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368 quenched. But that does not hinder it when it has once given itself up to the flaring impulse, as if the fire would last for ever. Ah, when one feels for the second time in life the great glow, unfortunately the faith in its eternal durance fails, and the bitterest recollection whispers to us that this in the end, too, will devour itself. Hence the difference in melancholy in the first love and in the second. In the first, we think that our passion can only end tragically by death, and indeed when the opposing threatening difficulties are invincible we easily make up our minds to hurry with the loved one to the grave. On the contrary, in a second love we know that our wildest and noblest feelings will turn with time into a tender tameness, and that we shall yet regard with calm indifference the eyes, the lips, the limbs which now inspire us so wildly. Ah, this thought is more melancholy than that of death. For it is a sad comfortless feeling when we in the glow of intoxication think of future sobriety and coolness, and know from experience that the highly poetic heroic passion must have such a pitifully prosaic end! These highly poetic heroic passions! How the princesses of the theatre bear themselves, and warmly rouged, splendidly dressed, laden with flashing gems, walk proudly o'er the scene declaiming in measured iambics. But when the