“Marriage is not an institution of nature. The family in the east is entirely
different from the family in the west. Man is the servant of nature, and the
institutions of society are grafts, not spontaneous growths of nature. Laws are
made to suit manners, and manners vary.
“Marriage must therefore undergo the gradual development towards perfection to
which all human affairs submit.”
These words, pronounced in the presence of the Conseil d’Etat by Napoleon
during the discussion of the civil code, produced a profound impression upon
the author of this book; and perhaps unconsciously he received the suggestion
of this work, which he now presents to the public. And indeed at the period
during which, while still in his youth, he studied French law, the word
ADULTERY made a singular impression upon him. Taking, as it did, a prominent
place in the code, this word never occurred to his mind without conjuring up
its mournful train of consequences. Tears, shame, hatred, terror, secret crime,
bloody wars, families without a head, and social misery rose like a sudden line
of phantoms before him when he read the solemn word ADULTERY! Later on, when he
became acquainted with the most cultivated circles of society, the author
perceived that the rigor of marriage laws was very generally modified by
adultery. He found that the number of unhappy homes was larger than that of
happy marriages. In fact, he was the first to notice that of all human sciences
that which relates to marriage was the least progressive. But this was the
observation of a young man; and with him, as with so many others, this thought,
like a pebble flung into the bosom of a lake, was lost in the abyss of his
tumultuous thoughts. Nevertheless, in spite of himself the author was compelled
to investigate, and eventually there was gathered within his mind, little by
little, a swarm of conclusions, more or less just, on the subject of married
life. Works like the present one are formed in the mind of the author with as
much mystery as that with which truffles grow on the scented plains of
Perigord. Out of the primitive and holy horror which adultery caused him and
the investigation which he had thoughtlessly made, there was born one morning a
trifling thought in which his ideas were formulated. This thought was really a
satire upon marriage. It was as follows: A husband and wife found themselves in
love with each other for the first time after twenty-seven years of marriage.
He amused himself with this little axiom and passed a whole week in delight,
grouping around this harmless epigram the crowd of ideas which came to him
unconsciously and which he was astonished to find that he possessed. His
humorous mood yielded at last to the claims of serious investigation. Willing
as he was to take a hint, the author returned to his habitual idleness.
Nevertheless, this slight germ of science and of joke grew to perfection,
unfostered, in the fields of thought. Each phase of the work which had been
condemned by others took root and gathered strength, surviving like the slight
branch of a tree which, flung upon the sand by a winter’s storm, finds itself
covered at morning with white and fantastic icicles, produced by the caprices
of nightly frosts. So the sketch lived on and became the starting point of
myriad branching moralizations. It was like a polypus which multiplies itself
by generation. The feelings of youth, the observations which a favorable
opportunity led him to make, were verified in the most trifling events of his
after life. Soon this mass of ideas became harmonized, took life, seemed, as it
were, to become a living individual and moved in the midst of those domains of
fancy, where the soul loves to give full rein to its wild creations. Amid all
the distractions of the world and of life, the author always heard a voice
ringing in his ears and mockingly revealing the secrets of things at the very
moment he was watching a woman as she danced, smiled, or talked. Just as
Mephistopheles pointed out to Faust in that terrific assemblage at the Brocken,
faces full of frightful augury, so the author was conscious in the midst of the
ball of a demon who would strike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and
say to him: “Do you notice that enchanting smile? It is a grin of hatred.” And
then the demon would strut about like one of the captains in the old comedies
of Hardy. He would twitch the folds of a lace mantle and endeavor to make new
the fretted tinsel and spangles of its former glory. And then like Rabelais he
would burst into loud and unrestrainable laughter, and would trace on the
street-wall a word which might serve as a pendant to the “Drink!” which was the
only oracle obtainable from the heavenly bottle. This literary Trilby would
often appear seated on piles of books, and with hooked fingers would point out
with a grin of malice two yellow volumes whose title dazzled the eyes. Then
when he saw he had attracted the author’s attention he spelt out, in a voice
alluring as the tones of an harmonica, Physiology of Marriage! But,
almost always he appeared at night during my dreams, gentle as some fairy
guardian; he tried by words of sweetness to subdue the soul which he would
appropriate to himself. While he attracted, he also scoffed at me; supple as a
woman’s mind, cruel as a tiger, his friendliness was more formidable than his
hatred, for he never yielded a caress without also inflicting a wound. One
night in particular he exhausted the resources of his sorceries, and crowned
all by a last effort. He came, he sat on the edge of the bed like a young
maiden full of love, who at first keeps silence but whose eyes sparkle, until
at last her secret escapes her.
“This,” said he, “is a prospectus of a new life-buoy, by means of which one can
pass over the Seine dry-footed. This other pamphlet is the report of the
Institute on a garment by wearing which we can pass through flames without
being burnt. Have you no scheme which can preserve marriage from the miseries
of excessive cold and excessive heat? Listen to me! Here we have a book on the
Art of preserving foods; on the Art of curing smoky chimneys; on
the Art of making good mortar; on the Art of tying a cravat; on
the Art of carving meat.”
In a moment he had named such a prodigious number of books that the author felt
his head go round.
“These myriads of books,” says he, “have been devoured by readers; and while
everybody does not build a house, and some grow hungry, and others have no
cravat, or no fire to warm themselves at, yet everybody to some degree is
married. But come look yonder.”
He waved his hand, and appeared to bring before me a distant ocean where all
the books of the world were tossing up and down like agitated waves. The
octodecimos bounded over the surface of the water. The octavos as they were
flung on their way uttered a solemn sound, sank to the bottom, and only rose up
again with great difficulty, hindered as they were by duodecimos and works of
smaller bulk which floated on the top and melted into light foam. The furious
billows were crowded with journalists, proof-readers, paper-makers,
apprentices, printers’ agents, whose hands alone were seen mingled in the
confusion among the books. Millions of voices rang in the air, like those of
schoolboys bathing. Certain men were seen moving hither and thither in canoes,
engaged in fishing out the books, and landing them on the shore in the presence
of a tall man, of a disdainful air, dressed in black, and of a cold,
unsympathetic expression. The whole scene represented the libraries and the
public. The demon pointed out with his finger a skiff freshly decked out with
all sails set and instead of a flag bearing a placard. Then with a peal of
sardonic laughter, he read with a thundering voice: Physiology of
Marriage.
The author fell in love, the devil left him in peace, for he would have
undertaken more than he could handle if he had entered an apartment occupied by
a woman. Several years passed without bringing other torments than those of
love, and the author was inclined to believe that he had been healed of one
infirmity by means of another which took its place. But one evening he found
himself in a Parisian drawing-room where one of the men among the circle who
stood round the fireplace began the conversation by relating in a sepulchral
voice the following anecdote:
A peculiar thing took place at Ghent while I was staying there. A lady ten
years a widow lay on her bed attacked by mortal sickness. The three heirs of
collateral lineage were waiting for her last sigh. They did not leave her side
for fear that she would make a will in favor of the convent of Beguins
belonging to the town. The sick woman kept silent, she seemed dozing and death
appeared to overspread very gradually her mute and livid face. Can’t you
imagine those three relations seated in silence through that winter midnight
beside her bed? An old nurse is with them and she shakes her head, and the
doctor sees with anxiety that the sickness has reached its last stage, and
holds his hat in one hand and with the other makes a sign to the relations, as
if to say to them: “I have no more visits to make here.” Amid the solemn
silence of the room is heard the dull rustling of a snow-storm which beats upon
the shutters. For fear that the eyes of the dying woman might be dazzled by the
light, the youngest of the heirs had fitted a shade to the candle which stood
near that bed so that the circle of light scarcely reached the pillow of the
deathbed, from which the sallow countenance of the sick woman stood out like a
figure of Christ imperfectly gilded and fixed upon a cross of tarnished silver.
The flickering rays shed by the blue flames of a crackling fire were therefore
the sole light of this sombre chamber, where the denouement of a drama was just
ending. A log suddenly rolled from the fire onto the floor, as if presaging
some catastrophe. At the sound of it the sick woman quickly rose to a sitting
posture. She opened two eyes, clear as those of a cat, and all present eyed her
in astonishment. She saw the log advance, and before any one could check an
unexpected movement which seemed prompted by a kind of delirium, she bounded
from her bed, seized the tongs and threw the coal back into the fireplace. The
nurse, the doctor, the relations rushed to her assistance; they took the dying
woman in their arms. They put her back in bed; she laid her head upon her
pillow and after a few minutes died, keeping her eyes fixed even after her
death upon that plank in the floor which the burning brand had touched.
Scarcely had the Countess Van Ostroem expired when the three co-heirs exchanged
looks of suspicion, and thinking no more about their aunt, began to examine the
mysterious floor. As they were Belgians their calculations were as rapid as
their glances. An agreement was made by three words uttered in a low voice that
none of them should leave the chamber. A servant was sent to fetch a carpenter.
Their collateral hearts beat excitedly as they gathered round the treasured
flooring, and watched their young apprentice giving the first blow with his
chisel. The plank was cut through.
“My aunt made a sign,” said the youngest of the heirs.
“No; it was merely the quivering light that made it appear so,” replied the
eldest, who kept one eye on the treasure and the other on the corpse.
The afflicted relations discovered exactly on the spot where the brand had
fallen a certain object artistically enveloped in a mass of plaster.
“Proceed,” said the eldest of the heirs.
The chisel of the apprentice then brought to light a human head and some odds
and ends of clothing, from which they recognized the count whom all the town
believed to have died at Java, and whose loss had been bitterly deplored by his
wife.
The narrator of this old story was a tall spare man, with light eyes and brown
hair, and the author thought he saw in him a vague resemblance to the demon who
had before this tormented him; but the stranger did not show the cloven foot.
Suddenly the word ADULTERY sounded in the ears of the author; and this word
woke up in his imagination the most mournful countenances of that procession
which before this had streamed by on the utterance of the magic syllables. From
that evening he was haunted and persecuted by dreams of a work which did not
yet exist; and at no period of his life was the author assailed with such
delusive notions about the fatal subject of this book. But he bravely resisted
the fiend, although the latter referred the most unimportant incidents of life
to this unknown work, and like a customhouse officer set his stamp of mockery
upon every occurrence.
Some days afterwards the author found himself in the company of two ladies. The
first of them had been one of the most refined and the most intellectual women
of Napoleon’s court. In his day she occupied a lofty position, but the sudden
appearance of the Restoration caused her downfall; she became a recluse. The
second, who was young and beautiful, was at that time living at Paris the life
of a fashionable woman. They were friends, because, the one being forty and the
other twenty-two years old, they were seldom rivals on the same field. The
author was considered quite insignificant by the first of the two ladies, and
since the other soon discovered this, they carried on in his presence the
conversation which they had begun in a frank discussion of a woman’s lot.
“Have you noticed, dear, that women in general bestow their love only upon a
fool?”
“What do you mean by that, duchess? And how can you make your remark fit in
with the fact that they have an aversion for their husbands?”
“These women are absolute tyrants!” said the author to himself. “Has the devil
again turned up in a mob cap?”
“No, dear, I am not joking,” replied the duchess, “and I shudder with fear for
myself when I coolly consider people whom I have known in other times. Wit
always has a sparkle which wounds us, and the man who has much of it makes us
fear him perhaps, and if he is a proud man he will be capable of jealousy, and
is not therefore to our taste. In fact, we prefer to raise a man to our own
height rather than to have to climb up to his. Talent has great successes for
us to share in, but the fool affords enjoyment to us; and we would sooner hear
said ‘that is a very handsome man’ than to see our lover elected to the
Institute.”
“That’s enough, duchess! You have absolutely startled me.”
And the young coquette began to describe the lovers about whom all the women of
her acquaintance raved; there was not a single man of intellect among them.
“But I swear by my virtue,” she said, “their husbands are worth more.”
“But these are the sort of people they choose for husbands,” the duchess
answered gravely.
“Tell me,” asked the author, “is the disaster which threatens the husband in
France quite inevitable?”
“It is,” replied the duchess, with a smile; “and the rage which certain women
breathe out against those of their sex, whose unfortunate happiness it is to
entertain a passion, proves what a burden to them is their chastity. If it were
not for fear of the devil, one would be Lais; another owes her virtue to the
dryness of her selfish heart; a third to the silly behaviour of her first
lover; another still—”
The author checked this outpour of revelation by confiding to the two ladies
his design for the work with which he had been haunted; they smiled and
promised him their assistance. The youngest, with an air of gaiety suggested
one of the first chapters of the undertaking, by saying that she would take
upon herself to prove mathematically that women who are entirely virtuous were
creatures of reason.
When the author got home he said at once to his demon:
“Come! I am ready; let us sign the compact.”
But the demon never returned.
If the author has written here the biography of his book he has not acted on
the prompting of fatuity. He relates facts which may furnish material for the
history of human thought, and will without doubt explain the work itself. It
may perhaps be important to certain anatomists of thought to be told that the
soul is feminine. Thus although the author made a resolution not to think about
the book which he was forced to write, the book, nevertheless, was completed.
One page of it was found on the bed of a sick man, another on the sofa of a
boudoir. The glances of women when they turned in the mazes of a waltz flung to
him some thoughts; a gesture or a word filled his disdainful brain with others.
On the day when he said to himself, “This work, which haunts me, shall be
achieved,” everything vanished; and like the three Belgians, he drew forth a
skeleton from the place over which he had bent to seize a treasure.
A mild, pale countenance took the place of the demon who had tempted me; it
wore an engaging expression of kindliness; there were no sharp pointed arrows
of criticism in its lineaments. It seemed to deal more with words than with
ideas, and shrank from noise and clamor. It was perhaps the household genius of
the honorable deputies who sit in the centre of the Chamber.
“Wouldn’t it be better,” it said, “to let things be as they are? Are things so
bad? We ought to believe in marriage as we believe in the immortality of the
soul; and you are certainly not making a book to advertise the happiness of
marriage. You will surely conclude that among a million of Parisian homes
happiness is the exception. You will find perhaps that there are many husbands
disposed to abandon their wives to you; but there is not a single son who will
abandon his mother. Certain people who are hit by the views which you put forth
will suspect your morals and will misrepresent your intentions. In a word, in
order to handle social sores, one ought to be a king, or a first consul at
least.”
Reason, although it appeared under a form most pleasing to the author, was not
listened to; for in the distance Folly tossed the coxcomb of Panurge, and the
author wished to seize it; but, when he tried to catch it, he found that it was
as heavy as the club of Hercules. Moreover, the cure of Meudon adorned it in
such fashion that a young man who was less pleased with producing a good work
than with wearing fine gloves could not even touch it.
“Is our work completed?” asked the younger of the two feminine assistants of
the author.
“Alas! madame,” I said, “will you ever requite me for all the hatreds which
that work will array against me?”
She waved her hand, and then the author replied to her doubt by a look of
indifference.
“What do you mean? Would you hesitate? You must publish it without fear. In the
present day we accept a book more because it is in fashion than because it has
anything in it.”
Although the author does not here represent himself as anything more than the
secretary of two ladies, he has in compiling their observations accomplished a
double task. With regard to marriage he has here arranged matters which
represent what everybody thinks but no one dares to say; but has he not also
exposed himself to public displeasure by expressing the mind of the public?
Perhaps, however, the eclecticism of the present essay will save it from
condemnation. All the while that he indulges in banter the author has attempted
to popularize certain ideas which are particularly consoling. He has almost
always endeavored to lay bare the hidden springs which move the human soul.
While undertaking to defend the most material interests of man, judging them or
condemning them, he will perhaps bring to light many sources of intellectual
delight. But the author does not foolishly claim always to put forth his
pleasantries in the best of taste; he has merely counted upon the diversity of
intellectual pursuits in expectation of receiving as much blame as approbation.
The subject of his work was so serious that he is constantly launched into
anecdote; because at the present day anecdotes are the vehicle of all moral
teaching, and the anti-narcotic of every work of literature. In literature,
analysis and investigation prevail, and the wearying of the reader increases in
proportion with the egotism of the writer. This is one of the greatest
misfortunes that can befall a book, and the present author has been quite aware
of it. He has therefore so arranged the topics of this long essay as to afford
resting places for the reader. This method has been successfully adopted by a
writer, who produced on the subject of Taste a work somewhat parallel to that
which is here put forth on the subject of Marriage. From the former the present
writer may be permitted to borrow a few words in order to express a thought
which he shares with the author of them. This quotation will serve as an
expression of homage to his predecessor, whose success has been so swiftly
followed by his death:
“When I write and speak of myself in the singular, this implies a confidential
talk with the reader; he can examine the statement, discuss it, doubt and even
ridicule it; but when I arm myself with the formidable WE, I become the
professor and demand submission.”— Brillat-Savarin, Preface to the
Physiology of Taste.
DECEMBER 5, 1829.
We will declaim against stupid laws until they are changed, and in the meantime
blindly submit to them.—Diderot, Supplement to the Voyage of
Bougainville.
THE SUBJECT.
Physiology, what must I consider your meaning?
Is not your object to prove that marriage unites for life two beings who do not
know each other?
That life consists in passion, and that no passion survives marriage?
That marriage is an institution necessary for the preservation of society, but
that it is contrary to the laws of nature?
That divorce, this admirable release from the misfortunes of marriage, should
with one voice be reinstated?
That, in spite of all its inconveniences, marriage is the foundation on which
property is based?
That it furnishes invaluable pledges for the security of government?
That there is something touching in the association of two human beings for the
purpose of supporting the pains of life?
That there is something ridiculous in the wish that one and the same thoughts
should control two wills?
That the wife is treated as a slave?
That there has never been a marriage entirely happy?
That marriage is filled with crimes and that the known murders are not the
worst?
That fidelity is impossible, at least to the man?
That an investigation if it could be undertaken would prove that in the
transmission of patrimonial property there was more risk than security?
That adultery does more harm than marriage does good?
That infidelity in a woman may be traced back to the earliest ages of society,
and that marriage still survives this perpetuation of treachery?
That the laws of love so strongly link together two human beings that no human
law can put them asunder?
That while there are marriages recorded on the public registers, there are
others over which nature herself has presided, and they have been dictated
either by the mutual memory of thought, or by an utter difference of mental
disposition, or by corporeal affinity in the parties named; that it is thus
that heaven and earth are constantly at variance?
That there are many husbands fine in figure and of superior intellect whose
wives have lovers exceedingly ugly, insignificant in appearance or stupid in
mind?
All these questions furnish material for books; but the books have been written
and the questions are constantly reappearing.
Physiology, what must I take you to mean?
Do you reveal new principles? Would you pretend that it is the right thing that
woman should be made common? Lycurgus and certain Greek peoples as well as
Tartars and savages have tried this.
Can it possibly be right to confine women? The Ottomans once did so, and
nowadays they give them their liberty.
Would it be right to marry young women without providing a dowry and yet
exclude them from the right of succeeding to property? Some English authors and
some moralists have proved that this with the admission of divorce is the
surest method of rendering marriage happy.
Should there be a little Hagar in each marriage establishment? There is no need
to pass a law for that. The provision of the code which makes an unfaithful
wife liable to a penalty in whatever place the crime be committed, and that
other article which does not punish the erring husband unless his concubine
dwells beneath the conjugal roof, implicitly admits the existence of mistresses
in the city.
Sanchez has written a dissertation on the penal cases incident to marriage; he
has even argued on the illegitimacy and the opportuneness of each form of
indulgence; he has outlined all the duties, moral, religious and corporeal, of
the married couple; in short his work would form twelve volumes in octavo if
the huge folio entitled De Matrimonio were thus represented.
Clouds of lawyers have flung clouds of treatises over the legal difficulties
which are born of marriage. There exist several works on the judicial
investigation of impotency.
Legions of doctors have marshaled their legions of books on the subject of
marriage in its relation to medicine and surgery.
In the nineteenth century the Physiology of Marriage is either an
insignificant compilation or the work of a fool written for other fools; old
priests have taken their balances of gold and have weighed the most trifling
scruples of the marriage consciences; old lawyers have put on their spectacles
and have distinguished between every kind of married transgression; old doctors
have seized the scalpel and drawn it over all the wounds of the subject; old
judges have mounted to the bench and have decided all the cases of marriage
dissolution; whole generations have passed unuttered cries of joy or of grief
on the subject, each age has cast its vote into the urn; the Holy Spirit, poets
and writers have recounted everything from the days of Eve to the Trojan war,
from Helen to Madame de Maintenon, from the mistress of Louis XIV to the woman
of their own day.
Physiology, what must I consider your meaning?
Shall I say that you intend to publish pictures more or less skillfully drawn,
for the purpose of convincing us that a man marries:
From ambition—that is well known;
From kindness, in order to deliver a girl from the tyranny of her mother;
From rage, in order to disinherit his relations;
From scorn of a faithless mistress;
From weariness of a pleasant bachelor life;
From folly, for each man always commits one;
In consequence of a wager, which was the case with Lord Byron;
From interest, which is almost always the case;
From youthfulness on leaving college, like a blockhead;
From ugliness,—fear of some day failing to secure a wife;
Through Machiavelism, in order to be the heir of some old woman at an early
date;
From necessity, in order to secure the standing to our son;
From obligation, the damsel having shown herself weak;
From passion, in order to become more surely cured of it;
On account of a quarrel, in order to put an end to a lawsuit;
From gratitude, by which he gives more than he has received;
From goodness, which is the fate of doctrinaires;
From the condition of a will when a dead uncle attaches his legacy to some
girl, marriage with whom is the condition of succession;
From custom, in imitation of his ancestors;
From old age, in order to make an end of life;
From yatidi, that is the hour of going to bed and signifies amongst the
Turks all bodily needs;
From religious zeal, like the Duke of Saint-Aignan, who did not wish to commit
sin?[*]
[*] The foregoing queries came in (untranslatable) alphabetic order in the
original.—Editor
But these incidents of marriage have furnished matter for thirty thousand
comedies and a hundred thousand romances.
Physiology, for the third and last time I ask you—What is your meaning?
So far everything is commonplace as the pavement of the street, familiar as a
crossway. Marriage is better known than the Barabbas of the Passion. All the
ancient ideas which it calls to light permeate literature since the world is
the world, and there is not a single opinion which might serve to the advantage
of the world, nor a ridiculous project which could not find an author to write
it up, a printer to print it, a bookseller to sell it and a reader to read it.
Allow me to say to you like Rabelais, who is in every sense our master:
“Gentlemen, God save and guard you! Where are you? I cannot see you; wait until
I put on my spectacles. Ah! I see you now; you, your wives, your children. Are
you in good health? I am glad to hear it.”
But it is not for you that I am writing. Since you have grown-up children that
ends the matter.
Ah! it is you, illustrious tipplers, pampered and gouty, and you, tireless
pie-cutters, favorites who come dear; day-long pantagruellists who keep your
private birds, gay and gallant, and who go to tierce, to sexts, to nones, and
also to vespers and compline and never tire of going.
It is not for you that the Physiology of Marriage is addressed, for you
are not married and may you never be married. You herd of bigots, snails,
hypocrites, dotards, lechers, booted for pilgrimage to Rome, disguised and
marked, as it were, to deceive the world. Go back, you scoundrels, out of my
sight! Gallows birds are ye all—now in the devil’s name will you not begone?
There are none left now but the good souls who love to laugh; not the snivelers
who burst into tears in prose or verse, whatever their subject be, who make
people sick with their odes, their sonnets, their meditation; none of these
dreamers, but certain old-fashioned pantagruellists who don’t think twice about
it when they are invited to join a banquet or provoked to make a repartee, who
can take pleasure in a book like Pease and the Lard with commentary of
Rabelais, or in the one entitled The Dignity of Breeches, and who esteem
highly the fair books of high degree, a quarry hard to run down and redoubtable
to wrestle with.
It no longer does to laugh at a government, my friend, since it has invented
means to raise fifteen hundred millions by taxation. High ecclesiastics, monks
and nuns are no longer so rich that we can drink with them; but let St. Michael
come, he who chased the devil from heaven, and we shall perhaps see the good
time come back again! There is only one thing in France at the present moment
which remains a laughing matter, and that is marriage. Disciples of Panurge, ye
are the only readers I desire. You know how seasonably to take up and lay down
a book, how to get the most pleasure out of it, to understand the hint in a
half word—how to suck nourishment from a marrow-bone.
The men of the microscope who see nothing but a speck, the census-mongers—have
they reviewed the whole matter? Have they pronounced without appeal that it is
as impossible to write a book on marriage as to make new again a broken pot?
Yes, master fool. If you begin to squeeze the marriage question you squirt out
nothing but fun for the bachelors and weariness for the married men. It is
everlasting morality. A million printed pages would have no other matter in
them.
In spite of this, here is my first proposition: marriage is a fight to the
death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven, because it is
the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love; the fight at once
commences and victory, that is to say liberty, remains in the hands of the
cleverer of the two.
Undoubtedly. But do you see in this a fresh idea?
Well, I address myself to the married men of yesterday and of to-day; to those
who on leaving the Church or the registration office indulge the hope of
keeping their wives for themselves alone; to those whom some form or other of
egotism or some indefinable sentiment induces to say when they see the marital
troubles of another, “This will never happen to me.”
I address myself to those sailors who after witnessing the foundering of other
ships still put to sea; to those bachelors who after witnessing the shipwreck
of virtue in a marriage of another venture upon wedlock. And this is my
subject, eternally now, yet eternally old!
A young man, or it may be an old one, in love or not in love, has obtained
possession by a contract duly recorded at the registration office in heaven and
on the rolls of the nation, of a young girl with long hair, with black liquid
eyes, with small feet, with dainty tapering fingers, with red lips, with teeth
of ivory, finely formed, trembling with life, tempting and plump, white as a
lily, loaded with the most charming wealth of beauty. Her drooping eyelashes
seem like the points of the iron crown; her skin, which is as fresh as the
calyx of a white camelia, is streaked with the purple of the red camelia; over
her virginal complexion one seems to see the bloom of young fruit and the
delicate down of a young peach; the azure veins spread a kindling warmth over
this transparent surface; she asks for life and she gives it; she is all joy
and love, all tenderness and candor; she loves her husband, or at least
believes she loves him.
The husband who is in love says in the bottom of his heart: “Those eyes will
see no one but me, that mouth will tremble with love for me alone, that gentle
hand will lavish the caressing treasures of delight on me alone, that bosom
will heave at no voice but mine, that slumbering soul will awake at my will
alone; I only will entangle my fingers in those shining tresses; I alone will
indulge myself in dreamily caressing that sensitive head. I will make death the
guardian of my pillow if only I may ward off from the nuptial couch the
stranger who would violate it; that throne of love shall swim in the blood of
the rash or of my own. Tranquillity, honor, happiness, the ties of home, the
fortune of my children, all are at stake there; I would defend them as a
lioness defends her cubs. Woe unto him who shall set foot in my lair!”
Well now, courageous athlete, we applaud your intention. Up to the present
moment no geographer has ventured to trace the lines of longitude and latitude
in the ocean of marriage. Old husbands have been ashamed to point out the sand
banks, the reefs, the shallows, the breakers, the monsoons, the coasts and
currents which have wrecked their ships, for their shipwrecks brought them
shame. There was no pilot, no compass for those pilgrims of marriage. This work
is intended to supply the desideratum.
Without mentioning grocers and drapers, there are so many people occupied in
discovering the secret motives of women, that it is really a work of charity to
classify for them, by chapter and verse, all the secret situations of marriage;
a good table of contents will enable them to put their finger on each movement
of their wives’ heart, as a table of logarithms tells them the product of a
given multiplication.
And now what do you think about that? Is not this a novel undertaking, and one
which no philosopher has as yet approached, I mean this attempt to show how a
woman may be prevented from deceiving her husband? Is not this the comedy of
comedies? Is it not a second speculum vitae humanae. We are not now
dealing with the abstract questions which we have done justice to already in
this Meditation. At the present day in ethics as in exact science, the world
asks for facts for the results of observation. These we shall furnish.
Let us begin then by examining the true condition of things, by analyzing the
forces which exist on either side. Before arming our imaginary champion let us
reckon up the number of his enemies. Let us count the Cossacks who intend to
invade his little domain.
All who wish may embark with us on this voyage, all who can may laugh. Weigh
anchor; hoist sail! You know exactly the point from which you start. You have
this advantage over a great many books that are written.
As for our fancy of laughing while we weep, and of weeping while we laugh, as
the divine Rabelais drank while he ate and ate while he drank; as for our
humor, to put Heraclitus and Democritus on the same page and to discard style
or premeditated phrase—if any of the crew mutiny, overboard with the doting
cranks, the infamous classicists, the dead and buried romanticists, and steer
for the blue water!
Everybody perhaps will jeeringly remark that we are like those who say with
smiling faces, “I am going to tell you a story that will make you laugh!” But
it is the proper thing to joke when speaking of marriage! In short, can you not
understand that we consider marriage as a trifling ailment to which all of us
are subject and upon which this volume is a monograph?
