[Pg 118] CHAPTER XXXIII Always a little doubt to allay--that is what whets our appetite every moment, that is what makes the life of happy love. As it is never separated from fear, so its pleasures can never tire. The characteristic of this happiness is its high seriousness. [Pg 119] CHAPTER XXXIV OF CONFIDENCES There is no form of insolence so swiftly punished as that which leads you, in passion-love, to take an intimate friend into your confidence. He knows that, if what you say is true, you have pleasures a thousand times greater than he, and that your own make you despise his. It is far worse between women--their lot in life being to inspire a passion, and the _confidante_ having commonly also displayed her charms for the advantage of the lover. On the other hand, for anyone a prey to this fever, there is no moral need more imperative than that of a friend, before whom to dilate on the fearful doubts which at every instant beset his soul; for in this terrible passion, always a thing imagined is a thing existent. "A great fault in Salviati's character," he writes in 1817, "--in this point how opposed to Napoleon's!--is that when, in the discussion of interests in which passion is concerned, something is at last morally proved, he cannot resolve to take that as a fact once and for all established and as a point to start from. In spite of himself and greatly to his hurt, he brings it again and again under discussion." The reason is that, in the field of ambition, it is easy to be brave. Crystallisation, not being subjected to the desire of the thing to be won, helps to fortify our courage; in love it is wholly in the service of the object against which our courage is wanted. A woman may find an unfaithful friend, she also may find one with nothing to do. [Pg 120] A princess of thirty-five,[1] with nothing to do and dogged by the need of action, of intrigue, etc. etc., discontented with a lukewarm lover and yet unable to hope to sow the seeds of another love, with no use to make of the energy which is consuming her, with no other distraction than fits of black humour, can very well find an occupation, that is to say a pleasure, and a life's work, in accomplishing the misfortune of a true passion--passion which someone has the insolence to feel for another than herself, while her own lover falls to sleep at her side. It is the only case in which hate produces happiness; the reason being that it procures occupation and work.