Such continual intercourse would be inconvenient in France, where one must display a certain degree of affectation, and where your mistress can quite well say to you: "Monsieur So-and-so, you're glum this evening; you don't say a word." In Italy it is only a matter of telling the woman you love everything that passes through your head—you must actually think aloud. There is a certain nervous state which results from intimacy; freedom provokes freedom, and is only to be got in this way. But there is one great inconvenience; you find that love in this way paralyses all your tastes and renders all the other occupations of your life insipid. Such love is the best substitute for passion.
Our friends at Paris, who are still at the stage of trying to conceive that it's possible to be a Persian[(71)], not knowing what to say, will cry out that such manners are indecent. To begin with, I am only an historian; and secondly, I reserve to myself the right to show one day, by dint of solid reasoning, that as regards manners and fundamentally, Paris is not superior to Bologna. Quite unconsciously these poor people are still repeating their twopence-halfpenny catechism.
12 July, 1821. There is nothing odious in the society of Bologna. At Paris the role of a deceived husband is execrable; here (at Bologna) it is nothing—there are no deceived husbands. Manners are the same, it is only hate that is missing; the recognised lover is always the husband's friend, and this friendship, which has been cemented by reciprocal services, quite often survives other interests. Most love-affairs last five or six years, many for ever. People part at last, when they no longer find it sweet to tell each other everything, and when the first month of the rupture is over, there is no bitterness.
January, 1822. The ancient mode of the cavaliere servente, imported into Italy by Philip II, along with Spanish pride and manners, has entirely fallen into disuse in the large towns. I know of only one exception, and that's Calabria, where the eldest brother always takes orders, marries his younger brother, sets up in the service of his sister-in-law and becomes at the same time her lover.
Napoleon banished libertinism from upper Italy, and even from here (Naples).
The morals of the present generation of pretty women shame their mothers; they are more favourable to passion-love, but physical love has lost a great deal.[7]
[1] Of that Paris which has given the world Voltaire, Molière and so many men of distinguished wit—but one can't have everything, and it would show little wit to be annoyed at it.
[2] This French habit, growing weaker every day, will increase the distance between us and Molière's heroes.
[3] Every infraction of this honour is a subject of ridicule in bourgeois circles in France. (See M. Picard's Petite Ville.)
[4] See the excellent and curious Histoire de l'Église, by M. de Potter.