I noticed that the most tenderly-inclined men and those who thought most of women were the ones who abused them worse than all the others and who returned to the subject with particular persistency, as if they were mortally aggrieved with them for not being such as they would like them to be, and thus falsifying the good opinion they had formed of them at first.
What I wanted before everything was not physical beauty, but beauty of the heart, love; but love as I understand it may not be within the bounds of human possibilities.—And yet it seems to me that I could love so and that I would give more than I demand.
What magnificent folly! what sublime prodigality!
To deliver yourself absolutely, keeping nothing at all of yourself, to renounce control of yourself and your free-will, to place your will in another's hands, to see only with his eyes, to hear only with his ears, to be but one in two bodies, to mingle and blend your hearts in such a way that you do not know whether you are yourself or the other, to absorb and radiate continually, to be now the moon and now the sun, to see the whole world and all creation in a single being, to displace the centre of life, to be ready, at any moment, for the greatest sacrifices and the most absolute self-abnegation; to suffer the pangs of your beloved as if they were your own; O prodigy! to make yourself double by giving yourself away;—that is love as I understand it.
The fidelity of ivy, the twining of a young vine, the cooing of the turtle-dove, all those go without saying, they are the first and simplest conditions.
If I had remained at home, in the costume of my own sex, listlessly turning my spinning-wheel or making tapestry in a window recess behind the glass, this thing that I have sought the world over would perhaps have found me out unaided. Love is like fortune, it does not like to be run after. It visits by preference those who sleep on well-curbs, and the kisses of queens and goddesses often descend upon closed eyes.—It blinds and deceives you to think that all adventures and all good fortune exist only in the places where you are not, and it is a bad plan to order your horse saddled or to post off in search of your ideal. Many people have made that mistake, many more will make it.—The horizon is always of the loveliest azure, although, when you arrive there, the hills that compose it are usually only bare, seamed, rain-swept fields of yellow clay.
I fancied that the world was full of adorable young men, and that I should meet on the roads whole tribes of Esplandians, Amadises and Launcelots of the Lake in search of their Dulcineas, and I was greatly amazed to find that the world paid but little heed to that sublime search and was content to lie with the first strumpet that came to hand; I am severely punished for my curiosity and my suspicion. I am the most horribly blasé creature in the world without ever having enjoyed anything. In my case, knowledge has gone before experience; there is nothing worse than such premature knowledge which is not the fruit of action.—The most absolute ignorance would be a hundred thousand times better, it would at least make you do many foolish things which would serve to instruct you and rectify your ideas; for, under this disgust of which I spoke just now, there is always an active, rebellious element which produces the most extraordinary confusion; the mind is convinced, the body is not, and will not subscribe to this superb disdain. The young and robust body plunges and rears under the mind like a lusty stallion ridden by a feeble old man whom he cannot unseat, for the nose-band holds his head and the bit tears his mouth.
Since I have lived with men, I have seen so many women shamefully betrayed, so many secret liaisons imprudently divulged, the purest passions recklessly dragged in the wind, young men hurrying off to vile harlots from the arms of the most charming mistresses, the most firmly-established intrigues broken off suddenly and for no plausible reason, that it is no longer possible for me to make up my mind to take a lover.—It would be like throwing myself into a bottomless abyss in broad daylight with my eyes open.—However, it is still the secret longing of my heart to have one. The voice of nature stifles the voice of reason.—I feel sure that I shall never be happy if I do not love and am not loved; but the unfortunate part of it is that I can have none but a man for a lover, and if men are not devils altogether, they are certainly very far from being angels. It would not avail them to glue wings to their shoulder-blades and put crowns of gold paper on their heads; I know them too well to allow myself to be deceived.—All the fine speeches they might make me would do no good. I know in advance what they will say and I could finish them by myself. I have seen them study their rôles and read them over before going on the stage; I know all their principal harangues for effect and the passages they rely upon.—Neither the pallor of the face nor the distortion of the features would convince me. I know that those things prove nothing.—A night's debauch, a few bottles of wine and two or three girls are enough to make up the face very nicely. I have seen that cunning trick played by a young marquis, naturally very fresh and rosy, with whom it worked exceedingly well, and who owed to that touching pallor, so worthily earned, the crowning of his flame.—I also know how the most lackadaisical Celadons console themselves for the cruelty of their Astreas and find a way to possess their souls in patience, awaiting their hour of bliss.—I have seen the drabs who acted as understudies for modest Ariadnes.
In truth, after that, man does not tempt me much; for he hasn't beauty like woman—beauty, that magnificent garment which so well conceals the imperfections of the soul, that divine drapery which God has cast over the nudity of the world, and which in some sort makes one excusable for loving the vilest courtesan in the gutter, if she possesses that royal, magnificent gift.
In default of mental virtues, I would like to have at least the exquisite perfection of form, the satiny flesh, the roundness of outline, the graceful curves, the fine texture of the skin, everything that tends to make women charming.—Since I cannot have love, I would at least have sensual pleasure, and fill the brother's place with the sister as far as possible.—But all the men I have seen seem to me horribly ugly. My horse is a hundred times handsomer, and I could kiss him with less repugnance than some dandies who deem themselves extremely fascinating. Certain it is that the genus fop, as I know it, would be by no means a brilliant theme for me to embroider with variations of pleasure.—A man of the sword would suit me no better; soldiers have something mechanical in their gait, and bestial in their faces, which causes me to consider them as something less than human beings; nor do men of the robe attract me much more, for they are dirty, greasy, unkempt, threadbare creatures, with a green eye and a mouth without lips; they smell terribly of must and mould, and I should not enjoy putting my face against their wolf's or badger's muzzle. As for poets, they have no thought for anything on earth except the ends of words, they go back no farther than the penultimate, and it is no exaggeration to say that it is hard to put them to any suitable use; they are greater bores than the others, and they are quite as ugly too, and have not the least distinction or refinement in their manners or their clothes, which is really strange enough:—people who think all day of nothing but form and beauty do not notice that their boots are ill-made and their hats absurd! They look like country apothecaries or exhibitors of trained dogs out of work, and would disgust you with poesy and poetry for several eternities.