not
only in her protestations of fidelity - one soon tires of that game -
but in all those explosions of inviolable Romanticism by which she would
probably perish if one did not contrive a safety valve through which the
sighs and the smoke, and "the aria of Romanticism" may escape and make
her worshiper happy. Let one compare her admiringly to Juliet, the
difference being only that no person ever as much as thought of touching
a hair on her Romeo's head. With regard to intellectual matters, let one
hold her capable of all and, if one has been lucky enough to find the
right woman, in a trice one will have a cantankerous authoress, whilst
wonderingly shading one's eyes with one's hand and duly admiring what
the little black hen may yield besides. It is altogether
incomprehensible why Socrates did not choose this course of action
instead of bickering with Xanthippe - oh, well! to be sure he wished to
acquire practice, like the riding master who, even though he has the
best trained horse, yet knows how to tease him in such fashion that
there is good reason for breaking him in again.
Let me be a little more concrete in order to illustrate a particular and
highly interesting phenomenon. A great deal has been said about feminine
fidelity, but rarely with any discretion. From a purely aesthetic point
of view this fidelity is to be regarded as a piece of poetic fiction
which steps on the stage to find her lover - a fiction which sits by the
spinning wheel and waits for her lover to come; but when she has found
him, or he has come, why, then aesthetics is at a loss. Her infidelity,
on the other hand, as contrasted with her previous fidelity, is to be
judged chiefly wit