Most men demand such a proof of love, as to their mind dissipates all doubts; women are not so fortunate as to be able to find such a proof. And there is in life this trouble for lovers—that what makes the security and happiness of one, makes the danger and almost the humiliation of the other.
In love, men run the risk of the secret torture of the soul—women expose themselves to the scoffs of the public; they are more timid, and, besides, for them public opinion means much more.—"Sois considérée, il le faut."[2]
They have not that sure means of ours of mastering public opinion by risking for an instant their life.
Women, then, must naturally be far more mistrustful. In virtue of their habits, all the mental movements, which form periods in the birth of love, are in their case more mild, more timid, more gradual and less decided. There is therefore a greater disposition to constancy; they will less easily withdraw from a crystallisation once begun.
A woman, seeing her lover, reflects with rapidity, or yields to the happiness of loving—happiness from which she is recalled in a disagreeable manner, if he make the least attack; for at the call to arms all pleasures must be abandoned.
The lover's part is simpler—he looks in the eyes of the woman he loves; a single smile can raise him to the zenith of happiness, and he looks continually for it.[3] The length of the siege humiliates a man; on the contrary it makes a woman's glory.
A woman is capable of loving and, for an entire year, not saying more than ten or twelve words to the man whom she loves. At the bottom of her heart she keeps note how often she has seen him—twice she went with him to the theatre, twice she sat near him at dinner, three times he bowed to her out walking.
One evening during some game he kissed her hand: it is to be noticed that she allows no one since to kiss it under any pretext, at the risk even of seeming peculiar.
In a man, Léonore[(6)] remarked to me, such conduct would be called a feminine way of love.
[1] Epicurus said that discrimination is necessary to participation in pleasure.