“But you, your bark or your work starts off like those postilions who crack
their whips because their passengers are English. You will not have galloped at
full speed for half a league before you dismount to mend a trace or to breathe
your horses. What is the good of blowing the trumpet before victory?”
Ah! my dear pantagruellists, nowadays to claim success is to obtain it, and
since, after all, great works are only due to the expansion of little ideas, I
do not see why I should not pluck the laurels, if only for the purpose of
crowning those dirty bacon faces who join us in swallowing a dram. One moment,
pilot, let us not start without making one little definition.
Reader, if from time to time you meet in this work the terms virtue or
virtuous, let us understand that virtue means a certain labored facility by
which a wife keeps her heart for her husband; at any rate, that the word is not
used in a general sense, and I leave this distinction to the natural sagacity
of all.
MARRIAGE STATISTICS.
The administration has been occupied for nearly twenty years in reckoning how
many acres of woodland, meadow, vineyard and fallow are comprised in the area
of France. It has not stopped there, but has also tried to learn the number and
species of the animals to be found there. Scientific men have gone still
further; they have reckoned up the cords of wood, the pounds of beef, the
apples and eggs consumed in Paris. But no one has yet undertaken either in the
name of marital honor or in the interest of marriageable people, or for the
advantage of morality and the progress of human institutions, to investigate
the number of honest wives. What! the French government, if inquiry is made of
it, is able to say how many men it has under arms, how many spies, how many
employees, how many scholars; but, when it is asked how many virtuous women, it
can answer nothing! If the King of France took into his head to choose his
august partner from among his subjects, the administration could not even tell
him the number of white lambs from whom he could make his choice. It would be
obliged to resort to some competition which awards the rose of good conduct,
and that would be a laughable event.
Were the ancients then our masters in political institutions as in morality?
History teaches us that Ahasuerus, when he wished to take a wife from among the
damsels of Persia, chose Esther, the most virtuous and the most beautiful. His
ministers therefore must necessarily have discovered some method of obtaining
the cream of the population. Unfortunately the Bible, which is so clear on all
matrimonial questions, has omitted to give us a rule for matrimonial choice.
Let us try to supply this gap in the work of the administration by calculating
the sum of the female sex in France. Here we call the attention of all friends
to public morality, and we appoint them judges of our method of procedure. We
shall attempt to be particularly liberal in our estimations, particularly exact
in our reasoning, in order that every one may accept the result of this
analysis.
The inhabitants of France are generally reckoned at thirty millions.
Certain naturalists think that the number of women exceeds that of men; but as
many statisticians are of the opposite opinion, we will make the most probable
calculation by allowing fifteen millions for the women.
We will begin by cutting down this sum by nine millions, which stands for those
who seem to have some resemblance to women, but whom we are compelled to reject
upon serious considerations.
Let us explain:
Naturalists consider man to be no more than a unique species of the order
bimana, established by Dumeril in his Analytic Zoology, page 16; and
Bory de Saint Vincent thinks that the ourang-outang ought to be included in the
same order if we would make the species complete.
If these zoologists see in us nothing more than a mammal with thirty-two
vertebrae possessing the hyoid bone and more folds in the hemispheres of the
brain than any other animal; if in their opinion no other differences exist in
this order than those produced by the influence of climate, on which are
founded the nomenclature of fifteen species whose scientific names it is
needless to cite, the physiologists ought also to have the right of making
species and sub-species in accordance with definite degrees of intelligence and
definite conditions of existence, oral and pecuniary.
Now the nine millions of human creatures which we here refer to present at
first sight all the attributes of the human race; they have the hyoid bone, the
coracoid process, the acromion, the zygomatic arch. It is therefore permitted
for the gentlemen of the Jardin des Plantes to classify them with the bimana;
but our Physiology will never admit that women are to be found among them. In
our view, and in the view of those for whom this book is intended, a woman is a
rare variety of the human race, and her principal characteristics are due to
the special care men have bestowed upon its cultivation,—thanks to the power of
money and the moral fervor of civilization! She is generally recognized by the
whiteness, the fineness and softness of her skin. Her taste inclines to the
most spotless cleanliness. Her fingers shrink from encountering anything but
objects which are soft, yielding and scented. Like the ermine she sometimes
dies for grief on seeing her white tunic soiled. She loves to twine her tresses
and to make them exhale the most attractive scents; to brush her rosy nails, to
trim them to an almond shape, and frequently to bathe her delicate limbs. She
is not satisfied to spend the night excepting on the softest down, and
excepting on hair-cushioned lounges, she loves best to take a horizontal
position. Her voice is of penetrating sweetness; her movements are full of
grace. She speaks with marvelous fluency. She does not apply herself to any
hard work; and, nevertheless, in spite of her apparent weakness, there are
burdens which she can bear and move with miraculous ease. She avoids the open
sunlight and wards it off by ingenious appliances. For her to walk is
exhausting. Does she eat? This is a mystery. Has she the needs of other
species? It is a problem. Although she is curious to excess she allows herself
easily to be caught by any one who can conceal from her the slightest thing,
and her intellect leads her to seek incessantly after the unknown. Love is her
religion; she thinks how to please the one she loves. To be beloved is the end
of all her actions; to excite desire is the motive of every gesture. She dreams
of nothing excepting how she may shine, and moves only in a circle filled with
grace and elegance. It is for her the Indian girl has spun the soft fleece of
Thibet goats, Tarare weaves its airy veils, Brussels sets in motion those
shuttles which speed the flaxen thread that is purest and most fine, Bidjapour
wrenches from the bowels of the earth its sparkling pebbles, and the Sevres
gilds its snow-white clay. Night and day she reflects upon new costumes and
spends her life in considering dress and in plaiting her apparel. She moves
about exhibiting her brightness and freshness to people she does not know, but
whose homage flatters her, while the desire she excites charms her, though she
is indifferent to those who feel it. During the hours which she spends in
private, in pleasure, and in the care of her person, she amuses herself by
caroling the sweetest strains. For her France and Italy ordain delightful
concerts and Naples imparts to the strings of the violin an harmonious soul.
This species is in fine at once the queen of the world and the slave of
passion. She dreads marriage because it ends by spoiling her figure, but she
surrenders herself to it because it promises happiness. If she bears children
it is by pure chance, and when they are grown up she tries to conceal them.
These characteristics taken at random from among a thousand others are not
found amongst those beings whose hands are as black as those of apes and their
skin tanned like the ancient parchments of an olim; whose complexion is
burnt brown by the sun and whose neck is wrinkled like that of a turkey; who
are covered with rags; whose voice is hoarse; whose intelligence is nil; who
think of nothing but the bread box, and who are incessantly bowed in toil
towards the ground; who dig; who harrow; who make hay, glean, gather in the
harvest, knead the bread and strip hemp; who, huddled among domestic beasts,
infants and men, dwell in holes and dens scarcely covered with thatch; to whom
it is of little importance from what source children rain down into their
homes. Their work it is to produce many and to deliver them to misery and toil,
and if their love is not like their labor in the fields it is at least as much
a work of chance.
Alas! if there are throughout the world multitudes of trades-women who sit all
day long between the cradle and the sugar-cask, farmers’ wives and daughters
who milk the cows, unfortunate women who are employed like beasts of burden in
the manufactories, who all day long carry the loaded basket, the hoe and the
fish-crate, if unfortunately there exist these common human beings to whom the
life of the soul, the benefits of education, the delicious tempests of the
heart are an unattainable heaven; and if Nature has decreed that they should
have coracoid processes and hyoid bones and thirty-two vertebrae, let them
remain for the physiologist classed with the ourang-outang. And here we make no
stipulations for the leisure class; for those who have the time and the sense
to fall in love; for the rich who have purchased the right of indulging their
passions; for the intellectual who have conquered a monopoly of fads. Anathema
on all those who do not live by thought. We say Raca and fool to all those who
are not ardent, young, beautiful and passionate. This is the public expression
of that secret sentiment entertained by philanthropists who have learned to
read and can keep their own carriage. Among the nine millions of the
proscribed, the tax-gatherer, the magistrate, the law-maker and the priest
doubtless see living souls who are to be ruled and made subject to the
administration of justice. But the man of sentiment, the philosopher of the
boudoir, while he eats his fine bread, made of corn, sown and harvested by
these creatures, will reject them and relegate them, as we do, to a place
outside the genus Woman. For them, there are no women excepting those who can
inspire love; and there is no living being but the creature invested with the
priesthood of thought by means of a privileged education, and with whom leisure
has developed the power of imagination; in other words that only is a human
being whose soul dreams, in love, either of intellectual enjoyments or of
physical delights.
We would, however, make the remark that these nine million female pariahs
produce here and there a thousand peasant girls who from peculiar circumstances
are as fair as Cupids; they come to Paris or to the great cities and end up by
attaining the rank of femmes comme il faut; but to set off against these
two or three thousand favored creatures, there are one hundred thousand others
who remain servants or abandon themselves to frightful irregularities.
Nevertheless, we are obliged to count these Pompadours of the village among the
feminine population.
Our first calculation is based upon the statistical discovery that in France
there are eighteen millions of the poor, ten millions of people in easy
circumstances and two millions of the rich.
There exist, therefore, in France only six millions of women in whom men of
sentiment are now interested, have been interested, or will be interested.
Let us subject this social elite to a philosophic examination.
We think, without fear of being deceived, that married people who have lived
twenty years together may sleep in peace without fear of having their love
trespassed upon or of incurring the scandal of a lawsuit for criminal
conversation.
From these six millions of individuals we must subtract about two millions of
women who are extremely attractive, because for the last forty years they have
seen the world; but since they have not the power to make any one fall in love
with them, they are on the outside of the discussion now before us. If they are
unhappy enough to receive no attention for the sake of amiability, they are
soon seized with ennui; they fall back upon religion, upon the cultivation of
pets, cats, lap-dogs, and other fancies which are no more offensive than their
devoutness.
The calculations made at the Bureau of Longitudes concerning population
authorize us again to subtract from the total mentioned two millions of young
girls, pretty enough to kill; they are at present in the A B C of life and
innocently play with other children, without dreading that these little
hobbledehoys, who now make them laugh, will one day make them weep.
Again, of the two millions of the remaining women, what reasonable man would
not throw out a hundred thousand poor girls, humpbacked, plain, cross-grained,
rickety, sickly, blind, crippled in some way, well educated but penniless, all
bound to be spinsters, and by no means tempted to violate the sacred laws of
marriage?
Nor must we retain the one hundred thousand other girls who become sisters of
St. Camille, Sisters of Charity, monastics, teachers, ladies’ companions, etc.
And we must put into this blessed company a number of young people difficult to
estimate, who are too grown up to play with little boys and yet too young to
sport their wreath of orange blossoms.
Finally, of the fifteen million subjects which remain at the bottom of our
crucible we must eliminate five hundred thousand other individuals, to be
reckoned as daughters of Baal, who subserve the appetites of the base. We must
even comprise among those, without fear that they will be corrupted by their
company, the kept women, the milliners, the shop girls, saleswomen, actresses,
singers, the girls of the opera, the ballet-dancers, upper servants,
chambermaids, etc. Most of these creatures excite the passions of many people,
but they would consider it immodest to inform a lawyer, a mayor, an
ecclesiastic or a laughing world of the day and hour when they surrendered to a
lover. Their system, justly blamed by an inquisitive world, has the advantage
of laying upon them no obligations towards men in general, towards the mayor or
the magistracy. As these women do not violate any oath made in public, they
have no connection whatever with a work which treats exclusively of lawful
marriage.
Some one will say that the claims made by this essay are very slight, but its
limitations make just compensation for those which amateurs consider
excessively padded. If any one, through love for a wealthy dowager, wishes to
obtain admittance for her into the remaining million, he must classify her
under the head of Sisters of Charity, ballet-dancers, or hunchbacks; in fact we
have not taken more than five hundred thousand individuals in forming this last
class, because it often happens, as we have seen above, that the nine millions
of peasant girls make a large accession to it. We have for the same reason
omitted the working-girl class and the hucksters; the women of these two
sections are the product of efforts made by nine millions of female bimana to
rise to the higher civilization. But for its scrupulous exactitude many persons
might regard this statistical meditation as a mere joke.
We have felt very much inclined to form a small class of a hundred thousand
individuals as a crowning cabinet of the species, to serve as a place of
shelter for women who have fallen into a middle estate, like widows, for
instance; but we have preferred to estimate in round figures.
It would be easy to prove the fairness of our analysis: let one reflection be
sufficient.
The life of a woman is divided into three periods, very distinct from each
other: the first begins in the cradle and ends on the attainment of a
marriageable age; the second embraces the time during which a woman belongs to
marriage; the third opens with the critical period, the ending with which
nature closes the passions of life. These three spheres of existence, being
almost equal in duration, might be employed for the classification into equal
groups of a given number of women. Thus in a mass of six millions, omitting
fractions, there are about two million girls between one and eighteen, two
millions women between eighteen and forty and two millions of old women. The
caprices of society have divided the two millions of marriageable women into
three main classes, namely: those who remain spinsters for reasons which we
have defined; those whose virtue does not reckon in the obtaining of husbands,
and the million of women lawfully married, with whom we have to deal.
You see then, by the exact sifting out of the feminine population, that there
exists in France a little flock of barely a million white lambs, a privileged
fold into which every wolf is anxious to enter.
Let us put this million of women, already winnowed by our fan, through another
examination.
To arrive at the true idea of the degree of confidence which a man ought to
have in his wife, let us suppose for a moment that all wives will deceive their
husbands.
On this hypothesis, it will be proper to cut out about one-twentieth, viz.,
young people who are newly married and who will be faithful to their vows for a
certain time.
Another twentieth will be in ill-health. This will be to make a very modest
allowance for human infirmities.
Certain passions, which we are told destroy the dominion of the man over the
heart of his wife, namely, aversion, grief, the bearing of children, will
account for another twentieth.
Adultery does not establish itself in the heart of a married woman with the
promptness of a pistol-shot. Even when sympathy with another rouses feelings on
first sight, a struggle always takes place, whose duration discounts the total
sum of conjugal infidelities. It would be an insult to French modesty not to
admit the duration of this struggle in a country so naturally combative,
without referring to at least a twentieth in the total of married women; but
then we will suppose that there are certain sickly women who preserve their
lovers while they are using soothing draughts, and that there are certain wives
whose confinement makes sarcastic celibates smile. In this way we shall
vindicate the modesty of those who enter upon the struggle from motives of
virtue. For the same reason we should not venture to believe that a woman
forsaken by her lover will find a new one on the spot; but this discount being
much more uncertain than the preceding one, we will estimate it at
one-fortieth.
These several rebates will reduce our sum total to eight hundred thousand
women, when we come to calculate the number of those who are likely to violate
married faith. Who would not at the present moment wish to retain the
persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not the supreme flower of the
country? Are they not all blooming creatures, fascinating the world by their
beauty, their youth, their life and their love? To believe in their virtue is a
sort of social religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the
chief glory of France.
It is in the midst of this million we are bound to investigate:
The number of honest women;
The number of virtuous women.
The work of investigating this and of arranging the results under two
categories requires whole meditations, which may serve as an appendix to the
present one.
OF THE HONEST WOMAN.
The preceding meditation has proved that we possess in France a floating
population of one million women reveling in the privilege of inspiring those
passions which a gallant man avows without shame, or dissembles with delight.
It is then among this million of women that we must carry our lantern of
Diogenes in order to discover the honest women of the land.
This inquiry suggests certain digressions.
Two young people, well dressed, whose slender figures and rounded arms suggest
a paver’s tool, and whose boots are elegantly made, meet one morning on the
boulevard, at the end of the Passage des Panoramas.
“What, is this you?”
“Yes, dear boy; it looks like me, doesn’t it?”
Then they laugh, with more or less intelligence, according to the nature of the
joke which opens the conversation.
When they have examined each other with the sly curiosity of a police officer
on the lookout for a clew, when they are quite convinced of the newness of each
other’s gloves, of each other’s waistcoat and of the taste with which their
cravats are tied; when they are pretty certain that neither of them is down in
the world, they link arms and if they start from the Theater des Varietes, they
have not reached Frascati’s before they have asked each other a roundabout
question whose free translation may be this:
“Whom are you living with now?”
As a general rule she is a charming woman.
Who is the infantryman of Paris into whose ear there have not dropped, like
bullets in the day of battle, thousands of words uttered by the passer-by, and
who has not caught one of those numberless sayings which, according to
Rabelais, hang frozen in the air? But the majority of men take their way
through Paris in the same manner as they live and eat, that is, without
thinking about it. There are very few skillful musicians, very few practiced
physiognomists who can recognize the key in which these vagrant notes are set,
the passion that prompts these floating words. Ah! to wander over Paris! What
an adorable and delightful existence is that! To saunter is a science; it is
the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to
live. The young and pretty women, long contemplated with ardent eyes, would be
much more admissible in claiming a salary than the cook who asks for twenty
sous from the Limousin whose nose with inflated nostrils took in the perfumes
of beauty. To saunter is to enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy;
it is to enjoy the sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or
grotesque physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a
thousand existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for
the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions.
Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard to the categorical
question which is always with us?
“She is thirty-five years old, but you would not think she was more than
twenty!” said an enthusiastic youth with sparkling eyes, who, freshly liberated
from college, would, like Cherubin, embrace all.
“Zounds! Mine has dressing-gowns of batiste and diamond rings for the evening!”
said a lawyer’s clerk.
“But she has a box at the Francais!” said an army officer.
“At any rate,” cried another one, an elderly man who spoke as if he were
standing on the defence, “she does not cost me a sou! In our case —wouldn’t you
like to have the same chance, my respected friend?”
And he patted his companion lightly on the shoulder.
“Oh! she loves me!” said another. “It seems too good to be true; but she has
the most stupid of husbands! Ah!—Buffon has admirably described the animals,
but the biped called husband—”
What a pleasant thing for a married man to hear!
“Oh! what an angel you are, my dear!” is the answer to a request discreetly
whispered into the ear.
“Can you tell me her name or point her out to me?”
“Oh! no; she is an honest woman.”
When a student is loved by a waitress, he mentions her name with pride and
takes his friends to lunch at her house. If a young man loves a woman whose
husband is engaged in some trade dealing with articles of necessity, he will
answer, blushingly, “She is the wife of a haberdasher, of a stationer, of a
hatter, of a linen-draper, of a clerk, etc.”
But this confession of love for an inferior which buds and blows in the midst
of packages, loaves of sugar, or flannel waistcoats is always accompanied with
an exaggerated praise of the lady’s fortune. The husband alone is engaged in
the business; he is rich; he has fine furniture. The loved one comes to her
lover’s house; she wears a cashmere shawl; she owns a country house, etc.
In short, a young man is never wanting in excellent arguments to prove that his
mistress is very nearly, if not quite, an honest woman. This distinction
originates in the refinement of our manners and has become as indefinite as the
line which separates bon ton from vulgarity. What then is meant by an
honest woman?
On this point the vanity of women, of their lovers, and even that of their
husbands, is so sensitive that we had better here settle upon some general
rules, which are the result of long observation.
Our one million of privileged women represent a multitude who are eligible for
the glorious title of honest women, but by no means all are elected to it. The
principles on which these elections are based may be found in the following
axioms:
I.
An honest woman is necessarily a married woman.
II.
An honest woman is under forty years old.
III.
A married woman whose favors are to be paid for is not an honest
woman.
IV.
A married woman who keeps a private carriage is an honest woman.
V.
A woman who does her own cooking is not an honest woman.
VI. When a man has made enough to yield an income of twenty thousand francs,
his wife is an honest woman, whatever the business in which his fortune was
made.
VII. A woman who says “letter of change” for letter of exchange, who says of a
man, “He is an elegant gentleman,” can never be an honest woman, whatever
fortune she possesses.
VIII.
An honest woman ought to be in a financial condition such as forbids
her lover to think she will ever cost him anything.
IX.
A woman who lives on the third story of any street excepting the Rue
de Rivoli and the Rue de Castiglione is not an honest woman.
X. The wife of a banker is always an honest woman, but the woman who sits at
the cashier’s desk cannot be one, unless her husband has a very large business
and she does not live over his shop.
XI. The unmarried niece of a bishop when she lives with him can pass for an
honest woman, because if she has an intrigue she has to deceive her uncle.
XII.
An honest woman is one whom her lover fears to compromise.
XIII.
The wife of an artist is always an honest woman.
By the application of these principles even a man from Ardeche can resolve all
the difficulties which our subject presents.
In order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely educated, may
possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to pass whole hours in
her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life of soul, she must have at
least six thousand francs a year if she lives in the country, and twenty
thousand if she lives at Paris. These two financial limits will suggest to you
how many honest women are to be reckoned on in the million, for they are really
a mere product of our statistical calculations.
Now three hundred thousand independent people, with an income of fifteen
thousand francs, represent the sum total of those who live on pensions, on
annuities and the interest of treasury bonds and mortgages.
Three hundred thousand landed proprietors enjoy an income of three thousand
five hundred francs and represent all territorial wealth.
Two hundred thousand payees, at the rate of fifteen hundred francs each,
represent the distribution of public funds by the state budget, by the budgets
of the cities and departments, less the national debt, church funds and
soldier’s pay, (i.e. five sous a day with allowances for washing, weapons,
victuals, clothes, etc.).
Two hundred thousand fortunes amassed in commerce, reckoning the capital at
twenty thousand francs in each case, represent all the commercial
establishments possible in France.
Here we have a million husbands represented.
But at what figure shall we count those who have an income of fifty, of a
hundred, of two, three, four, five, and six hundred francs only, from consols
or some other investment?
How many landed proprietors are there who pay taxes amounting to no more than a
hundred sous, twenty francs, one hundred francs, two hundred, or two hundred
and eighty?
At what number shall we reckon those of the governmental leeches, who are
merely quill-drivers with a salary of six hundred francs a year?
How many merchants who have nothing but a fictitious capital shall we admit?
These men are rich in credit and have not a single actual sou, and resemble the
sieves through which Pactolus flows. And how many brokers whose real capital
does not amount to more than a thousand, two thousand, four thousand, five
thousand francs? Business!—my respects to you!
Let us suppose more people to be fortunate than actually are so. Let us divide
this million into parts; five hundred thousand domestic establishments will
have an income ranging from a hundred to three thousand francs, and five
thousand women will fulfill the conditions which entitle them to be called
honest women.
After these observations, which close our meditation on statistics, we are
entitled to cut out of this number one hundred thousand individuals;
consequently we can consider it to be proven mathematically that there exist in
France no more than four hundred thousand women who can furnish to men of
refinement the exquisite and exalted enjoyments which they look for in love.
And here it is fitting to make a remark to the adepts for whom we write, that
love does not consist in a series of eager conversations, of nights of
pleasure, of an occasional caress more or less well-timed and a spark of
amour-propre baptized by the name of jealousy. Our four hundred thousand
women are not of those concerning whom it may be said, “The most beautiful girl
in the world can give only what she has.” No, they are richly endowed with
treasures which appeal to our ardent imaginations, they know how to sell dear
that which they do not possess, in order to compensate for the vulgarity of
that which they give.
Do we feel more pleasure in kissing the glove of a grisette than in draining
the five minutes of pleasure which all women offer to us?
Is it the conversation of a shop-girl which makes you expect boundless
delights?
In your intercourse with a woman who is beneath you, the delight of flattered
amour-propre is on her side. You are not in the secret of the happiness
which you give.
In a case of a woman above you, either in fortune or social position, the
ticklings of vanity are not only intense, but are equally shared. A man can
never raise his mistress to his own level; but a woman always puts her lover in
the position that she herself occupies. “I can make princes and you can make
nothing but bastards,” is an answer sparkling with truth.
If love is the first of passions, it is because it flatters all the rest of
them at the same time. We love with more or less intensity in proportion to the
number of chords which are touched by the fingers of a beautiful mistress.
Biren, the jeweler’s son, climbing into the bed of the Duchesse de Courlande
and helping her to sign an agreement that he should be proclaimed sovereign of
the country, as he was already of the young and beautiful queen, is an example
of the happiness which ought to be given to their lovers by our four hundred
thousand women.
If a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the heads which
crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artistic woman of fashion.
Now we all love more or less to be at the top.
It is on this brilliant section of the nation that the attack is made by men
whose education, talent or wit gives them the right to be considered persons of
importance with regard to that success of which people of every country are so
proud; and only among this class of women is the wife to be found whose heart
has to be defended at all hazard by our husband.
What does it matter whether the considerations which arise from the existence
of a feminine aristocracy are or are not equally applicable to other social
classes? That which is true of all women exquisite in manners, language and
thought, in whom exceptional educational facilities have developed a taste for
art and a capacity for feeling, comparing and thinking, who have a high sense
of propriety and politeness and who actually set the fashion in French manners,
ought to be true also in the case of women whatever their nation and whatever
their condition. The man of distinction to whom this book is dedicated must of
necessity possess a certain mental vision, which makes him perceive the various
degrees of light that fill each class and comprehend the exact point in the
scale of civilization to which each of our remarks is severally applicable.
Would it not be then in the highest interests of morality, that we should in
the meantime try to find out the number of virtuous women who are to be found
among these adorable creatures? Is not this a question of marito-national
importance?
OF THE VIRTUOUS WOMAN.
The question, perhaps, is not so much how many virtuous women there are, as
what possibility there is of an honest woman remaining virtuous.
In order to throw light upon a point so important, let us cast a rapid glance
over the male population.
From among our fifteen millions of men we must cut off, in the first place, the
nine millions of bimana of thirty-two vertebrae and exclude from our
physiological analysis all but six millions of people. The Marceaus, the
Massenas, the Rousseaus, the Diderots and the Rollins often sprout forth
suddenly from the social swamp, when it is in a condition of fermentation; but,
here we plead guilty of deliberate inaccuracy. These errors in calculation are
likely, however, to give all their weight to our conclusion and to corroborate
what we are forced to deduce in unveiling the mechanism of passion.
From the six millions of privileged men, we must exclude three millions of old
men and children.
It will be affirmed by some one that this subtraction leaves a remainder of
four millions in the case of women.
This difference at first sight seems singular, but is easily accounted for.
The average age at which women are married is twenty years and at forty they
cease to belong to the world of love.
Now a young bachelor of seventeen is apt to make deep cuts with his penknife in
the parchment of contracts, as the chronicles of scandal will tell you.
On the other hand, a man at fifty-two is more formidable than at any other age.
It is at this fair epoch of life that he enjoys an experience dearly bought,
and probably all the fortune that he will ever require. The passions by which
his course is directed being the last under whose scourge he will move, he is
unpitying and determined, like the man carried away by a current who snatches
at a green and pliant branch of willow, the young nursling of the year.
XIV.
Physically a man is a man much longer than a woman is a woman.
With regard to marriage, the difference in duration of the life of love with a
man and with a woman is fifteen years. This period is equal to three-fourths of
the time during which the infidelities of the woman can bring unhappiness to
her husband. Nevertheless, the remainder in our subtraction from the sum of men
only differs by a sixth or so from that which results in our subtraction from
the sum of women.
Great is the modest caution of our estimates. As to our arguments, they are
founded on evidence so widely known, that we have only expounded them for the
sake of being exact and in order to anticipate all criticism.
It has, therefore, been proved to the mind of every philosopher, however little
disposed he may be to forming numerical estimates, that there exists in France
a floating mass of three million men between seventeen and fifty-two, all
perfectly alive, well provided with teeth, quite resolved on biting, in fact,
biting and asking nothing better than the opportunity of walking strong and
upright along the way to Paradise.
The above observations entitle us to separate from this mass of men a million
husbands. Suppose for an instant that these, being satisfied and always happy,
like our model husband, confine themselves to conjugal love.
Our remainder of two millions do not require five sous to make love.
It is quite sufficient for a man to have a fine foot and a clear eye in order
to dismantle the portrait of a husband.
It is not necessary that he should have a handsome face nor even a good figure;
Provided that a man appears to be intellectual and has a distinguished
expression of face, women never look where he comes from but where he is going
to;
The charms of youth are the unique equipage of love;
A coat made by Brisson, a pair of gloves bought from Boivin, elegant shoes, for
whose payment the dealer trembles, a well-tied cravat are sufficient to make a
man king of the drawing-room;
And soldiers—although the passion for gold lace and aiguillettes has died
away—do not soldiers form of themselves a redoubtable legion of celibates? Not
to mention Eginhard—for he was a private secretary —has not a newspaper
recently recorded how a German princess bequeathed her fortune to a simple
lieutenant of cuirassiers in the imperial guard?
But the notary of the village, who in the wilds of Gascony does not draw more
than thirty-six deeds a year, sends his son to study law at Paris; the hatter
wishes his son to be a notary, the lawyer destines his to be a judge, the judge
wishes to become a minister in order that his sons may be peers. At no epoch in
the world’s history has there been so eager a thirst for education. To-day it
is not intellect but cleverness that promenades the streets. From every crevice
in the rocky surface of society brilliant flowers burst forth as the spring
brings them on the walls of a ruin; even in the caverns there droop from the
vaulted roof faintly colored tufts of green vegetation. The sun of education
permeates all. Since this vast development of thought, this even and fruitful
diffusion of light, we have scarcely any men of superiority, because every
single man represents the whole education of his age. We are surrounded by
living encyclopaedias who walk about, think, act and wish to be immortalized.
