The fortunate young man who has not subjected his love to the process of decomposition we have described loves ardently, recklessly, splendidly. His love is a sunny day in May, without clouds, without chills, without sorrows; it is a feast where weariness, fatigue and delusions are unknown. He lives because he loves, and he loves because he lives. He burns his incense to the goddess, but he is chaste and knows very little of lasciviousness. He is sometimes so pure as to call a blush on the face of a woman who, being in her thirties, already loves too knowingly. He neither measures nor weighs; and who has ever dared to reduce to a mathematical formula the force of a thunderbolt or the kilogrammeters of an earthquake? And the loves of a young man are thunderbolts or earthquakes. A young man is not very jealous; he is less so, in any case, than the adult and the old; he is too confident, too happy to doubt; and, besides, he has no time! His lips are wreathed in a perpetual smile; a golden ray of sunlight rests on his brow like a halo of bliss. There is no tomorrow for him except under the form of a continuation of the happiness of today; he does not remember the past, and in good faith believes himself to have always loved his goddess, even when he did not know her. He believes in inborn loves, as the philosopher of old used to believe in congenital ideas. O happy youth!
If the young man is the most powerful, the most ardent lover, the adult is the most skillful. The use and abuse of life have somewhat dulled his spirit, almost extinguished the flames of passion; but no excessive impatience, no needless timidity, no sudden explosions of desire oppose any obstacle to the blissful perfection of his loves. He loves with shrewdness, with passion, with a most subtle art; he is a hundred times more libertine than the youth, but also more delicate, richer in exquisite tastes belonging to the world of thought. The youthful lover is a nude and often ferocious savage; the adult has become civilized from long experience and is clothed with the blandishments of his art. His most spontaneous sympathies are for unripe fruit, for the flowers still enclosed within the untouched and thorny calyx of innocence and ignorance; but he likes to love the independent woman as well, the widow and the matron; he is essentially eclectic. His joys are scarcer than in the days of youth, but they are more precious, because rendered more savory by a certain economy almost verging on avarice. He knows that his hours are numbered and follows with a caress every coin he spends; before parting with it, he bestows upon it a look of affection and regret. Rich in memories, but poor in hopes, he concentrates all his cares, patience and attention on the present. He is the ablest, the wisest master of love; and when health and freshness of heart do not desert him, he can awaken ardent and lasting passions and preserve them for a long time. Woman much less than man is bent on inquiring about white hair and birth certificates; and if she only feels that she is loved deeply and ardently, she willingly forgets half a score of years, and more, of the age of her companion.