Madame, you ask me whether I am laughing at you? You cannot believe that a man has
never been in love. Well, then, no, no, I have never loved, never!
Why is this? I really cannot tell. I have never experienced that intoxication of the heart
which we call love! Never have I lived in that dream, in that exaltation, in that state of
madness into which the image of a woman casts us. I have never been pursued, haunted,
roused to fever heat, lifted up to Paradise by the thought of meeting, or by the possession
of, a being who had suddenly become for me more desirable than any good fortune, more
beautiful than any other creature, of more consequence than the whole world! I have
never wept, I have never suffered on account of any of you. I have not passed my nights
sleepless, while thinking of her. I have no experience of waking thoughts bright with
thought and memories of her. I have never known the wild rapture of hope before her
arrival, or the divine sadness of regret when she went from me, leaving behind her a
delicate odor of violet powder.
I have never been in love.
I have also often asked myself why this is. And truly I can scarcely tell. Nevertheless I
have found some reasons for it; but they are of a metaphysical character, and perhaps you
will not be able to appreciate them.
I suppose I am too critical of women to submit to their fascination. I ask you to forgive
me for this remark. I will explain what I mean. In every creature there is a moral being
and a physical being. In order to love, it would be necessary for me to find a harmony
between these two beings which I have never found. One always predominates;
sometimes the moral, sometimes the physical.
The intellect which we have a right to require in a woman, in order to love her, is not the
same as the virile intellect. It is more, and it is less. A woman must be frank, delicate,
sensitive, refined, impressionable. She has no need of either power or initiative in
thought, but she must have kindness, elegance, tenderness, coquetry and that faculty of
assimilation which, in a little while, raises her to an equality with him who shares her life.
Her greatest quality must be tact, that subtle sense which is to the mind what touch is to
the body. It reveals to her a thousand little things, contours, angles and forms on the plane
of the intellectual.
Very frequently pretty women have not intellect to correspond with their personal
charms. Now, the slightest lack of harmony strikes me and pains me at the first glance. In
friendship this is not of importance. Friendship is a compact in which one fairly shares
defects and merits. We may judge of friends, whether man or woman, giving them credit
for what is good, and overlooking what is bad in them, appreciating them at their just
value, while giving ourselves up to an intimate, intense and charming sympathy.
