A woman of quick fancy and tender heart, but timid and cautious in her sensibility, who the day after she appears in society, passes in review a thousand times nervously and painfully all that she may have said or given hint of—such a woman, I say, grows easily used to want of beauty in a man: it is hardly an obstacle in rousing her affection.
It is really on the same principle that you care next to nothing for the degree of beauty in a mistress, whom you adore and who repays you with harshness. You have very nearly stopped crystallising her beauty, and when your friend in need tells you that she isn't pretty, you are almost ready to agree. Then he thinks he has made great way.
My friend, brave Captain Trab, described to me this evening his feelings on seeing Mirabeau once upon a time. No one looking upon that great man felt a disagreeable sensation in the eyes—that is to say, found him ugly. People were carried away by his thundering words; they fixed their attention, they delighted in fixing their attention, only on what was beautiful in his face. As he had practically no beautiful features (in the sense of sculpturesque or picturesque beauty) they minded only what beauty he had of another kind, the beauty of expression.[1]
While attention was blind to all traces of ugliness, picturesquely speaking, it fastened on the smallest passable details with fervour—for example, the beauty of his vast head of hair. If he had had horns, people would have thought them lovely.[2]
The appearance every evening of a pretty dancer forces a little interest from those poor souls, blasé or bereft of imagination, who adorn the balcony of the opera. By her graceful movements, daring and strange, she awakens their physical love and procures them perhaps the only crystallisation of which they are still capable. This is the way by which a young scarecrow, who in the street would not have been honoured with a glance, least of all from people the worse for wear, has only to appear frequently on the stage, and she manages to get herself handsomely supported. Geoffroy used to say that the theatre is the pedestal of woman. The more notorious and the more dilapidated a dancer, the more she is worth; hence the green-room proverb: "Some get sold at a price who wouldn't be taken as a gift." These women steal part of their passions from their lovers, and are very susceptible of love from pique.
How manage not to connect generous or lovable sentiments with the face of an actress, in whose features there is nothing repugnant, whom for two hours every evening we see expressing the most noble feelings, and whom otherwise we do not know? When at last you succeed in being received by her, her features recall such pleasing feelings, that the entire reality which surrounds her, however little nobility it may sometimes possess, is instantly invested with romantic and touching colours.
"Devotee, in the days of my youth, of that boring French tragedy,[3] whenever I had the luck of supping with Mlle. Olivier, I found myself every other moment overbrimming with respect, in the belief that I was speaking to a queen; and really I have never been quite sure whether, in her case, I had fallen in love with a queen or a pretty tart."
[1] That is the advantage of being à la mode. Putting aside the defects of a face which are already familiar, and no longer have any effect upon the imagination, the public take hold of one of the three following ideas of beauty:—
(1) The people—of the idea of wealth.
(2) The upper classes—of the idea of elegance, material or moral.