Naturalness cannot be praised too highly. It is the only coquetry permissible in a thing so serious as love à la Werther; in which a man has no idea where he is going, and in which at the same time by a lucky chance for virtue, that is his best policy. A man, really moved, says charming things unconsciously; he speaks a language which he does not know himself.
Woe to the man the least bit affected! Given he were in love, allow him all the wit in the world, he loses three-quarters of his advantages. Let him relapse for an instant into affectation—a minute later comes a moment of frost.
The whole art of love, as it seems to me, reduces itself to saying exactly as much as the degree of intoxication at the moment allows of, that is to say in other terms, to listen to one's heart. It must not be thought, that this is so easy; a man, who truly loves, has no longer strength to speak, when his mistress says anything to make him happy.
Thus he loses the deeds which his words[4] would have given birth to. It is better to be silent than say things too tender at the wrong time, and what was in point ten seconds ago, is now no longer—in fact at this moment it makes a mess of things. Every time that I used to infringe this rule[5] and say something, which had come into my head three minutes earlier and which I thought pretty, Léonore never failed to punish me. And later I would say to myself, as I went away—"She is right." This is the sort of thing to upset women of delicacy extremely; it is indecency of sentiment. Like tasteless rhetoricians, they are readier to admit a certain degree of weakness and coldness. There being nothing in the world to alarm them but the falsity of their lover, the least little insincerity of detail, be it the most innocent in the world, robs them instantly of all delight and puts mistrust into their heart.
Respectable women have a repugnance to what is vehement and unlooked for—those being none the less characteristics of passion—and, furthermore, that vehemence alarms their modesty; they are on the defensive against it.
When a touch of jealousy or displeasure has occasioned some chilliness, it is generally possible to begin subjects, fit to give birth to the excitement favourable to love, and, after the first two or three phrases of introduction, as long as a man does not miss the opportunity of saying exactly what his heart suggests, the pleasure he will give to his loved one will be keen. The fault of most men is that they want to succeed in saying something, which they think either pretty or witty or touching—instead of releasing their soul from the false gravity of the world, until a degree of intimacy and naturalness brings out in simple language what they are feeling at the moment. The man, who is brave enough for this, will have instantly his reward in a kind of peacemaking.
It is this reward, as swift as it is involuntary, of the pleasure one gives to the object of one's love, which puts this passion so far above the others.
If there is perfect naturalness between them, the happiness of two individuals comes to be fused together.[6] This is simply the greatest happiness which can exist, by reason of sympathy and several other laws of human nature.
It is quite easy to determine the meaning of this word naturalness—essential condition of happiness in love.
We call natural that which does not diverge from an habitual way of acting. It goes without saying that one must not merely never lie to one's love, but not even embellish the least bit or tamper with the simple outline of truth. For if a man is embellishing, his attention is occupied in doing so and no longer answers simply and truly, as the keys of a piano, to the feelings mirrored in his eye. The woman finds it out at once by a certain chilliness within her, and she, in her turn, falls back on coquetry. Might not here be found hidden the cause why it is impossible to love a woman with a mind too far below one's own—the reason being that, in her case, one can make pretence with impunity, and, as that course is more convenient, one abandons oneself to unnaturalness by force of habit? From that moment love is no longer love; it sinks to the level of an ordinary transaction—the only difference being that, instead of money, you get pleasure or flattery or a mixture of both. It is hard not to feel a shade of contempt for a woman, before whom one can with impunity act a part, and consequently, in order to throw her over, one only needs to come across something better in her line. Habit or vow may hold, but I am speaking of the heart's desire, whose nature it is to fly to the greatest pleasure.