"That is," put in some more critical auditor, "whom he can love as a woman loves a man."
"For want of the experience of such a passion," Malbone went on, unheeding, "nobody comprehends Petrarch. Philosophers and sensualists all refuse to believe that his dream of Laura went on, even when he had a mistress and a child. Why not? Every one must have something to which his dreams can cling, amid the degradations of actual life, and this tie is more real than the degradation; and if he holds to the tie, it will one day save him."
"What is the need of the degradation?" put in the clear-headed Harry.
"None, except in weakness," said Philip. "A stronger nature may escape it. Good God! do I not know how Petrarch must have felt? What sorrow life brings! Suppose a man hopelessly separated from one whom he passionately loves. Then, as he looks up at the starry sky, something says to him: 'You can bear all these agonies of privation, loss of life, loss of love,--what are they? If the tie between you is what you thought, neither life nor death, neither folly nor sin, can keep her forever from you.' Would that one could always feel so! But I am weak. Then comes impulse, it thirsts for some immediate gratification; I yield, and plunge into any happiness since I cannot obtain her. Then comes quiet again, with the stars, and I bitterly reproach myself for needing anything more than that stainless ideal. And so, I fancy, did Petrarch."
Philip was getting into a dangerous mood with his sentimentalism. No lawful passion can ever be so bewildering or ecstatic as an unlawful one. For that which is right has all the powers of the universe on its side, and can afford to wait; but the wrong, having all those vast forces against it, must hurry to its fulfilment, reserve nothing, concentrate all its ecstasies upon to-day. Malbone, greedy of emotion, was drinking to the dregs a passion that could have no to-morrow.
Sympathetic persons are apt to assume that every refined emotion must be ennobling. This is not true of men like Malbone, voluptuaries of the heart. He ordinarily got up a passion very much as Lord Russell got up an appetite,--he, of Spence's Anecdotes, who went out hunting for that sole purpose, and left the chase when the sensation came. Malbone did not leave his more spiritual chase so soon,--it made him too happy.
Sometimes, indeed, when he had thus caught his emotion, it caught him in return, and for a few moments made him almost unhappy. This he liked best of all; he nursed the delicious pain, knowing that it would die out soon enough, there was no need of hurrying it to a close. At least, there had never been need for such solicitude before.
