The country doctor / by Honoré de Balzac.

  • Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850.
Date:
[1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The country doctor / by Honoré de Balzac. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    always ungratified, sprang up again stronger than before, and increased with age. At that time all the elements of a genuine affection were united in my person. 1 had been put to the proof, 1 appreciated the joys of constancy, and the happiness of trans- forming a sacrifice into a pleasure; and the woman whom 1 loved was certain to be always first in my thoughts and my acts. I took pleasure in imagining a love that had attained that degree of certainty in which the emotions it arouses have penetrated both so thoroughly that happiness has become a part of their lives, their glances, their words, and no longer causes any shock. Love is then a part of life as religious feeling is a part of the soul, it animates it, supports it, enlightens it. I understood conjugal love otherwise than most men understand it and 1 considered that its beauty, its magnificence, are found in those very things that cause its death in innumerable families. 1 felt keenly the moral gran- deur of a dual life so intimately shared that the most commonplace actions should no longer be an obstacle to the perpetuity of sentiments. But where could one find two hearts whose pulsations were so per- fectly synchronous—pardon me that scientific ex- pression—as to make that celestial union possible? If such exist, nature or chance places them so far apart that they cannot meet, they know each other too late, or are parted too soon by death. That fatality must have some significance, but I have never tried to fathom it. 1 suffer too much from my wound to study it. Perhaps perfect happiness