Old Love Stories Retold | Page 8

Heine's point of view. When "Camille Selden" first
sought his acquaintance, he had been living with Mathilde for some
twenty years. Men of genius--and even ordinary men are not apt to live
with women they do not love for twenty years; and that Heine did
perhaps the one wise thing of his life in marrying his Mathilde there
can be very little doubt.
To a man such as Heine a woman is not so much a personality as a
beautiful embodiment of the elements: "Earth, air, fire and water met
together in a rose."' If she is beautiful, he will waive "intellectual
sympathy"; if she is good, he will not mind her forgetting the titles of
his books. When she becomes a mother, he --being a man of
genius--understands that she is a more wonderful being than he can
ever hope to be.
Much has been said about the unhappy marriages of great writers. The
true reason too often has been that they have married literary amateurs
instead of women and wives. Heine was wiser. No one would, of
course, pretend that Mathilde was his mate. But, then, what woman
could have been? Certainly not that little literary prig he called his
"Mouche."

End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Old Love Stories Retold by
Richard Le Gallienne. At present we have only this one chapter/story of
this book.

Love Stories Retold by Richard Le Gallienne
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