Hence the frightful catastrophes of climbing ambitions and insensate passions.
We feel the want of other worlds; there are more hives needed to receive the
swarms, and especially are we in need of more pretty women.
But the maladies by which a man is afflicted do not nullify the sum total of
human passion. To our shame be it spoken, a woman is never so much attached to
us as when we are sick.
With this thought, all the epigrams written against the little sex —for it is
antiquated nowadays to say the fair sex—ought to be disarmed of their point and
changed into madrigals of eulogy! All men ought to consider that the sole
virtue of a woman is to love and that all women are prodigiously virtuous, and
at that point to close the book and end their meditation.
Ah! do you not remember that black and gloomy hour when lonely and suffering,
making accusations against men and especially against your friends, weak,
discouraged, and filled with thoughts of death, your head supported by a
fevered pillow and stretched upon a sheet whose white trellis-work of linen was
stamped upon your skin, you traced with your eyes the green paper which covered
the walls of your silent chamber? Do you recollect, I say, seeing some one
noiselessly open your door, exhibiting her fair young face, framed with rolls
of gold, and a bonnet which you had never seen before? She seemed like a star
in a stormy night, smiling and stealing towards you with an expression in which
distress and happiness were blended, and flinging herself into your arms!
“How did you manage it? What did you tell your husband?” you ask.
“Your husband!”—Ah! this brings us back again into the depths of our subject.
XV.
Morally the man is more often and longer a man than the woman is a women.
On the other hand we ought to consider that among these two millions of
celibates there are many unhappy men, in whom a profound sense of their misery
and persistent toil have quenched the instinct of love;
That they have not all passed through college, that there are many artisans
among them, many footmen—the Duke of Gevres, an extremely plain and short man,
as he walked through the park of Versailles saw several lackeys of fine
appearance and said to his friends, “Look how these fellows are made by us, and
how they imitate us”—that there are many contractors, many trades people who
think of nothing but money; many drudges of the shop;
That there are men more stupid and actually more ugly than God would have made
them;
That there are those whose character is like a chestnut without a kernel;
That the clergy are generally chaste;
That there are men so situated in life that they can never enter the brilliant
sphere in which honest women move, whether for want of a coat, or from their
bashfulness, or from the failure of a mahout to introduce them.
But let us leave to each one the task of adding to the number of these
exceptions in accordance with his personal experience—for the object of a book
is above all things to make people think—and let us instantly suppress one-half
of the sum total and admit only that there are one million of hearts worthy of
paying homage to honest women. This number approximately includes those who are
superior in all departments. Women love only the intellectual, but justice must
be done to virtue.
As for these amiable celibates, each of them relates a string of adventures,
all of which seriously compromise honest women. It would be a very moderate and
reserved computation to attribute no more than three adventures to each
celibate; but if some of them count their adventures by the dozen, there are
many more who confine themselves to two or three incidents of passion and some
to a single one in their whole life, so that we have in accordance with the
statistical method taken the average. Now if the number of celibates be
multiplied by the number of their excesses in love the result will be three
millions of adventures; to set against this we have only four hundred thousand
honest women!
If the God of goodness and indulgence who hovers over the worlds does not make
a second washing of the human race, it is doubtless because so little success
attended the first.
Here then we have a people, a society which has been sifted, and you see the
result!
XVI.
Manners are the hypocrisy of nations, and hypocrisy is more or less perfect.
XVII.
Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.
Physical love is a craving like hunger, excepting that man eats all the time,
and in love his appetite is neither so persistent nor so regular as at the
table.
A piece of bread and a carafe of water will satisfy the hunger of any man; but
our civilization has brought to light the science of gastronomy.
Love has its piece of bread, but it has also its science of loving, that
science which we call coquetry, a delightful word which the French alone
possess, for that science originated in this country.
Well, after all, isn’t it enough to enrage all husbands when they think that
man is so endowed with an innate desire to change from one food to another,
that in some savage countries, where travelers have landed, they have found
alcoholic drinks and ragouts?
Hunger is not so violent as love; but the caprices of the soul are more
numerous, more bewitching, more exquisite in their intensity than the caprices
of gastronomy; but all that the poets and the experiences of our own life have
revealed to us on the subject of love, arms us celibates with a terrible power:
we are the lion of the Gospel seeking whom we may devour.
Then, let every one question his conscience on this point, and search his
memory if he has ever met a man who confined himself to the love of one woman
only!
How, alas! are we to explain, while respecting the honor of all the peoples,
the problem which results from the fact that three millions of burning hearts
can find no more than four hundred thousand women on which they can feed?
Should we apportion four celibates for each woman and remember that the honest
women would have already established, instinctively and unconsciously, a sort
of understanding between themselves and the celibates, like that which the
presidents of royal courts have initiated, in order to make their partisans in
each chamber enter successively after a certain number of years?
That would be a mournful way of solving the difficulty!
Should we make the conjecture that certain honest women act in dividing up the
celibates, as the lion in the fable did? What! Surely, in that case, half at
least of our altars would become whited sepulchres!
Ought one to suggest for the honor of French ladies that in the time of peace
all other countries should import into France a certain number of their honest
women, and that these countries should mainly consist of England, Germany and
Russia? But the European nations would in that case attempt to balance matters
by demanding that France should export a certain number of her pretty women.
Morality and religion suffer so much from such calculations as this, that an
honest man, in an attempt to prove the innocence of married women, finds some
reason to believe that dowagers and young people are half of them involved in
this general corruption, and are liars even more truly than are the celibates.
But to what conclusion does our calculation lead us? Think of our husbands, who
to the disgrace of morals behave almost all of them like celibates and glory
in petto over their secret adventures.
Why, then we believe that every married man, who is at all attached to his wife
from honorable motives, can, in the words of the elder Corneille, seek a rope
and a nail; foenum habet in cornu.
It is, however, in the bosom of these four hundred thousand honest women that
we must, lantern in hand, seek for the number of the virtuous women in France!
As a matter of fact, we have by our statistics of marriage so far only set down
the number of those creatures with which society has really nothing to do. Is
it not true that in France the honest people, the people comme il faut,
form a total of scarcely three million individuals, namely, our one million of
celibates, five hundred thousand honest women, five hundred thousand husbands,
and a million of dowagers, of infants and of young girls?
Are you then astonished at the famous verse of Boileau? This verse proves that
the poet had cleverly fathomed the discovery mathematically propounded to you
in these tiresome meditations and that his language is by no means
hyperbolical.
Nevertheless, virtuous women there certainly are:
Yes, those who have never been tempted and those who die at their first
child-birth, assuming that their husbands had married them virgins;
Yes, those who are ugly as the Kaifakatadary of the Arabian Nights;
Yes, those whom Mirabeau calls “fairy cucumbers” and who are composed of atoms
exactly like those of strawberry and water-lily roots. Nevertheless, we need
not believe that!
Further, we acknowledge that, to the credit of our age, we meet, ever since the
revival of morality and religion and during our own times, some women, here and
there, so moral, so religious, so devoted to their duties, so upright, so
precise, so stiff, so virtuous, so—that the devil himself dare not even look at
them; they are guarded on all sides by rosaries, hours of prayer and directors.
Pshaw!
We will not attempt to enumerate the women who are virtuous from stupidity, for
it is acknowledged that in love all women have intellect.
In conclusion, we may remark that it is not impossible that there exist in some
corner of the earth women, young, pretty and virtuous, whom the world does not
suspect.
But you must not give the name of virtuous woman to her who, in her struggle
against an involuntary passion, has yielded nothing to her lover whom she
idolizes. She does injury in the most cruel way in which it can possibly be
done to a loving husband. For what remains to him of his wife? A thing without
name, a living corpse. In the very midst of delight his wife remains like the
guest who has been warned by Borgia that certain meats were poisoned; he felt
no hunger, he ate sparingly or pretended to eat. He longed for the meat which
he had abandoned for that provided by the terrible cardinal, and sighed for the
moment when the feast was over and he could leave the table.
What is the result which these reflections on the feminine virtue lead to? Here
they are; but the last two maxims have been given us by an eclectic philosopher
of the eighteenth century.
XVIII.
A virtuous woman has in her heart one fibre less or one fibre more than other
women; she is either stupid or sublime.
XIX.
The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.
XX.
The most virtuous women have in them something which is never chaste.
XXI.
“That a man of intellect has doubts about his mistress is conceivable, but
about his wife!—that would be too stupid.”
XXII.
“Men would be insufferably unhappy if in the presence of women they thought the
least bit in the world of that which they know by heart.”
The number of those rare women who, like the Virgins of the Parable, have kept
their lamps lighted, will always appear very small in the eyes of the defenders
of virtue and fine feeling; but we must needs exclude it from the total sum of
honest women, and this subtraction, consoling as it is, will increase the
danger which threatens husbands, will intensify the scandal of their married
life, and involve, more or less, the reputation of all other lawful spouses.
What husband will be able to sleep peacefully beside his young and beautiful
wife while he knows that three celibates, at least, are on the watch; that if
they have not already encroached upon his little property, they regard the
bride as their destined prey, for sooner or later she will fall into their
hands, either by stratagem, compulsive conquest or free choice? And it is
impossible that they should fail some day or other to obtain victory!
What a startling conclusion!
On this point the purist in morality, the collets montes will accuse us
perhaps of presenting here conclusions which are excessively despairing; they
will be desirous of putting up a defence, either for the virtuous women or the
celibates; but we have in reserve for them a final remark.
Increase the number of honest women and diminish the number of celibates, as
much as you choose, you will always find that the result will be a larger
number of gallant adventurers than of honest women; you will always find a vast
multitude driven through social custom to commit three sorts of crime.
If they remain chaste, their health is injured, while they are the slaves of
the most painful torture; they disappoint the sublime ends of nature, and
finally die of consumption, drinking milk on the mountains of Switzerland!
If they yield to legitimate temptations, they either compromise the honest
women, and on this point we re-enter on the subject of this book, or else they
debase themselves by a horrible intercourse with the five hundred thousand
women of whom we spoke in the third category of the first Meditation, and in
this case, have still considerable chance of visiting Switzerland, drinking
milk and dying there!
Have you never been struck, as we have been, by a certain error of organization
in our social order, the evidence of which gives a moral certainty to our last
calculations?
The average age at which a man marries is thirty years; the average age at
which his passions, his most violent desires for genesial delight are
developed, is twenty years. Now during the ten fairest years of his life,
during the green season in which his beauty, his youth and his wit make him
more dangerous to husbands than at any other epoch of his life, his finds
himself without any means of satisfying legitimately that irresistible craving
for love which burns in his whole nature. During this time, representing the
sixth part of human life, we are obliged to admit that the sixth part or less
of our total male population and the sixth part which is the most vigorous is
placed in a position which is perpetually exhausting for them, and dangerous
for society.
“Why don’t they get married?” cries a religious woman.
But what father of good sense would wish his son to be married at twenty years
of age?
Is not the danger of these precocious unions apparent at all? It would seem as
if marriage was a state very much at variance with natural habitude, seeing
that it requires a special ripeness of judgment in those who conform to it. All
the world knows what Rousseau said: “There must always be a period of
libertinage in life either in one state or another. It is an evil leaven which
sooner or later ferments.”
Now what mother of a family is there who would expose her daughter to the risk
of this fermentation when it has not yet taken place?
On the other hand, what need is there to justify a fact under whose domination
all societies exist? Are there not in every country, as we have demonstrated, a
vast number of men who live as honestly as possible, without being either
celibates or married men?
Cannot these men, the religious women will always ask, abide in continence like
the priests?
Certainly, madame.
Nevertheless, we venture to observe that the vow of chastity is the most
startling exception to the natural condition of man which society makes
necessary; but continence is the great point in the priest’s profession; he
must be chaste, as the doctor must be insensible to physical sufferings, as the
notary and the advocate insensible to the misery whose wounds are laid bare to
their eyes, as the soldier to the sight of death which he meets on the field of
battle. From the fact that the requirements of civilization ossify certain
fibres of the heart and render callous certain membranes, we must not
necessarily conclude that all men are bound to undergo this partial and
exceptional death of the soul. This would be to reduce the human race to a
condition of atrocious moral suicide.
But let it be granted that, in the atmosphere of a drawing-room the most
Jansenistic in the world, appears a young man of twenty-eight who has
scrupulously guarded his robe of innocence and is as truly virginal as the
heath-cock which gourmands enjoy. Do you not see that the most austere of
virtuous women would merely pay him a sarcastic compliment on his courage; the
magistrate, the strictest that ever mounted a bench, would shake his head and
smile, and all the ladies would hide themselves, so that he might not hear
their laughter? When the heroic and exceptional young victim leaves the
drawing-room, what a deluge of jokes bursts upon his innocent head? What a
shower of insults! What is held to be more shameful in France than impotence,
than coldness, than the absence of all passion, than simplicity?
The only king of France who would not have laughed was perhaps Louis XIII; but
as for his roue of a father, he would perhaps have banished the young man,
either under the accusation that he was no Frenchman or from a conviction that
he was setting a dangerous example.
Strange contradiction! A young man is equally blamed if he passes life in Holy
Land, to use an expression of bachelor life. Could it possibly be for the
benefit of the honest women that the prefects of police, and mayors of all time
have ordained that the passions of the public shall not manifest themselves
until nightfall, and shall cease at eleven o’clock in the evening?
Where do you wish that our mass of celibates should sow their wild oats? And
who is deceived on this point? as Figaro asks. Is it the governments or the
governed? The social order is like the small boys who stop their ears at the
theatre, so as not to hear the report of the firearms. Is society afraid to
probe its wound or has it recognized the fact that evil is irremediable and
things must be allowed to run their course? But there crops up here a question
of legislation, for it is impossible to escape the material and social dilemma
created by this balance of public virtue in the matter of marriage. It is not
our business to solve this difficulty; but suppose for a moment that society in
order to save a multitude of families, women and honest girls, found itself
compelled to grant to certain licensed hearts the right of satisfying the
desire of the celibates; ought not our laws then to raise up a professional
body consisting of female Decii who devote themselves for the republic, and
make a rampart of their bodies round the honest families? The legislators have
been very wrong hitherto in disdaining to regulate the lot of courtesans.
XXIII.
The courtesan is an institution if she is a necessity.
This question bristles with so many ifs and buts that we will bequeath it for
solution to our descendants; it is right that we shall leave them something to
do. Moreover, its discussion is not germane to this work; for in this, more
than in any other age, there is a great outburst of sensibility; at no other
epoch have there been so many rules of conduct, because never before has it
been so completely accepted that pleasure comes from the heart. Now, what man
of sentiment is there, what celibate is there, who, in the presence of four
hundred thousand young and pretty women arrayed in the splendors of fortune and
the graces of wit, rich in treasures of coquetry, and lavish in the dispensing
of happiness, would wish to go—? For shame!
Let us put forth for the benefit of our future legislature in clear and brief
axioms the result arrived at during the last few years.
XXIV.
In the social order, inevitable abuses are laws of nature, in accordance with
which mankind should frame their civil and political institutes.
XXV.
“Adultery is like a commercial failure, with this difference,” says Chamfort,
“that it is the innocent party who has been ruined and who bears the disgrace.”
In France the laws that relate to adultery and those that relate to bankruptcy
require great modifications. Are they too indulgent? Do they sin on the score
of bad principles? Caveant consules!
Come now, courageous athlete, who have taken as your task that which is
expressed in the little apostrophe which our first Meditation addresses to
people who have the charge of a wife, what are you going to say about it? We
hope that this rapid review of the question does not make you tremble, that you
are not one of those men whose nervous fluid congeals at the sight of a
precipice or a boa constrictor! Well! my friend, he who owns soil has war and
toil. The men who want your gold are more numerous than those who want your
wife.
After all, husbands are free to take these trifles for arithmetical estimates,
or arithmetical estimates for trifles. The illusions of life are the best
things in life; that which is most respectable in life is our futile credulity.
Do there not exist many people whose principles are merely prejudices, and who
not having the force of character to form their own ideas of happiness and
virtue accept what is ready made for them by the hand of legislators? Nor do we
address those Manfreds who having taken off too many garments wish to raise all
the curtains, that is, in moments when they are tortured by a sort of moral
spleen. By them, however, the question is boldly stated and we know the extent
of the evil.
It remains that we should examine the chances and changes which each man is
likely to meet in marriage, and which may weaken him in that struggle from
which our champion should issue victorious.
OF THE PREDESTINED.
Predestined means destined in advance for happiness or unhappiness. Theology
has seized upon this word and employs it in relation to the happy; we give to
the term a meaning which is unfortunate to our elect of which one can say in
opposition to the Gospel, “Many are called, many are chosen.”
Experience has demonstrated that there are certain classes of men more subject
than others to certain infirmities; the Gascons are given to exaggeration and
Parisians to vanity. As we see that apoplexy attacks people with short necks,
or butchers are liable to carbuncle, as gout attacks the rich, health the poor,
deafness kings, paralysis administrators, so it has been remarked that certain
classes of husbands and their wives are more given to illegitimate passions.
Thus they forestall the celibates, they form another sort of aristocracy. If
any reader should be enrolled in one of these aristocratic classes he will, we
hope, have sufficient presence of mind, he or at least his wife, instantly to
call to mind the favorite axiom of Lhomond’s Latin Grammar: “No rule without
exception.” A friend of the house may even recite the verse—
“Present company always excepted.”
And then every one will have the right to believe, in petto, that he
forms the exception. But our duty, the interest which we take in husbands and
the keen desire which we have to preserve young and pretty women from the
caprices and catastrophes which a lover brings in his train, force us to give
notice to husbands that they ought to be especially on their guard.
In this recapitulation first are to be reckoned the husbands whom business,
position or public office calls from their houses and detains for a definite
time. It is these who are the standard-bearers of the brotherhood.
Among them, we would reckon magistrates, holding office during pleasure or for
life, and obliged to remain at the Palace for the greater portion of the day;
other functionaries sometimes find means to leave their office at business
hours; but a judge or a public prosecutor, seated on his cushion of lilies, is
bound even to die during the progress of the hearing. There is his field of
battle.
It is the same with the deputies and peers who discuss the laws, of ministers
who share the toils of the king, of secretaries who work with the ministers, of
soldiers on campaign, and indeed with the corporal of the police patrol, as the
letter of Lafleur, in the Sentimental Journey, plainly shows.
Next to the men who are obliged to be absent from home at certain fixed hours,
come the men whom vast and serious undertakings leave not one minute for
love-making; their foreheads are always wrinkled with anxiety, their
conversation is generally void of merriment.
At the head of these unfortunates we must place the bankers, who toil in the
acquisition of millions, whose heads are so full of calculations that the
figures burst through their skulls and range themselves in columns of addition
on their foreheads.
These millionaires, forgetting most of the time the sacred laws of marriage and
the attention due to the tender flower which they have undertaken to cultivate,
never think of watering it or of defending it from the heat and cold. They
scarcely recognize the fact that the happiness of their spouses is in their
keeping; if they ever do remember this, it is at table, when they see seated
before them a woman in rich array, or when a coquette, fearing their brutal
repulse, comes, gracious as Venus, to ask them for cash— Oh! it is then, that
they recall, sometimes very vividly, the rights specified in the two hundred
and thirteenth article of the civil code, and their wives are grateful to them;
but like the heavy tariff which the law lays upon foreign merchandise, their
wives suffer and pay the tribute, in virtue of the axiom which says: “There is
no pleasure without pain.”
The men of science who spend whole months in gnawing at the bone of an
antediluvian monster, in calculating the laws of nature, when there is an
opportunity to peer into her secrets, the Grecians and Latinists who dine on a
thought of Tacitus, sup on a phrase of Thucydides, spend their life in brushing
the dust from library shelves, in keeping guard over a commonplace book, or a
papyrus, are all predestined. So great is their abstraction or their ecstasy,
that nothing that goes on around them strikes their attention. Their
unhappiness is consummated; in full light of noon they scarcely even perceive
it. Oh happy men! a thousand times happy! Example: Beauzee, returning home
after session at the Academy, surprises his wife with a German. “Did not I tell
you, madame, that it was necessary that I shall go,” cried the stranger. “My
dear sir,” interrupted the academician, “you ought to say that I should
go!”
Then there come, lyre in hand, certain poets whose whole animal strength has
left the ground floor and mounted to the upper story. They know better how to
mount Pegasus than the beast of old Peter, they rarely marry, although they are
accustomed to lavish the fury of their passions on some wandering or imaginary
Chloris.
But the men whose noses are stained with snuff;
But those who, to their misfortune, have a perpetual cold in their head;
But the sailors who smoke or chew;
But those men whose dry and bilious temperament makes them always look as if
they had eaten a sour apple;
But the men who in private life have certain cynical habits, ridiculous fads,
and who always, in spite of everything, look unwashed;
But the husbands who have obtained the degrading name of “hen-pecked”;
Finally the old men who marry young girls.
All these people are par excellence among the predestined.
There is a final class of the predestined whose ill-fortune is almost certain,
we mean restless and irritable men, who are inclined to meddle and tyrannize,
who have a great idea of domestic domination, who openly express their low
ideas of women and who know no more about life than herrings about natural
history. When these men marry, their homes have the appearance of a wasp whose
head a schoolboy has cut off, and who dances here and there on a window pane.
For this sort of predestined the present work is a sealed book. We do not write
any more for those imbeciles, walking effigies, who are like the statues of a
cathedral, than for those old machines of Marly which are too weak to fling
water over the hedges of Versailles without being in danger of sudden collapse.
I rarely make my observations on the conjugal oddities with which the
drawing-room is usually full, without recalling vividly a sight which I once
enjoyed in early youth:
In 1819 I was living in a thatched cottage situated in the bosom of the
delightful valley l’Isle-Adam. My hermitage neighbored on the park of Cassan,
the sweetest of retreats, the most fascinating in aspect, the most attractive
as a place to ramble in, the most cool and refreshing in summer, of all places
created by luxury and art. This verdant country-seat owes its origin to a
farmer-general of the good old times, a certain Bergeret, celebrated for his
originality; who among other fantastic dandyisms adopted the habit of going to
the opera, with his hair powdered in gold; he used to light up his park for his
own solitary delectation and on one occasion ordered a sumptuous entertainment
there, in which he alone took part. This rustic Sardanapalus returned from
Italy so passionately charmed with the scenery of that beautiful country that,
by a sudden freak of enthusiasm, he spent four or five millions in order to
represent in his park the scenes of which he had pictures in his portfolio. The
most charming contrasts of foliage, the rarest trees, long valleys, and
prospects the most picturesque that could be brought from abroad, Borromean
islands floating on clear eddying streams like so many rays, which concentrate
their various lustres on a single point, on an Isola Bella, from which the
enchanted eye takes in each detail at its leisure, or on an island in the bosom
of which is a little house concealed under the drooping foliage of a
century-old ash, an island fringed with irises, rose-bushes, and flowers which
appears like an emerald richly set. Ah! one might rove a thousand leagues for
such a place! The most sickly, the most soured, the most disgusted of our men
of genius in ill health would die of satiety at the end of fifteen days,
overwhelmed with the luscious sweetness of fresh life in such a spot.
The man who was quite regardless of the Eden which he thus possessed had
neither wife nor children, but was attached to a large ape which he kept. A
graceful turret of wood, supported by a sculptured column, served as a dwelling
place for this vicious animal, who being kept chained and rarely petted by his
eccentric master, oftener at Paris than in his country home, had gained a very
bad reputation. I recollect seeing him once in the presence of certain ladies
show almost as much insolence as if he had been a man. His master was obliged
to kill him, so mischievous did he gradually become.
One morning while I was sitting under a beautiful tulip tree in flower,
occupied in doing nothing but inhaling the lovely perfumes which the tall
poplars kept confined within the brilliant enclosure, enjoying the silence of
the groves, listening to the murmuring waters and the rustling leaves, admiring
the blue gaps outlined above my head by clouds of pearly sheen and gold,
wandering fancy free in dreams of my future, I heard some lout or other, who
had arrived the day before from Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of
a man who has nothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear
anything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If the
distant notes of Roland’s Horn had only filled the air with life, perhaps—but a
noisy fiddler like this, who undertakes to bring to you the expression of human
ideas and the phraseology of music! This Amphion, who was walking up and down
the dining-room, finished by taking a seat on the window-sill, exactly in front
of the monkey. Perhaps he was looking for an audience. Suddenly I saw the
animal quietly descend from his little dungeon, stand upon his hind feet, bow
his head forward like a swimmer and fold his arms over his bosom like Spartacus
in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker, summoned by a sweet
voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir not unknown to me, laid his violin
on the window-sill and made off like a swallow who rejoins his companion by a
rapid level swoop. The great monkey, whose chain was sufficiently long,
approached the window and gravely took in hand the violin. I don’t know whether
you have ever had as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to learn music,
but at the present moment, when I laugh much less than I did in those careless
days, I never think of that monkey without a smile; the semi-man began by
grasping the instrument with his fist and by sniffing at it as if he were
tasting the flavor of an apple. The snort from his nostrils probably produced a
dull harmonious sound in the sonorous wood and then the orang-outang shook his
head, turned over the violin, turned it back again, raised it up in the air,
lowered it, held it straight out, shook it, put it to his ear, set it down, and
picked it up again with a rapidity of movement peculiar to these agile
creatures. He seemed to question the dumb wood with faltering sagacity and in
his gestures there was something marvelous as well as infantile. At last he
undertook with grotesque gestures to place the violin under his chin, while in
one hand he held the neck; but like a spoiled child he soon wearied of a study
which required skill not to be obtained in a moment and he twitched the strings
without being able to draw forth anything but discordant sounds. He seemed
annoyed, laid the violin on the window-sill and snatching up the bow he began
to push it to and fro with violence, like a mason sawing a block of stone. This
effort only succeeded in wearying his fastidious ears, and he took the bow with
both hands and snapped it in two on the innocent instrument, source of harmony
and delight. It seemed as if I saw before me a schoolboy holding under him a
companion lying face downwards, while he pommeled him with a shower of blows
from his fist, as if to punish him for some delinquency. The violin being now
tried and condemned, the monkey sat down upon the fragments of it and amused
himself with stupid joy in mixing up the yellow strings of the broken bow.
Never since that day have I been able to look upon the home of the predestined
without comparing the majority of husbands to this orang-outang trying to play
the violin.
Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is
innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to
know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard,
the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it. How many
monkeys—men, I mean—marry without knowing what a woman is! How many of the
predestined proceed with their wives as the ape of Cassan did with his violin!
They have broken the heart which they did not understand, as they might dim and
disdain the amulet whose secret was unknown to them. They are children their
whole life through, who leave life with empty hands after having talked about
love, about pleasure, about licentiousness and virtue as slaves talk about
liberty. Almost all of them married with the most profound ignorance of women
and of love. They commenced by breaking in the door of a strange house and
expected to be welcomed in this drawing-room. But the rudest artist knows that
between him and his instrument, of wood, or of ivory, there exists a mysterious
sort of friendship. He knows by experience that it takes years to establish
this understanding between an inert matter and himself. He did not discover, at
the first touch, the resources, the caprices, the deficiencies, the
excellencies of his instrument. It did not become a living soul for him, a
source of incomparable melody until he had studied for a long time; man and
instrument did not come to understand each other like two friends, until both
of them had been skillfully questioned and tested by frequent intercourse.
Can a man ever learn woman and know how to decipher this wondrous strain of
music, by remaining through life like a seminarian in his cell? Is it possible
that a man who makes it his business to think for others, to judge others, to
rule others, to steal money from others, to feed, to heal, to wound
others—that, in fact, any of our predestined, can spare time to study a woman?
They sell their time for money, how can they give it away for happiness? Money
is their god. No one can serve two masters at the same time. Is not the world,
moreover, full of young women who drag along pale and weak, sickly and
suffering? Some of them are the prey of feverish inflammations more or less
serious, others lie under the cruel tyranny of nervous attacks more or less
violent. All the husbands of these women belong to the class of the ignorant
and the predestined. They have caused their own misfortune and expended as much
pains in producing it as the husband artist would have bestowed in bringing to
flower the late and delightful blooms of pleasure. The time which an ignorant
man passes to consummate his own ruin is precisely that which a man of
knowledge employs in the education of his happiness.
XXVI.
Do not begin marriage by a violation of law.
In the preceding meditations we have indicated the extent of the evil with the
reckless audacity of those surgeons, who boldly induce the formation of false
tissues under which a shameful wound is concealed. Public virtue, transferred
to the table of our amphitheatre, has lost even its carcass under the strokes
of the scalpel. Lover or husband, have you smiled, or have you trembled at this
evil? Well, it is with malicious delight that we lay this huge social burden on
the conscience of the predestined. Harlequin, when he tried to find out whether
his horse could be accustomed to go without food, was not more ridiculous than
the men who wish to find happiness in their home and yet refuse to cultivate it
with all the pains which it demands. The errors of women are so many
indictments of egotism, neglect and worthlessness in husbands.
