AT last they have arrived. I was sitting by the window when I heard the clattering of their carriage. My heart throbbed... What does it mean? Can it be that I am in love?... I am so stupidly constituted that such a thing might be expected of me.
I dined at their house. Princess Ligovski looked at me with much tenderness, and did not leave her daughter’s side... a bad sign! On the other hand, Vera is jealous of me in regard to Princess Mary—however, I have been striving for that good fortune. What will not a woman do in order to chagrin her rival? I remember that once a woman loved me simply because I was in love with another woman. There is nothing more paradoxical than the female mind; it is difficult to convince a woman of anything; they have to be led into convincing themselves. The order of the proofs by which they demolish their prejudices is most original; to learn their dialectic it is necessary to overthrow in your own mind every scholastic rule of logic. For example, the usual way:
“This man loves me; but I am married: therefore I must not love him.”
The woman’s way:
“I must not love him, because I am married; but he loves me—therefore”...
A few dots here, because reason has no more to say. But, generally, there is something to be said by the tongue, and the eyes, and, after these, the heart—if there is such a thing.
What if these notes should one day meet a woman’s eye?
“Slander!” she will exclaim indignantly.
Ever since poets have written and women have read them (for which the poets should be most deeply grateful) women have been called angels so many times that, in very truth, in their simplicity of soul, they have believed the compliment, forgetting that, for money, the same poets have glorified Nero as a demigod...
It would be unreasonable were I to speak of women with such malignity—I who have loved nothing else in the world—I who have always been ready to sacrifice for their sake ease, ambition, life itself... But, you see, I am not endeavouring, in a fit of vexation and injured vanity, to pluck from them the magic veil through which only an accustomed glance can penetrate. No, all that I say about them is but the result of
“A mind which coldly hath observed,
A heart which bears the stamp of woe.” 29
Women ought to wish that all men knew them as well as I because I have loved them a hundred times better since I have ceased to be afraid of them and have comprehended their little weaknesses.
By the way: the other day, Werner compared women to the enchanted forest of which Tasso tells in his “Jerusalem Delivered.” 30
“So soon as you approach,” he said, “from all directions terrors, such as I pray Heaven may preserve us from, will take wing at you: duty, pride, decorum, public opinion, ridicule, contempt... You must simply go straight on without looking at them; gradually the monsters disappear, and, before you, opens a bright and quiet glade, in the midst of which blooms the green myrtle. On the other hand, woe to you if, at the first steps, your heart trembles and you turn back!”
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