still more about love

PAUL GERALDY

a man experienced in the problems of love and marriage contemplates love's old age

1 They are everywhere about you, in the houses you visit, and in the crowded streets, and they are everywhere mingled with the men. . . . You are haunted. You feel dizzy. You tremble. ... Ah! the drama is not that one grows older, but rather that one refuses to grow older.

One must be either a wise Ulysses or a theatrical manager to remain insensible to the beauty of women.

By renouncing harems and gynaeceums, men doubtless courted the danger of losing their own wives, but at the same time they rendered the wives of others accessible to themselves.

2 An affair? Be careful. If you love her, what a hopeless business! If you don't love her, what an infernal bore!

Men leave their family for love, and make another family, which they leave in turn for another love. . . .

3 Spiritual effusions, a vague sublimity, an ineffable harmony of two souls, lofty summits, an ideal . . . are what one demands of love at twenty. Later one demands lips, arms, torsos, knees . . . human warmth and freshness . . . youth.

4 She, too, is looking at the people about her; she is beginning to reproach you mutely with being only yourself.

She is not very happy, and you are not wholly at fault. It is very difficult to make a woman happy.

Even an exceptionally brilliant material success would not have made her happy. Men are disillusioned by success because it costs them too great an effort, and women because it does not cost them enough.

5 She is bored. Almost all women are a little bored. She does not like your friends. She loathes the sight of other women. She is not at all thrilled by your success. She would like you to be more attentive to her life, more devoted to herself.

She has splendid possibilities, which you notice rarely, and then only to lull them to sleep. She observes this and holds it against you.

"One never marries the woman one thinks one will marry," you confided to me one day. Perhaps the truth of it is that we kill the woman we marry. Each man kills the thing he loves. . . .

Think of the girl she was. Remember that Amazon. . . .

6 Consider the wives of your friends. They would have asked nothing better than to be faithful. But all too soon the man they had chosen for a master revealed his limitations. A specialist, such as he proved to be, is tiresome. His conscientiousness, his economy and foresight, his frankness, his objectivity, his sense of order, his logic, all make them ill at ease. They feel the need of childhood, of air. They take a playmate, meanwhile retaining their former master as a steward. . . .

They lie to him only because they are forced to do so. They would be delighted to make him their intimate friend.

"I never thought," said Moliere in a letter to his friend Rohault, "that I was too austere for domestic society."

7 Take care. She is still very beautiful. A really beautiful woman retains hexbeauty for many years.

She is torn by conflicting impulses, by aspirations toward the sublime, by instincts that rise from the depths. You have taught her to love!

Women guide man toward one woman. A man leads a woman toward men.

8 She is changed. She is growing younger. She thinks more of self-adornment. In company she has a laugh, a tone of voice, a fascinating manner that you observe with amazement. . . . And how indulgent she is to the more and more open advances of the men who surround her!

You are angry at her for being too cordial to your friends. You do not like to see them linger at her side. You are beginning to avoid people you might have liked.

The role of the jealous husband makes you heartsick. . . . And yet. . . .

9 There are people who claim that a higher degree of intelligence would lead us to accept the infidelity of a wife; that modern facilities and the field wide open to our desires will cure us little by little of our mania for possession. . . . Doubtless property is only a form of bondage; doubtless it serves our vanity and nothing more. That which is not attached to ourselves we love more freely. The desire to monopolize a woman, to enslave her imagination, to paralyze her faculty of evolution, her instinct for self-contradiction, is a rash ambition. . . . But should we ever attain to this degree of wisdom and tolerance, we should love only with moderation: in other words, we should love no more.

We are repelled by moral dogmas. We think we have escaped our obligations to society. We proclaim our rights to new beginnings, to the liberty of love. . . . But we had parents.

Andre Maurois says that life is short, that we should expect nothing of those we love except the propitious "climate" which is necessary to our development, and that we must not attach too much importance to their actions. It is wisely spoken, but alas! man is not made in this fashion. He attaches a great importance to the actions of those he loves.

It was not in the nature of man to love. He was taught love by women. But he has developed it further than they.

Women invented love, and men fidelity. No! this is not a paradox.

The strongest man hides within him a shamefaced sentimentalist, and the weakest woman a stern realist.

10 Should you give her a little more of yourself, be more attentive, occupy her leisure, try to amuse her?

. . . But it would take every moment of your time. And what about your work?

