September 22, 1871. (_Charnex_).--Gray sky--a melancholy day. A friend
has left me, the sun is unkind and capricious. Everything passes away,
everything forsakes us. And in place of all we have lost, age and gray
hairs! ... After dinner I walked to Chailly between two showers. A rainy
landscape has a great charm for me; the dark tints become more velvety,
the softer tones more ethereal. The country in rain is like a face with
traces of tears upon it--less beautiful no doubt, but more expressive.
Behind the beauty which is superficial, gladsome, radiant, and palpable,
the aesthetic sense discovers another order of beauty altogether,
hidden, veiled, secret and mysterious, akin to moral beauty. This sort
of beauty only reveals itself to the initiated, and is all the more
exquisite for that. It is a little like the refined joy of sacrifice,
like the madness of faith, like the luxury of grief; it is not within
the reach of all the world. Its attraction is peculiar, and affects one
like some strange perfume, or bizarre melody. When once the taste for it
is set up the mind takes a special and keen delight in it, for one finds
in it
"Son bien premierement, puis le dedain d'autrui,"
and it is pleasant to one's vanity not to be of the same opinion as the
common herd.
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