To return to this word natural—natural and habitual are two different things. If one takes these words in the same sense, it is evident that the more sensibility in a man, the harder it is for him to be natural, since the influence of habit on his way of being and acting is less powerful, and he himself is more powerful at each new event. In the life-story of a cold heart every page is the same: take him to-day or take him to-morrow, it is always the same dummy.
A man of sensibility, so soon as his heart is touched, loses all traces of habit to guide his action; and how can he follow a path, which he has forgotten all about?
He feels the enormous weight attaching to every word which he says to the object of his love—it seems to him as if a word is to decide his fate. How is he not to look about for the right word? At any rate, how is he not to have the feeling that he is trying to say "the right thing"? And then, there is an end of candour. And so we must give up our claim to candour, that quality of our being, which never reflects upon itself. We are the best we can be, but we feel what we are.
I fancy this brings us to the last degree of naturalness, to which the most delicate heart can pretend in love.
A man of passion can but cling might and main, as his only refuge in the storm, to the vow never to change a jot or tittle of the truth and to read the message of his heart correctly. If the conversation is lively and fragmentary, he may hope for some fine moments of naturalness: otherwise he will only be perfectly natural in hours when he will be a little less madly in love.
In the presence of the loved one, we hardly retain naturalness even in our movements, however deeply such habits are rooted in the muscles. When I gave my arm to Léonore, I always felt on the point of stumbling, and I wondered if I was walking properly. The most one can do is never to be affected willingly: it is enough to be convinced that want of naturalness is the greatest possible disadvantage, and can easily be the source of the greatest misfortunes. For the heart of the woman, whom you love, no longer understands your own; you lose that nervous involuntary movement of sincerity, which answers the call of sincerity. It means the loss of every way of touching, I almost said of winning her. Not that I pretend to deny, that a woman worthy of love may see her fate in that pretty image of the ivy, which "dies if it does not cling"—that is a law of Nature; but to make your lover's happiness is none the less a step that will decide your own. To me it seems that a reasonable woman ought not to give in completely to her lover, until she can hold out no longer, and the slightest doubt thrown on the sincerity of your heart gives her there and then a little strength—enough at least to delay her defeat still another day.[7]
Is it necessary to add that to make all this the last word in absurdity you have only to apply it to gallant-love?
[2] 20 September, 1811.
[3] At the first quarrel Madame Ivernetta gave poor Bariac his congé. Bariac was truly in love and this congé threw him into despair; but his friend Guillaume Balaon, whose life we are writing, was of great help to him and managed, finally, to appease the severe Ivernetta. Peace was restored, and the reconciliation was accompanied by circumstances so delicious, that Bariac swore to Balaon that the hour of the first favours he had received from his mistress had not been as sweet as that of this voluptuous peacemaking. These words turned Balaon's head; he wanted to know this pleasure, of which his friend had just given him a description, etc. etc. (Vie de quelques Troubadours, by Nivernois, Vol. I, p. 32.)