CHAPTER XXXVIII
OF SELF-ESTEEM PIQUED[1]
Pique is a manifestation of vanity; I do not want my antagonist to go higher than myself and I take that antagonist himself as judge of my worth. I want to produce an effect on his heart. It is this that carries us so far beyond all reasonable limits.
Sometimes, to justify our own extravagance, we go so far as to tell ourselves that this rival has a mind to dupe us.
Pique, being an infirmity of honour, is far more common in monarchies; it must, surely, be exceedingly rare in countries, where the habit is rampant of valuing things according to their utility—for example, in the United States.
Every man, and a Frenchman sooner than any other, loathes being taken for a dupe; and yet the lightness of the French character under the old monarchic régime[2], prevented pique from working great havoc beyond the domains of gallantry and gallant-love. Pique has produced serious tragedies only in monarchies, where, through the climate, the shade of character is darker (Portugal, Piedmont).
The provincial in France forms a ludicrous idea of what is considered a gentleman in good society—and then he takes cover behind his model, and waits there all his life to see that no one trespasses. And so good-bye naturalness! He is always in a state of pique, a mania which gives a laughable character even to his love affairs. This enviousness is what makes it most unbearable to live in small towns, and one should remind oneself of this, when one admires the picturesque situation of any of them. The most generous and noble emotions are there paralysed by contact with all that is most low in the products of civilisation. In order to put the finishing touch to their awfulness, these bourgeois talk of nothing but the corruption of great cities.[3]
Pique cannot exist in passion-love; it is feminine pride. "If I let my lover treat me badly, he will despise me and no longer be able to love me." It may also be jealousy in all its fury.
Jealousy desires the death of the object it fears. The man in a state of pique is miles away from that—he wants his enemy to live, and, above all, be witness of his triumph.