“Aimer c’est craindre, et craindre c’est souffrir”

The maxim “Aimer c’est craindre, et craindre c’est souffrir” (“To love is to fear, and to fear is to suffer”) is Silas Ruthyn’s compact rationale for treating Dudley Ruthyn’s distress as evidence of love. In the conversation with Maud, the phrase turns suffering into a romantic credential—and helps Silas soften her resistance to Dudley’s pursuit.

Meaning and Immediate Use

Silas introduces the maxim after suggesting that Maud is being cruel and has forgotten her own part in the situation. He urges her to consult her looking-glass, then describes Dudley as young, inexperienced in the world, and desperately enamoured. The French saying gives this defense the appearance of a general truth: love entails fear, fear entails suffering, and suffering can prompt desperate remedies.

The maxim does not answer Maud’s complaint on its own terms. Instead, Silas shifts attention from Dudley’s conduct to his presumed feelings, inviting Maud to see the young man not as an object of suspicion or dislike but as a suffering lover. The aphorism thus makes an emotional appeal while leaving the grounds of Maud’s resistance unresolved.

Rhetorical Function in the Conversation

The saying is part of Silas’s effort to lower the temperature of the exchange. Maud has begun to worry that her own language may have been exaggerated and her manner too tempestuous. Silas’s smiling, teasing description of Dudley as a “rough but romantic young fool” gives her a face-saving reason to reconsider without openly dismissing her complaint.

That softening soon becomes persuasion. Silas moves from defending Dudley to asking whether the subject deserves a second thought, while assuming that Maud is free of attachment and merely imagines that she dislikes him. The maxim therefore marks a pivot: apparent sympathy for Dudley’s pain becomes an argument that Maud might reconsider the match.

Irony and Narrative Significance

The maxim’s elegant balance contrasts with the practical pressure of the conversation. By presenting fear and suffering as natural consequences of love, Silas makes distress seem not a warning about Dudley’s behavior but a reason to excuse it. The phrase captures the persuasive force of romantic convention in the scene: an abstract account of love is used to reinterpret a particular woman’s objections, rather than to establish that her concerns are unfounded.