A tour through Genoa, Florence, and Milan made up the rest of this
interesting trip, which lasted from March till June. Disappointed in
the object for which he left home, it furnished him with leisure to
gather fresh subjects for his pen, and even to begin one--the _Diaries
of Two Young Wives_. What he wished to describe in this book was
stated in the following remarks to Madame Hanska: "I have never seen a
novel in which happy love, satisfied love, is depicted. Rousseau puts
too much rhetoric in his attempt, and Richardson too much preaching.
The poets have too many flourishes; the novelists are too much the
slaves of facts. Petrarch is too exclusively occupied with his images
of speech and his _concetti_; he sees the poetry more than the woman.
Pope has given perhaps too many regrets to Heloise; he wanted her to
be better than nature; and the better is an enemy to the good. In
fine, God, who created love with humanity, has alone understood it;
for none of his creatures has described, so as to please me, the
elegies, fantasies, and poems of this divine passion of which each
speaks and which so few have really known."
Did Balzac himself ever know it? By his own confession, never in his
youth.
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