r love of Nature only a kind of
unconscious joy in it; but here even the peasant has that, and the songs
of the men that cannot read or write are full of it. If a field labourer
sing to his love he will sing of the narcissus and the crocus, as
Meleager sang to Heliodora twenty centuries ago."

* * *

That is an Italian amorous fancy. Romeo and Othello are the typical
Italian lovers. I never can tell how a northerner like Shakespeare could
draw either. You are often very unfaithful; but _while_ you are faithful
you are ardent, and you are absorbed in the woman. That is one of the
reasons why an Italian succeeds in love as no other man does. "L'art de
bruler silencieusement ment le coeur d'un femme" is a supreme art with
you. Compared with you, all other men are children. You have been the
supreme masters of the great passion since the days of Ovid.

* * *

Boredom is the ill-natured pebble that always _will_ get in the golden
slipper of the pilgrim of pleasure.

* * *

"They say," the great assassin who slays as many thousands as ever did
plague or cholera, drink or warfare; "they say," the thief of
reputation, who steals, with stealthy step and coward's mask, to filch
good names away in the dead dark of irresponsible calumny; "they say," a
giant murderer, iron-gloved to slay you, a fleet, elusive, vaporous
will-o'-the-wisp, when you would seize and choke it; "they say," mighty
Thug though it be which strangles from behind the purest victim, had not
been ever known to touch the Lady Hilda.

* * *

All her old philosophies seemed falling about her like shed leaves, and
her old self seemed to her but a purposeless frivolous chilly creature.
The real reason she would not face, and indeed as yet was not conscious
of; the reason that love had entered into her, and that love, if it be
worth the name, has always two handmaidens: swift sympathy, and sad
humility, keeping step together.

* * *

The Femme Galante has passed through many various changes, in many
countries. The dames of the Decamerone were unlike the fair
athlete-seekers of the days of Horace; and the powdered coquettes of the
years of Moliere, were sisters only by the kinship of a common vice to
the frivolous and fragile faggot of impulses, that is called Frou-frou.

The Femme Galante has always been a feature in every age; poets, from
Juvenal to Musset, hav