Yet it is yours, reader, it pertains to you, who have often condemned in
another the crime which you yourself commit, it is yours to hold the balance.
One of the scales is quite loaded, take care what you are going to put in the
other. Reckon up the number of predestined ones who may be found among the
total number of married people, weigh them, and you will then know where the
evil is seated.
Let us try to penetrate more deeply into the causes of this conjugal
sickliness.
The word love, when applied to the reproduction of the species, is the most
hateful blasphemy which modern manners have taught us to utter. Nature, in
raising us above the beasts by the divine gift of thought, had rendered us very
sensitive to bodily sensations, emotional sentiment, cravings of appetite and
passions. This double nature of ours makes of man both an animal and a lover.
This distinction gives the key to the social problem which we are considering.
Marriage may be considered in three ways, politically, as well as from a civil
and moral point of view: as a law, as a contract and as an institution. As a
law, its object is a reproduction of the species; as a contract, it relates to
the transmission of property; as an institution, it is a guarantee which all
men give and by which all are bound: they have father and mother, and they will
have children. Marriage, therefore, ought to be the object of universal
respect. Society can only take into consideration those cardinal points, which,
from a social point of view, dominate the conjugal question.
Most men have no other views in marrying, than reproduction, property or
children; but neither reproduction nor property nor children constitutes
happiness. The command, “Increase and multiply,” does not imply love. To ask of
a young girl whom we have seen fourteen times in fifteen days, to give you love
in the name of law, the king and justice, is an absurdity worthy of the
majority of the predestined.
Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment; happiness in marriage
results in perfect union of soul between a married pair. Hence it follows that
in order to be happy a man must feel himself bound by certain rules of honor
and delicacy. After having enjoyed the benefit of the social law which
consecrates the natural craving, he must obey also the secret laws of nature by
which sentiments unfold themselves. If he stakes his happiness on being himself
loved, he must himself love sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.
But to feel this passion is always to feel desire. Can a man always desire his
wife?
Yes.
It is as absurd to deny that it is possible for a man always to love the same
woman, as it would be to affirm that some famous musician needed several
violins in order to execute a piece of music or compose a charming melody.
Love is the poetry of the senses. It has the destiny of all that which is great
in man and of all that which proceeds from his thought. Either it is sublime,
or it is not. When once it exists, it exists forever and goes on always
increasing. This is the love which the ancients made the child of heaven and
earth.
Literature revolves round seven situations; music expresses everything with
seven notes; painting employs but seven colors; like these three arts, love
perhaps founds itself on seven principles, but we leave this investigation for
the next century to carry out.
If poetry, music and painting have found infinite forms of expression, pleasure
should be even more diversified. For in the three arts which aid us in seeking,
often with little success, truth by means of analogy, the man stands alone with
his imagination, while love is the union of two bodies and of two souls. If the
three principal methods upon which we rely for the expression of thought
require preliminary study in those whom nature has made poets, musicians or
painters, is it not obvious that, in order, to be happy, it is necessary to be
initiated into the secrets of pleasure? All men experience the craving for
reproduction, as all feel hunger and thirst; but all are not called to be
lovers and gastronomists. Our present civilization has proved that taste is a
science, and it is only certain privileged beings who have learned how to eat
and drink. Pleasure considered as an art is still waiting for its
physiologists. As for ourselves, we are contented with pointing out that
ignorance of the principles upon which happiness is founded, is the sole cause
of that misfortune which is the lot of all the predestined.
It is with the greatest timidity that we venture upon the publication of a few
aphorisms which may give birth to this new art, as casts have created the
science of geology; and we offer them for the meditation of philosophers, of
young marrying people and of the predestined.
XXVII.
Marriage is a science.
XXVIII.
A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least
one woman.
XXIX.
The fate of the home depends on the first night.
XXX.
A woman deprived of her free will can never have the credit of making a
sacrifice.
XXXI. In love, putting aside all consideration of the soul, the heart of a
woman is like a lyre which does not reveal its secret, excepting to him who is
a skillful player.
XXXII. Independently of any gesture of repulsion, there exists in the soul of
all women a sentiment which tends, sooner or later, to proscribe all pleasure
devoid of passionate feeling.
XXXIII.
The interest of a husband as much as his honor forbids him to indulge a
pleasure which he has not had the skill to make his wife desire.
XXXIV. Pleasure being caused by the union of sensation and sentiment, we can
say without fear of contradiction that pleasures are a sort of material ideas.
XXXV.
As ideas are capable of infinite combination, it ought to be the same with
pleasures.
XXXVI.
In the life of man there are no two moments of pleasure exactly alike, any more
than there are two leaves of identical shape upon the same tree.
XXXVII.
If there are differences between one moment of pleasure and another, a man can
always be happy with the same woman.
XXXVIII. To seize adroitly upon the varieties of pleasure, to develop them, to
impart to them a new style, an original expression, constitutes the genius of a
husband.
XXXIX. Between two beings who do not love each other this genius is
licentiousness; but the caresses over which love presides are always pure.
XL.
The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most voluptuous.
XLI.
The most virtuous woman can be forward without knowing it.
XLII. When two human beings are united by pleasure, all social
conventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef on which many
vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgets there is a modesty
which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal love ought never either to
put on or to take away the bandage of its eyes, excepting at the due season.
XLIII.
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in
striking true.
XLIV. To call a desire into being, to nourish it, to develop it, to bring it to
full growth, to excite it, to satisfy it, is a complete poem of itself.
XLV. The progression of pleasures is from the distich to the quatrain, from the
quatrain to the sonnet, from the sonnet to the ballad, from the ballad to the
ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to the dithyramb. The
husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool.
XLVI.
Each night ought to have its menu.
XLVII.
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours everything, that
is, familiarity.
XLVIII.
If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of two
consecutive nights, he has married too early.
XLIX. It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is
more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to
time.
L.
A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to awaken.
LI.
The man who enters his wife’s dressing-room is either a philosopher or an
imbecile.
LII.
The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man.
LIII.
The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a throne.
LIV.
A man must not flatter himself that he knows his wife, and is making her happy
unless he sees her often at his knees.
It is to the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions of
snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men that Sterne
addressed, in Tristram Shandy, the letter written by Walter Shandy to
his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marry the widow Wadman.
These celebrated instructions which the most original of English writers has
comprised in this letter, suffice with some few exceptions to complete our
observations on the manner in which husbands should behave to their wives; and
we offer it in its original form to the reflections of the predestined, begging
that they will meditate upon it as one of the most solid masterpieces of human
wit.
“What I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of love-making
to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee—tho’ not so well for me—that thou
hast occasion for a letter of instructions upon that head, and that I am able
to write it to thee.
“Had it been the good pleasure of Him who disposes of our lots, and thou no
sufferer by the knowledge, I had been well content that thou should’st have
dipped the pen this moment into the ink instead of myself; but that not being
the case—Mrs. Shandy being now close beside me, preparing for bed—I have thrown
together without order, and just as they have come into my mind, such hints and
documents as I deem may be of use to thee; intending, in this, to give thee a
token of my love; not doubting, my dear Toby, of the manner in which it will be
accepted.
“In the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion in the
affair—though I perceive from a glow in my cheek, that I blush as I begin to
speak to thee upon the subject, as well knowing, notwithstanding thy unaffected
secrecy, how few of its offices thou neglectest—yet I would remind thee of one
(during the continuance of thy courtship) in a particular manner, which I would
not have omitted; and that is, never to go forth upon the enterprise, whether
it be in the morning or in the afternoon, without first recommending thyself to
the protection of Almighty God, that He may defend thee from the evil one.
“Shave the whole top of thy crown clean once at least every four or five days,
but oftener if convenient; lest in taking off thy wig before her, thro’ absence
of mind, she should be able to discover how much has been cut away by Time—how
much by Trim.
“’Twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her fancy.
“Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim, Toby—
“‘That women are timid.’ And ’tis well they are—else there would be no
dealing with them.
“Let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang too loose about thy thighs, like
the trunk-hose of our ancestors.
“A just medium prevents all conclusions.
“Whatever thou hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to utter it in a low
soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches it, weaves dreams of
midnight secrecy into the brain: For this cause, if thou canst help it, never
throw down the tongs and poker.
“Avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse with her, and
do whatever lies in thy power at the same time, to keep from her all books and
writings which tend there to: there are some devotional tracts, which if thou
canst entice her to read over, it will be well: but suffer her not to look into
Rabelais, or Scarron, or Don Quixote.
“They are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear Toby, that
there is no passion so serious as lust.
“Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her parlor.
“And if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sofa with her, and she gives
thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers—beware of taking it—thou canst not lay
thy hand upon hers, but she will feel the temper of thine. Leave that and as
many other things as thou canst, quite undetermined; by so doing, thou wilt
have her curiosity on thy side; and if she is not conquered by that, and thy
Asse continues still kicking, which there is great reason to suppose—thou must
begin, with first losing a few ounces of blood below the ears, according to the
practice of the ancient Scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits of the
appetite by that means.
“Avicenna, after this, is for having the part anointed with the syrup of
hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges—and I believe rightly. But thou
must eat little or no goat’s flesh, nor red deer—nor even foal’s flesh by any
means; and carefully abstain—that is, as much as thou canst,—from peacocks,
cranes, coots, didappers and water-hens.
“As for thy drink—I need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of Vervain and
the herb Hanea, of which Aelian relates such effects; but if thy stomach palls
with it—discontinue it from time to time, taking cucumbers, melons, purslane,
water-lilies, woodbine, and lettuce, in the stead of them.
“There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present—
“Unless the breaking out of a fresh war.—So wishing everything, dear Toby, for
the best,
“I rest thy affectionate brother,
“WALTER SHANDY.”
Under the present circumstances Sterne himself would doubtless have omitted
from his letter the passage about the ass; and, far from advising the
predestined to be bled he would have changed the regimen of cucumbers and
lettuces for one eminently substantial. He recommended the exercise of economy,
in order to attain to the power of magic liberality in the moment of war, thus
imitating the admirable example of the English government, which in time of
peace has two hundred ships in commission, but whose shipwrights can, in time
of need, furnish double that quantity when it is desirable to scour the sea and
carry off a whole foreign navy.
When a man belongs to the small class of those who by a liberal education have
been made masters of the domain of thought, he ought always, before marrying,
to examine his physical and moral resources. To contend advantageously with the
tempest which so many attractions tend to raise in the heart of his wife, a
husband ought to possess, besides the science of pleasure and a fortune which
saves him from sinking into any class of the predestined, robust health,
exquisite tact, considerable intellect, too much good sense to make his
superiority felt, excepting on fit occasions, and finally great acuteness of
hearing and sight.
If he has a handsome face, a good figure, a manly air, and yet falls short of
all these promises, he will sink into the class of the predestined. On the
other hand, a husband who is plain in features but has a face full of
expression, will find himself, if his wife once forgets his plainness, in a
situation most favorable for his struggle against the genius of evil.
He will study (and this is a detail omitted from the letter of Sterne) to give
no occasion for his wife’s disgust. Also, he will resort moderately to the use
of perfumes, which, however, always expose beauty to injurious suspicions.
He ought as carefully to study how to behave and how to pick out subjects of
conversation, as if he were courting the most inconstant of women. It is for
him that a philosopher has made the following reflection:
“More than one woman has been rendered unhappy for the rest of her life, has
been lost and dishonored by a man whom she has ceased to love, because he took
off his coat awkwardly, trimmed one of his nails crookedly, put on a stocking
wrong side out, and was clumsy with a button.”
One of the most important of his duties will be to conceal from his wife the
real state of his fortune, so that he may satisfy her fancies and caprices as
generous celibates are wont to do.
Then the most difficult thing of all, a thing to accomplish which superhuman
courage is required, is to exercise the most complete control over the ass of
which Sterne speaks. This ass ought to be as submissive as a serf of the
thirteenth century was to his lord; to obey and be silent, advance and stop, at
the slightest word.
Even when equipped with these advantages, a husband enters the lists with
scarcely any hope of success. Like all the rest, he still runs the risk of
becoming, for his wife, a sort of responsible editor.
“And why!” will exclaim certain good but small-minded people, whose horizon is
limited to the tip of their nose, “why is it necessary to take so much pains in
order to love, and why is it necessary to go to school beforehand, in order to
be happy in your own home? Does the government intend to institute a
professional chair of love, just as it has instituted a chair of law?”
This is our answer:
These multiplied rules, so difficult to deduce, these minute observations,
these ideas which vary so as to suit different temperaments, are innate, so to
speak, in the heart of those who are born for love; just as his feeling of
taste and his indescribable felicity in combining ideas are natural to the soul
of the poet, the painter or the musician. The men who would experience any
fatigue in putting into practice the instructions given in this Meditation are
naturally predestined, just as he who cannot perceive the connection which
exists between two different ideas is an imbecile. As a matter of fact, love
has its great men although they be unrecognized, as war has its Napoleons,
poetry its Andre Cheniers and philosophy its Descartes.
This last observation contains the germ of a true answer to the question which
men from time immemorial have been asking: Why are happy marriages so very
rare?
This phenomenon of the moral world is rarely met with for the reason that
people of genius are rarely met with. A passion which lasts is a sublime drama
acted by two performers of equal talent, a drama in which sentiments form the
catastrophe, where desires are incidents and the lightest thought brings a
change of scene. Now how is it possible, in this herd of bimana which we call a
nation, to meet, on any but rare occasions, a man and a woman who possess in
the same degree the genius of love, when men of talent are so thinly sown and
so rare in all other sciences, in the pursuit of which the artist needs only to
understand himself, in order to attain success?
Up to the present moment, we have been confronted with making a forecast of the
difficulties, to some degree physical, which two married people have to
overcome, in order to be happy; but what a task would be ours if it were
necessary to unfold the startling array of moral obligations which spring from
their differences in character? Let us cry halt! The man who is skillful enough
to guide the temperament will certainly show himself master of the soul of
another.
We will suppose that our model husband fulfills the primary conditions
necessary, in order that he may dispute or maintain possession of his wife, in
spite of all assailants. We will admit that he is not to be reckoned in any of
the numerous classes of the predestined which we have passed in review. Let us
admit that he has become imbued with the spirit of all our maxims; that he has
mastered the admirable science, some of whose precepts we have made known; that
he has married wisely, that he knows his wife, that he is loved by her; and let
us continue the enumeration of all those general causes which might aggravate
the critical situation which we shall represent him as occupying for the
instruction of the human race.
OF BOARDING SCHOOLS.
If you have married a young lady whose education has been carried on at a
boarding school, there are thirty more obstacles to your happiness, added to
all those which we have already enumerated, and you are exactly like a man who
thrusts his hands into a wasp’s nest.
Immediately, therefore, after the nuptial blessing has been pronounced, without
allowing yourself to be imposed upon by the innocent ignorance, the frank
graces and the modest countenance of your wife, you ought to ponder well and
faithfully follow out the axioms and precepts which we shall develop in the
second part of this book. You should even put into practice the rigors
prescribed in the third part, by maintaining an active surveillance, a paternal
solicitude at all hours, for the very day after your marriage, perhaps on the
evening of your wedding day, there is danger in the house.
I mean to say that you should call to mind the secret and profound instruction
which the pupils have acquired de natura rerum,—of the nature of things.
Did Lapeyrouse, Cook or Captain Peary ever show so much ardor in navigating the
ocean towards the Poles as the scholars of the Lycee do in approaching
forbidden tracts in the ocean of pleasure? Since girls are more cunning,
cleverer and more curious than boys, their secret meetings and their
conversations, which all the art of their teachers cannot check, are
necessarily presided over by a genius a thousand times more informal than that
of college boys. What man has ever heard the moral reflections and the
corrupting confidences of these young girls? They alone know the sports at
which honor is lost in advance, those essays in pleasure, those promptings in
voluptuousness, those imitations of bliss, which may be compared to the thefts
made by greedy children from a dessert which is locked up. A girl may come
forth from her boarding school a virgin, but never chaste. She will have
discussed, time and time again at secret meetings, the important question of
lovers, and corruption will necessarily have overcome her heart or her spirit.
Nevertheless, we will admit that your wife has not participated in these
virginal delights, in these premature deviltries. Is she any better because she
has never had any voice in the secret councils of grown-up girls? No! She will,
in any case, have contracted a friendship with other young ladies, and our
computation will be modest, if we attribute to her no more than two or three
intimate friends. Are you certain that after your wife has left boarding
school, her young friends have not there been admitted to those confidences, in
which an attempt is made to learn in advance, at least by analogy, the pastimes
of doves? And then her friends will marry; you will have four women to watch
instead of one, four characters to divine, and you will be at the mercy of four
husbands and a dozen celibates, of whose life, principles and habits you are
quite ignorant, at a time when our meditations have revealed to you certain
coming of a day when you will have your hands full with the people whom you
married with your wife. Satan alone could have thought of placing a girl’s
boarding school in the middle of a large town! Madame Campan had at least the
wisdom to set up her famous institution at Ecouen. This sensible precaution
proved that she was no ordinary woman. There, her young ladies did not gaze
upon the picture gallery of the streets, the huge and grotesque figures and the
obscene words drawn by some evil-spirited pencil. They had not perpetually
before their eyes the spectacle of human infirmities exhibited at every barrier
in France, and treacherous book-stalls did not vomit out upon them in secret
the poison of books which taught evil and set passion on fire. This wise
school-mistress, moreover, could only at Ecouen preserve a young lady for you
spotless and pure, if, even there, that were possible. Perhaps you hope to find
no difficulty in preventing your wife from seeing her school friends? What
folly! She will meet them at the ball, at the theatre, out walking and in the
world at large; and how many services two friends can render each other! But we
will meditate upon this new subject of alarm in its proper place and order.
Nor is this all; if your mother-in-law sent her daughter to a boarding school,
do you believe that this was out of solicitude for her daughter? A girl of
twelve or fifteen is a terrible Argus; and if your mother-in-law did not wish
to have an Argus in her house I should be inclined to suspect that your
mother-in-law belonged undoubtedly to the most shady section of our honest
women. She will, therefore, prove for her daughter on every occasion either a
deadly example or a dangerous adviser.
Let us stop here!—The mother-in-law requires a whole Meditation for herself.
So that, whichever way you turn, the bed of marriage, in this connection, is
equally full of thorns.
Before the Revolution, several aristocratic families used to send their
daughters to the convent. This example was followed by a number of people who
imagined that in sending their daughters to a school where the daughters of
some great noblemen were sent, they would assume the tone and manners of
aristocrats. This delusion of pride was, from the first, fatal to domestic
happiness; for the convents had all the disadvantages of other boarding
schools. The idleness that prevailed there was more terrible. The cloister bars
inflame the imagination. Solitude is a condition very favorable to the devil;
and one can scarcely imagine what ravages the most ordinary phenomena of life
are able to leave in the soul of these young girls, dreamy, ignorant and
unoccupied.
Some of them, by reason of their having indulged idle fancies, are led into
curious blunders. Others, having indulged in exaggerated ideas of married life,
say to themselves, as soon as they have taken a husband, “What! Is this all?”
In every way, the imperfect instruction, which is given to girls educated in
common, has in it all the danger of ignorance and all the unhappiness of
science.
A young girl brought up at home by her mother or by her virtuous, bigoted,
amiable or cross-grained old aunt; a young girl, whose steps have never crossed
the home threshold without being surrounded by chaperons, whose laborious
childhood has been wearied by tasks, albeit they were profitless, to whom in
short everything is a mystery, even the Seraphin puppet show, is one of those
treasures which are met with, here and there in the world, like woodland
flowers surrounded by brambles so thick that mortal eye cannot discern them.
The man who owns a flower so sweet and pure as this, and leaves it to be
cultivated by others, deserves his unhappiness a thousand times over. He is
either a monster or a fool.
And if in the preceding Meditation we have succeeded in proving to you that by
far the greater number of men live in the most absolute indifference to their
personal honor, in the matter of marriage, is it reasonable to believe that any
considerable number of them are sufficiently rich, sufficiently intellectual,
sufficiently penetrating to waste, like Burchell in the Vicar of
Wakefield, one or two years in studying and watching the girls whom they
mean to make their wives, when they pay so little attention to them after
conjugal possession during that period of time which the English call the
honeymoon, and whose influence we shall shortly discuss?
Since, however, we have spent some time in reflecting upon this important
matter, we would observe that there are many methods of choosing more or less
successfully, even though the choice be promptly made.
It is, for example, beyond doubt that the probabilities will be in your favor:
I. If you have chosen a young lady whose temperament resembles that of the
women of Louisiana or the Carolinas.
To obtain reliable information concerning the temperament of a young person, it
is necessary to put into vigorous operation the system which Gil Blas
prescribes, in dealing with chambermaids, a system employed by statesmen to
discover conspiracies and to learn how the ministers have passed the night.
II. If you choose a young lady who, without being plain, does not belong to the
class of pretty women.
We regard it as an infallible principle that great sweetness of disposition
united in a woman with plainness that is not repulsive, form two indubitable
elements of success in securing the greatest possible happiness to the home.
But would you learn the truth? Open your Rousseau; for there is not a single
question of public morals whose trend he has not pointed out in advance. Read:
“Among people of fixed principles the girls are careless, the women severe; the
contrary is the case among people of no principle.”
To admit the truth enshrined in this profound and truthful remark is to
conclude, that there would be fewer unhappy marriages if men wedded their
mistresses. The education of girls requires, therefore, important modifications
in France. Up to this time French laws and French manners instituted to
distinguish between a misdemeanor and a crime, have encouraged crime. In
reality the fault committed by a young girl is scarcely ever a misdemeanor, if
you compare it with that committed by the married woman. Is there any
comparison between the danger of giving liberty to girls and that of allowing
it to wives? The idea of taking a young girl on trial makes more serious men
think than fools laugh. The manners of Germany, of Switzerland, of England and
of the United States give to young ladies such rights as in France would be
considered the subversion of all morality; and yet it is certain that in these
countries there are fewer unhappy marriages than in France.
LV. “Before a woman gives herself entirely up to her lover, she ought to
consider well what his love has to offer her. The gift of her esteem and
confidence should necessarily precede that of her heart.”
Sparkling with truth as they are, these lines probably filled with light the
dungeon, in the depths of which Mirabeau wrote them; and the keen observation
which they bear witness to, although prompted by the most stormy of his
passions, has none the less influence even now in solving the social problem on
which we are engaged. In fact, a marriage sealed under the auspices of the
religious scrutiny which assumes the existence of love, and subjected to the
atmosphere of that disenchantment which follows on possession, ought naturally
to be the most firmly-welded of all human unions.
A woman then ought never to reproach her husband for the legal right, in virtue
of which she belongs to him. She ought not to find in this compulsory
submission any excuse for yielding to a lover, because some time after her
marriage she has discovered in her own heart a traitor whose sophisms seduce
her by asking twenty times an hour, “Wherefore, since she has been given
against her will to a man whom she does not love, should she not give herself,
of her own free-will, to a man whom she does love.” A woman is not to be
tolerated in her complaints concerning faults inseparable from human nature.
She has, in advance, made trial of the tyranny which they exercise, and taken
sides with the caprices which they exhibit.
A great many young girls are likely to be disappointed in their hopes of
love!—But will it not be an immense advantage to them to have escaped being
made the companions of men whom they would have had the right to despise?
Certain alarmists will exclaim that such an alteration in our manners would
bring about a public dissoluteness which would be frightful; that the laws, and
the customs which prompt the laws, could not after all authorize scandal and
immorality; and if certain unavoidable abuses do exist, at least society ought
not to sanction them.
It is easy to say, in reply, first of all, that the proposed system tends to
prevent those abuses which have been hitherto regarded as incapable of
prevention; but, the calculations of our statistics, inexact as they are, have
invariably pointed out a widely prevailing social sore, and our moralists may,
therefore, be accused of preferring the greater to the lesser evil, the
violation of the principle on which society is constituted, to the granting of
a certain liberty to girls; and dissoluteness in mothers of families, such as
poisons the springs of public education and brings unhappiness upon at least
four persons, to dissoluteness in a young girl, which only affects herself or
at the most a child besides. Let the virtue of ten virgins be lost rather than
forfeit this sanctity of morals, that crown of honor with which the mother of a
family should be invested! In the picture presented by a young girl abandoned
by her betrayer, there is something imposing, something indescribably sacred;
here we see oaths violated, holy confidences betrayed, and on the ruins of a
too facile virtue innocence sits in tears, doubting everything, because
compelled to doubt the love of a father for his child. The unfortunate girl is
still innocent; she may yet become a faithful wife, a tender mother, and, if
the past is mantled in clouds, the future is blue as the clear sky. Shall we
not find these tender tints in the gloomy pictures of loves which violate the
marriage law? In the one, the woman is the victim, in the other, she is a
criminal. What hope is there for the unfaithful wife? If God pardons the fault,
the most exemplary life cannot efface, here below, its living consequences. If
James I was the son of Rizzio, the crime of Mary lasted as long as did her
mournful though royal house, and the fall of the Stuarts was the justice of
God.
But in good faith, would the emancipation of girls set free such a host of
dangers?
It is very easy to accuse a young person for suffering herself to be deceived,
in the desire to escape, at any price, from the condition of girlhood; but such
an accusation is only just in the present condition of our manners. At the
present day, a young person knows nothing about seduction and its snares, she
relies altogether upon her weakness, and mingling with this reliance the
convenient maxims of the fashionable world, she takes as her guide while under
the control of those desires which everything conspires to excite, her own
deluding fancies, which prove a guide all the more treacherous, because a young
girl rarely ever confides to another the secret thoughts of her first love.
If she were free, an education free from prejudices would arm her against the
love of the first comer. She would, like any one else, be very much better able
to meet dangers of which she knew, than perils whose extent had been concealed
from her. And, moreover, is it necessary for a girl to be any the less under
the watchful eye of her mother, because she is mistress of her own actions? Are
we to count as nothing the modesty and the fears which nature has made so
powerful in the soul of a young girl, for the very purpose of preserving her
from the misfortune of submitting to a man who does not love her? Again, what
girl is there so thoughtless as not to discern, that the most immoral man
wishes his wife to be a woman of principle, as masters desire their servants to
be perfect; and that, therefore, her virtue is the richest and the most
advantageous of all possessions?
After all, what is the question before us? For what do you think we are
stipulating? We are making a claim for five or six hundred thousand maidens,
protected by their instinctive timidity, and by the high price at which they
rate themselves; they understand how to defend themselves, just as well as they
know how to sell themselves. The eighteen millions of human beings, whom we
have excepted from this consideration, almost invariably contract marriages in
accordance with the system which we are trying to make paramount in our system
of manners; and as to the intermediary classes by which we poor bimana are
separated from the men of privilege who march at the head of a nation, the
number of castaway children which these classes, although in tolerably easy
circumstances, consign to misery, goes on increasing since the peace, if we may
believe M. Benoiston de Chateauneuf, one of the most courageous of those
savants who have devoted themselves to the arid yet useful study of statistics.
We may guess how deep-seated is the social hurt, for which we propound a
remedy, if we reckon the number of natural children which statistics reveal,
and the number of illicit adventures whose evidence in high society we are
forced to suspect. But it is difficult here to make quite plain all the
advantages which would result from the emancipation of young girls. When we
come to observe the circumstances which attend a marriage, such as our present
manners approve of, judicious minds must appreciate the value of that system of
education and liberty, which we demand for young girls, in the name of reason
and nature. The prejudice which we in France entertain in favor of the
virginity of brides is the most silly of all those which still survive among
us. The Orientals take their brides without distressing themselves about the
past and lock them up in order to be more certain about the future; the French
put their daughters into a sort of seraglio defended by their mothers, by
prejudice, and by religious ideas, and give the most complete liberty to their
wives, thus showing themselves much more solicitous about a woman’s past than
about her future. The point we are aiming at is to bring about a reversal of
our system of manners. If we did so we should end, perhaps, by giving to
faithful married life all the flavor and the piquancy which women of to-day
find in acts of infidelity.
But this discussion would take us far from our subject, if it led us to
examine, in all its details, the vast improvement in morals which doubtless
will distinguish twentieth century France; for morals are reformed only very
gradually! Is it not necessary, in order to produce the slightest change, that
the most daring dreams of the past century become the most trite ideas of the
present one? We have touched upon this question merely in a trifling mood, for
the purposes of showing that we are not blind to its importance, and of
bequeathing also to posterity the outline of a work, which they may complete.
To speak more accurately there is a third work to be composed; the first
concerns courtesans, while the second is the physiology of pleasure!
“When there are ten of us, we cross ourselves.”
