CHAPTER XXIX
OF WOMEN'S COURAGE
I tell thee, proud Templar, that not in thy fiercest battles hast thou displayed more of thy vaunted courage than has been shewn by women, when called upon to suffer by affection or duty. (Ivanhoe.)
I remember meeting the following phrase in a book of history: "All the men lost their head: that is the moment when women display an incontestable superiority."
Their courage has a reserve which that of their lover wants; he acts as a spur to their sense of worth. They find so much pleasure in being able, in the fire of danger, to dispute the first place for firmness with the man, who often wounds them by the proudness of his protection and his strength, that the vehemence of that enjoyment raises them above any kind of fear, which at the moment is the man's weak point. A man, too, if the same help were given him at the same moment, would show himself superior to everything; for fear never resides in the danger, but in ourselves.
Not that I mean to depreciate women's courage—I have seen them, on occasions, superior to the bravest men. Only they must have a man to love. Then they no longer feel except through him; and so the most obvious and personal danger becomes, as it were, a rose to gather in his presence.[1]
I have found also in women, who did not love, intrepidity, the coldest, the most surprising and the most exempt from nerves.
It is true, I have always imagined that they are so brave, only because they do not know the tiresomeness of wounds!
As for moral courage, so far superior to the other, the firmness of a woman who resists her love is simply the most admirable thing, which can exist on earth. All other possible marks of courage are as nothing compared to a thing so strongly opposed to nature and so arduous. Perhaps they find a source of strength in the habit of sacrifice, which is bred in them by modesty.
Hard on women it is that the proofs of this courage should always remain secret and be almost impossible to divulge.
Still harder that it should always be employed against their own happiness: the Princesse de Clèves would have done better to say nothing to her husband and give herself to M. de Nemours.