We call _natural_ that which does not diverge from an habitual way of acting. It goes without saying that one must not merely never lie to one's love, but not even embellish the least bit or tamper with the simple outline of truth. For if a man is embellishing, his attention is occupied in doing so and no longer answers simply and truly, as the keys of a piano, to the feelings mirrored in his eye. The woman finds it out at once by a certain chilliness within her, and she, in her turn, falls back on coquetry. Might not here be found hidden the cause why it is impossible to love a woman with a mind too far below one's own--the reason being that, in her case, one can make pretence with impunity, and, as that course is more convenient, one abandons oneself to unnaturalness by force of habit? From that moment love is no longer love; it sinks to the level of an ordinary transaction--the only difference being that, instead of money, you get pleasure or flattery or a mixture of both. It is hard not to feel a shade of contempt for a woman, before whom one can with impunity act a part, and [Pg 116] consequently, in order to throw her over, one only needs to come across something better in her line. Habit or vow may hold, but I am speaking of the heart's desire, whose nature it is to fly to the greatest pleasure. To return to this word _natural_--natural and habitual are two different things. If one takes these words in the same sense, it is evident that the more sensibility in a man, the harder it is for him to be natural, since the influence of _habit_ on his way of being and acting is less powerful, and he himself is more powerful at each new event. In the life-story of a cold heart every page is the same: take him to-day or take him to-morrow, it is always the same dummy. A man of sensibility, so soon as his heart is touched, loses all traces of habit to guide his action; and how can he follow a path, which he has forgotten all about? He feels the enormous weight attaching to every word which he says to the object of his love--it seems to him as if a word is to decide his fate. How is he not to look about for the right word? At any rate, how is he not to have the feeling that he is trying to say "the right thing"? And then, there is an end of candour. And so we must give up our claim to candour, that quality of our being, which never reflects upon itself. We are the best we can be, but we feel what we are. I fancy this brings us to the last degree of _naturalness_, to which the most delicate heart can pretend in love. A man of passion can but cling might and main, as his only refuge in the storm, to the vow never to change a jot or tittle of the truth and to read the message of his heart correctly. If the conversation is lively and fragmentary, he may hope for some fine moments of _naturalness_: otherwise he will only be perfectly natural in hours when he will be a little less madly in love.