[Pg 75] All this looks like extravagance, but I have seen better still. A woman, whom one of my friends loved to idolatry, pretending to take offence at some or other want of delicacy, which I was never allowed to learn, condemned him all of a sudden to see her only twice a month. These visits, so rare and so intensely desired, meant an attack of madness, and it wanted all Salviati's strength of character to keep it from being seen by outward signs. From the very first, the idea of the visit's end is too insistent for one to be able to take pleasure in the visit. One speaks a great deal, deaf to one's own thoughts, saying often the contrary of what one thinks. One embarks upon discourses which have got suddenly to be cut short, because of their absurdity--if one manage to rouse oneself and listen to one's thoughts within. The effort we make is so violent that we seem chilly. Love hides itself in its excess. Away from her, the imagination was lulled by the most charming dialogues: there were transports the most tender and the most touching. And thus for ten days or so you think you have the courage to speak; but two days before what should have been our day of happiness, the fever begins, and, as the terrible instant draws near, its force redoubles. Just as you come into her _salon_, in order not to do or say some incredible piece of nonsense, you clutch in despair at the resolution of keeping your mouth shut and your eyes on her--in order at least to be able to remember her face. Scarcely before her, something like a kind of drunkenness comes over your eyes; you feel driven like a maniac to do strange actions; it is as if you had two souls--one to act and the other to blame your actions. You feel, in a confused way, that to turn your strained attention to folly would temporarily refresh the blood, and make you lose from sight the end of the visit and the misery of parting for a fortnight. [Pg 76] If some bore be there, who tells a pointless story, the poor lover, in his inexplicable madness, as if he were nervous of losing moments so rare, becomes all attention. That hour, of which he drew himself so sweet a picture, passes like a flash of lightning and yet he feels, with unspeakable bitterness, all the little circumstances which show how much a stranger he has become to her whom he loves. There he is in the midst of indifferent visitors and sees himself the only one who does not know her life of these past days, in all its details. At last he goes: and as he coldly says good-bye, he has the agonising feeling of two whole weeks before another meeting. Without a doubt he would suffer less never to see the object of his love again. It is in the style, only far blacker, of the Duc de Policastro, who every six months travelled a hundred leagues to see for a quarter of an hour at Lecce a beloved mistress guarded by a jealous husband. Here you can see clearly Will without influence upon Love.