The passion for conquest, even when it becomes a fixed idea that paralyzes all activity, all energy, still retains a certain beauty. And can we say as much for that fear of defeat and deprivation which is the passion for preserving?

11 Her mind is more open, more inquisitive. She knows people you have never met.

She is less tender, and shows you more consideration. She spends less time in the house, and your house is somehow kept in order. She is an incomparable friend and collaborator.

Has she a secret?

Those lovely, transparent eyes of hers. . . . Ah! what do you know? Surely you cannot spy on her.

You doubt. In this doubt, there is already a confession of defeat.

Your child . . . and clasping your child to her breast, a stranger ... an enemy?

12 Should you leave her? Arrange for a separation? What would become of her without you? She is a child. Freedom would destroy her. And you could not bear to feel that she was abandoned or unhappy.

There were times when you saw her suffer. You think of them now. . . .

For months or years one continues to love the woman one has loved.

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13 In love there are neither crimes nor misdemeanors. There are errors of taste.

14 And besides, what do you really know?

You know nothing whatever. Hold your peace. Perhaps Maurois is right, after all. ....

Marriage, in an idle and brilliant society, is a state which permits both husband and wife, on their separate sides, to play at love with the maximum of convenience.

15 But love itself. . . . Well, really, what about it? Every human being has a thousand qualities, a thousand reasons for pleasing or displeasing—in other words, he bears in himself the history of his love and of every love.

There are perfect bodies and perfect faces. There are no perfect hearts.

Your love is past. Everything passes. Everything ends. Whether happily or unhappily, it is all the same.

To love is good. To love no more is good also. Now that the end has come, haven't you a sense of new possibilities, of open spaces about you? Love was a prison.

Life is bigger than love.

The end of life is not love.

16 Love: a land too distant, a term too all-embracing, like God. Vague points of direction.

The greatest blessing ever conferred on us by love was to make us believe in love.

17 And besides, what is your business in life?

You have been entrusted with yourself. Cultivate yourself.

If you love yourself enough to rise very high, you will feel yourself fall back on the earth in dew, and you will realize that love is given and not received. If you do not love yourself, you are betraying the one you love.

After all, it is not such a simple matter to love oneself. Always, everywhere, since the beginning, there has been this querulous and conceited self, this narrow, indolent, unexciting self, -this tiresome self. You would prefer to give it no attention and to entrust the duty of flattering and soothing this irritating creature to some one else. You would prefer to change your soul, change your tastes, and set out with new eyes in search of other worlds. . . .

Let this privilege be reserved for women! For you, the master, the warrior, there must be no desertion, no forsaking your post.

18 Love is only love for oneself, and in this, perhaps, lies its greatness. But we never admit the fact, and in this lies its tragedy.

Nobody deserves to be loved or not to be loved.

To love is to judge too well. Not to love is to judge badly.

19 You are less lonely than you think. You have never really numbered your friends. List among them the companions of your labours —your superiors and advisers, your rivals, your subordinates. . . . List among them all men of good will. . . . And in addition list these: so many adorable comrades, so many ardent surrenders, so many heads bent over tenderly.

Your life is a continuous process of exchange with the world, an exchange that becomes more active day by day.

It is true that there is war everywhere, but there is also a little love everywhere.

20 She is changing. At present she is restless, superficial, unstable, wholly taken up with minor matters, indifferent to everything that counts.

Women do not grow old very gracefully.

You no longer have very much to say to her. You would prefer to live alone. As a matter of fact, you would now be able to live alone. But remember that she has been your indispensable companion, and that you could not have tolerated any other. If you had never known her, would you have known yourself?

My friend, H. B., who never used his talents to the best advantage, once said, "I lacked a witness."

She enabled you to be yourself. She distracted you from yourself. She was your horizon, your landscape, your window on life. Do not take back your tenderness.

You share your home with your mother. You continue to cherish her, although she has lingered long past her time. To your wife you owe no less than to your mother.

Pay back your debt with your time, which is. becoming less precious from day to day.

To love one's work is easy. It is within the power of any man. But if men loved only their work, they would form a society of termites. Forget the happiness of nations for the moment. Think of hers.

She is so eager for happiness! Women are so loath to relinquish happiness! . . . The answer is simple: it is all they have.

Devote yourself to her. Bend over her tenderly. Speak to her of herself. Do everything you can for her . . . .

And rely on yourself.