He would be sorry to see his rival renounce the struggle, for the fellow may have the insolence to say in the depth of his heart: "If I had persevered in my original object, I should have outdone him."
With pique, there is no interest in the apparent purpose—the point of everything is victory. This is well brought out in the love affairs of chorus-girls; take away the rival, and the boasted passion, which threatened suicide from the fifth-floor window, instantly subsides.
Love from pique, contrary to passion-love, passes in a moment; it is enough for the antagonist by an irrevocable step to own that he renounces the struggle. I hesitate, however, to advance this maxim, having only one example, and that leaves doubts in my mind. Here are the facts—the reader will judge. Dona Diana is a young person of twenty-three, daughter of one of the richest and proudest citizens of Seville. She is beautiful, without any doubt, but of a peculiar type of beauty, and is credited with ever so much wit and still more pride. She was passionately in love, to all appearances at least, with a young officer, with whom her family would have nothing to do. The officer left for America with Morillo, and they corresponded continuously. One day in the midst of a lot of people, assembled round the mother of Dona Diana, a fool announced the death of the charming officer. All eyes are turned upon Dona Diana; Dona Diana says nothing but these words: "What a pity—so young."
Just that day we had been reading a play of old Massinger, which ends tragically, but in which the heroine takes the death of her lover with this apparent tranquillity. I saw the mother shudder in spite of her pride and dislike; the father went out of the room to hide his joy. In the midst of this scene and the dismay of all present, who were making eyes at the fool who had told the story, Dona Diana, the only one at ease, proceeded with the conversation, as if nothing had happened. Her mother, in apprehension, set her maid to watch her, but nothing seemed to be altered in her behaviour.
Two years later, a very fine young man paid his attentions to her. This time again, and, still for the same reason, Dona Diana's parents violently opposed the marriage, because the aspirant was not of noble birth. She herself declared it should take place. A state of pique ensues between the daughter's sense of honour and the father's. The young man is forbidden the house. Dona Diana is no longer taken to the country and hardly ever to church. With scrupulous care, every means of meeting her lover is taken from her. He disguises himself and sees her secretly at long intervals. She becomes more and more resolute, and refuses the most brilliant matches, even a title and a great establishment at the Court of Ferdinand VII. The whole town is talking of the misfortunes of the two lovers and of their heroic constancy. At last the majority of Dona Diana draws near. She gives her father to understand that she means to make use of her right of disposing of her own hand. The family, driven back on its last resources, opens negotiations for the marriage. When it is half concluded, at an official meeting of the two families, the young man, after six years' constancy, refuses Dona Diana.[4]
A quarter of an hour later no trace of anything—she was consoled. Did she love from pique? Or are we face to face with a great soul, that disclaims to parade its sorrow before the eyes of the world?
In passion-love satisfaction, if I can call it such, is often only to be won by piquing the loved one's self-esteem. Then, in appearance, the lover realises all that can be desired; complaints would be ridiculous and seem senseless. He cannot speak of his misfortune, and yet how constantly he knows and feels its prick! Its traces are inwoven, so to speak, with circumstances, the most flattering and the most fit to awaken illusions of enchantment. This misfortune rears its monstrous head at the tenderest moments, as if to taunt the lover and make him feel, at one and the same instant, all the delight of being loved by the charming and unfeeling creature in his arms, and the impossibility of this delight being his. Perhaps after jealousy, this is the cruellest unhappiness.
The story is still fresh in a certain large town[5] of a man of soft and gentle nature, who was carried away by a rage of this kind to spill the blood of his mistress, who only loved him from pique against her sister. He arranged with her, one evening, to come for a row on the sea by themselves, in a pretty little boat he had devised himself. Once well out to sea, he touches a spring, the boat divides and disappears for ever.
I have seen a man of sixty set out to keep an actress, the most capricious, irresponsible, delightful and wonderful on the London stage—Miss Cornel.
"And you expect that she'll be faithful?" people asked him.