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The admirable laws of chemical affinity are well known to us, and we can follow the kindred and repellent atoms which group themselves under the exact law of numbers. But those other laws which repel and attract human hearts and bodies are, on the contrary, scarcely divined by one who has eyes to read the great book of psychology, where the letters are so minute, the writing mysterious, and even the numbering of the pages incorrect.
Sympathy should be first physical, then moral, and lastly intellectual, following the highroad which leads from the less to the greater, from that which is external to that which is internal.
Everyone knows—even the boccali of Montelupo[2] know—that opposite types seek and love each other. The blond attracts the brown, and vice versa; slight, small women please giants and athletes; delicate natures attract bears, and so on. But there are other occult and mysterious sympathies, where it is not a case of a combination of opposites, and where yet the attraction is exceedingly great and irresistible. How often has it been a wonder to us to see an ugly woman adored by a very handsome man, and an ugly man ardently sought after by women, and having witnessed this strange antithesis we begin at once to speculate what impure explanation, what vile or illicit trading with money or lasciviousness can account for it, while really it is a simple fact of elective affinity, the reasons for which escape us from our ignorance and short-sightedness.
[2] Montelupo, a village on the Arno, is still renowned for its crockery and terracotta. It is highly probable that in the feudal times the mugs and drinking cups, which are called “boccali” even to the present time, were made there; they were exported in large quantities and became so plentiful throughout Tuscany that when any news was widespread, it was said to be known even by the Boccali of Montelupo. Hence the proverb.
Look around you, and in the small circle of your own acquaintance you will find several such singular and extraordinary facts. For my part I have under my eyes a young man, the perfection of a man, aristocratic as regards birth, mind, and income, who, indifferent to the sympathies awakened in women at his every step, is completely absorbed in a woman who is hardly feminine, neither handsome nor young, and to thousands of others indifferent or contemptible.
I see another young man desperately in love with the ruins of a woman, where not even the compassionate ivy of coquetry covers the decay and deficiencies, and in whom there is a complete wreck of all delicacy of outline. He loved her so much that after many years he made her his wife, without any considerations of money.
It matters very little to your happiness or marriage whether lightning or inducted current has electrified you, but sympathy ought to exist between the man and the woman. For charity’s sake, for the love of God, do not forget this; do not believe in the common proverb, which has made so many victims: Marry if all considerations of income and of age agree. Love will come after. No! love will not come after, except by chance, and in exceedingly rare cases. There will come to you, on the contrary, reciprocal antipathy, adultery, a lie in the very surname of your children; there will come all those lively intrigues through which our fine and virtuous modern society moves. If, in the first choice of love, the man and woman do not approach each other with a tremor of holy fear; if their hands do not meet each other intoxicated with the touch; if the first kiss be not a passion, the first embrace a delirium, renounce forever the sweet and fond blessedness of the dual life.
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