the moon and stars is, after all, as reasonable as
to grow pale over a work destined to live a day, a year, or a century!
for what renown lasts longer than that? If I were really loved, I should
not regret those wasted hours; but is it true that I am loved? There are
moments when I recover my coolness and clearness of mind, a degree of
self possession incompatible with the enthusiasm of genuine passion;
at other times, it is true, a sudden agitation renders me powerless and
leaves me as weak as a child. Oh, yes, I love her in a strange manner;
the sentiment that I feel for her has become a study of the mind as
well as an emotion of the heart, and that is what gives it its despotic
tenacity; for a material impression weakens and gradually dies out, but
when an energetic intelligence is brought to bear upon it, it becomes
desperate. I should be wrong to complain. Passion, a passive sentiment!
This word has a contradictory meaning for me. I am a lover as Napoleon
was an emperor: nobody forced the crown upon him, he took it and crowned
himself with his own hand. If my crown happens to be a thorny one, whom
can I accuse? Did not my brow crave it?

"I have loved this woman of my own choosing, above all others; the
choice made, I have worked at my love as I would at a cherished poem; it
has been the subject of all my meditations, the fairy of all my dreams,
for more than a year. I have not had a thought in which I have not paid
her homage. I have devoted my talents to her; it seemed to me that by
loving and perpetually contemplating her image, I might at last become
worthy of painting it. I was conscious of a grand future, if only she
had understood me; I often thought of Raphael and his own Fornarina.
There is a throne vacant in poetry; I had dreamed of this throne in
order to lay it at Clemence's feet. Oh! although this may never be more
than a dream, this dream has given me hours of incomparable happiness! I
should be ungrateful to deny it.

"And yet this love is only a fictitious sentiment; I realize it today.
It is not with her that I am in love, it is with a woman created by my
imagination, and whom I see clearly within this unfeeling marble shape.
When we have meditated for a long time, our thoughts end by taking
life and walking by our side. I can now understand the allegory of Adam
taking Eve from his own substance; but flesh forms a palpitating flesh
akin to itself; the mind creates only a shadow, and a shadow can no