you like the swan's knight.
I have asked nothing of you. I have wanted to know nothing. I have not
chided you about Mademoiselle Jeanne Tancrede. I saw you loved me, that
you were suffering, and it was enough--because I loved you."

"A woman can not be jealous in the same manner as a man, nor feel what
makes us suffer."

"I do not know that. Why can not she?"

"Why? Because there is not in the blood, in the flesh of a woman that
absurd and generous fury for ownership, that primitive instinct of which
man has made a right. Man is the god who wants his mate to himself. Since
time immemorial woman is accustomed to sharing men's love. It is the
past, the obscure past, that determines our passions. We are already so
old when we are born! Jealousy, for a woman, is only a wound to her own
self-love. For a man it is a torture as profound as moral suffering, as
continuous as physical suffering. You ask the reason why? Because, in
spite of my submission and of my respect, in spite of the alarm you cause
me, you are matter and I am the idea; you are the thing and I am the
mind; you are the clay and I am the artisan. Do not complain of this.
Near the perfect amphora, surrounded with garlands, what is the rude and
humble potter? The amphora is tranquil and beautiful; he is wretched; he
is tormented; he wills; he suffers; for to will is to suffer. Yes, I am
jealous. I know what there is in my jealousy. When I examine it, I find
in it hereditary prejudices, savage conceit, sickly susceptibility, a
mingling of rudest violence and cruel feebleness, imbecile and wicked
revolt against the laws of life and of society. But it does not matter
that I know it for what it is: it exists and it torments me. I am the
chemist who, studying the properties of an acid which he has drunk, knows
how it was combined and what salts form it. Nevertheless the acid burns
him, and will burn him to the bone."

"My love, you are absurd."

"Yes, I am absurd. I feel it better than you feel it yourself. To desire
a woman in all the brilliancy of her beauty and her wit, mistress of
herself, who knows and who dares; more beautiful in that and more
desirable, and whose choice is free, voluntary, deliberate; to desire
her, to love her for what she is, and to suffer because she is not
puerile candor nor pale innocence, which would be shocking in her if it
were possible to find them there; to ask her at the same time that she be
herself and not be herself; to ador