Old Love Stories Retold | Page 3

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ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END*

This etext was prepared by Mike Pullen,
[email protected].

This is a story of Heinrich Heine and his Mathilda. At present we have
only this one chapter/story of this book. This is one chapter of the more
complete book by Richard Le Gallienne which contains additional true
love tales about other famous people.}

Heine and Mathilde
by Richard Le Gallienne

The love story of Heine and his Mathilde is another of those stories
which fix a type of loving. It is the love of a man of the most brilliant
genius, the most relentless, mocking intellect, for a simple, pretty
woman, who could no more understand him than a cow can understand
a comet. Many men of genius have loved just such women, and the
world, of course, has wondered. How is it that men of genius prefer
some little Mathilde, when the presidents of so many women's clubs are
theirs for the asking? Perhaps the problem is not so difficult as, at first
sight, it may seem. After all, a man of genius is much like other men.
He is no more anxious than any other man to marry an encyclopedia, or
a university degree. And, more than most men, he is fitted to realize the
mysterious importance and satisfaction of simple beauty--though it may
go quite unaccompanied by "intellectual" conversation--and the value
of simple woman-goodness, the woman-goodness that orders a
household so skillfully that your home is a work of art, the
woman-goodness that glories in that "simple" thing we call motherhood,
the woman-goodness that is almost happy when you are ill because it
will be so wonderful to nurse you. Superior persons often smile at these

Mathildes of the great. They have smiled no little at Mathilde
Crescence Mirat; but he who was perhaps the greatest mocker that ever
lived knew better than to laugh at Mathilde. The abysses of his brain no
one can, or even dare, explore--but, listen as we will at the door of that
infernal pit of laughter, we shall hear