"And, on the side of affection, what do we not owe to love? After the hazards of early youth, the heart is closed to sympathy. Death and absence remove our early companions, and we are reduced to passing our life with lukewarm partners, measure in hand, for ever calculating ideas of interest and vanity. Little by little all the sensitive and generous region of the soul becomes waste, for want of cultivation, and at less than thirty a man finds his heart steeled to all sweet and gentle sensations. In the midst of this arid desert, love causes a well of feelings to spring up, fresher and more abundant even than that of earliest youth. In those days it was a vague hope, irresponsible and incessantly distracted[4]—no devotion to one thing, no deep and constant desire; the soul, at all times light, was athirst for novelty and forgot to-day its adoration of the day before. But, than the crystallisation of love nothing is more concentrated, more mysterious, more eternally single in its object. In those days only agreeable things claimed to please and to please for an instant: now we are deeply touched by everything which is connected with the loved one—even by objects the most indifferent. Arriving at a great town, a hundred miles from that which Léonore lives in, I was in a state of fear and trembling; at each street corner I shuddered to meet Alviza, the intimate friend of Madame ——, although I did not know her. For me everything took a mysterious and sacred tint. My heart beat fast, while talking to an old scholar; for I could not hear without blushing the name of the city gate, near which the friend of Léonore lives.
"Even the severities of the woman we love have an infinite grace, which the most flattering moments in the company of other women cannot offer. It is like the great shadows in Correggio's pictures, which far from being, as in other painters, passages less pleasant, but necessary in order to give effect to the lights and relief to the figures, have graces of their own which charm and throw us into a gentle reverie.[5]
"Yes, half and the fairest half of life is hidden from the man, who has not loved with passion."
Salviati had need of the whole force of his dialectic powers, to hold his own against the wise Schiassetti, who was always saying to him: "You want to be happy, then be content with a life exempt from pains and with a small quantity of happiness every day. Keep yourself from the lottery of great passions."
"Then give me your curiosity," was Salviati's answer.
I imagine there were not a few days, when he would have liked to be able to follow the advice of our sensible colonel; he made a little struggle and thought he was succeeding; but this line of action was absolutely beyond his strength. And yet what strength was in that soul!
A white satin hat, a little like that of Madame ——, seen in the distance in the street, made his heart stop beating, and forced him to rest against the wall. Even in his blackest moments, the happiness of meeting her gave him always some hours of intoxication, beyond the reach of all misfortune and all reasoning.[6] For the rest, at the time of his death[7] his character had certainly contracted more than one noble habit, after two years of this generous and boundless passion; and, in so far at least, he judged himself correctly. Had he lived, and circumstances helped him a little, he would have made a name for himself. Maybe also, just through his simplicity, his merit would have passed on this earth unseen.
O lasso
Quanti dolci pensier, quanto desio
Menò costui al doloroso passo!
Biondo era, e bello, e di gentile aspetto;
Ma l'un de' cigli un colpo avea diviso.
(Dante.)[8]
[1] Sotto l'usbergo del sentirsi pura. [Under the shield of conscious purity.—Tr.] (Dante, Inf., XXVIII, 117.)