Book 1 — CHAPTER III OF HOPE
Cecil N. Sidney Woolf translation
A very small degree of hope is enough to cause the birth of love.
In the course of events hope may fail—love is none the less born. With a firm, daring and impetuous character, and in an imagination developed by the troubles of life, the degree of hope may be smaller: it can come sooner to an end, without killing love.
If a lover has had troubles, if he is of a tender, thoughtful character, if he despairs of other women, and if his admiration is intense for her whom he loves, no ordinary pleasure will succeed in distracting him from the second crystallisation. He will prefer to dream of the most doubtful chance of pleasing her one day, than to accept from an ordinary woman all she could lavish.
The woman whom he loves would have to kill his hope at that period, and (note carefully, not later) in some inhuman manner, and overwhelm him with those marks of patent contempt, which make it impossible to appear again in public.
Far longer delays between all these periods are compatible with the birth of love.
It demands much more hope and much more substantial hope, in the case of the cold, the phlegmatic and the prudent. The same is true of people no longer young.
It is the second crystallisation which ensures love's duration, for then every moment makes it clear that the question is—be loved or die. Long months of love have turned into habit this conviction of our every moment—how find means to support the thought of loving no more? The stronger the character the less is it subject to inconstancy.
This second crystallisation is almost entirely absent from the passions inspired by women who yield too soon.
After the crystallisations have worked—especially the second, which is far the stronger—the branch is no longer to be recognised by indifferent eyes, for:—
(1) It is adorned with perfections which they do not see.
(2) It is adorned with perfections which for them are not perfections at all.
The perfection of certain charms, mentioned to him by an old friend of his love, and a certain hint of liveliness noticed in her eye, are a diamond in the crystallisation[1] of Del Rosso. These ideas, conceived during the evening, keep him dreaming all the night.
An unexpected answer, which makes me see more clearly a tender, generous, ardent, or, as it is popularly called, romantic[2] soul, preferring to the happiness of kings the simple pleasures of a walk with the loved one at midnight in a lonely wood, gives me food for dreams[3] for a whole night.
Let him call my mistress a prude: I shall call his a whore.