Droll Stories Vol I by Balzac

The Fair Imperia

"(...) but speaking that sweet language which the ladies so well understand, that has neither stops, commas, accents, letters, figures, characters, notes, nor images."

The King's Sweetheart

"Then she began to weep, like all young maidens will before they become experienced, for afterward they never cry with their eyes."

The change in a woman, as a sort of revenge upon her "fate". As if she became more mature, and only cries through actions.

The High Constable's Wife

"His pale face was softly melancholy. His physiognomy gave proof of a fine heart, one of those which nourish ardent passions and plunge delightedly into the despair of love without hope. Of these people there are few, because ordinarily one likes more a certain thing than the unknown felicities lying and flourishing at the bottomest depths of the soul!"

Yes, most people want a sort of security for their love- that it would be returned. But these marvelous beings, these poets of the heart are so few, so few has passed their lives (miserable and short as they've mostly been)on this earth- gracing us with their divine presence for a fleeting moment- and then they disappear. Like phantoms momentarily wandering the barren earth of the human intellect, to bring us a flower from heaven... How they suffered for love! They, who were her most ardent worshipers- they were cursed by it! Oh, what a horrible irony!

"Who does not love the warm attack of life when it flows thus round the heart and engulfs everything?"

I love how he puts in the word "attack"- as if it were violent...

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Pub by Gebbie Publishing Company