In the present state of our morals and of our imperfect civilization, a problem
crops up which for the moment is insoluble, and which renders superfluous all
discussion on the art of choosing a wife; we commend it, as we have done all
the others, to the meditation of philosophers.
It has not yet been decided whether a wife is forced into infidelity by the
impossibility of obtaining any change, or by the liberty which is allowed her
in this connection.
Moreover, as in this work we pitch upon a man at the moment that he is newly
married, we declare that if he has found a wife of sanguine temperament, of
vivid imagination, of a nervous constitution or of an indolent character, his
situation cannot fail to be extremely serious.
A man would find himself in a position of danger even more critical if his wife
drank nothing but water [see the Meditation entitled Conjugal Hygiene];
but if she had some talent for singing, or if she were disposed to take cold
easily, he should tremble all the time; for it must be remembered that women
who sing are at least as passionate as women whose mucous membrane shows
extreme delicacy.
Again, this danger would be aggravated still more if your wife were less than
seventeen; or if, on the other hand, her general complexion were pale and dull,
for this sort of woman is almost always artificial.
But we do not wish to anticipate here any description of the terrors which
threaten husbands from the symptoms of unhappiness which they read in the
character of their wives. This digression has already taken us too far from the
subject of boarding schools, in which so many catastrophes are hatched, and
from which issue so many young girls incapable of appreciating the painful
sacrifices by which the honest man who does them the honor of marrying them,
has obtained opulence; young girls eager for the enjoyments of luxury, ignorant
of our laws, ignorant of our manners, claim with avidity the empire which their
beauty yields them, and show themselves quite ready to turn away from the
genuine utterances of the heart, while they readily listen to the buzzing of
flattery.
This Meditation should plant in the memory of all who read it, even those who
merely open the book for the sake of glancing at it or distracting their mind,
an intense repugnance for young women educated in a boarding school, and if it
succeeds in doing so, its services to the public will have already proved
considerable.
OF THE HONEYMOON.
If our meditations prove that it is almost impossible for a married woman to
remain virtuous in France, our enumeration of the celibates and the
predestined, our remarks upon the education of girls, and our rapid survey of
the difficulties which attend the choice of a wife will explain up to a certain
point this national frailty. Thus, after indicating frankly the aching malady
under which the social slate is laboring, we have sought for the causes in the
imperfection of the laws, in the irrational condition of our manners, in the
incapacity of our minds, and in the contradictions which characterize our
habits. A single point still claims our observation, and that is the first
onslaught of the evil we are confronting.
We reach this first question on approaching the high problems suggested by the
honeymoon; and although we find here the starting point of all the phenomena of
married life, it appears to us to be the brilliant link round which are
clustered all our observations, our axioms, our problems, which have been
scattered deliberately among the wise quips which our loquacious meditations
retail. The honeymoon would seem to be, if we may use the expression, the
apogee of that analysis to which we must apply ourselves, before engaging in
battle our two imaginary champions.
The expression honeymoon is an Anglicism, which has become an idiom in
all languages, so gracefully does it depict the nuptial season which is so
fugitive, and during which life is nothing but sweetness and rapture; the
expression survives as illusions and errors survive, for it contains the most
odious of falsehoods. If this season is presented to us as a nymph crowned with
fresh flowers, caressing as a siren, it is because in it is unhappiness
personified and unhappiness generally comes during the indulgence of folly.
The married couple who intend to love each other during their whole life have
no notion of a honeymoon; for them it has no existence, or rather its existence
is perennial; they are like the immortals who do not understand death. But the
consideration of this happiness is not germane to our book; and for our readers
marriage is under the influence of two moons, the honeymoon and the Red-moon.
This last terminates its course by a revolution, which changes it to a
crescent; and when once it rises upon a home its light there is eternal.
How can the honeymoon rise upon two beings who cannot possibly love each other?
How can it set, when once it has risen?
Have all marriages their honeymoon?
Let us proceed to answer these questions in order.
It is in this connection that the admirable education which we give to girls,
and the wise provisions made by the law under which men marry, bear all their
fruit. Let us examine the circumstances which precede and attend those
marriages which are least disastrous.
The tone of our morals develops in the young girl whom you make your wife a
curiosity which is naturally excessive; but as mothers in France pique
themselves on exposing their girls every day to the fire which they do not
allow to scorch them, this curiosity has no limit.
Her profound ignorance of the mysteries of marriage conceals from this
creature, who is as innocent as she is crafty, a clear view of the dangers by
which marriage is followed; and as marriage is incessantly described to her as
an epoch in which tyranny and liberty equally prevail, and in which enjoyment
and supremacy are to be indulged in, her desires are intensified by all her
interest in an existence as yet unfulfilled; for her to marry is to be called
up from nothingness into life!
If she has a disposition for happiness, for religion, for morality, the voices
of the law and of her mother have repeated to her that this happiness can only
come to her from you.
Obedience if it is not virtue, is at least a necessary thing with her; for she
expects everything from you. In the first place, society sanctions the slavery
of a wife, but she does not conceive even the wish to be free, for she feels
herself weak, timid and ignorant.
Of course she tries to please you, unless a chance error is committed, or she
is seized by a repugnance which it would be unpardonable in you not to divine.
She tries to please because she does not know you.
In a word, in order to complete your triumph, you take her at a moment when
nature demands, often with some violence, the pleasure of which you are the
dispenser. Like St. Peter you hold the keys of Paradise.
I would ask of any reasonable creature, would a demon marshal round the angel
whose ruin he had vowed all the elements of disaster with more solicitude than
that with which good morals conspire against the happiness of a husband? Are
you not a king surrounded by flatterers?
This young girl, with all her ignorance and all her desires, committed to the
mercy of a man who, even though he be in love, cannot know her shrinking and
secret emotions, will submit to him with a certain sense of shame, and will be
obedient and complaisant so long as her young imagination persuades her to
expect the pleasure or the happiness of that morrow which never dawns.
In this unnatural situation social laws and the laws of nature are in conflict,
but the young girl obediently abandons herself to it, and, from motives of
self-interest, suffers in silence. Her obedience is a speculation; her
complaisance is a hope; her devotion to you is a sort of vocation, of which you
reap the advantage; and her silence is generosity. She will remain the victim
of your caprices so long as she does not understand them; she will suffer from
the limitations of your character until she has studied it; she will sacrifice
herself without love, because she believed in the show of passion you made at
the first moment of possession; she will no longer be silent when once she has
learned the uselessness of her sacrifices.
And then the morning arrives when the inconsistencies which have prevailed in
this union rise up like branches of a tree bent down for a moment under a
weight which has been gradually lightened. You have mistaken for love the
negative attitude of a young girl who was waiting for happiness, who flew in
advance of your desires, in the hope that you would go forward in anticipation
of hers, and who did not dare to complain of the secret unhappiness, for which
she at first accused herself. What man could fail to be the dupe of a delusion
prepared at such long range, and in which a young innocent woman is at once the
accomplice and the victim? Unless you were a divine being it would be
impossible for you to escape the fascination with which nature and society have
surrounded you. Is not a snare set in everything which surrounds you on the
outside and influences you within? For in order to be happy, is it not
necessary to control the impetuous desires of your senses? Where is the
powerful barrier to restrain her, raised by the light hand of a woman whom you
wish to please, because you do not possess? Moreover, you have caused your
troops to parade and march by, when there was no one at the window; you have
discharged your fireworks whose framework alone was left, when your guest
arrived to see them. Your wife, before the pledges of marriage, was like a
Mohican at the Opera: the teacher becomes listless, when the savage begins to
understand.
LVI. In married life, the moment when two hearts come to understand each other
is sudden as a flash of lightning, and never returns, when once it is passed.
This first entrance into life of two persons, during which a woman is
encouraged by the hope of happiness, by the still fresh sentiment of her
married duty, by the wish to please, by the sense of virtue which begins to be
so attractive as soon as it shows love to be in harmony with duty, is called
the honeymoon. How can it last long between two beings who are united for their
whole life, unless they know each other perfectly? If there is one thing which
ought to cause astonishment it is this, that the deplorable absurdities which
our manners heap up around the nuptial couch give birth to so few hatreds! But
that the life of the wise man is a calm current, and that of the prodigal a
cataract; that the child, whose thoughtless hands have stripped the leaves from
every rose upon his pathway, finds nothing but thorns on his return, that the
man who in his wild youth has squandered a million, will never enjoy, during
his life, the income of forty thousand francs, which this million would have
provided—are trite commonplaces, if one thinks of the moral theory of life; but
new discoveries, if we consider the conduct of most men. You may see here a
true image of all honeymoons; this is their history, this is the plain fact and
not the cause that underlies it.
But that men endowed with a certain power of thought by a privileged education,
and accustomed to think deliberately, in order to shine in politics,
literature, art, commerce or private life—that these men should all marry with
the intention of being happy, of governing a wife, either by love or by force,
and should all tumble into the same pitfall and should become foolish, after
having enjoyed a certain happiness for a certain time,—this is certainly a
problem whose solution is to be found rather in the unknown depths of the human
soul, than in the quasi physical truths, on the basis of which we have hitherto
attempted to explain some of these phenomena. The risky search for the secret
laws, which almost all men are bound to violate without knowing it, under these
circumstances, promises abundant glory for any one even though he make
shipwreck in the enterprise upon which we now venture to set forth. Let us then
make the attempt.
In spite of all that fools have to say about the difficulty they have had in
explaining love, there are certain principles relating to it as infallible as
those of geometry; but in each character these are modified according to its
tendency; hence the caprices of love, which are due to the infinite number of
varying temperaments. If we were permitted never to see the various effects of
light without also perceiving on what they were based, many minds would refuse
to believe in the movement of the sun and in its oneness. Let the blind men cry
out as they like; I boast with Socrates, although I am not as wise as he was,
that I know of naught save love; and I intend to attempt the formulation of
some of its precepts, in order to spare married people the trouble of cudgeling
their brains; they would soon reach the limit of their wit.
Now all the preceding observations may be resolved into a single proposition,
which may be considered either the first or last term in this secret theory of
love, whose statement would end by wearying us, if we did not bring it to a
prompt conclusion. This principle is contained in the following formula:
LVII. Between two beings susceptible of love, the duration of passion is in
proportion to the original resistance of the woman, or to the obstacles which
the accidents of social life put in the way of your happiness.
If you have desired your object only for one day, your love perhaps will not
last more than three nights. Where must we seek for the causes of this law? I
do not know. If you cast your eyes around you, you will find abundant proof of
this rule; in the vegetable world the plants which take the longest time to
grow are those which promise to have the longest life; in the moral order of
things the works produced yesterday die to-morrow; in the physical world the
womb which infringes the laws of gestation bears dead fruit. In everything, a
work which is permanent has been brooded over by time for a long period. A long
future requires a long past. If love is a child, passion is a man. This general
law, which all men obey, to which all beings and all sentiments must submit, is
precisely that which every marriage infringes, as we have plainly shown. This
principle has given rise to the love tales of the Middle Ages; the Amadises,
the Lancelots, the Tristans of ballad literature, whose constancy may justly be
called fabulous, are allegories of the national mythology which our imitation
of Greek literature nipped in the bud. These fascinating characters, outlined
by the imagination of the troubadours, set their seal and sanction upon this
truth.
LVIII. We do not attach ourselves permanently to any possessions, excepting in
proportion to the trouble, toil and longing which they have cost us.
All our meditations have revealed to us about the basis of the primordial law
of love is comprised in the following axiom, which is at the same time the
principle and the result of the law.
LIX.
In every case we receive only in proportion to what we give.
This last principle is so self-evident that we will not attempt to demonstrate
it. We merely add a single observation which appears to us of some importance.
The writer who said: “Everything is true, and everything is false,” announced a
fact which the human intellect, naturally prone to sophism, interprets as it
chooses, but it really seems as though human affairs have as many facets as
there are minds that contemplate them. This fact may be detailed as follows:
There cannot be found, in all creation, a single law which is not
counterbalanced by a law exactly contrary to it; life in everything is
maintained by the equilibrium of two opposing forces. So in the present
subject, as regards love, if you give too much, you will not receive enough.
The mother who shows her children her whole tenderness calls forth their
ingratitude, and ingratitude is occasioned, perhaps, by the impossibility of
reciprocation. The wife who loves more than she is loved must necessarily be
the object of tyranny. Durable love is that which always keeps the forces of
two human beings in equilibrium. Now this equilibrium may be maintained
permanently; the one who loves the more ought to stop at the point of the one
who loves the less. And is it not, after all the sweetest sacrifice that a
loving heart can make, that love should so accommodate itself as to adjust the
inequality?
What sentiment of admiration must rise in the soul of a philosopher on
discovering that there is, perhaps, but one single principle in the world, as
there is but one God; and that our ideas and our affections are subject to the
same laws which cause the sun to rise, the flowers to bloom, the universe to
teem with life!
Perhaps, we ought to seek in the metaphysics of love the reasons for the
following proposition, which throws the most vivid light on the question of
honeymoons and of Red-moons:
Man goes from aversion to love; but if he has begun by loving, and afterwards
comes to feel aversion, he never returns to love.
In certain human organisms the feelings are dwarfed, as the thought may be in
certain sterile imaginations. Thus, just as some minds have the faculty of
comprehending the connections existing between different things without formal
deduction; and as they have the faculty of seizing upon each formula
separately, without combining them, or without the power of insight, comparison
and expression; so in the same way, different souls may have more or less
imperfect ideas of the various sentiments. Talent in love, as in every other
art, consists in the power of forming a conception combined with the power of
carrying it out. The world is full of people who sing airs, but who omit the
ritornello, who have quarters of an idea, as they have quarters of
sentiment, but who can no more co-ordinate the movements of their affections
than of their thoughts. In a word, they are incomplete. Unite a fine
intelligence with a dwarfed intelligence and you precipitate a disaster; for it
is necessary that equilibrium be preserved in everything.
We leave to the philosophers of the boudoir or to the sages of the back parlor
to investigate the thousand ways in which men of different temperaments,
intellects, social positions and fortunes disturb this equilibrium. Meanwhile
we will proceed to examine the last cause for the setting of the honeymoon and
the rising of the Red-moon.
There is in life one principle more potent than life itself. It is a movement
whose celerity springs from an unknown motive power. Man is no more acquainted
with the secret of this revolution than the earth is aware of that which causes
her rotation. A certain something, which I gladly call the current of life,
bears along our choicest thoughts, makes use of most people’s will and carries
us on in spite of ourselves. Thus, a man of common-sense, who never fails to
pay his bills, if he is a merchant, a man who has been able to escape death, or
what perhaps is more trying, sickness, by the observation of a certain easy but
daily regimen, is completely and duly nailed up between the four planks of his
coffin, after having said every evening: “Dear me! to-morrow I will not forget
my pills!” How are we to explain this magic spell which rules all the affairs
of life? Do men submit to it from a want of energy? Men who have the strongest
wills are subject to it. Is it default of memory? People who possess this
faculty in the highest degree yield to its fascination.
Every one can recognize the operation of this influence in the case of his
neighbor, and it is one of the things which exclude the majority of husbands
from the honeymoon. It is thus that the wise man, survivor of all reefs and
shoals, such as we have pointed out, sometimes falls into the snares which he
himself has set.
I have myself noticed that man deals with marriage and its dangers in very much
the same way that he deals with wigs; and perhaps the following phases of
thought concerning wigs may furnish a formula for human life in general.
FIRST EPOCH.—Is it possible that I shall ever have white hair?
SECOND EPOCH.—In any case, if I have white hair, I shall never wear a wig. Good
Lord! what is more ugly than a wig?
One morning you hear a young voice, which love much oftener makes to vibrate
than lulls to silence, exclaiming:
“Well, I declare! You have a white hair!”
THIRD EPOCH.—Why not wear a well-made wig which people would not notice? There
is a certain merit in deceiving everybody; besides, a wig keeps you warm,
prevents taking cold, etc.
FOURTH EPOCH.—The wig is so skillfully put on that you deceive every one who
does not know you.
The wig takes up all your attention, and amour-propre makes you every
morning as busy as the most skillful hairdresser.
FIFTH EPOCH.—The neglected wig. “Good heavens! How tedious it is, to have to go
with bare head every evening, and to curl one’s wig every morning!”
SIXTH EPOCH.—The wig allows certain white hairs to escape; it is put on awry
and the observer perceives on the back of your neck a white line, which
contrasts with the deep tints pushed back by the collar of your coat.
SEVENTH EPOCH.—Your wig is as scraggy as dog’s tooth grass; and —excuse the
expression—you are making fun of your wig.
“Sir,” said one of the most powerful feminine intelligences which have
condescended to enlighten me on some of the most obscure passages in my book,
“what do you mean by this wig?”
“Madame,” I answered, “when a man falls into a mood of indifference with regard
to his wig, he is,—he is—what your husband probably is not.”
“But my husband is not—” (she paused and thought for a moment). “He is not
amiable; he is not—well, he is not—of an even temper; he is not—”
“Then, madame, he would doubtless be indifferent to his wig!”
We looked at each other, she with a well-assumed air of dignity, I with a
suppressed smile.
“I see,” said I, “that we must pay special respect to the ears of the little
sex, for they are the only chaste things about them.”
I assumed the attitude of a man who has something of importance to disclose,
and the fair dame lowered her eyes, as if she had some reason to blush.
“Madame, in these days a minister is not hanged, as once upon a time, for
saying yes or no; a Chateaubriand would scarcely torture Francoise de Foix, and
we wear no longer at our side a long sword ready to avenge an insult. Now in a
century when civilization has made such rapid progress, when we can learn a
science in twenty-four lessons, everything must follow this race after
perfection. We can no longer speak the manly, rude, coarse language of our
ancestors. The age in which are fabricated such fine, such brilliant stuffs,
such elegant furniture, and when are made such rich porcelains, must needs be
the age of periphrase and circumlocution. We must try, therefore, to coin a new
word in place of the comic expression which Moliere used; since the language of
this great man, as a contemporary author has said, is too free for ladies who
find gauze too thick for their garments. But people of the world know, as well
as the learned, how the Greeks had an innate taste for mysteries. That poetic
nation knew well how to invest with the tints of fable the antique traditions
of their history. At the voice of their rhapsodists together with their poets
and romancers, kings became gods and their adventures of gallantry were
transformed into immortal allegories. According to M. Chompre, licentiate in
law, the classic author of the Dictionary of Mythology, the labyrinth
was ‘an enclosure planted with trees and adorned with buildings arranged in
such a way that when a young man once entered, he could no more find his way
out.’ Here and there flowery thickets were presented to his view, but in the
midst of a multitude of alleys, which crossed and recrossed his path and bore
the appearance of a uniform passage, among the briars, rocks and thorns, the
patient found himself in combat with an animal called the Minotaur.
“Now, madame, if you will allow me the honor of calling to your mind the fact
that the Minotaur was of all known beasts that which Mythology distinguishes as
the most dangerous; that in order to save themselves from his ravages, the
Athenians were bound to deliver to him, every single year, fifty virgins; you
will perhaps escape the error of good M. Chompre, who saw in the labyrinth
nothing but an English garden; and you will recognize in this ingenious fable a
refined allegory, or we may better say a faithful and fearful image of the
dangers of marriage. The paintings recently discovered at Herculaneum have
served to confirm this opinion. And, as a matter of fact, learned men have for
a long time believed, in accordance with the writings of certain authors, that
the Minotaur was an animal half-man, half-bull; but the fifth panel of ancient
paintings at Herculaneum represents to us this allegorical monster with a body
entirely human; and, to take away all vestige of doubt, he lies crushed at the
feet of Theseus. Now, my dear madame, why should we not ask Mythology to come
and rescue us from that hypocrisy which is gaining ground with us and hinders
us from laughing as our fathers laughed? And thus, since in the world a young
lady does not very well know how to spread the veil under which an honest woman
hides her behavior, in a contingency which our grandfathers would have roughly
explained by a single word, you, like a crowd of beautiful but prevaricating
ladies, you content yourselves with saying, ‘Ah! yes, she is very amiable,
but,’—but what?—‘but she is often very inconsistent—.’ I have for a long time
tried to find out the meaning of this last word, and, above all, the figure of
rhetoric by which you make it express the opposite of that which it signifies;
but all my researches have been in vain. Vert-Vert used the word last, and was
unfortunately addressed to the innocent nuns whose infidelities did not in any
way infringe the honor of the men. When a woman is inconsistent the
husband must be, according to me, minotaurized. If the minotaurized man
is a fine fellow, if he enjoys a certain esteem,—and many husbands really
deserve to be pitied,—then in speaking of him, you say in a pathetic voice, ‘M.
A—- is a very estimable man, his wife is exceedingly pretty, but they say he is
not happy in his domestic relations.’ Thus, madame, the estimable man who is
unhappy in his domestic relations, the man who has an inconsistent wife, or the
husband who is minotaurized are simply husbands as they appear in Moliere.
Well, then, O goddess of modern taste, do not these expressions seem to you
characterized by a transparency chaste enough for anybody?”
“Ah! mon Dieu!” she answered, laughing, “if the thing is the same, what does it
matter whether it be expressed in two syllables or in a hundred?”
She bade me good-bye, with an ironical nod and disappeared, doubtless to join
the countesses of my preface and all the metaphorical creatures, so often
employed by romance-writers as agents for the recovery or composition of
ancient manuscripts.
As for you, the more numerous and the more real creatures who read my book, if
there are any among you who make common cause with my conjugal champion, I give
you notice that you will not at once become unhappy in your domestic relations.
A man arrives at this conjugal condition not suddenly, but insensibly and by
degrees. Many husbands have even remained unfortunate in their domestic
relations during their whole life and have never known it. This domestic
revolution develops itself in accordance with fixed rules; for the revolutions
of the honeymoon are as regular as the phases of the moon in heaven, and are
the same in every married house. Have we not proved that moral nature, like
physical nature, has its laws?
Your young wife will never take a lover, as we have elsewhere said, without
making serious reflections. As soon as the honeymoon wanes, you will find that
you have aroused in her a sentiment of pleasure which you have not satisfied;
you have opened to her the book of life; and she has derived an excellent idea
from the prosaic dullness which distinguishes your complacent love, of the
poetry which is the natural result when souls and pleasures are in accord. Like
a timid bird, just startled by the report of a gun which has ceased, she puts
her head out of her nest, looks round her, and sees the world; and knowing the
word of a charade which you have played, she feels instinctively the void which
exists in your languishing passion. She divines that it is only with a lover
that she can regain the delightful exercise of her free will in love.
You have dried the green wood in preparation for a fire.
In the situation in which both of you find yourselves, there is no woman, even
the most virtuous, who would not be found worthy of a grande passion,
who has not dreamed of it, and who does not believe that it is easily kindled,
for there is always found a certain amour-propre ready to reinforce that
conquered enemy—a jaded wife.
“If the role of an honest woman were nothing more than perilous,” said an old
lady to me, “I would admit that it would serve. But it is tiresome; and I have
never met a virtuous woman who did not think about deceiving somebody.”
And then, before any lover presents himself, a wife discusses with herself the
legality of the act; she enters into a conflict with her duties, with the law,
with religion and with the secret desires of a nature which knows no check-rein
excepting that which she places upon herself. And then commences for you a
condition of affairs totally new; then you receive the first intimation which
nature, that good and indulgent mother, always gives to the creatures who are
exposed to any danger. Nature has put a bell on the neck of the Minotaur, as on
the tail of that frightful snake which is the terror of travelers. And then
appear in your wife what we will call the first symptoms, and woe to him who
does not know how to contend with them. Those who in reading our book will
remember that they saw those symptoms in their own domestic life can pass to
the conclusion of this work, where they will find how they may gain
consolation.
The situation referred to, in which a married couple bind themselves for a
longer or a shorter time, is the point from which our work starts, as it is the
end at which our observations stop. A man of intelligence should know how to
recognize the mysterious indications, the obscure signs and the involuntary
revelation which a wife unwittingly exhibits; for the next Meditation will
doubtless indicate the more evident of the manifestations to neophytes in the
sublime science of marriage.
OF THE FIRST SYMPTOMS.
When your wife reaches that crisis in which we have left her, you yourself are
wrapped in a pleasant and unsuspicious security. You have so often seen the sun
that you begin to think it is shining over everybody. You therefore give no
longer that attention to the least action of your wife, which was impelled by
your first outburst of passion.
This indolence prevents many husbands from perceiving the symptoms which, in
their wives, herald the first storm; and this disposition of mind has resulted
in the minotaurization of more husbands than have either opportunity,
carriages, sofas and apartments in town.
The feeling of indifference in the presence of danger is to some degree
justified by the apparent tranquillity which surrounds you. The conspiracy
which is formed against you by our million of hungry celibates seems to be
unanimous in its advance. Although all are enemies of each other and know each
other well, a sort of instinct forces them into co-operation.
Two persons are married. The myrmidons of the Minotaur, young and old, have
usually the politeness to leave the bride and bridegroom entirely to themselves
at first. They look upon the husband as an artisan, whose business it is to
trim, polish, cut into facets and mount the diamond, which is to pass from hand
to hand in order to be admired all around. Moreover, the aspect of a young
married couple much taken with each other always rejoices the heart of those
among the celibates who are known as roues; they take good care not to
disturb the excitement by which society is to be profited; they also know that
heavy showers to not last long. They therefore keep quiet; they watch, and
wait, with incredible vigilance, for the moment when bride and groom begin to
weary of the seventh heaven.
The tact with which celibates discover the moment when the breeze begins to
rise in a new home can only be compared to the indifference of those husbands
for whom the Red-moon rises. There is, even in intrigue, a moment of ripeness
which must be waited for. The great man is he who anticipates the outcome of
certain circumstances. Men of fifty-two, whom we have represented as being so
dangerous, know very well, for example, that any man who offers himself as
lover to a woman and is haughtily rejected, will be received with open arms
three months afterwards. But it may be truly said that in general married
people in betraying their indifference towards each other show the same naivete
with which they first betrayed their love. At the time when you are traversing
with madame the ravishing fields of the seventh heaven—where according to their
temperament, newly married people remain encamped for a longer or shorter time,
as the preceding Meditation has proved—you go little or not at all into
society. Happy as you are in your home, if you do go abroad, it will be for the
purpose of making up a choice party and visiting the theatre, the country, etc.
From the moment you the newly wedded make your appearance in the world again,
you and your bride together, or separately, and are seen to be attentive to
each other at balls, at parties, at all the empty amusements created to escape
the void of an unsatisfied heart, the celibates discern that your wife comes
there in search of distraction; her home, her husband are therefore wearisome
to her.
At this point the celibate knows that half of the journey is accomplished. At
this point you are on the eve of being minotaurized, and your wife is likely to
become inconsistent; which means that she is on the contrary likely to prove
very consistent in her conduct, that she has reasoned it out with astonishing
sagacity and that you are likely very soon to smell fire. From that moment she
will not in appearance fail in any of her duties, and will put on the colors of
that virtue in which she is most lacking. Said Crebillon:
“Alas!
Is it right to be heir of the man who we slay?”
Never has she seemed more anxious to please you. She will seek, as much as
possible, to allay the secret wounds which she thinks about inflicting upon
your married bliss, she will do so by those little attentions which induce you
to believe in the eternity of her love; hence the proverb, “Happy as a fool.”
But in accordance with the character of women, they either despise their own
husbands from the very fact that they find no difficulty in deceiving them; or
they hate them when they find themselves circumvented by them; or they fall
into a condition of indifference towards them, which is a thousand times worse
than hatred. In this emergency, the first thing which may be diagnosed in a
woman is a decided oddness of behavior. A woman loves to be saved from herself,
to escape her conscience, but without the eagerness shown in this connection by
wives who are thoroughly unhappy. She dresses herself with especial care, in
order, she will tell you, to flatter your amour-propre by drawing all
eyes upon her in the midst of parties and public entertainments.
When she returns to the bosom of her stupid home you will see that, at times,
she is gloomy and thoughtful, then suddenly laughing and gay as if beside
herself; or assuming the serious expression of a German when he advances to the
fight. Such varying moods always indicate the terrible doubt and hesitation to
which we have already referred. There are women who read romances in order to
feast upon the images of love cleverly depicted and always varied, of love
crowned yet triumphant; or in order to familiarize themselves in thought with
the perils of an intrigue.
She will profess the highest esteem for you, she will tell you that she loves
you as a sister; and that such reasonable friendship is the only true, the only
durable friendship, the only tie which it is the aim of marriage to establish
between man and wife.
She will adroitly distinguish between the duties which are all she has to
perform and the rights which she can demand to exercise.
She views with indifference, appreciated by you alone, all the details of
married happiness. This sort of happiness, perhaps, has never been very
agreeable to her and moreover it is always with her. She knows it well, she has
analyzed it; and what slight but terrible evidence comes from these
circumstances to prove to an intelligent husband that this frail creature
argues and reasons, instead of being carried away on the tempest of passion.
LX.
The more a man judges the less he loves.
