[Pg 36] and we feel that we cannot resist it. Now at twenty-eight a gentle heart knows itself: it knows that, if it is still to find some happiness in life, from love it must be claimed; and this poor, torn heart becomes the seat of a fearful struggle between love and mistrust. Crystallisation proceeds gradually; but the crystallisation, which emerges triumphant from this terrible proof, in which the soul in all its movements never loses sight of the most awful danger, is a thousand times more brilliant and more solid than crystallisation at sixteen, in which everything, by right of age, is gaiety and happiness." "In this way love should be less gay and more passionate."[1] This conversation (Bologna, 9 March, 1820), bringing into doubt a point which seemed to me so clear, makes me believe more and more, that a man can say practically nothing with any sense on that which happens in the inmost heart of a woman of feeling: as to a coquet it is different--_we_ also have senses and vanity. The disparity between the birth of love in the two sexes would seem to come from the nature of their hopes, which are different. One attacks, the other defends; one asks, the other refuses; one is daring, the other timid. The man reflects: "Can I please her? Will she love me?" The woman: "When he says he loves me, isn't it for sport? Is his a solid character? Can he answer to himself for the length of his attachments?" Thus it is that many women regard and treat a young man of twenty-three as a child. If he has gone through six campaigns, he finds everything different--he is a young hero. On the man's side, hope depends simply on the actions of that which he loves--nothing easier to interpret. On the side of woman, hope must rest on moral considerations--very difficult rightly to appreciate. [Pg 37] Most men demand such a proof of love, as to their mind dissipates all doubts; women are not so fortunate as to be able to find such a proof. And there is in life this trouble for lovers--that what makes the security and happiness of one, makes the danger and almost the humiliation of the other. In love, men run the risk of the secret torture of the soul--women expose themselves to the scoffs of the public; they are more timid, and, besides, for them public opinion means much more.--"Sois considérée, il le faut."[2] They have not that sure means of ours of mastering public opinion by risking for an instant their life. Women, then, must naturally be far more mistrustful. In virtue of their habits, all the mental movements, which form periods in the birth of love, are in their case more mild, more timid, more gradual and less decided. There is therefore a greater disposition to constancy; they will less easily withdraw from a crystallisation once begun.