Life results from the action of two opposing principles; when one of
them is lacking the being suffers. Vandenesse, by satisfying every
need, had suppressed desire, that king of creation, which fills an
enormous place in the moral forces. Extreme heat, extreme sorrow,
complete happiness, are all despotic principles that reign over spaces
devoid of production; they insist on being solitary; they stifle all
that is not themselves. Vandenesse was not a woman, and none but women
know the art of varying happiness; hence their coquetry, refusals,
fears, quarrels, and the all-wise clever foolery with which they put
in doubt the things that seemed to be without a cloud the night
before. Men may weary by their constancy, but women never. Vandenesse
was too thoroughly kind by nature to worry deliberately the woman he
loved; on the contrary, he kept her in the bluest and least cloudy
heaven of love. The problem of eternal beatitude is one of those whose
solution is known only to God. Here, below, the sublimest poets have
simply harassed their readers when attempting to picture paradise.
Dante's reef was that of Vandenesse; all honor to such courage!
Felix's wife began to find monotony in an Eden so well arranged; the
perfect happiness which the first woman found in her terrestrial
paradise gave her at length a sort of nausea of sweet things, and made
the countess wish, like Rivarol reading Florian, for a wolf in the
fold.
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