.

How manage not to connect generous or lovable sentiments with the face of an actress, in whose features there is nothing repugnant, whom for two hours every evening we see expressing the most noble feelings, and whom otherwise we do not know? When at last you succeed in being received by her, her features recall such pleasing feelings, that the entire reality which surrounds her, however little nobility it may sometimes possess, is instantly invested with romantic and touching colours.

"Devotee, in the days of my youth, of that boring French tragedy,[3] whenever I had the luck of supping with Mlle. Olivier, I found myself every other moment overbrimming with respect, in the belief that I was speaking to a queen; and really I have never been quite sure whether, in her case, I had fallen in love with a queen or a pretty tart."

[1] That is the advantage of being à la mode. Putting aside the defects of a face which are already familiar, and no longer have any effect upon the imagination, the public take hold of one of the three following ideas of beauty:—

(1) The people—of the idea of wealth.

(2) The upper classes—of the idea of elegance, material or moral.

(3) The Court—of the idea: "My object is to please the women."

Almost all take hold of a mixture of all three. The happiness attached to the idea of riches is linked to a refinement in the pleasure which the idea of elegance suggests, and the whole comes into touch with love. In one way or another the imagination is led on by novelty. It is possible in this way to be interested in a very ugly man without thinking of his ugliness,[*] and in good time his ugliness becomes beauty. At Vienna, in 1788, Madame Viganò, a dancer and the woman of the moment, was with child—very soon the ladies took to wearing little Ventres à la Viganò. For the same reason reversed, nothing more fearful than a fashion out of date! Bad taste is a confusion of fashion, which lives only by change, with the lasting beauty produced by such and such a government, guided by such and such a climate. A building in fashion to-day, in ten years will be out of fashion. It will be less displeasing in two hundred years, when its fashionable day will be forgotten. Lovers are quite mad to think about their dress; a woman has other things to do, when seeing the object of her love, than to bother about his get-up; we look at our lover, we do not examine him, says Rousseau. If this examination takes place, we are dealing with gallant-love and not passion-love. The brilliance of beauty is almost offensive in the object of our love; it is none of our business to see her beautiful, we want her tender and languishing. Adornment has effect in love only upon girls, who are so rigidly guarded in their parents' house, that they often lose their hearts through their eyes. (L.'s words. September 15, 1820.)

* Le petit Germain, Mémoires de Grammont.

[2] For their polish or their size or their form! In this way, or by the combination of sentiments (see above, the small-pox scars) a woman in love grows used to the faults of her lover. The Russian Princess C. has actually become used to a man who literally has no nose. The picture of his courage, of his pistol loaded to kill himself in despair at his misfortune, and pity for the bitter calamity, enhanced by the idea that he will recover and is beginning to recover, are the forces which have worked this miracle. The poor fellow with his wound must appear not to think of his misfortune. (Berlin, 1807.)

[3] Improper expression copied from the Memoirs of my friend, the late Baron de Bottmer. It is by the same trick that Feramorz pleases Lalla-Rookh. See that charming poem.