"Love gives the keenest possible of all sensations—and the proof is that in these moments of 'inflammation,' as physiologists would say, the heart is open to those 'complex sensations' which Helvétius, Buffon and other philosophers think so absurd. The other day, as you know, Luizina fell into the lake; you see, her eye was following a laurel leaf that had fallen from a tree on Isola-Madre (one of the Borromean Islands). The poor woman owned to me that one day her lover, while talking to her, threw into the lake the leaves of a laurel branch he was stripping, and said: 'Your cruelty and the calumnies of your friend are preventing me from turning my life to account and winning a little glory.'
"It is a peculiar and incomprehensible fact that, when some great passion has brought upon the soul moments of torture and extreme unhappiness, the soul comes to despise the happiness of a peaceful life, where everything seems framed to our desires. A fine country-house in a picturesque position, substantial means, a good wife, three pretty children, and friends charming and numerous—this is but a mere outline of all our host. General C——, possesses. And yet he said, as you know, he felt tempted to go to Naples and take the command of a guerilla band. A soul made for passion soon finds this happy life monotonous, and feels, perhaps, that it only offers him commonplace ideas. 'I wish,' C. said to you, 'that I had never known the fever of high passion. I wish I could rest content with the apparent happiness on which people pay me every day such stupid compliments, which, to put the finishing touch to, I have to answer politely.'"
I, a philosopher, rejoin: "Do you want the thousandth proof that we are not created by a good Being? It is the fact that pleasure does not make perhaps half as much impression on human life as pain...."[1] The Contessina interrupted me. "In life there are few mental pains that are not rendered sweet by the emotion they themselves excite, and, if there is a spark of magnanimity in the soul, this pleasure is increased a hundredfold. The man condemned to death in 1815 and saved by chance (M. de Lavalette[(65)], for example), if he was going courageously to his doom, must recall that moment ten times a month. But the coward, who was going to die crying and yelling (the exciseman, Morris, thrown into the lake, Rob Roy)—suppose him also saved by chance—can at most recall that instant with pleasure because he was saved, not for the treasures of magnanimity that he discovered with him, and that take away for the future all his fears."
I: "Love, even unhappy love, gives a gentle soul, for whom a thing imagined is a thing existent, treasures of this kind of enjoyment. He weaves sublime visions of happiness and beauty about himself and his beloved. How often has Salviati heard Léonore, with her enchanting smile, say, like Mademoiselle Mars in Les Fausses Confidences: 'Well, yes, I do love you!' No, these are never the illusions of a prudent mind."
Fulvia (raising her eyes to heaven): "Yes, for you and me, love, even unhappy love, if only our admiration for the beloved knows no limit, is the supreme happiness."
(Fulvia is twenty-three,—the most celebrated beauty of ... Her eyes were heavenly as she talked like this at midnight and raised them towards the glorious sky above the Borromean Islands. The stars seemed to answer her. I looked down and could find no more philosophical arguments to meet her. She continued:)
"And all that the world calls happiness is not worth the trouble. Only contempt, I think, can cure this passion; not contempt too violent, for that is torture. For you men it is enough to see the object of your adoration love some gross, prosaic creature, or sacrifice you in order to enjoy pleasures of luxurious comfort with a woman friend."
[1] See the analysis of the ascetic principle in Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation.
By giving oneself pain one pleases a good Being.