from Love

CRYSTALLISATION: THE BIRTH OF LOVE

Here is what happens to the soul:

1. Admiration

2. The lover say to himself: 'What joy to kiss her, to be kissed by her', so on.

3. Hope. You study her perfections....

4. Love is born. To love is to enjoy seeing, touching, sensing with all the senses, and being as close as possible to the object of love who love is return.

5. The first crystallisation begins. The lover who is sure of his mistress's love delights in attributing to her every possible excellence. In the end you exaggerate her qualities wildly, and see her as someone fallen from Heaven, still unknown, but certain to be yours.

If a lover's brain is left undisturbed for four and twenty hours, the result is the 'crystallisation' of the object of his thoughts:

A branch of a tree, plucked in winter, that has been stripped of its leaves and thrown deep down into one of the salt mines of Salzburg, is found, on its being taken out two or three months later, to be covered with brilliant crystals, and garnished, even to the very smallest twigs, which are often no bigger than a titmouse's foot, with innumerable sparkling diamonds; the original branch can no longer be seen.

What I have called crystallisation is that operation of the mind which turns whatever peresents itself into a discovery of new perfections in the object of love.

STENDHAL (1783-1842)