If we can still love those who have made us suffer, we love them all the more. It is as if the principle, that conflict is a necessary law of progress, were applicable even to love. For there is no love like that which has roused up the intensest feelings of our nature,—revealed us to ourselves, like lightning suddenly disclosing an abyss,—yet has survived all the storm and tumult of such passionate discord and all the terror of such a revelation. [Illustration] 85. F has much, much to learn! Through power, through passion, through feeling we do much, but only through observation, reflection, and sympathy we learn much; hence it is that minds highly gifted often remain immature. Artist minds especially, so long as they live only or chiefly for their art, their faculties bent on creating or representing, remain immature on one side—the reasoning and reflecting side of the character. [Illustration] 86. Said a Frenchman of his adversary, “Il se croit supérieur à moi de toute la hauteur de sa bêtise!” There is a mingled felicity, politeness, and acrimony, in this phrase quite untranslatable. 87. It is a pity that we have no words to express the French distinction between _rêver_ and _rêvasser_. The one implies meditation on a definite subject: the other the abandonment of the mind to vague discussion, aimless thoughts. [Illustration] 88. It seems to me that the conversation of the first converser in the world would _tire_ me, _pall_ on me at last, where I am not sure of the sincerity. Talk without truth is the hollow brass; talk without love is like the tinkling cymbal, and where it does not tinkle it gingles, and where it does not gingle, it jars. [Illustration] 89.