CHAPTER XXXIX

OF QUARRELSOME LOVE

It is of two kinds:

I. In which the originator of the quarrel loves.

2. In which he does not love.

If one of the lovers is too superior in advantages which both value, the love of the other must die; for sooner or later comes the fear of contempt, to cut short crystallisation.

Nothing is so odious to the mediocre as mental superiority. There lies the source of hatred in the world of to-day, and if we do not have to thank this principle for desperate enmities, it is solely due to the fact that the people it comes between are not forced to live together. What then of love? For here, everything being natural, especially on the part of the superior being, superiority is not masked by any social precaution.

For the passion to be able to survive, the inferior must ill-treat the other party; otherwise the latter could not shut a window, without the other taking offence.

As for the superior party, he deludes himself: the love he feels is beyond the reach of danger, and, besides, almost all the weaknesses in that which we love, make it only the dearer to us.

In point of duration, directly after passion-love reciprocated between people on the same level, one must put quarrelsome love, in which the quarreller does not love. Examples of this are to be found in the anecdotes, relative to the Duchesse de Berri (Memoirs of Duclos).

Partaking, as it does, of the nature of set habits, which

[Pg 142] are rooted in the prosaic and egoistic side of life and follow man inseparably to the grave, this love can last longer than passion-love itself. But it is no longer love, it is a habit engendered by love, which has nothing of that passion but memories and physical pleasure. This habit necessarily presupposes a less noble kind of being. Each day a little scene is got ready--"Will he make a fuss?"--which occupies the imagination, just as, in passion-love, every day a new proof of affection had to be found. See the anecdotes about Madame d'Houdetot and Saint-Lambert.[1]

It is possible that pride refuses to get used to this kind of occupation; in which case, after some stormy months, pride kills love. But we see the nobler passion make a long resistance before giving in. The little quarrels of happy love foster a long time the illusion of a heart that still loves and sees itself badly treated. Some tender reconciliations may make the transition more bearable. A woman excuses the man she has deeply loved, on the score of a secret sorrow or a blow to his prospects. At last she grows used to being scolded. Where, really, outside passion-love, outside gambling or the possession of power,[2] can you find any other unfailing entertainment to be compared with it for liveliness? If the scolder happens to die, the victim who survives proves inconsolable. This is the principle which forms the bond of many middle-class marriages; the scolded can listen to his own voice all day long talking of his favourite subject.

There is a false kind of quarrelsome love. I took from the letters of a woman of extraordinary brilliance this in