Love à la Werther opens the soul to all the arts, to all sweet and romantic impressions, to the moonlight, to the beauty of the forest, to the beauty of pictures—in a word, to the feeling and enjoyment of the beautiful, under whatever form it be found, even under the coarsest cloak. It causes man to find happiness even without riches.[1] Such souls, instead of growing weary like Mielhan, Bezenval, etc., go mad, like Rousseau, from an excess of sensibility. Women endowed with a certain elevation of soul, who, after their first youth, know how to recognise love, both where it is and what it is, generally escape the Don Juan—he is remarkable in their eyes rather by the number than the quality of his conquests. Observe, to the prejudice of tender hearts, that publicity is as necessary to Don Juan's triumph as secrecy is to Werther's. Most of the men who make women the business of their life are born in the lap of luxury; that is to say, they are, as a result of their education and the example set by everything that surrounded them in youth, hardened egoists.[2]
The real Don Juan even ends by looking on women as the enemy, and rejoicing in their misfortunes of every sort.
On the other hand, the charming Duke delle Pignatelle showed us the proper way to find happiness in pleasures, even without passion. "I know that I like a woman," he told me one evening, "when I find myself completely confused in her company, and don't know what to say to her." So far from letting his self-esteem be put to shame or take its revenge for these embarrassing moments, he cultivated them lovingly as the source of his happiness. With this charming young man gallant-love was quite free from the corroding influence of vanity; his was a shade of true love, pale, but innocent and unmixed; and he respected all women, as charming beings, towards whom we are far from just. (February 20, 1820.)
As a man does not choose himself a temperament, that is to say, a soul, he cannot play a part above him. J. J. Rousseau and the Duc de Richelieu might have tried in vain; for all their cleverness, they could never have exchanged their fortunes with respect to women. I could well believe that the Duke never had moments such as those that Rousseau experienced in the park de la Chevrette with Madame d'Houdetot; at Venice, when listening to the music of the Scuole; and at Turin at the feet of Madame Bazile. But then he never had to blush at the ridicule that overwhelmed Rousseau in his affair with Madame de Larnage, remorse for which pursued him during the rest of his life.
A Saint-Preux's part is sweeter and fills up every moment of existence, but it must be owned that that of a Don Juan is far more brilliant. Saint-Preux's tastes may change at middle age: solitary and retired, and of pensive habits, he takes a back place on the stage of life, while Don Juan realises the magnificence of his reputation among men, and could yet perhaps please a woman of feeling by making sincerely the sacrifice of his libertine's tastes.
After all the reasons offered so far, on both sides of the question, the balance still seems to be even. What makes me think that the Werthers are the happier, is that Don Juan reduces love to the level of an ordinary affair. Instead of being able, like Werther, to shape realities to his desires, he finds, in love, desires which are imperfectly satisfied by cold reality, just as in ambition, avarice or other passions. Instead of losing himself in the enchanting reveries of crystallisation, he thinks, like a general, of the success of his manoeuvres[3] and, in a word, he kills love, instead of enjoying it more keenly than other men, as ordinary people imagine.
This seems to me unanswerable. And there is another reason, which is no less so in my eyes, though, thanks to the malignity of Providence, we must pardon men for not recognising it. The habit of justice is, to my thinking, apart from accidents, the most assured way of arriving at happiness—and a Werther is no villain.[4]
To be happy in crime, it is absolutely necessary to have no remorse. I do not know whether such a creature can exist;[5] I have never seen him. I would bet that the affair of Madame Michelin disturbed the Duc de Richelieu's nights.
One ought either to have absolutely no sympathy or be able to put the human race to death—which is impossible.[6]
People who only know love from novels will experience a natural repugnance in reading these words in favour of virtue in love. The reason is that, by the laws of the novel, the portraiture of a virtuous love is essentially tiresome and uninteresting. Thus the sentiment of virtue seems from a distance to neutralise that of love, and the words "a virtuous love" seem synonymous with a feeble love. But all this comes from weakness in the art of painting, and has nothing to do with passion such as it exists in nature.[7]