She never thinks of anything but her own pleasure; does nothing but visit the dressmaker and the theatre and read novels; never thinks it her duty to provide for her future husband’s comfort and happiness by educating herself in domestic economy and æsthetic accomplishments of real depth—as you have toiled and studied in anticipation of providing for her comfort and happiness. She takes no sympathetic interest in your affairs—how can you expect to be happy with her? If she loves you not, you would be more than a fool to try to get her consent to marriage, for is it not the ecstasy of Love to be loved and worshipped alone and beyond any other mortal?
The beauty of her eyes will not last,—it is nothing, anyway, but sunlight mechanically reflected from a darkly-painted iris—and when its youthful brilliancy vanishes there will be no soul-sparks to take its place. And for this brief honeymoon mirage you are willing to give up your bachelor comforts and pleasures, your freedom to do what you please, go where you please, and travel whenever you please; to exchange your refreshing sleep o’ nights for domestic cares and the pleasure of trotting up and down the room with a bawling baby at two o’clock in the morning? Bah! Are you in your senses?
True, if you are rich some of these disadvantages may be avoided. But if you are rich you will not be refused, for—
“Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair,”
as Byron remarks; and again: “For my own part, I am of the opinion of Pausanias, that success in love depends upon Fortune.”
But of all her shortcomings the most galling and fatal is that she loves you not. This thought alone, says Stendhal, may succeed in curing a man of his passion. You will notice, he says, that she whom you love favours others with little attentions which she withholds from you. They may be mere trifles, such as not giving you a chance to help her into her carriage, her box at the opera. The thought of this, by “associating a sense of humiliation with every thought of her, poisons the source of love and may destroy it.”
Thus wounded Pride is the easiest way out of Love, as gratified Pride is the straightest way in.
REASON VERSUS PASSION
According to Shakspere, though Love does not admit Reason as his counsellor, he does use him as his physician. The most effective way of using Reason to cure Love is by way of comparison. By dwelling on the miseries of married life as just detailed, the disappointed lover may mitigate his pains somewhat, as did that Italian mentioned by Schopenhauer, who resisted the agony of torture by constantly keeping in his mind’s eye the picture of the gallows that would have been the reward of confession.
Again, he may compare his present Love with a former infatuation that seemed at the time equally deep and eternal, though now he wonders how he could have ever loved that girl. History repeats itself.