What mass of meditations, what abysses of desperation are gathered in a few seconds in the head of a woman caressed by a man whom she does not love! What eloquence in silence, that silence which Ovid, the libertine, eagerly advised women to avoid! Often does a man press to his bosom a creature who does not love him and whom he too heedlessly prostitutes, while the victim meditates a long, cruel revenge. More than one adultery, more than one assassination was conceived, discussed, vowed in that moment when man, enjoying the supreme bliss, believed to have in his arms a happy creature. More than one embrace has generated twins, a new man and a new hatred; a tenacious and bitter hatred, which only the death of the one who hates can extinguish, since it often survives the death of its object.
O men, you who see in love a cup to empty, and find in matrimony only an association of two capitals or a mechanism for reproducing the species, remember that for many creatures love is the first and the last of passions, the first and the last of joys; and remember that for very many women, whom you neglect and perhaps despise, love is all of life.
There is no nature so unhappy that its distress could not be relieved by another nature capable of mending the shreds of the heart, tempering the bitterness, straightening the rachitic limbs. There is no man, born weak or sickly, who could not become robust if he only should live in a climate, be supplied with food and surrounded with the physical and moral atmosphere that agrees with him. And I believe that the same can apply to love. If we could dedicate half a century to the search for the right woman, if Diogenes' lantern could be fitted with the electric light which modern science concedes to us, certainly among the thousand millions of human beings who tread this planet we could and should be able to find the woman who would be happy with us and make us happy. Unfortunately, life is too short and love is too rapid and exacting in its desires to make such a search possible; and even for the most fortunate and wisest creatures a part of happiness is always among the unknown quantities determined by chance and not by reflection. Hence many and beautiful natures are tied by love-knots, and still are not happy because characters fit each other on many sides of the human polygon but not on all.
The study of these contrasts, of these partial incompatibilities would require the moral analysis of the entire man, of all his social vicissitudes, while many of those sorrows do not belong solely to love, but spring from all human affections and poison friendship, fraternal, filial and paternal loves; some of them, however, are peculiar to the love of loves.
To feel at the same hour, at the same moment, in the same degree, the stimulus of a desire or the thirst for a caress is a rare thing, a fortunate coincidence which gilds with the most beautiful rays the happiest hours of life; but it can never be the bread of a daily bliss. In all other cases, thirst arises in one of the two and is communicated to the other, so that a spark draws a spark, a caress generates caresses. It is an invitation of lips, a fluttering of wings, a harmonious note which calls from a bough to another bough; but it is always the invitation to a rendezvous, the awakening of one who slumbers. In these invitations, in these first skirmishes, the ridiculous always runs parallel and very near to the sublime. Love stands between them, it is true, and never permits them to unite; but the least inadvertence, the least unscrupulous or heedless movement may bring the two elements into contact; and the ridiculous, wherever it touches, wounds self-love and, with it, love.
Even upon the most impatient, the most ridiculous, the most grotesque desires you should throw at once the mantle of love to cover them. Every threat of ridicule then vanishes like vapor; no wounding of self-love is possible. I address myself to woman, because she oftener than we has the opportunity of healing these unsightly wounds, because she has her hand suavely ready to aid. Woe, if your companion should blush through your fault, because you knew not at the proper time and place how to close your eyes or shield them with the merciful veil of your hand or your love!
How much bitterness, how much rancor and spite, how many nettles and thorns are found on the blooming paths of the most fervid passion, just because delicacy of sentiment does not always know how to reconcile the inequalities of the senses, because a too exacting modesty repels a too live ardor of temperament, or because woman does not decide with wise perception that the too exacting demands, prompted by selfish love and not by love, should be allowed to starve! By fleeing one may lose or conquer; by standing one's ground one may lose or conquer: but many flee when they should not recede, many stand firm when they should flee; hence many defeats which disappoint both conquerors and conquered, and love often lies on the ground drenched with its own blood.
The tortures, the spites, the bitternesses, the wearinesses, the stings, the torments of love should be deeply studied because they always move side by side with joy and voluptuousness, and very few are so fortunate as not to stumble against them. Much luck, a thorough knowledge of man, great experience can defend us from them, so that at the end of our career we may bless love, which, though with some slight sorrow, has perfumed our life with its most beautiful flowers.
I have alluded only to some of the torments which populate the hell of love; but their number is infinite, their names are countless. In every field of sentiment, of senses and of intellect man possesses a much greater possibility to suffer than to enjoy; and when bliss is attained and the veins are cut from which oozes the bitter sap of sorrow, it is always after a long, fierce battle, in which we defend ourselves with all the weapons of nature and art. Here also—and here more, perhaps, than anywhere else—the weight of mental virtues is revealed in all its power, the influence of a noble and generous character in all its strength. The ardent and impetuous heart is not a source of greater amorous bitterness when the calm light of reason burns within it, when the sublime incapacity to commit base actions accompanies the desire for the good, when we enjoy more the pleasure we give than that which we receive.