Little tiffs, sulkings, fits of temper, and even of jealousy--have as many as you like, they will act as shovels of fuel to keep love and interest alive; but reproaches about origin, antecedents, former poverty, early a.s.sociations, claims to grat.i.tude especially, will only lead to the inevitable and somewhat logical answer, 'If you married me, I imagine it was because you thought I was as good as you.'

There is no remedy known for the harm done by such reproaches and claims to grat.i.tude.

CHAPTER XLV

CUPIDIANA

Stray thoughts on women, love and matrimony.

Few lovers are sure of each other. If you doubt it, listen to what they say, and you will constantly hear them repeat: 'Do you love me?' 'Will you always love me?' or 'How long will you love me?' They will often wake each other in the night to repeat these questions.

Men should cease to be jealous when they discover that they have real ground for being jealous. I do not believe that jealousy comes from true love; but justifiable jealousy should cure one of love.

Love sanctifies everything. Men and women, who really love each other and are faithful, are virtuous.

If you love a woman from the depths of your heart and soul, no words can be found adequate to convey an idea of it.

You cannot blame a man or a woman for being in love any more than you can blame them for having the toothache. If the love they feel is a misfortune to them, or the cause of unhappiness to others, pity them all.

Friendship is the old age of love. Happy the husband and wife who, when the days of love and pa.s.sion are gone, find real happiness and blessed rest in friendship.

There should be no other law than love to bind a man and a woman together. The day they cease to love each other should be the day on which the contract determines, and they become friends.

The intelligent, artistic, refined man is a gourmet in love; the foolish and brutal man is a gourmand.

Men in old age often give young ones salutary advice as a consolation for being unable to give them bad example.

However ill you may speak or think of women, you will always find a woman able to do it better than you.

Why are women far less indulgent than men for the faults of women?

If I were a beautiful woman, oh, how I should hate women!

The woman who has never succ.u.mbed to temptation, often because temptation has never been in her way, is inexorable for the weaknesses of her s.e.x.

Nine times out of ten the ugly woman will at once accept as reliably true any gossip she hears on the subject of a beautiful woman. She draws herself up and thinks: 'No one could ever say such things of me.'

And she is right: no one would who did not wish to be grossly flattering.

Only the woman who has yielded to temptation is charitable, and will help the fallen angel. Like Dido, she says:

'Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.'

It is because I love and revere woman that I pity the fallen one, and cannot say an unkind word of her.

I think that men should go down on their knees before the fallen women, and implore their pardon, in the name of their s.e.x, for the injury--the criminal, irretrievable injury--that has been done to them by the curs and scoundrels who are the cause of their present condition.

A woman is a wretched coward who, having had, in succession, the protection of a father and of a husband, does not pity and help, if she can, the beautiful, unprotected girl who has tried to fight the battle of life by herself, and has been wounded.

Woman is an angel who seldom appreciates a man who has not a bit of the devil in him.

The most religious woman will postpone an interview with her Maker for an appointment with her dressmaker.

Matrimony is like any other contract: an agreement signed by two honourable persons, each of whom, in every clause, takes the other to be a dishonourable one.