ELLIPSE^ LOVE : PARABOLA, MATERNITY. 
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from the other are fatally absorbed ; as in true love, where not a 
thought leaves the heart of one of the two lovers, which does not 
find its resting place in the other. Is not this shut curve, whose 
foci mutually absorb their rays, the true image of that world of 
lovers, which is only peopled with two beings — her and him ? 
Does not the definition of the ellipse answer well to this : Love is 
the selfhood of two ! 
Before this explanation, the astronomers were generally ignorant 
why the planets describe ellipses and not circumferences around 
their pivot of attraction ; they now know as much of this mystery 
as I do. But let us pursue the course of the conic sections. 
The ellipse is torn and opens ; one of the foci has broken its 
confinement, and the radii of the other go to seek through the in- 
finite the fugitive focus which they no longer meet. Then ill 
tongues say that the monotony of the conjugal tie has provoked 
separation, and, generalizing from the particular case, conclude 
that marriage is the tomb of love. 
But the ellipse may disappear only to be transformed into the 
parabola, and in this the conscientious analogist finds nothing scan- 
dalous, but on the contrary quite natural, that the ellipse, curve 
of love, should engender the parabola, curve of familism, as love 
engenders the family. When children come, it is necessary that 
the exclusive mutual absorption of the parents should exhaust its 
ardor, and that the selfhood of the two should become that of 
three, four, or five. One of the foci has disappeared, it is very 
true, but the tenderness of the father and of the mother now ra- 
diates toward the infinite — toward future generations, to which 
the present generation is linked by children. This faculty of ra- 
diation in the parabolical curve explains to you why the parabolic 
mirror (reverberator) is the most reflecting of all mirrors, why the 
yellow ray, color of familism, is the most luminous of all the colors 
of the prism. Decamps, Eugene Delacroix, Diaz, Baron, who are 
such great colorists, would perhaps without my suggestion, be 
ignorant of this interesting peculiarity of the relation of the yellow 
ray to the reverberator and maternal love. The physician has his 
eye open henceforth over a new horizon, passional optics. 
But see how the parabola in turn exaggerates and veers toward 
