Everyone knows—even the boccali of Montelupo[2] know—that opposite types seek and love each other. The blond attracts the brown, and _vice versa_; slight, small women please giants and athletes; delicate natures attract bears, and so on. But there are other occult and mysterious sympathies, where it is not a case of a combination of opposites, and where yet the attraction is exceedingly great and irresistible. How often has it been a wonder to us to see an ugly woman adored by a very handsome man, and an ugly man ardently sought after by women, and having witnessed this strange antithesis we begin at once to speculate what impure explanation, what vile or illicit trading with money or lasciviousness can account for it, while really it is a simple fact of elective affinity, the reasons for which escape us from our ignorance and short-sightedness. [2] Montelupo, a village on the Arno, is still renowned for its crockery and terracotta. It is highly probable that in the feudal times the mugs and drinking cups, which are called “boccali” even to the present time, were made there; they were exported in large quantities and became so plentiful throughout Tuscany that when any news was widespread, it was said to be known even by the Boccali of Montelupo. Hence the proverb. Look around you, and in the small circle of your own acquaintance you will find several such singular and extraordinary facts. For my part I have under my eyes a young man, the perfection of a man, aristocratic as regards birth, mind, and income, who, indifferent to the sympathies awakened in women at his every step, is completely absorbed in a woman who is hardly feminine, neither handsome nor young, and to thousands of others indifferent or contemptible. I see another young man desperately in love with the ruins of a woman, where not even the compassionate ivy of coquetry covers the decay and deficiencies, and in whom there is a complete wreck of all delicacy of outline. He loved her so much that after many years he made her his wife, without any considerations of money.