And now will burst forth from her those pleasantries at which you will be the
first to laugh and those reflections which will startle you by their
profundity; now you will see sudden changes of mood and the caprices of a mind
which hesitates. At times she will exhibit extreme tenderness, as if she
repented of her thoughts and her projects; sometimes she will be sullen and at
cross-purposes with you; in a word, she will fulfill the varium et mutabile
femina which we hitherto have had the folly to attribute to the feminine
temperament. Diderot, in his desire to explain the mutations almost atmospheric
in the behavior of women, has even gone so far as to make them the offspring of
what he calls la bete feroce; but we never see these whims in a woman
who is happy.
These symptoms, light as gossamer, resemble the clouds which scarcely break the
azure surface of the sky and which they call flowers of the storm. But soon
their colors take a deeper intensity.
In the midst of this solemn premeditation, which tends, as Madame de Stael
says, to bring more poetry into life, some women, in whom virtuous mothers
either from considerations of worldly advantage of duty or sentiment, or
through sheer hypocrisy, have inculcated steadfast principles, take the
overwhelming fancies by which they are assailed for suggestions of the devil;
and you will see them therefore trotting regularly to mass, to midday offices,
even to vespers. This false devotion exhibits itself, first of all in the shape
of pretty books of devotion in a costly binding, by the aid of which these dear
sinners attempt in vain to fulfill the duties imposed by religion, and long
neglected for the pleasures of marriage.
Now here we will lay down a principle, and you must engrave it on your memory
in letters of fire.
When a young woman suddenly takes up religious practices which she has before
abandoned, this new order of life always conceals a motive highly significant,
in view of her husband’s happiness. In the case of at least seventy-nine women
out of a hundred this return to God proves that they have been inconsistent, or
that they intend to become so.
But a symptom more significant still and more decisive, and one that every
husband should recognize under pain of being considered a fool, is this:
At the time when both of you are immersed in the illusive delights of the
honeymoon, your wife, as one devoted to you, would constantly carry out your
will. She was happy in the power of showing the ready will, which both of you
mistook for love, and she would have liked for you to have asked her to walk on
the edge of the roof, and immediately, nimble as a squirrel, she would have run
over the tiles. In a word, she found an ineffable delight in sacrificing to you
that ego which made her a being distinct from yours. She had identified
herself with your nature and was obedient to that vow of the heart, Una
caro.
All this delightful promptness of an earlier day gradually faded away. Wounded
to find her will counted as nothing, your wife will attempt, nevertheless, to
reassert it by means of a system developed gradually, and from day to day, with
increased energy.
This system is founded upon what we may call the dignity of the married woman.
The first effect of this system is to mingle with your pleasures a certain
reserve and a certain lukewarmness, of which you are the sole judge.
According to the greater or lesser violence of your sensual passion, you have
perhaps discerned some of those twenty-two pleasures which in other times
created in Greece twenty-two kinds of courtesans, devoted especially to these
delicate branches of the same art. Ignorant and simple, curious and full of
hope, your young wife may have taken some degrees in this science as rare as it
is unknown, and which we especially commend to the attention of the future
author of Physiology of Pleasure.
Lacking all these different kinds of pleasure, all these caprices of soul, all
these arrows of love, you are reduced to the most common of love fashions, of
that primitive and innocent wedding gait, the calm homage which the innocent
Adam rendered to our common Mother and which doubtless suggested to the Serpent
the idea of taking them in. But a symptom so complete is not frequent. Most
married couples are too good Christians to follow the usages of pagan Greece,
so we have ranged, among the last symptoms, the appearance in the calm nuptial
couch of those shameless pleasures which spring generally from lawless passion.
In their proper time and place we will treat more fully of this fascinating
diagnostic; at this point, things are reduced to a listlessness and conjugal
repugnance which you alone are in a condition to appreciate.
At the same time that she is ennobling by her dignity the objects of marriage,
your wife will pretend that she ought to have her opinion and you yours. “In
marrying,” she will say, “a woman does not vow that she will abdicate the
throne of reason. Are women then really slaves? Human laws can fetter the body;
but the mind!—ah! God has placed it so near Himself that no human hand can
touch it.”
These ideas necessarily proceed either from the too liberal teachings which you
have allowed her to receive, or from some reflections which you have permitted
her to make. A whole Meditation has been devoted to Home Instruction.
Then your wife begins to say, “My chamber, my bed, my
apartment.” To many of your questions she will reply, “But, my dear, this is no
business of yours!” Or: “Men have their part in the direction of the house, and
women have theirs.” Or, laughing at men who meddle in household affairs, she
will affirm that “men do not understand some things.”
The number of things which you do not understand increases day by day.
One fine morning, you will see in your little church two altars, where before
you never worshiped but at one. The altar of your wife and your own altar have
become distinct, and this distinction will go on increasing, always in
accordance with the system founded upon the dignity of woman.
Then the following ideas will appear, and they will be inculcated in you
whether you like it or not, by means of a living force very ancient in origin
and little known. Steam-power, horse-power, man-power, and water-power are good
inventions, but nature has provided women with a moral power, in comparison
with which all other powers are nothing; we may call it rattle-power.
This force consists in a continuance of the same sound, in an exact repetition
of the same words, in a reversion, over and over again, to the same ideas, and
this so unvaried, that from hearing them over and over again you will admit
them, in order to be delivered from the discussion. Thus the power of the
rattle will prove to you:
That you are very fortunate to have such an excellent wife;
That she has done you too much honor in marrying you;
That women often see clearer than men;
That you ought to take the advice of your wife in everything, and almost always
ought to follow it;
That you ought to respect the mother of your children, to honor her and have
confidence in her;
That the best way to escape being deceived, is to rely upon a wife’s
refinement, for according to certain old ideas which we have had the weakness
to give credit, it is impossible for a man to prevent his wife from
minotaurizing him;
That a lawful wife is a man’s best friend;
That a woman is mistress in her own house and queen in her drawing-room, etc.
Those who wish to oppose a firm resistance to a woman’s conquest, effected by
means of her dignity over man’s power, fall into the category of the
predestined.
At first, quarrels arise which in the eye of wives give an air of tyranny to
husbands. The tyranny of a husband is always a terrible excuse for
inconsistency in a wife. Then, in their frivolous discussions they are enabled
to prove to their families and to ours, to everybody and to ourselves, that we
are in the wrong. If, for the sake of peace, or from love, you acknowledge the
pretended rights of women, you yield an advantage to your wife by which she
will profit eternally. A husband, like a government, ought never to acknowledge
a mistake. In case you do so, your power will be outflanked by the subtle
artifices of feminine dignity; then all will be lost; from that moment she will
advance from concession to concession until she has driven you from her bed.
The woman being shrewd, intelligent, sarcastic and having leisure to meditate
over an ironical phrase, can easily turn you into ridicule during a momentary
clash of opinions. The day on which she turns you into ridicule, sees the end
of your happiness. Your power has expired. A woman who has laughed at her
husband cannot henceforth love him. A man should be, to the woman who is in
love with him, a being full of power, of greatness, and always imposing. A
family cannot exist without despotism. Think of that, ye nations!
Now the difficult course which a man has to steer in presence of such serious
incidents as these, is what we may call the haute politique of marriage,
and is the subject of the second and third parts of our book. That breviary of
marital Machiavelism will teach you the manner in which you may grow to
greatness within that frivolous mind, within that soul of lacework, to use
Napoleon’s phrase. You may learn how a man may exhibit a soul of steel, may
enter upon this little domestic war without ever yielding the empire of his
will, and may do so without compromising his happiness. For if you exhibit any
tendency to abdication, your wife will despise you, for the sole reason that
she has discovered you to be destitute of mental vigor; you are no longer a
man to her.
But we have not yet reached the point at which are to be developed those
theories and principles, by means of which a man may unite elegance of manners
with severity of measures; let it suffice us, for the moment, to point out the
importance of impending events and let us pursue our theme.
At this fatal epoch, you will see that she is adroitly setting up a right to go
out alone.
You were at one time her god, her idol. She has now reached that height of
devotion at which it is permitted to see holes in the garments of the saints.
“Oh, mon Dieu! My dear,” said Madame de la Valliere to her husband, “how badly
you wear your sword! M. de Richelieu has a way of making it hang straight at
his side, which you ought to try to imitate; it is in much better taste.”
“My dear, you could not tell me in a more tactful manner that we have been
married five months!” replied the Duke, whose repartee made his fortune in the
reign of Louis XV.
She will study your character in order to find weapons against you. Such a
study, which love would hold in horror, reveals itself in the thousand little
traps which she lays purposely to make you scold her; when a woman has no
excuse for minotaurizing her husband she sets to work to make one.
She will perhaps begin dinner without waiting for you.
If you drive through the middle of the town, she will point out certain objects
which escaped your notice; she will sing before you without feeling afraid; she
will interrupt you, sometimes vouchsafe no reply to you, and will prove to you,
in a thousand different ways, that she is enjoying at your side the use of all
her faculties and exercising her private judgment.
She will try to abolish entirely your influence in the management of the house
and to become sole mistress of your fortune. At first this struggle will serve
as a distraction for her soul, whether it be empty or in too violent commotion;
next, she will find in your opposition a new motive for ridicule. Slang
expressions will not fail her, and in France we are so quickly vanquished by
the ironical smile of another!
At other times headaches and nervous attacks make their appearance; but these
symptoms furnish matter for a whole future Meditation. In the world she will
speak of you without blushing, and will gaze at you with assurance. She will
begin to blame your least actions because they are at variance with her ideas,
or her secret intentions. She will take no care of what pertains to you, she
will not even know whether you have all you need. You are no longer her
paragon.
In imitation of Louis XIV, who carried to his mistresses the bouquets of orange
blossoms which the head gardener of Versailles put on his table every morning,
M. de Vivonne used almost every day to give his wife choice flowers during the
early period of his marriage. One morning he found the bouquet lying on the
side table without having been placed, as usual, in a vase of water.
“Oh! Oh!” said he, “if I am not a cuckold, I shall very soon be one.”
You go on a journey for eight days and you receive no letters, or you receive
one, three pages of which are blank.—Symptom.
You come home mounted on a valuable horse which you like very much, and between
her kisses your wife shows her uneasiness about the horse and his
fodder.—Symptom.
To these features of the case, you will be able to add others. We shall
endeavor in the present volume always to paint things in bold fresco style and
leave the miniatures to you. According to the characters concerned, the
indications which we are describing, veiled under the incidents of ordinary
life, are of infinite variety. One man may discover a symptom in the way a
shawl is put on, while another needs to receive a fillip to his intellect, in
order to notice the indifference of his mate.
Some fine spring morning, the day after a ball, or the eve of a country party,
this situation reaches its last phase; your wife is listless and the happiness
within her reach has no more attractions for her. Her mind, her imagination,
perhaps her natural caprices call for a lover. Nevertheless, she dare not yet
embark upon an intrigue whose consequences and details fill her with dread. You
are still there for some purpose or other; you are a weight in the balance,
although a very light one. On the other hand, the lover presents himself
arrayed in all the graces of novelty and all the charms of mystery. The
conflict which has arisen in the heart of your wife becomes, in presence of the
enemy, more real and more full of peril than before. Very soon the more dangers
and risks there are to be run, the more she burns to plunge into that delicious
gulf of fear, enjoyment, anguish and delight. Her imagination kindles and
sparkles, her future life rises before her eyes, colored with romantic and
mysterious hues. Her soul discovers that existence has already taken its tone
from this struggle which to a woman has so much solemnity in it. All is
agitation, all is fire, all is commotion within her. She lives with three times
as much intensity as before, and judges the future by the present. The little
pleasure which you have lavished upon her bears witness against you; for she is
not excited as much by the pleasures which she has received, as by those which
she is yet to enjoy; does not imagination show her that her happiness will be
keener with this lover, whom the laws deny her, than with you? And then, she
finds enjoyment even in her terror and terror in her enjoyment. Then she falls
in love with this imminent danger, this sword of Damocles hung over her head by
you yourself, thus preferring the delirious agonies of such a passion, to that
conjugal inanity which is worse to her than death, to that indifference which
is less a sentiment than the absence of all sentiment.
You, who must go to pay your respects to the Minister of Finance, to write
memorandums at the bank, to make your reports at the Bourse, or to speak in the
Chamber; you, young men, who have repeated with many others in our first
Meditation the oath that you will defend your happiness in defending your wife,
what can you oppose to these desires of hers which are so natural? For, with
these creatures of fire, to live is to feel; the moment they cease to
experience emotion they are dead. The law in virtue of which you take your
position produces in her this involuntary act of minotaurism. “There is one
sequel,” said D’Alembert, “to the laws of movement.” Well, then, where are your
means of defence?— Where, indeed?
Alas! if your wife has not yet kissed the apple of the Serpent, the Serpent
stands before her; you sleep, we are awake, and our book begins.
Without inquiring how many husbands, among the five hundred thousand which this
book concerns, will be left with the predestined; how many have contracted
unfortunate marriages; how many have made a bad beginning with their wives; and
without wishing to ask if there be many or few of this numerous band who can
satisfy the conditions required for struggling against the danger which is
impending, we intend to expound in the second and third part of this work the
methods of fighting the Minotaur and keeping intact the virtue of wives. But if
fate, the devil, the celibate, opportunity, desire your ruin, in recognizing
the progress of all intrigues, in joining in the battles which are fought by
every home, you will possibly be able to find some consolation. Many people
have such a happy disposition, that on showing to them the condition of things
and explaining to them the why and the wherefore, they scratch their foreheads,
rub their hands, stamp on the ground, and are satisfied.
EPILOGUE.
Faithful to our promise, this first part has indicated the general causes which
bring all marriages to the crises which we are about to describe; and, in
tracing the steps of this conjugal preamble, we have also pointed out the way
in which the catastrophe is to be avoided, for we have pointed out the errors
by which it is brought about.
But these first considerations would be incomplete if, after endeavoring to
throw some light upon the inconsistency of our ideas, of our manners and of our
laws, with regard to a question which concerns the life of almost all living
beings, we did not endeavor to make plain, in a short peroration, the political
causes of the infirmity which pervades all modern society. After having exposed
the secret vices of marriage, would it not be an inquiry worthy of philosophers
to search out the causes which have rendered it so vicious?
The system of law and of manners which so far directs women and controls
marriage in France, is the outcome of ancient beliefs and traditions which are
no longer in accordance with the eternal principles of reason and of justice,
brought to light by the great Revolution of 1789.
Three great disturbances have agitated France; the conquest of the country by
the Romans, the establishment of Christianity and the invasion of the Franks.
Each of these events has left a deep impress upon the soil, upon the laws, upon
the manners and upon the intellect of the nation.
Greece having one foot on Europe and the other on Asia, was influenced by her
voluptuous climate in the choice of her marriage institutions; she received
them from the East, where her philosophers, her legislators and her poets went
to study the abstruse antiquities of Egypt and Chaldea. The absolute seclusion
of women which was necessitated under the burning sun of Asia prevailed under
the laws of Greece and Ionia. The women remained in confinement within the
marbles of the gyneceum. The country was reduced to the condition of a city, to
a narrow territory, and the courtesans who were connected with art and religion
by so many ties, were sufficient to satisfy the first passions of the young
men, who were few in number, since their strength was elsewhere taken up in the
violent exercises of that training which was demanded of them by the military
system of those heroic times.
At the beginning of her royal career Rome, having sent to Greece to seek such
principles of legislation as might suit the sky of Italy, stamped upon the
forehead of the married woman the brand of complete servitude. The senate
understood the importance of virtue in a republic, hence the severity of
manners in the excessive development of the marital and paternal power. The
dependence of the woman on her husband is found inscribed on every code. The
seclusion prescribed by the East becomes a duty, a moral obligation, a virtue.
On these principles were raised temples to modesty and temples consecrated to
the sanctity of marriage; hence, sprang the institution of censors, the law of
dowries, the sumptuary laws, the respect for matrons and all the
characteristics of the Roman law. Moreover, three acts of feminine violation
either accomplished or attempted, produced three revolutions! And was it not a
grand event, sanctioned by the decrees of the country, that these illustrious
women should make their appearances on the political arena! Those noble Roman
women, who were obliged to be either brides or mothers, passed their life in
retirement engaged in educating the masters of the world. Rome had no
courtesans because the youth of the city were engaged in eternal war. If, later
on, dissoluteness appeared, it merely resulted from the despotism of emperors;
and still the prejudices founded upon ancient manners were so influential that
Rome never saw a woman on a stage. These facts are not put forth idly in
scanning the history of marriage in France.
After the conquest of Gaul, the Romans imposed their laws upon the conquered;
but they were incapable of destroying both the profound respect which our
ancestors entertained for women and the ancient superstitions which made women
the immediate oracles of God. The Roman laws ended by prevailing, to the
exclusion of all others, in this country once known as the “land of written
law,” or Gallia togata, and their ideas of marriage penetrated more or
less into the “land of customs.”
But, during the conflict of laws with manners, the Franks invaded the Gauls and
gave to the country the dear name of France. These warriors came from the North
and brought the system of gallantry which had originated in their western
regions, where the mingling of the sexes did not require in those icy climates
the jealous precautions of the East. The women of that time elevated the
privations of that kind of life by the exaltation of their sentiments. The
drowsy minds of the day made necessary those varied forms of delicate
solicitation, that versatility of address, the fancied repulse of coquetry,
which belong to the system whose principles have been unfolded in our First
Part, as admirably suited to the temperate clime of France.
To the East, then, belong the passion and the delirium of passion, the long
brown hair, the harem, the amorous divinities, the splendor, the poetry of love
and the monuments of love.— To the West, the liberty of wives, the sovereignty
of their blond locks, gallantry, the fairy life of love, the secrecy of
passion, the profound ecstasy of the soul, the sweet feelings of melancholy and
the constancy of love.
These two systems, starting from opposite points of the globe, have come into
collision in France; in France, where one part of the country, Languedoc, was
attracted by Oriental traditions, while the other, Languedoil, was the native
land of a creed which attributes to woman a magical power. In the Languedoil,
love necessitates mystery, in the Languedoc, to see is to love.
At the height of this struggle came the triumphant entry of Christianity into
France, and there it was preached by women, and there it consecrated the
divinity of a woman who in the forests of Brittany, of Vendee and of Ardennes
took, under the name of Notre-Dame, the place of more than one idol in the
hollow of old Druidic oaks.
If the religion of Christ, which is above all things a code of morality and
politics, gave a soul to all living beings, proclaimed that equality of all in
the sight of God, and by such principles as these fortified the chivalric
sentiments of the North, this advantage was counterbalanced by the fact, that
the sovereign pontiff resided at Rome, of which seat he considered himself the
lawful heir, through the universality of the Latin tongue, which became that of
Europe during the Middle Ages, and through the keen interest taken by monks,
writers and lawyers in establishing the ascendency of certain codes, discovered
by a soldier in the sack of Amalfi.
These two principles of the servitude and the sovereignty of women retain
possession of the ground, each of them defended by fresh arguments.
The Salic law, which was a legal error, was a triumph for the principle of
political and civil servitude for women, but it did not diminish the power
which French manners accorded them, for the enthusiasm of chivalry which
prevailed in Europe supplanted the party of manners against the party of law.
And in this way was created that strange phenomenon which since that time has
characterized both our national despotism and our legislation; for ever since
those epochs which seemed to presage the Revolution, when the spirit of
philosophy rose and reflected upon the history of the past, France has been the
prey of many convulsions. Feudalism, the Crusades, the Reformation, the
struggle between the monarchy and the aristocracy. Despotism and Priestcraft
have so closely held the country within their clutches, that woman still
remains the subject of strange counter-opinions, each springing from one of the
three great movements to which we have referred. Was it possible that the woman
question should be discussed and woman’s political education and marriage
should be ventilated when feudalism threatened the throne, when reform menaced
both king and barons, and the people, between the hierarchy and the empire,
were forgotten? According to a saying of Madame Necker, women, amid these great
movements, were like the cotton wool put into a case of porcelain. They were
counted for nothing, but without them everything would have been broken.
A married woman, then, in France presents the spectacle of a queen out at
service, of a slave, at once free and a prisoner; a collision between these two
principles which frequently occurred, produced odd situations by the thousand.
And then, woman was physically little understood, and what was actually
sickness in her, was considered a prodigy, witchcraft or monstrous turpitude.
In those days these creatures, treated by the law as reckless children, and put
under guardianship, were by the manners of the time deified and adored. Like
the freedmen of emperors, they disposed of crowns, they decided battles, they
awarded fortunes, they inspired crimes and revolutions, wonderful acts of
virtue, by the mere flash of their glances, and yet they possessed nothing and
were not even possessors of themselves. They were equally fortunate and
unfortunate. Armed with their weakness and strong in instinct, they launched
out far beyond the sphere which the law allotted them, showing themselves
omnipotent for evil, but impotent for good; without merit in the virtues that
were imposed upon them, without excuse in their vices; accused of ignorance and
yet denied an education; neither altogether mothers nor altogether wives.
Having all the time to conceal their passions, while they fostered them, they
submitted to the coquetry of the Franks, while they were obliged like Roman
women, to stay within the ramparts of their castles and bring up those who were
to be warriors. While no system was definitely decided upon by legislation as
to the position of women, their minds were left to follow their inclinations,
and there are found among them as many who resemble Marion Delorme as those who
resemble Cornelia; there are vices among them, but there are as many virtues.
These were creatures as incomplete as the laws which governed them; they were
considered by some as a being midway between man and the lower animals, as a
malignant beast which the laws could not too closely fetter, and which nature
had destined, with so many other things, to serve the pleasure of men; while
others held woman to be an angel in exile, a source of happiness and love, the
only creature who responded to the highest feelings of man, while her miseries
were to be recompensed by the idolatry of every heart. How could the
consistency, which was wanting in a political system, be expected in the
general manners of the nation?
And so woman became what circumstances and men made her, instead of being what
the climate and native institutions should have made her; sold, married against
her taste, in accordance with the Patria potestas of the Romans, at the
same time that she fell under the marital despotism which desired her
seclusion, she found herself tempted to take the only reprisals which were
within her power. Then she became a dissolute creature, as soon as men ceased
to be intently occupied in intestine war, for the same reason that she was a
virtuous woman in the midst of civil disturbances. Every educated man can fill
in this outline, for we seek from movements like these the lessons and not the
poetic suggestion which they yield.
The Revolution was too entirely occupied in breaking down and building up, had
too many enemies, or followed perhaps too closely on the deplorable times
witnessed under the regency and under Louis XV, to pay any attention to the
position which women should occupy in the social order.
The remarkable men who raised the immortal monument which our codes present
were almost all old-fashioned students of law deeply imbued with a spirit of
Roman jurisprudence; and moreover they were not the founders of any political
institutions. Sons of the Revolution, they believed, in accordance with that
movement, that the law of divorce wisely restricted and the bond of dutiful
submission were sufficient ameliorations of the previous marriage law. When
that former order of things was remembered, the change made by the new
legislation seemed immense.
At the present day the question as to which of these two principles shall
triumph rests entirely in the hands of our wise legislators. The past has
teaching which should bear fruit in the future. Have we lost all sense of the
eloquence of fact?
The principles of the East resulted in the existence of eunuchs and seraglios;
the spurious social standing of France has brought in the plague of courtesans
and the more deadly plague of our marriage system; and thus, to use the
language of a contemporary, the East sacrifices to paternity men and the
principle of justice; France, women and modesty. Neither the East nor France
has attained the goal which their institutions point to; for that is happiness.
The man is not more loved by the women of a harem than the husband is sure of
being in France, as the father of his children; and marrying is not worth what
it costs. It is time to offer no more sacrifice to this institution, and to
amass a larger sum of happiness in the social state by making our manners and
our institution conformable to our climate.
Constitutional government, a happy mixture of two extreme political systems,
despotism and democracy, suggests by the necessity of blending also the two
principles of marriage, which so far clash together in France. The liberty
which we boldly claim for young people is the only remedy for the host of evils
whose source we have pointed out, by exposing the inconsistencies resulting
from the bondage in which girls are kept. Let us give back to youth the
indulgence of those passions, those coquetries, love and its terrors, love and
its delights, and that fascinating company which followed the coming of the
Franks. At this vernal season of life no fault is irreparable, and Hymen will
come forth from the bosom of experiences, armed with confidence, stripped of
hatred, and love in marriage will be justified, because it will have had the
privilege of comparison.
In this change of manners the disgraceful plague of public prostitution will
perish of itself. It is especially at the time when the man possesses the
frankness and timidity of adolescence, that in his pursuit of happiness he is
competent to meet and struggle with great and genuine passions of the heart.
The soul is happy in making great efforts of whatever kind; provided that it
can act, that it can stir and move, it makes little difference, even though it
exercise its power against itself. In this observation, the truth of which
everybody can see, there may be found one secret of successful legislation, of
tranquillity and happiness. And then, the pursuit of learning has now become so
highly developed that the most tempestuous of our coming Mirabeaus can consume
his energy either in the indulgence of a passion or the study of a science. How
many young people have been saved from debauchery by self-chosen labors or the
persistent obstacles put in the way of a first love, a love that was pure! And
what young girl does not desire to prolong the delightful childhood of
sentiment, is not proud to have her nature known, and has not felt the secret
tremblings of timidity, the modesty of her secret communings with herself, and
wished to oppose them to the young desires of a lover inexperienced as herself!
The gallantry of the Franks and the pleasures which attend it should then be
the portion of youth, and then would naturally result a union of soul, of mind,
of character, of habits, of temperament and of fortune, such as would produce
the happy equilibrium necessary for the felicity of the married couple. This
system would rest upon foundations wider and freer, if girls were subjected to
a carefully calculated system of disinheritance; or if, in order to force men
to choose only those who promised happiness by their virtues, their character
or their talents, they married as in the United States without dowry.
In that case, the system adopted by the Romans could advantageously be applied
to the married women who when they were girls used their liberty. Being
exclusively engaged in the early education of their children, which is the most
important of all maternal obligations, occupied in creating and maintaining the
happiness of the household, so admirably described in the fourth book of
Julie, they would be in their houses like the women of ancient Rome,
living images of Providence, which reigns over all, and yet is nowhere visible.
In this case, the laws covering the infidelity of the wife should be extremely
severe. They should make the penalty disgrace, rather than inflict painful or
coercive sentences. France has witnessed the spectacle of women riding asses
for the pretended crime of magic, and many an innocent woman has died of shame.
In this may be found the secret of future marriage legislation. The young girls
of Miletus delivered themselves from marriage by voluntary death; the senate
condemned the suicides to be dragged naked on a hurdle, and the other virgins
condemned themselves for life.
Women and marriage will never be respected until we have that radical change in
manners which we are now begging for. This profound thought is the ruling
principle in the two finest productions of an immortal genius. Emile and
La Nouvelle Heloise are nothing more than two eloquent pleas for the
system. The voice there raised will resound through the ages, because it points
to the real motives of true legislation, and the manners which will prevail in
the future. By placing children at the breast of their mothers, Jean-Jacques
rendered an immense service to the cause of virtue; but his age was too deeply
gangrened with abuses to understand the lofty lessons unfolded in those two
poems; it is right to add also that the philosopher was in these works
overmastered by the poet, and in leaving in the heart of Julie after her
marriage some vestiges of her first love, he was led astray by the
attractiveness of a poetic situation, more touching indeed, but less useful
than the truth which he wished to display.
Nevertheless, if marriage in France is an unlimited contract to which men agree
with a silent understanding that they may thus give more relish to passion,
more curiosity, more mystery to love, more fascination to women; if a woman is
rather an ornament to the drawing-room, a fashion-plate, a portmanteau, than a
being whose functions in the order politic are an essential part of the
country’s prosperity and the nation’s glory, a creature whose endeavors in life
vie in utility with those of men—I admit that all the above theory, all these
long considerations sink into nothingness at the prospect of such an important
destiny!——
But after having squeezed a pound of actualities in order to obtain one drop of
philosophy, having paid sufficient homage to that passion for the historic,
which is so dominant in our time, let us turn our glance upon the manners of
the present period. Let us take the cap and bells and the coxcomb of which
Rabelais once made a sceptre, and let us pursue the course of this inquiry
without giving to one joke more seriousness than comports with it, and without
giving to serious things the jesting tone which ill befits them.
“To be or not to be,
That is the question.”
—Shakspeare, Hamlet.
A TREATISE ON MARITAL POLICY.
When a man reaches the position in which the first part of this book sets him,
we suppose that the idea of his wife being possessed by another makes his heart
beat, and rekindles his passion, either by an appeal to his amour
propre, his egotism, or his self-interest, for unless he is still on his
wife’s side, he must be one of the lowest of men and deserves his fate.
In this trying moment it is very difficult for a husband to avoid making
mistakes; for, with regard to most men, the art of ruling a wife is even less
known than that of judiciously choosing one. However, marital policy consists
chiefly in the practical application of three principles which should be the
soul of your conduct. The first is never to believe what a woman says; the
second, always to look for the spirit without dwelling too much upon the letter
of her actions; and the third, not to forget that a woman is never so garrulous
as when she holds her tongue, and is never working with more energy than when
she keeps quiet.
