CLX
In a man who, to be released from life, has taken poison, the moral part of his being is dead. Dazed by what he has done and by what he is about to experience, he no longer attends to anything. There are some rare exceptions.
CLXI
An old sea captain, to whom I respectfully offered my manuscript, thought it the silliest thing in the world to honour with six hundred pages so trivial a thing as love. But, however trivial, love is still the only weapon which can strike strong souls, and strike home.
What was it prevented M. de M——, in 1814, from despatching Napoleon in the forest of Fontainebleau? The contemptuous glance of a pretty woman coming into the Bains-Chinois.[1] What a difference in the destiny of the world if Napoleon and his son had been killed in 1814!
[1] Memoirs, p. 88. (London edition.)
CLXII
I quote the following lines from a French letter received from Znaim, remarking at the same time that there is not a man in the provinces capable of understanding my brilliant lady correspondent:—
"... Chance means a lot in love. When for a whole year I have read no English, I find the first novel I pick up delicious. One who is used to the love of a prosaic being—slow, shy of all that is refined, and passionately responsive to none but material interests, the love of shekels, the glory of a fine stable and bodily desires, etc.—can easily feel disgust at the behaviour of impetuous genius, ardent and uncurbed in fancy, mindful of love, forgetful of all the rest, always active and always headlong, just where the other let himself be led and never acted for himself. The shock, which genius causes, may offend what, last year at Zithau, we used to call feminine pride, l'orgueil féminin—(is that French?) With the man of genius comes the startling feeling which with his predecessor was unknown—and, remember, this predecessor came to an untimely end in the wars and remains a synonym for perfection. This feeling may easily be mistaken for repulsion by a soul, lofty but without that assurance which is the fruit of a goodly number of intrigues."