It is, we observe, the love that despises the senses which Julie somewhat affectedly extols. Now, certain as it is that love can continue to exist even when circumstances forbid its complete gratification, it is equally certain that renunciation for the sake of renunciation and of spirituality is contrary to nature. When the religious reaction set in in Denmark, Ingemann, in his youthful works, preached such renunciation. The question whether Julie really favoured the principle, or whether we are not in reality indebted for it to Lamartine, who admired without practising it, must be left undecided. In his reminiscences of his love affairs, Lamartine is in the habit of describing himself as emancipated from all sensual desire. And we know them all, these love affairs; for the man who, according to his own account, had always such complete control over his passions, had very little control over his pen. We know (from his _Confidences_) how during his meetings with Lucy, the beautiful girl of sixteen, in the cold frosty weather, he was as cold as the winter night. We remember the sentence in _Graziella_: "We slept two steps from each other; my cold indifference protected me." It may be doubtful whether it was really Julie who enounced the principle of renunciation, but there can be no doubt of the genuineness of the next speech attributed to her. She adds, blushing deeply, that the renunciation she demands of him is imperative--on account of her health; she has medical authority for what she says; she would leave his arms like a shadow, like a corpse: "The sacrifice would be the sacrifice not only of my dignity, but of my life."
It is impossible to deny that there is an extraordinary inconsistency between this last utterance and those which precede it, and that this exceedingly practical explanation deprives the spiritual friendship of much of its spirituality. We seem to come down from the seventh heaven and feel the solid earth beneath our feet again.
There follow scenes like those in _Valérie_--projects of suicide which are never carried into execution; nights spent by the lovers in tender converse, with a thick oaken door between them; rapt, sentimental ecstasies. This is a love which finds expression only in lingering looks, languishing that reaches the verge of insanity, sighs that are almost screams, long silences and endless outpourings--never a caress or an embrace. Unpleasant, almost offensive, in any case unnatural, is the manner in which, in this love-story too, our attention is perpetually drawn to the fact that the lovers keep their vow, that their love remains platonic. On the one solitary occasion when there seems to be real danger, there arrives at the critical moment--who? None other than that estimable old man, Monsieur Bonald, with whose theories on the subject of woman and of marriage we are acquainted. He is coming to stay with Julie, arrives at twelve o'clock at night, and is thus saved the grief of seeing his pupils rebel against order. Even in his novel, Lamartine does not miss the opportunity of proclaiming that he was at variance with Bonald, especially as regarded his doctrine of theocratic government. It became the fashion to disagree with Bonald. Chateaubriand himself remarks in his _Memoirs_ (iv. 23): "Monsieur de Bonald was a clever man. His sagacity was mistaken for genius."