From the moment that your suspicions are aroused, you ought to be like a man
mounted on a tricky horse, who always watches the ears of the beast, in fear of
being thrown from the saddle.
But art consists not so much in the knowledge of principles, as in the manner
of applying them; to reveal them to ignorant people is to put a razor in the
hand of a monkey. Moreover, the first and most vital of your duties consists in
perpetual dissimulation, an accomplishment in which most husbands are sadly
lacking. In detecting the symptoms of minotaurism a little too plainly marked
in the conduct of their wives, most men at once indulge in the most insulting
suspicions. Their minds contract a tinge of bitterness which manifests itself
in their conversation, and in their manners; and the alarm which fills their
heart, like the gas flame in a glass globe, lights up their countenances so
plainly, that it accounts for their conduct.
Now a woman, who has twelve hours more than you have each day to reflect and to
study you, reads the suspicion written upon your face at the very moment that
it arises. She will never forget this gratuitous insult. Nothing can ever
remedy that. All is now said and done, and the very next day, if she has
opportunity, she will join the ranks of inconsistent women.
You ought then to begin under these circumstances to affect towards your wife
the same boundless confidence that you have hitherto had in her. If you begin
to lull her anxieties by honeyed words, you are lost, she will not believe you;
for she has her policy as you have yours. Now there is as much need for tact as
for kindliness in your behavior, in order to inculcate in her, without her
knowing it, a feeling of security, which will lead her to lay back her ears,
and prevent you from using rein or spur at the wrong moment.
But how can we compare a horse, the frankest of all animals, to a being, the
flashes of whose thought, and the movements of whose impulses render her at
moments more prudent than the Servite Fra-Paolo, the most terrible adviser that
the Ten at Venice ever had; more deceitful than a king; more adroit than Louis
XI; more profound than Machiavelli; as sophistical as Hobbes; as acute as
Voltaire; as pliant as the fiancee of Mamolin; and distrustful of no one in the
whole wide world but you?
Moreover, to this dissimulation, by means of which the springs that move your
conduct ought to be made as invisible as those that move the world, must be
added absolute self-control. That diplomatic imperturbability, so boasted of by
Talleyrand, must be the least of your qualities; his exquisite politeness and
the grace of his manners must distinguish your conversation. The professor here
expressly forbids you to use your whip, if you would obtain complete control
over your gentle Andalusian steed.
LXI.
If a man strike his mistress it is a self-inflicted wound; but if he strike his
wife it is suicide!
How can we think of a government without police, an action without force, a
power without weapons?—Now this is exactly the problem which we shall try to
solve in our future meditations. But first we must submit two preliminary
observations. They will furnish us with two other theories concerning the
application of all the mechanical means which we propose you should employ. An
instance from life will refresh these arid and dry dissertations: the hearing
of such a story will be like laying down a book, to work in the field.
In the year 1822, on a fine morning in the month of February, I was traversing
the boulevards of Paris, from the quiet circles of the Marais to the
fashionable quarters of the Chaussee-d’Antin, and I observed for the first
time, not without a certain philosophic joy, the diversity of physiognomy and
the varieties of costume which, from the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule even to the
Madeleine, made each portion of the boulevard a world of itself, and this whole
zone of Paris, a grand panorama of manners. Having at that time no idea of what
the world was, and little thinking that one day I should have the audacity to
set myself up as a legislator on marriage, I was going to take lunch at the
house of a college friend, who was perhaps too early in life afflicted with a
wife and two children. My former professor of mathematics lived at a short
distance from the house of my college friend, and I promised myself the
pleasure of a visit to this worthy mathematician before indulging my appetite
for the dainties of friendship. I accordingly made my way to the heart of a
study, where everything was covered with a dust which bore witness to the lofty
abstraction of the scholar. But a surprise was in store for me there. I
perceived a pretty woman seated on the arm of an easy chair, as if mounted on
an English horse; her face took on the look of conventional surprise worn by
mistresses of the house towards those they do not know, but she did not
disguise the expression of annoyance which, at my appearance, clouded her
countenance with the thought that I was aware how ill-timed was my presence. My
master, doubtless absorbed in an equation, had not yet raised his head; I
therefore waved my right hand towards the young lady, like a fish moving his
fin, and on tiptoe I retired with a mysterious smile which might be translated
“I will not be the one to prevent him committing an act of infidelity to
Urania.” She nodded her head with one of those sudden gestures whose graceful
vivacity is not to be translated into words.
“My good friend, don’t go away,” cried the geometrician. “This is my wife!”
I bowed for the second time!—Oh, Coulon! Why wert thou not present to applaud
the only one of thy pupils who understood from that moment the expression,
“anacreontic,” as applied to a bow?—The effect must have been very
overwhelming; for Madame the Professoress, as the Germans say, rose hurriedly
as if to go, making me a slight bow which seemed to say: “Adorable!——” Her
husband stopped her, saying:
“Don’t go, my child, this is one of my pupils.”
The young woman bent her head towards the scholar as a bird perched on a bough
stretches its neck to pick up a seed.
“It is not possible,” said the husband, heaving a sigh, “and I am going to
prove it to you by A plus B.”
“Let us drop that, sir, I beg you,” she answered, pointing with a wink to me.
If it had been a problem in algebra, my master would have understood this look,
but it was Chinese to him, and so he went on.
“Look here, child, I constitute you judge in the matter; our income is ten
thousand francs.”
At these words I retired to the door, as if I were seized with a wild desire to
examine the framed drawings which had attracted my attention. My discretion was
rewarded by an eloquent glance. Alas! she did not know that in Fortunio I could
have played the part of Sharp-Ears, who heard the truffles growing.
“In accordance with the principles of general economy,” said my master, “no one
ought to spend in rent and servant’s wages more than two-tenths of his income;
now our apartment and our attendance cost altogether a hundred louis. I give
you twelve hundred francs to dress with” [in saying this he emphasized every
syllable]. “Your food,” he went on, takes up four thousand francs, our children
demand at lest twenty-five louis; I take for myself only eight hundred francs;
washing, fuel and light mount up to about a thousand francs; so that there does
not remain, as you see, more than six hundred francs for unforeseen expenses.
In order to buy the cross of diamonds, we must draw a thousand crowns from our
capital, and if once we take that course, my little darling, there is no reason
why we should not leave Paris which you love so much, and at once take up our
residence in the country, in order to retrench. Children and household expenses
will increase fast enough! Come, try to be reasonable!”
“I suppose I must,” she said, “but you will be the only husband in Paris who
has not given a New Year’s gift to his wife.”
And she stole away like a school-boy who goes to finish an imposed duty. My
master made a gesture of relief. When he saw the door close he rubbed his
hands, he talked of the war in Spain; and I went my way to the Rue de Provence,
little knowing that I had received the first installment of a great lesson in
marriage, any more than I dreamt of the conquest of Constantinople by General
Diebitsch. I arrived at my host’s house at the very moment they were sitting
down to luncheon, after having waited for me the half hour demanded by usage.
It was, I believe, as she opened a pate de foie gras that my pretty
hostess said to her husband, with a determined air:
“Alexander, if you were really nice you would give me that pair of ear-rings
that we saw at Fossin’s.”
“You shall have them,” cheerfully replied my friend, drawing from his
pocketbook three notes of a thousand francs, the sight of which made his wife’s
eyes sparkle. “I can no more resist the pleasure of offering them to you,” he
added, “than you can that of accepting them. This is the anniversary of the day
I first saw you, and the diamonds will perhaps make you remember it!——”
“You bad man!” said she, with a winning smile.
She poked two fingers into her bodice, and pulling out a bouquet of violets she
threw them with childlike contempt into the face of my friend. Alexander gave
her the price of the jewels, crying out:
“I had seen the flowers!”
I shall never forget the lively gesture and the eager joy with which, like a
cat which lays its spotted paw upon a mouse, the little woman seized the three
bank notes; she rolled them up blushing with pleasure, and put them in the
place of the violets which before had perfumed her bosom. I could not help
thinking about my old mathematical master. I did not then see any difference
between him and his pupil, than that which exists between a frugal man and a
prodigal, little thinking that he of the two who seemed to calculate the
better, actually calculated the worse. The luncheon went off merrily. Very
soon, seated in a little drawing-room newly decorated, before a cheerful fire
which gave warmth and made our hearts expand as in spring time, I felt
compelled to make this loving couple a guest’s compliments on the furnishing of
their little bower.
“It is a pity that all this costs so dear,” said my friend, “but it is right
that the nest be worthy of the bird; but why the devil do you compliment me
upon curtains which are not paid for?—You make me remember, just at the time I
am digesting lunch, that I still owe two thousand francs to a Turk of an
upholsterer.”
At these words the mistress of the house made a mental inventory of the pretty
room with her eyes, and the radiancy of her face changed to thoughtfulness.
Alexander took me by the hand and led me to the recess of a bay window.
“Do you happen,” he said in a low voice, “to have a thousand crowns to lend me?
I have only twelve thousand francs income, and this year—”
“Alexander,” cried the dear creature, interrupting her husband, while, rushing
up, she offered him the three banknotes, “I see now that it is a piece of
folly—”
“What do you mean?” answered he, “keep your money.”
“But, my love, I am ruining you! I ought to know that you love me so much, that
I ought not to tell you all that I wish for.”
“Keep it, my darling, it is your lawful property—nonsense, I shall gamble this
winter and get all that back again!”
“Gamble!” cried she, with an expression of horror. “Alexander, take back these
notes! Come, sir, I wish you to do so.”
“No, no,” replied my friend, repulsing the white and delicious little hand.
“Are you not going on Thursday to a ball of Madame de B——-?”
“I will think about what you asked of me,” said I to my comrade.
I went away bowing to his wife, but I saw plainly after that scene that my
anacreontic salutation did not produce much effect upon her.
“He must be mad,” thought I as I went away, “to talk of a thousand crowns to a
law student.”
Five days later I found myself at the house of Madame de B——-, whose balls were
becoming fashionable. In the midst of the quadrilles I saw the wife of my
friend and that of the mathematician. Madame Alexander wore a charming dress;
some flowers and white muslin were all that composed it. She wore a little
cross a la Jeannette, hanging by a black velvet ribbon which set off the
whiteness of her scented skin; long pears of gold decorated her ears. On the
neck of Madame the Professoress sparkled a superb cross of diamonds.
“How funny that is,” said I to a personage who had not yet studied the world’s
ledger, nor deciphered the heart of a single woman.
That personage was myself. If I had then the desire to dance with those fair
women, it was simply because I knew a secret which emboldened my timidity.
“So after all, madame, you have your cross?” I said to her first.
“Well, I fairly won it!” she replied, with a smile hard to describe.
“How is this! no ear-rings?” I remarked to the wife of my friend.
“Ah!” she replied, “I have enjoyed possession of them during a whole luncheon
time, but you see that I have ended by converting Alexander.”
“He allowed himself to be easily convinced?”
She answered with a look of triumph.
Eight years afterwards, this scene suddenly rose to my memory, though I had
long since forgotten it, and in the light of the candles I distinctly discerned
the moral of it. Yes, a woman has a horror of being convinced of anything; when
you try to persuade her she immediately submits to being led astray and
continues to play the role which nature gave her. In her view, to allow herself
to be won over is to grant a favor, but exact arguments irritate and confound
her; in order to guide her you must employ the power which she herself so
frequently employs and which lies in an appeal to sensibility. It is therefore
in his wife, and not in himself, that a husband can find the instruments of his
despotism; as diamond cuts diamond so must the woman be made to tyrannize over
herself. To know how to offer the ear-rings in such a way that they will be
returned, is a secret whose application embraces the slightest details of life.
And now let us pass to the second observation.
“He who can manage property of one toman, can manage one of an hundred
thousand,” says an Indian proverb; and I, for my part, will enlarge upon this
Asiatic adage and declare, that he who can govern one woman can govern a
nation, and indeed there is very much similarity between these two governments.
Must not the policy of husbands be very nearly the same as the policy of kings?
Do not we see kings trying to amuse the people in order to deprive them of
their liberty; throwing food at their heads for one day, in order to make them
forget the misery of a whole year; preaching to them not to steal and at the
same time stripping them of everything; and saying to them: “It seems to me
that if I were the people I should be virtuous”? It is from England that we
obtain the precedent which husbands should adopt in their houses. Those who
have eyes ought to see that when the government is running smoothly the Whigs
are rarely in power. A long Tory ministry has always succeeded an ephemeral
Liberal cabinet. The orators of a national party resemble the rats which wear
their teeth away in gnawing the rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as
they smell the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman is
the Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in which we have left her
she might naturally aspire to the conquest of more than one privilege. Shut
your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to waste her strength in mounting half
the steps of your throne; and when she is on the point of touching your
sceptre, fling her back to the ground, quite gently and with infinite grace,
saying to her: “Bravo!” and leaving her to expect success in the hereafter. The
craftiness of this manoeuvre will prove a fine support to you in the employment
of any means which it may please you to choose from your arsenal, for the
object of subduing your wife.
Such are the general principles which a husband should put into practice, if he
wishes to escape mistakes in ruling his little kingdom. Nevertheless, in spite
of what was decided by the minority at the council of Macon (Montesquieu, who
had perhaps foreseen the coming of constitutional government has remarked, I
forget in what part of his writings, that good sense in public assemblies is
always found on the side of the minority), we discern in a woman a soul and a
body, and we commence by investigating the means to gain control of her moral
nature. The exercise of thought, whatever people may say, is more noble than
the exercise of bodily organs, and we give precedence to science over cookery
and to intellectual training over hygiene.
INSTRUCTION IN THE HOME.
Whether wives should or should not be put under instruction—such is the
question before us. Of all those which we have discussed this is the only one
which has two extremes and admits of no compromise. Knowledge and ignorance,
such are the two irreconcilable terms of this problem. Between these two
abysses we seem to see Louis XVIII reckoning up the felicities of the
eighteenth century, and the unhappiness of the nineteenth. Seated in the centre
of the seesaw, which he knew so well how to balance by his own weight, he
contemplates at one end of it the fanatic ignorance of a lay brother, the
apathy of a serf, the shining armor on the horses of a banneret; he thinks he
hears the cry, “France and Montjoie-Saint-Denis!” But he turns round, he smiles
as he sees the haughty look of a manufacturer, who is captain in the national
guard; the elegant carriage of a stock broker; the simple costume of a peer of
France turned journalist and sending his son to the Polytechnique; then he
notices the costly stuffs, the newspapers, the steam engines; and he drinks his
coffee from a cup of Sevres, at the bottom of which still glitters the “N”
surmounted by a crown.
“Away with civilization! Away with thought!”—That is your cry. You ought to
hold in horror the education of women for the reason so well realized in Spain,
that it is easier to govern a nation of idiots than a nation of scholars. A
nation degraded is happy: if she has not the sentiment of liberty, neither has
she the storms and disturbances which it begets; she lives as polyps live; she
can be cut up into two or three pieces and each piece is still a nation,
complete and living, and ready to be governed by the first blind man who arms
himself with the pastoral staff.
What is it that produces this wonderful characteristic of humanity? Ignorance;
ignorance is the sole support of despotism, which lives on darkness and
silence. Now happiness in the domestic establishment as in a political state is
a negative happiness. The affection of a people for a king, in an absolute
monarchy, is perhaps less contrary to nature than the fidelity of a wife
towards her husband, when love between them no longer exists. Now we know that,
in your house, love at this moment has one foot on the window-sill. It is
necessary for you, therefore, to put into practice that salutary rigor by which
M. de Metternich prolongs his statu quo; but we would advise you to do
so with more tact and with still more tenderness; for your wife is more crafty
than all the Germans put together, and as voluptuous as the Italians.
You should, therefore, try to put off as long as possible the fatal moment when
your wife asks you for a book. This will be easy. You will first of all
pronounce in a tone of disdain the phrase “Blue stocking;” and, on her request
being repeated, you will tell her what ridicule attaches, among the neighbors,
to pedantic women.
You will then repeat to her, very frequently, that the most lovable and the
wittiest women in the world are found at Paris, where women never read;
That women are like people of quality who, according to Mascarillo, know
everything without having learned anything; that a woman while she is dancing,
or while she is playing cards, without even having the appearance of listening,
ought to know how to pick up from the conversation of talented men the
ready-made phrases out of which fools manufacture their wit at Paris;
That in this country decisive judgments on men and affairs are passed round
from hand to hand; and that the little cutting phrase with which a woman
criticises an author, demolishes a work, or heaps contempt on a picture, has
more power in the world than a court decision;
That women are beautiful mirrors, which naturally reflect the most brilliant
ideas;
That natural wit is everything, and the best education is gained rather from
what we learn in the world than by what we read in books;
That, above all, reading ends in making the eyes dull, etc.
To think of leaving a woman at liberty to read the books which her character of
mind may prompt her to choose! This is to drop a spark in a powder magazine; it
is worse than that, it is to teach your wife to separate herself from you; to
live in an imaginary world, in a Paradise. For what do women read? Works of
passion, the Confessions of Rousseau, romances, and all those
compositions which work most powerfully on their sensibility. They like neither
argument nor the ripe fruits of knowledge. Now have you ever considered the
results which follow these poetical readings?
Romances, and indeed all works of imagination, paint sentiments and events with
colors of a very different brilliancy from those presented by nature. The
fascination of such works springs less from the desire which each author feels
to show his skill in putting forth choice and delicate ideas than from the
mysterious working of the human intellect. It is characteristic of man to
purify and refine everything that he lays up in the treasury of his thoughts.
What human faces, what monuments of the dead are not made more beautiful than
actual nature in the artistic representation? The soul of the reader assists in
this conspiracy against the truth, either by means of the profound silence
which it enjoys in reading or by the fire of mental conception with which it is
agitated or by the clearness with which imagery is reflected in the mirror of
the understanding. Who has not seen on reading the Confessions of
Jean-Jacques, that Madame de Warens is described as much prettier than she ever
was in actual life? It might almost be said that our souls dwell with delight
upon the figures which they had met in a former existence, under fairer skies;
that they accept the creations of another soul only as wings on which they may
soar into space; features the most delicate they bring to perfection by making
them their own; and the most poetic expression which appears in the imagery of
an author brings forth still more ethereal imagery in the mind of a reader. To
read is to join with the writer in a creative act. The mystery of the
transubstantiation of ideas, originates perhaps in the instinctive
consciousness that we have of a vocation loftier than our present destiny. Or,
is it based on the lost tradition of a former life? What must that life have
been, if this slight residuum of memory offers us such volumes of delight?
Moreover, in reading plays and romances, woman, a creature much more
susceptible than we are to excitement, experiences the most violent transport.
She creates for herself an ideal existence beside which all reality grows pale;
she at once attempts to realize this voluptuous life, to take to herself the
magic which she sees in it. And, without knowing it, she passes from spirit to
letter and from soul to sense.
And would you be simple enough to believe that the manners, the sentiments of a
man like you, who usually dress and undress before your wife, can
counterbalance the influence of these books and outshine the glory of their
fictitious lovers, in whose garments the fair reader sees neither hole nor
stain?—Poor fool! too late, alas! for her happiness and for yours, your wife
will find out that the heroes of poetry are as rare in real life as the
Apollos of sculpture!
Very many husbands will find themselves embarrassed in trying to prevent their
wives from reading, yet there are certain people who allege that reading has
this advantage, that men know what their wives are about when they have a book
in hand. In the first place you will see, in the next Meditation, what a
tendency the sedentary life has to make a woman quarrelsome; but have you never
met those beings without poetry, who succeed in petrifying their unhappy
companions by reducing life to its most mechanical elements? Study great men in
their conversation and learn by heart the admirable arguments by which they
condemn poetry and the pleasures of imagination.
But if, after all your efforts, your wife persists in wishing to read, put at
her disposal at once all possible books from the A B C of her little boy to
Rene, a book more dangerous to you when in her hands than Therese
Philosophe. You might create in her an utter disgust for reading by giving
her tedious books; and plunge her into utter idiocy with Marie Alacoque,
The Brosse de Penitence, or with the chansons which were so fashionable
in the time of Louis XV; but later on you will find, in the present volume, the
means of so thoroughly employing your wife’s time, that any kind of reading
will be quite out of the question.
And first of all, consider the immense resources which the education of women
has prepared for you in your efforts to turn your wife from her fleeting taste
for science. Just see with what admirable stupidity girls lend themselves to
reap the benefit of the education which is imposed upon them in France; we give
them in charge to nursery maids, to companions, to governesses who teach them
twenty tricks of coquetry and false modesty, for every single noble and true
idea which they impart to them. Girls are brought up as slaves, and are
accustomed to the idea that they are sent into the world to imitate their
grandmothers, to breed canary birds, to make herbals, to water little Bengal
rose-bushes, to fill in worsted work, or to put on collars. Moreover, if a
little girl in her tenth year has more refinement than a boy of twenty, she is
timid and awkward. She is frightened at a spider, chatters nonsense, thinks of
dress, talks about the fashions and has not the courage to be either a watchful
mother or a chaste wife.
Notice what progress she had made; she has been shown how to paint roses, and
to embroider ties in such a way as to earn eight sous a day. She has learned
the history of France in Ragois and chronology in the Tables du
Citoyen Chantreau, and her young imagination has been set free in the realm
of geography; all without any aim, excepting that of keeping away all that
might be dangerous to her heart; but at the same time her mother and her
teachers repeat with unwearied voice the lesson, that the whole science of a
woman lies in knowing how to arrange the fig leaf which our Mother Eve wore.
“She does not hear for fifteen years,” says Diderot, “anything else but ‘my
daughter, your fig leaf is on badly; my daughter, your fig leaf is on well; my
daughter, would it not look better so?’”
Keep your wife then within this fine and noble circle of knowledge. If by
chance your wife wishes to have a library, buy for her Florian, Malte-Brun,
The Cabinet des Fees, The Arabian Nights, Redoute’s Roses,
The Customs of China, The Pigeons, by Madame Knip, the great work
on Egypt, etc. Carry out, in short, the clever suggestion of that princess who,
when she was told of a riot occasioned by the dearness of bread, said, “Why
don’t they eat cake?”
Perhaps, one evening, your wife will reproach you for being sullen and not
speaking to her; perhaps she will say that you are ridiculous, when you have
just made a pun; but this is one of the slight annoyances incident to our
system; and, moreover, what does it matter to you that the education of women
in France is the most pleasant of absurdities, and that your marital
obscurantism has brought a doll to your arms? As you have not sufficient
courage to undertake a fairer task, would it not be better to lead your wife
along the beaten track of married life in safety, than to run the risk of
making her scale the steep precipices of love? She is likely to be a mother:
you must not exactly expect to have Gracchi for sons, but to be really pater
quem nuptiae demonstrant; now, in order to aid you in reaching this
consummation, we must make this book an arsenal from which each one, in
accordance with his wife’s character and his own, may choose weapons fit to
employ against the terrible genius of evil, which is always ready to rise up in
the soul of a wife; and since it may fairly be considered that the ignorant are
the most cruel opponents of feminine education, this Meditation will serve as a
breviary for the majority of husbands.
If a woman has received a man’s education, she possesses in very truth the most
brilliant and most fertile sources of happiness both to herself and to her
husband; but this kind of woman is as rare as happiness itself; and if you do
not possess her for your wife, your best course is to confine the one you do
possess, for the sake of your common felicity, to the region of ideas she was
born in, for you must not forget that one moment of pride in her might destroy
you, by setting on the throne a slave who would immediately be tempted to abuse
her power.
After all, by following the system prescribed in this Meditation, a man of
superiority will be relieved from the necessity of putting his thoughts into
small change, when he wishes to be understood by his wife, if indeed this man
of superiority has been guilty of the folly of marrying one of those poor
creatures who cannot understand him, instead of choosing for his wife a young
girl whose mind and heart he has tested and studied for a considerable time.
Our aim in this last matrimonial observation has not been to advise all men of
superiority to seek for women of superiority and we do not wish each one to
expound our principles after the manner of Madame de Stael, who attempted in
the most indelicate manner to effect a union between herself and Napoleon.
These two beings would have been very unhappy in their domestic life; and
Josephine was a wife accomplished in a very different sense from this virago of
the nineteenth century.
And, indeed, when we praise those undiscoverable girls so happily educated by
chance, so well endowed by nature, whose delicate souls endure so well the rude
contact of the great soul of him we call a man, we mean to speak of
those rare and noble creatures of whom Goethe has given us a model in his
Claire of Egmont; we are thinking of those women who seek no other glory
than that of playing their part well; who adapt themselves with amazing pliancy
to the will and pleasure of those whom nature has given them for masters;
soaring at one time into the boundless sphere of their thought and in turn
stooping to the simple task of amusing them as if they were children;
understanding well the inconsistencies of masculine and violent souls,
understanding also their slightest word, their most puzzling looks; happy in
silence, happy also in the midst of loquacity; and well aware that the
pleasures, the ideas and the moral instincts of a Lord Byron cannot be those of
a bonnet-maker. But we must stop; this fair picture has led us too far from our
subject; we are treating of marriage and not of love.
THE HYGIENE OF MARRIAGE.
The aim of this Meditation is to call to your attention a new method of
defence, by which you may reduce the will of your new wife to a condition of
utter and abject submission. This is brought about by the reaction upon her
moral nature of physical changes, and the wise lowering of her physical
condition by a diet skillfully controlled.
This great and philosophical question of conjugal medicine will doubtless be
regarded favorably by all who are gouty, are impotent, or suffer from catarrh;
and by that legion of old men whose dullness we have quickened by our article
on the predestined. But it principally concerns those husbands who have courage
enough to enter into those paths of machiavelism, such as would not have been
unworthy of that great king of France who endeavored to secure the happiness of
the nation at the expense of certain noble heads. Here, the subject is the
same. The amputation or the weakening of certain members is always to the
advantage of the whole body.
Do you think seriously that a celibate who has been subject to a diet
consisting of the herb hanea, of cucumbers, of purslane and the applications of
leeches to his ears, as recommended by Sterne, would be able to carry by storm
the honor of your wife? Suppose that a diplomat had been clever enough to affix
a permanent linen plaster to the head of Napoleon, or to purge him every
morning: Do you think that Napoleon, Napoleon the Great, would ever have
conquered Italy? Was Napoleon, during his campaign in Russia, a prey to the
most horrible pangs of dysuria, or was he not? That is one of the questions
which has weighed upon the minds of the whole world. Is it not certain that
cooling applications, douches, baths, etc., produce great changes in more or
less acute affections of the brain? In the middle of the heat of July when each
one of your pores slowly filters out and returns to the devouring atmosphere
the glasses of iced lemonade which you have drunk at a single draught, have you
ever felt the flame of courage, the vigor of thought, the complete energy which
rendered existence light and sweet to you some months before?
No, no; the iron most closely cemented into the hardest stone will raise and
throw apart the most durable monument, by reason of the secret influence
exercised by the slow and invisible variations of heat and cold, which vex the
atmosphere. In the first place, let us be sure that if atmospheric mediums have
an influence over man, there is still a stronger reason for believing that man,
in turn, influences the imagination of his kind, by the more or less vigor with
which he projects his will and thus produces a veritable atmosphere around him.
It is in this fact that the power of the actor’s talent lies, as well as that
of poetry and of fanaticism; for the former is the eloquence of words, as the
latter is the eloquence of actions; and in this lies the foundation of a
science, so far in its infancy.
This will, so potent in one man against another, this nervous and fluid force,
eminently mobile and transmittable, is itself subject to the changing condition
of our organization, and there are many circumstances which make this frail
organism of ours to vary. At this point, our metaphysical observation shall
stop and we will enter into an analysis of the circumstances which develop the
will of man and impart to it a grater degree of strength or weakness.
Do not believe, however, that it is our aim to induce you to put cataplasms on
the honor of your wife, to lock her up in a sweating house, or to seal her up
like a letter; no. We will not even attempt to teach you the magnetic theory
which would give you the power to make your will triumph in the soul of your
wife; there is not a single husband who would accept the happiness of an
eternal love at the price of this perpetual strain laid upon his animal forces.
But we shall attempt to expound a powerful system of hygiene, which will enable
you to put out the flame when your chimney takes fire. The elegant women of
Paris and the provinces (and these elegant women form a very distinguished
class among the honest women) have plenty of means of attaining the object
which we propose, without rummaging in the arsenal of medicine for the four
cold specifics, the water-lily and the thousand inventions worthy only of
witches. We will leave to Aelian his herb hanea and to Sterne the purslane and
cucumber which indicate too plainly his antiphlogistic purpose.
You should let your wife recline all day long on soft armchairs, in which she
sinks into a veritable bath of eiderdown or feathers; you should encourage in
every way that does no violence to your conscience, the inclination which women
have to breathe no other air but the scented atmosphere of a chamber seldom
opened, where daylight can scarcely enter through the soft, transparent
curtains.
