Book 1 — CHAPTER XVIII LIMITATIONS OF BEAUTY
Cecil N. Sidney Woolf translation
An analogy is to be seen at the theatre in the reception of the public's favourite actors: the spectators are no longer conscious of the beauty or ugliness which the actors have in reality. Lekain, for all his remarkable ugliness, had a harvest of broken hearts—Garrick also. There are several reasons for this; the principal being that it was no longer the actual beauty of their features or their ways which people saw, but emphatically that which imagination was long since used to lend them, as a return for, and in memory of, all the pleasure they had given it. Why, take a comedian—his face alone raises a laugh as he first walks on.
A girl going for the first time to the Français would perhaps feel some antipathy to Lekain during the first scene; but soon he was making her weep or shiver—and how resist him as Tancrède[1] or Orosmane?
If his ugliness were still a little visible to her eyes, the fervour of an entire audience, and the nervous effect produced upon a young heart,[2] soon managed to eclipse it. If anything was still heard about his ugliness, it was mere talk; but not a word of it—Lekain's lady enthusiasts could be heard to exclaim "He's lovely!"
Remember that beauty is the expression of character, or, put differently, of moral habits, and that consequently it is exempt from all passion. Now it is passion that we want. Beauty can only supply us with probabilities about a woman, and probabilities, moreover, based on her capacity for self-possession; while the glances of your mistress with her small-pox scars are a delightful reality, which destroys all the probabilities in the world.