Читать книгу On Love - Stendhal - Страница 16

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Women attach themselves by the favours they dispense. As nineteen-twentieths of their ordinary dreams are relative to love, after intimate intercourse these day-dreams group themselves round a single object; they have to justify a course so extraordinary, so decisive, so contrary to all the habits of modesty. Men have no such task; and, besides, the imagination of women has time to work in detail upon the sweetness of such moments.

As love casts doubts upon things the best proved, the woman who, before she gave herself, was perfectly sure that her lover was a man above the crowd, no sooner thinks she has nothing left to refuse him, than she is all fears lest he was only trying to put one more woman on his list.

Then, and then only appears the second crystallisation, which, being hand in hand with fear, is far the stronger.[1]

Yesterday a queen, to-day she sees herself a slave. This state of soul and mind is encouraged in a woman by the nervous intoxication resulting from pleasures, which are just so much keener as they are more rare. Besides, a woman before her embroidery frame—insipid work which only occupies the hand—is thinking about her lover; while he is galloping with his squadron over the plain, where leading one wrong movement would bring him under arrest.

I should think, therefore, that the second crystallisation must be far stronger in the case of women, because theirs are more vivid fears; their vanity and honour are compromised; distraction at least is more difficult.

A woman cannot be guided by the habit of being reasonable, which I, Man, working at things cold and reasonable for six hours every day, contract at my office perforce. Even outside love, women are inclined to abandon themselves to their imagination and habitual high spirits: faults, therefore, in the object of their love ought more rapidly to disappear.

Women prefer emotion to reason—that is plain: in virtue of the futility of our customs, none of the affairs of the family fall on their shoulders, so that reason is of no use to them and they never find it of any practical good.

On the contrary, to them it is always harmful; for the only object of its appearance is to scold them for the pleasures of yesterday, or forbid them others for tomorrow.

Give over to your wife the management of your dealings with the bailiffs of two of your farms—I wager the accounts will be kept better than by you, and then, sorry tyrant, you will have the right at least to complain, since to make yourself loved you do not possess the talent. As soon as women enter on general reasonings, they are unconsciously making love. But in matters of detail they take pride in being stricter and more exact than men. Half the small trading is put into the hands of women, who acquit themselves of it better than their husbands. It is a well-known maxim that, if you are speaking business with a woman, you cannot be too serious.

This is because they are at all times and in all places greedy of emotion.—Observe the pleasures of burial rites in Scotland.

[1] This second crystallisation is wanting in light women, who are far away from all these romantic ideas.