CHAPTER XVII
BEAUTY DETHRONED BY LOVE
Alberic meets in a box at the theatre a woman more beautiful than his mistress (I beg to be allowed here a mathematical valuation)—that is to say, her features promise three units of happiness instead of two, supposing the quantity of happiness given by perfect beauty to be expressed by the number four.
Is it surprising that he prefers the features of his mistress, which promise a hundred units of happiness for him? Even the minor defects of her face, a small-pox mark, for example, touches the heart of the man who loves, and, when he observes them even in another woman, sets him dreaming far away. What, then, when he sees them in his mistress? Why, he has felt a thousand sentiments in presence of that small-pox mark, sentiments for the most part sweet, and all of the greatest interest; and now, such as they are, they are evoked afresh with incredible vividness by the sight of this sign, even in the face of another woman.
If ugliness thus comes to be preferred and loved, it is because in this case ugliness is beauty.[1] A man was passionately in love with a woman, very thin and scarred with small-pox: death bereft him of her. At Rome, three years after, he makes friends with two women, one more lovely than the day, the other thin, scarred with small-pox, and thereby, if you will, quite ugly. There he is, at the end of a week, in love with the ugly one—and this week he employs in effacing her ugliness with his memories; and with a very pardonable coquetry the lesser beauty did not fail to help him in the operation with a slight whip-up of the pulse.[2] A man meets a woman and is offended by her ugliness; soon, if she is unpretentious, her expression makes him forget the defects of her features; he finds her amiable—he conceives that one could love her. A week later he has hopes; another week and they are taken from him; another and he's mad.
[1] Beauty is only the promise of happiness. The happiness of a Greek was different to that of a Frenchman of 1822. See the eyes of the Medici Venus and compare them with the eyes of the Magdalen of Pordenone (in the possession of M. de Sommariva.)
[2] If one is sure of the love of a woman, one examines to see if she is more or less beautiful; if one is uncertain of her heart, there is no time to think of her face.
CHAPTER XVIII
LIMITATIONS OF BEAUTY
An analogy is to be seen at the theatre in the reception of the public's favourite actors: the spectators are no longer conscious of the beauty or ugliness which the actors have in reality. Lekain, for all his remarkable ugliness, had a harvest of broken hearts—Garrick also. There are several reasons for this; the principal being that it was no longer the actual beauty of their features or their ways which people saw, but emphatically that which imagination was long since used to lend them, as a return for, and in memory of, all the pleasure they had given it. Why, take a comedian—his face alone raises a laugh as he first walks on.