True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many … - Stendhal

A man may meet a woman and be shocked by her ugliness. Soon, if she is natural and unaffected, her expression makes him overlook the faults of her features. He begins to find her charming, it enters his head that she might be loved, and a week later he is living in hope. The following week he has been snubbed into despair, and the week afterwards he has gone mad. (Chapter 17)

A la Scala, il est d'usage de ne faire durer qu'une vingtaine de minutes ces petites visites que l'on fait dans les loges.

Everything is noble and delicate (on Lake Como), everything speaks of love, nothing recalls the ugliness of civilization. The villages located halfway up the coast are hidden by trees, and above the tops of the trees rises the graceful architecture of their slender bell towers. If some small field, fifty paces wide, occasionally interrupts the "bouquets" of chestnut and wild cherry trees, the satisfied eye sees plants growing happier and more vigorous than elsewhere. Beyond these hills, whose peaks offer hermitages that we would all like to inhabit, the amazed eye discovers the peaks of the Alps, always covered with snow, and their sublime austerity reminds him of the misfortunes of life, and this increases the voluptuousness. of the present hour. The imagination is moved by the distant sound of the bell of some tiny village hidden under the trees; and the sounds carried on the waters, which soften them, take on a color of sweet melancholy and resignation, and seem to say to man: Life is fleeing, so do not show yourself so reluctant towards the happiness that presents itself, hurry to enjoy. The language of these enchanting places, which have no equal in the world, restored her sixteen-year-old heart to the Countess.