You will obtain marvelous results from this system, after having previously
experienced the shock of her excitement; but if you are strong enough to
support this momentary transport of your wife you will soon see her artificial
energy die away. In general, women love to live fast, but, after their tempest
of passion, return to that condition of tranquillity which insures the
happiness of a husband.
Jean-Jacques, through the instrumentality of his enchanting Julie, must have
proved to your wife that it was infinitely becoming to refrain from affronting
her delicate stomach and her refined palate by making chyle out of coarse lumps
of beef, and enormous collops of mutton. Is there anything purer in the world
than those interesting vegetables, always fresh and scentless, those tinted
fruits, that coffee, that fragrant chocolate, those oranges, the golden apples
of Atalanta, the dates of Arabia and the biscuits of Brussels, a wholesome and
elegant food which produces satisfactory results, at the same time that it
imparts to a woman an air of mysterious originality? By the regimen which she
chooses she becomes quite celebrated in her immediate circle, just as she would
be by a singular toilet, a benevolent action or a bon mot. Pythagoras
must needs have cast his spell over her, and become as much petted by her as a
poodle or an ape.
Never commit the imprudence of certain men who, for the sake of putting on the
appearance of wit, controvert the feminine dictum, that the figure is
preserved by meagre diet. Women on such a diet never grow fat, that is
clear and positive; do you stick to that.
Praise the skill with which some women, renowned for their beauty, have been
able to preserve it by bathing themselves in milk, several times a day, or in
water compounded of substances likely to render the skin softer and to lower
the nervous tension.
Advise her above all things to refrain from washing herself in cold water;
because water warm or tepid is the proper thing for all kinds of ablutions.
Let Broussais be your idol. At the least indisposition of your wife, and on the
slightest pretext, order the application of leeches; do not even shrink from
applying from time to time a few dozen on yourself, in order to establish the
system of that celebrated doctor in your household. You will constantly be
called upon from your position as husband to discover that your wife is too
ruddy; try even sometimes to bring the blood to her head, in order to have the
right to introduce into the house at certain intervals a squad of leeches.
Your wife ought to drink water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wine agreeable
to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; every other kind of wine
would be bad for her. Never allow her to drink water alone; if you do, you are
lost.
“Impetuous fluid! As soon as you press against the floodgates of the brain, how
quickly do they yield to your power! Then Curiosity comes swimming by, making
signs to her companions to follow; they plunge into the current. Imagination
sits dreaming on the bank. She follows the torrent with her eyes and transforms
the fragments of straw and reed into masts and bowsprit. And scarcely has the
transformation taken place, before Desire, holding in one hand her skirt drawn
up even to her knees, appears, sees the vessel and takes possession of it. O ye
drinkers of water, it is by means of that magic spring that you have so often
turned and turned again the world at your will, throwing beneath your feet the
weak, trampling on his neck, and sometimes changing even the form and aspect of
nature!”
If by this system of inaction, in combination with our system of diet, you fail
to obtain satisfactory results, throw yourself with might and main into another
system, which we will explain to you.
Man has a certain degree of energy given to him. Such and such a man or woman
stands to another as ten is to thirty, as one to five; and there is a certain
degree of energy which no one of us ever exceeds. The quantity of energy, or
willpower, which each of us possesses diffuses itself like sound; it is
sometimes weak, sometimes strong; it modifies itself according to the octaves
to which it mounts. This force is unique, and although it may be dissipated in
desire, in passion, in toils of intellect or in bodily exertion, it turns
towards the object to which man directs it. A boxer expends it in blows of the
fist, the baker in kneading his bread, the poet in the enthusiasm which
consumes and demands an enormous quantity of it; it passes to the feet of the
dancer; in fact, every one diffuses it at will, and may I see the Minotaur
tranquilly seated this very evening upon my bed, if you do not know as well as
I do how he expends it. Almost all men spend in necessary toils, or in the
anguish of direful passions, this fine sum of energy and of will, with which
nature has endowed them; but our honest women are all the prey to the caprices
and the struggles of this power which knows not what to do with itself. If, in
the case of your wife, this energy has not been subdued by the prescribed
dietary regimen, subject her to some form of activity which will constantly
increase in violence. Find some means by which her sum of force which
inconveniences you may be carried off, by some occupation which shall entirely
absorb her strength. Without setting your wife to work the crank of a machine,
there are a thousand ways of tiring her out under the load of constant work.
In leaving it to you to find means for carrying out our design—and these means
vary with circumstances—we would point out that dancing is one of the very best
abysses in which love may bury itself. This point having been very well treated
by a contemporary, we will give him here an opportunity of speaking his mind:
“The poor victim who is the admiration of an enchanted audience pays dear for
her success. What result can possibly follow on exertions so ill-proportioned
to the resources of the delicate sex? The muscles of the body,
disproportionately wearied, are forced to their full power of exertion. The
nervous forces, intended to feed the fire of passions, and the labor of the
brain, are diverted from their course. The failure of desire, the wish for
rest, the exclusive craving for substantial food, all point to a nature
impoverished, more anxious to recruit than to enjoy. Moreover, a denizen of the
side scenes said to me one day, ‘Whoever has lived with dancers has lived with
sheep; for in their exhaustion they can think of nothing but strong food.’
Believe me, then, the love which a ballet girl inspires is very delusive; in
her we find, under an appearance of an artificial springtime, a soil which is
cold as well as greedy, and senses which are utterly dulled. The Calabrian
doctors prescribed the dance as a remedy for the hysteric affections which are
common among the women of their country; and the Arabs use a somewhat similar
recipe for the highbred mares, whose too lively temperament hinders their
fecundity. ‘Dull as a dancer’ is a familiar proverb at the theatre. In fact,
the best brains of Europe are convinced that dancing brings with it a result
eminently cooling.
“In support of this it may be necessary to add other observations. The life of
shepherds gives birth to irregular loves. The morals of weavers were horribly
decried in Greece. The Italians have given birth to a proverb concerning the
lubricity of lame women. The Spanish, in whose veins are found many mixtures of
African incontinence, have expressed their sentiments in a maxim which is
familiar with them: Muger y gallina pierna quebrantada [it is good that
a woman and a hen have one broken leg]. The profound sagacity of the Orientals
in the art of pleasure is altogether expressed by this ordinance of the caliph
Hakim, founder of the Druses, who forbade, under pain of death, the making in
his kingdom of any shoes for women. It seems that over the whole globe the
tempests of the heart wait only to break out after the limbs are at rest!”
What an admirable manoeuvre it would be to make a wife dance, and to feed her
on vegetables!
Do not believe that these observations, which are as true as they are wittily
stated, contradict in any way the system which we have previously prescribed;
by the latter, as by the former, we succeed in producing in a woman that needed
listlessness, which is the pledge of repose and tranquility. By the latter you
leave a door open, that the enemy may flee; by the former, you slay him.
Now at this point it seems to us that we hear timorous people and those of
narrow views rising up against our idea of hygiene in the name of morality and
sentiment.
“Is not woman endowed with a soul? Has she not feelings as we have? What right
has any one, without regard to her pain, her ideas, or her requirements, to
hammer her out, as a cheap metal, out of which a workman fashions a candlestick
or an extinguisher? Is it because the poor creatures are already so feeble and
miserable that a brute claims the power to torture them, merely at the dictate
of his own fancies, which may be more or less just? And, if by this weakening
or heating system of yours, which draws out, softens, hardens the fibres, you
cause frightful and cruel sickness, if you bring to the tomb a woman who is
dear to you; if, if,—”
This is our answer:
Have you never noticed into how many different shapes harlequin and columbine
change their little white hats? They turn and twist them so well that they
become, one after another, a spinning-top, a boat, a wine-glass, a half-moon, a
cap, a basket, a fish, a whip, a dagger, a baby, and a man’s head.
This is an exact image of the despotism with which you ought to shape and
reshape your wife.
The wife is a piece of property, acquired by contract; she is part of your
furniture, for possession is nine-tenths of the law; in fact, the woman is not,
to speak correctly, anything but an adjunct to the man; therefore abridge, cut,
file this article as you choose; she is in every sense yours. Take no notice at
all of her murmurs, of her cries, of her sufferings; nature has ordained her
for your use, that she may bear everything—children, griefs, blows and pains
from man.
Don’t accuse yourself of harshness. In the codes of all the nations which are
called civilized, man has written the laws which govern the destiny of women in
these cruel terms: Vae victis! Woe to the conquered!
Finally, think upon this last observation, the most weighty, perhaps, of all
that we have made up to this time: if you, her husband, do not break under the
scourge of your will this weak and charming reed, there will be a celibate,
capricious and despotic, ready to bring her under a yoke more cruel still; and
she will have to endure two tyrannies instead of one. Under all considerations,
therefore, humanity demands that you should follow the system of our hygiene.
OF PERSONAL MEASURES.
Perhaps the preceding Meditations will prove more likely to develop general
principles of conduct, than to repel force by force. They furnish, however, the
pharmacopoeia of medicine and not the practice of medicine. Now consider the
personal means which nature has put into your hands for self-defence; for
Providence has forgotten no one; if to the sepia (that fish of the Adriatic)
has been given the black dye by which he produces a cloud in which he
disappears from his enemy, you should believe that a husband has not been left
without a weapon; and now the time has come for you to draw yours.
You ought to have stipulated before you married that your wife should nurse her
own children; in this case, as long as she is occupied in bearing children or
in nursing them you will avoid the danger from one or two quarters. The wife
who is engaged in bringing into the world and nursing a baby has not really the
time to bother with a lover, not to speak of the fact that before and after her
confinement she cannot show herself in the world. In short, how can the most
bold of the distinguished women who are the subject of this work show herself
under these circumstances in public? O Lord Byron, thou didst not wish to see
women even eat!
Six months after her confinement, and when the child is on the eve of being
weaned, a woman just begins to feel that she can enjoy her restoration and her
liberty.
If your wife has not nursed her first child, you have too much sense not to
notice this circumstance, and not to make her desire to nurse her next one. You
will read to her the Emile of Jean-Jacques; you will fill her
imagination with a sense of motherly duties; you will excite her moral
feelings, etc.: in a word, you are either a fool or a man of sense; and in the
first case, even after reading this book, you will always be minotaurized;
while in the second, you will understand how to take a hint.
This first expedient is in reality your own personal business. It will give you
a great advantage in carrying out all the other methods.
Since Alcibiades cut the ears and the tail of his dog, in order to do a service
to Pericles, who had on his hands a sort of Spanish war, as well as an Ouvrard
contract affair, such as was then attracting the notice of the Athenians, there
is not a single minister who has not endeavored to cut the ears of some dog or
other.
So in medicine, when inflammation takes place at some vital point of the
system, counter-irritation is brought about at some other point, by means of
blisters, scarifications and cupping.
Another method consists in blistering your wife, or giving her, with a mental
needle, a prod whose violence is such as to make a diversion in your favor.
A man of considerable mental resources had made his honeymoon last for about
four years; the moon began to wane, and he saw appearing the fatal hollow in
its circle. His wife was exactly in that state of mind which we attributed at
the close of our first part to every honest woman; she had taken a fancy to a
worthless fellow who was both insignificant in appearance and ugly; the only
thing in his favor was, he was not her own husband. At this juncture, her
husband meditated the cutting of some dog’s tail, in order to renew, if
possible, his lease of happiness. His wife had conducted herself with such
tact, that it would have been very embarrassing to forbid her lover the house,
for she had discovered some slight tie of relationship between them. The danger
became, day by day, more imminent. The scent of the Minotaur was all around.
One evening the husband felt himself plunged into a mood of deep vexation so
acute as to be apparent to his wife. His wife had begun to show him more
kindness than she had ever exhibited, even during the honeymoon; and hence
question after question racked his mind. On her part a dead silence reigned.
The anxious questionings of his mind were redoubled; his suspicions burst
forth, and he was seized with forebodings of future calamity! Now, on this
occasion, he deftly applied a Japanese blister, which burned as fiercely as an
auto-da-fe of the year 1600. At first his wife employed a thousand
stratagems to discover whether the annoyance of her husband was caused by the
presence of her lover; it was her first intrigue and she displayed a thousand
artifices in it. Her imagination was aroused; it was no longer taken up with
her lover; had she not better, first of all, probe her husband’s secret?
One evening the husband, moved by the desire to confide in his loving helpmeet
all his troubles, informed her that their whole fortune was lost. They would
have to give up their carriage, their box at the theatre, balls, parties, even
Paris itself; perhaps, by living on their estate in the country a year or two,
they might retrieve all! Appealing to the imagination of his wife, he told her
how he pitied her for her attachment to a man who was indeed deeply in love
with her, but was now without fortune; he tore his hair, and his wife was
compelled in honor to be deeply moved; then in this first excitement of their
conjugal disturbance he took her off to his estate. Then followed
scarifications, mustard plaster upon mustard plaster, and the tails of fresh
dogs were cut: he caused a Gothic wing to be built to the chateau; madame
altered the park ten time over in order to have fountains and lakes and
variations in the grounds; finally, the husband in the midst of her labors did
not forget his own, which consisted in providing her with interesting reading,
and launching upon her delicate attentions, etc. Notice, he never informed his
wife of the trick he had played on her; and if his fortune was recuperated, it
was directly after the building of the wing, and the expenditure of enormous
sums in making water-courses; but he assured her that the lake provided a
water-power by which mills might be run, etc.
Now, there was a conjugal blister well conceived, for this husband neither
neglected to rear his family nor to invite to his house neighbors who were
tiresome, stupid or old; and if he spent the winter in Paris, he flung his wife
into the vortex of balls and races, so that she had not a minute to give to
lovers, who are usually the fruit of a vacant life.
Journeys to Italy, Switzerland or Greece, sudden complaints which require a
visit to the waters, and the most distant waters, are pretty good blisters. In
fact, a man of sense should know how to manufacture a thousand of them.
Let us continue our examination of such personal methods.
And here we would have you observe that we are reasoning upon a hypothesis,
without which this book will be unintelligible to you; namely, we suppose that
your honeymoon has lasted for a respectable time and that the lady that you
married was not a widow, but a maid; on the opposite supposition, it is at
least in accordance with French manners to think that your wife married you
merely for the purpose of becoming inconsistent.
From the moment when the struggle between virtue and inconsistency begins in
your home, the whole question rests upon the constant and involuntary
comparison which your wife is instituting between you and her lover.
And here you may find still another mode of defence, entirely personal, seldom
employed by husbands, but the men of superiority will not fear to attempt it.
It is to belittle the lover without letting your wife suspect your intention.
You ought to be able to bring it about so that she will say to herself some
evening while she is putting her hair in curl-papers, “My husband is superior
to him.”
In order to succeed, and you ought to be able to succeed, since you have the
immense advantage over the lover in knowing the character of your wife, and how
she is most easily wounded, you should, with all the tact of a diplomat, lead
this lover to do silly things and cause him to annoy her, without his being
aware of it.
In the first place, this lover, as usual, will seek your friendship, or you
will have friends in common; then, either through the instrumentality of these
friends or by insinuations adroitly but treacherously made, you will lead him
astray on essential points; and, with a little cleverness, you will succeed in
finding your wife ready to deny herself to her lover when he calls, without
either she or he being able to tell the reason. Thus you will have created in
the bosom of your home a comedy in five acts, in which you play, to your
profit, the brilliant role of Figaro or Almaviva; and for some months you will
amuse yourself so much the more, because your amour-propre, your vanity,
your all, were at stake.
I had the good fortune in my youth to win the confidence of an old
emigre who gave me those rudiments of education which are generally
obtained by young people from women. This friend, whose memory will always be
dear to me, taught me by his example to put into practice those diplomatic
stratagems which require tact as well as grace.
The Comte de Noce had returned from Coblenz at a time when it was dangerous for
the nobility to be found in France. No one had such courage and such kindness,
such craft and such recklessness as this aristocrat. Although he was sixty
years old he had married a woman of twenty-five, being compelled to this act of
folly by soft-heartedness; for he thus delivered this poor child from the
despotism of a capricious mother. “Would you like to be my widow?” this amiable
old gentleman had said to Mademoiselle de Pontivy, but his heart was too
affectionate not to become more attached to his wife than a sensible man ought
to be. As in his youth he had been under the influence of several among the
cleverest women in the court of Louis XV, he thought he would have no
difficulty in keeping his wife from any entanglement. What man excepting him
have I ever seen, who could put into successful practice the teachings which I
am endeavoring to give to husbands! What charm could he impart to life by his
delightful manners and fascinating conversation!—His wife never knew until
after his death what she then learned from me, namely, that he had the gout. He
had wisely retired to a home in the hollow of a valley, close to a forest. God
only knows what rambles he used to take with his wife!—His good star decreed
that Mademoiselle de Pontivy should possess an excellent heart and should
manifest in a high degree that exquisite refinement, that sensitive modesty
which renders beautiful the plainest girl in the world. All of a sudden, one of
his nephews, a good-looking military man, who had escaped from the disasters of
Moscow, returned to his uncle’s house, as much for the sake of learning how far
he had to fear his cousins, as heirs, as in the hope of laying siege to his
aunt. His black hair, his moustache, the easy small-talk of the staff officer,
a certain freedom which was elegant as well as trifling, his bright eyes,
contrasted favorably with the faded graces of his uncle. I arrived at the
precise moment when the young countess was teaching her newly found relation to
play backgammon. The proverb says that “women never learn this game excepting
from their lovers, and vice versa.” Now, during a certain game, M. de Noce had
surprised his wife and the viscount in the act of exchanging one of those looks
which are full of mingled innocence, fear, and desire. In the evening he
proposed to us a hunting-party, and we agreed. I never saw him so gay and so
eager as he appeared on the following morning, in spite of the twinges of gout
which heralded an approaching attack. The devil himself could not have been
better able to keep up a conversation on trifling subjects than he was. He had
formerly been a musketeer in the Grays and had known Sophie Arnoud. This
explains all. The conversation after a time became so exceedingly free among us
three, that I hope God may forgive me for it!
“I would never have believed that my uncle was such a dashing blade?” said the
nephew.
We made a halt, and while we were sitting on the edge of a green forest
clearing, the count led us on to discourse about women just as Brantome and
Aloysia might have done.
“You fellows are very happy under the present government!—the women of the time
are well mannered” (in order to appreciate the exclamation of the old
gentleman, the reader should have heard the atrocious stories which the captain
had been relating). “And this,” he went on, “is one of the advantages resulting
from the Revolution. The present system gives very much more charm and mystery
to passion. In former times women were easy; ah! indeed, you would not believe
what skill it required, what daring, to wake up those worn-out hearts; we were
always on the qui vive. But yet in those days a man became celebrated
for a broad joke, well put, or for a lucky piece of insolence. That is what
women love, and it will always be the best method of succeeding with them!”
These last words were uttered in a tone of profound contempt; he stopped, and
began to play with the hammer of his gun as if to disguise his deep feeling.
“But nonsense,” he went on, “my day is over! A man ought to have the body as
well as the imagination young. Why did I marry? What is most treacherous in
girls educated by mothers who lived in that brilliant era of gallantry, is that
they put on an air of frankness, of reserve; they look as if butter would not
melt in their mouths, and those who know them well feel that they would swallow
anything!”
He rose, lifted his gun with a gesture of rage, and dashing it to the ground
thrust it far up the butt in the moist sod.
“It would seem as if my dear aunt were fond of a little fun,” said the officer
to me in a low voice.
“Or of denouements that do not come off!” I added.
The nephew tightened his cravat, adjusted his collar and gave a jump like a
Calabrian goat. We returned to the chateau at about two in the afternoon. The
count kept me with him until dinner-time, under the pretext of looking for some
medals, of which he had spoken during our return home. The dinner was dull. The
countess treated her nephew with stiff and cold politeness. When we entered the
drawing-room the count said to his wife:
“Are you going to play backgammon?—We will leave you.”
The young countess made no reply. She gazed at the fire, as if she had not
heard. Her husband took some steps towards the door, inviting me by the wave of
his hand to follow him. At the sound of his footsteps, his wife quickly turned
her head.
“Why do you leave us?” said she, “you will have all tomorrow to show your
friend the reverse of the medals.”
The count remained. Without paying any attention to the awkwardness which had
succeeded the former military aplomb of his nephew, the count exercised during
the whole evening his full powers as a charming conversationalist. I had never
before seen him so brilliant or so gracious. We spoke a great deal about women.
The witticisms of our host were marked by the most exquisite refinement. He
made me forget that his hair was white, for he showed the brilliancy which
belonged to a youthful heart, a gaiety which effaces the wrinkles from the
cheek and melts the snow of wintry age.
The next day the nephew went away. Even after the death of M. de Noce, I tried
to profit by the intimacy of those familiar conversations in which women are
sometimes caught off their guard to sound her, but I could never learn what
impertinence the viscount had exhibited towards his aunt. His insolence must
have been excessive, for since that time Madame de Noce has refused to see her
nephew, and up to the present moment never hears him named without a slight
movement of her eyebrows. I did not at once guess the end at which the Comte de
Noce aimed, in inviting us to go shooting; but I discovered later that he had
played a pretty bold game.
Nevertheless, if you happen at last, like M. de Noce, to carry off a decisive
victory, do not forget to put into practice at once the system of blisters; and
do not for a moment imagine that such tours de force are to be repeated
with safety. If that is the way you use your talents, you will end by losing
caste in your wife’s estimation; for she will demand of you, reasonably enough,
double what you would give her, and the time will come when you declare
bankruptcy. The human soul in its desires follows a sort of arithmetical
progression, the end and origin of which are equally unknown. Just as the
opium-eater must constantly increase his doses in order to obtain the same
result, so our mind, imperious as it is weak, desires that feeling, ideas and
objects should go on ever increasing in size and in intensity. Hence the
necessity of cleverly distributing the interest in a dramatic work, and of
graduating doses in medicine. Thus you see, if you always resort to the
employment of means like these, that you must accommodate such daring measures
to many circumstances, and success will always depend upon the motives to which
you appeal.
And finally, have you influence, powerful friends, an important post? The last
means I shall suggest cuts to the root of the evil. Would you have the power to
send your wife’s lover off by securing his promotion, or his change of
residence by an exchange, if he is a military man? You cut off by this means
all communication between them; later on we will show you how to do it; for
sublata causa tollitur effectus,—Latin words which may be freely
translated “there is no effect without a cause.”
Nevertheless, you feel that your wife may easily choose another lover; but in
addition to these preliminary expedients, you will always have a blister ready,
in order to gain time, and calculate how you may bring the affair to an end by
fresh devices.
Study how to combine the system of blisters with the mimic wiles of Carlin, the
immortal Carlin of the Comedie-Italienne who always held and amused an
audience for whole hours, by uttering the same words, varied only by the art of
pantomime and pronounced with a thousand inflections of different tone,—“The
queen said to the king!” Imitate Carlin, discover some method of always keeping
your wife in check, so as not to be checkmated yourself. Take a degree among
constitutional ministers, a degree in the art of making promises. Habituate
yourself to show at seasonable times the punchinello which makes children run
after you without knowing the distance they run. We are all children, and women
are all inclined through their curiosity to spend their time in pursuit of a
will-o’-the-wisp. The flame is brilliant and quickly vanishes, but is not the
imagination at hand to act as your ally? Finally, study the happy art of being
near her and yet not being near her; of seizing the opportunity which will
yield you pre-eminence in her mind without ever crushing her with a sense of
your superiority, or even of her own happiness. If the ignorance in which you
have kept her does not altogether destroy her intellect, you must remain in
such relations with her that each of you will still desire the company of the
other.
OF APARTMENTS.
The preceding methods and systems are in a way purely moral; they share the
nobility of the soul, there is nothing repulsive in them; but now we must
proceed to consider precautions a la Bartholo. Do not give way to
timidity. There is a marital courage, as there is a civil and military courage,
as there is the courage of the National Guard.
What is the first course of a young girl after having purchased a parrot? Is it
not to fasten it up in a pretty cage, from which it cannot get out without
permission?
You may learn your duty from this child.
Everything that pertains to the arrangement of your house and of your
apartments should be planned so as not to give your wife any advantage, in case
she has decided to deliver you to the Minotaur; half of all actual mischances
are brought about by the deplorable facilities which the apartments furnish.
Before everything else determine to have for your porter a single man
entirely devoted to your person. This is a treasure easily to be found. What
husband is there throughout the world who has not either a foster-father or
some old servant, upon whose knees he has been dandled! There ought to exist by
means of your management, a hatred like that of Artreus and Thyestes between
your wife and this Nestor —guardian of your gate. This gate is the Alpha and
Omega of an intrigue. May not all intrigues in love be confined in these words
—entering and leaving?
Your house will be of no use to you if it does not stand between a court and a
garden, and so constructed as to be detached from all other buildings. You must
abolish all recesses in your apartments. A cupboard, if it contain but six pots
of preserves, should be walled in. You are preparing yourself for war, and the
first thought of a general is to cut his enemy off from supplies. Moreover, all
the walls must be smooth, in order to present to the eye lines which may be
taken in at a glance, and permit the immediate recognition of the least strange
object. If you consult the remains of antique monuments you will see that the
beauty of Greek and Roman apartments sprang principally from the purity of
their lines, the clear sweep of their walls and scantiness of furniture. The
Greeks would have smiled in pity, if they had seen the gaps which our closets
make in our drawing-rooms.
This magnificent system of defence should above all be put in active operation
in the apartment of your wife; never let her curtain her bed in such a way that
one can walk round it amid a maze of hangings; be inexorable in the matter of
connecting passages, and let her chamber be at the bottom of your
reception-rooms, so as to show at a glance those who come and go.
The Marriage of Figaro will no doubt have taught you to put your wife’s
chamber at a great height from the ground. All celibates are Cherubins.
Your means, doubtless, will permit your wife to have a dressing-room, a
bath-room, and a room for her chambermaid. Think then on Susanne, and never
commit the fault of arranging this little room below that of madame’s, but
place it always above, and do not shrink from disfiguring your mansion by
hideous divisions in the windows.
If, by ill luck, you see that this dangerous apartment communicates with that
of your wife by a back staircase, earnestly consult your architect; let his
genius exhaust itself in rendering this dangerous staircase as innocent as the
primitive garret ladder; we conjure you let not this staircase have appended to
it any treacherous lurking-place; its stiff and angular steps must not be
arranged with that tempting curve which Faublas and Justine found so useful
when they waited for the exit of the Marquis de B——-. Architects nowadays make
such staircases as are absolutely preferable to ottomans. Restore rather the
virtuous garret steps of our ancestors.
Concerning the chimneys in the apartment of madame, you must take care to place
in the flue, five feet from the ground, an iron grill, even though it be
necessary to put up a fresh one every time the chimney is swept. If your wife
laughs at this precaution, suggest to her the number of murders that have been
committed by means of chimneys. Almost all women are afraid of robbers. The bed
is one of those important pieces of furniture whose structure will demand long
consideration. Everything concerning it is of vital importance. The following
is the result of long experience in the construction of beds. Give to this
piece of furniture a form so original that it may be looked upon without
disgust, in the midst of changes of fashion which succeed so rapidly in
rendering antiquated the creations of former decorators, for it is essential
that your wife be unable to change, at pleasure, this theatre of married
happiness. The base should be plain and massive and admit of no treacherous
interval between it and the floor; and bear in mind always that the Donna Julia
of Byron hid Don Juan under her pillow. But it would be ridiculous to treat
lightly so delicate a subject.
LXII.
The bed is the whole of marriage.
Moreover, we must not delay to direct your attention to this wonderful creation
of human genius, an invention which claims our recognition much more than
ships, firearms, matches, wheeled carriages, steam engines of all kinds, more
than even barrels and bottles. In the first place, a little thought will
convince us that this is all true of the bed; but when we begin to think that
it is our second father, that the most tranquil and most agitated half of our
existence is spent under its protecting canopy, words fail in eulogizing it.
(See Meditation XVII, entitled “Theory of the Bed.”)
When the war, of which we shall speak in our third part, breaks out between you
and madame, you will always have plenty of ingenious excuses for rummaging in
the drawers and escritoires; for if your wife is trying to hide from you some
statue of her adoration, it is your interest to know where she has hidden it. A
gyneceum, constructed on the method described, will enable you to calculate at
a glance, whether there is present in it two pounds of silk more than usual.
Should a single closet be constructed there, you are a lost man! Above all,
accustom your wife, during the honeymoon, to bestow especial pains in the
neatness of her apartment; let nothing put off that. If you do not habituate
her to be minutely particular in this respect, if the same objects are not
always found in the same places, she will allow things to become so untidy,
that you will not be able to see that there are two pounds of silk more or less
in her room.
The curtains of your apartments ought to be of a stuff which is quite
transparent, and you ought to contract the habit in the evenings of walking
outside so that madame may see you come right up to the window just out of
absent-mindedness. In a word, with regard to windows, let the sills be so
narrow that even a sack of flour cannot be set up on them.
If the apartment of your wife can be arranged on these principles, you will be
in perfect safety, even if there are niches enough there to contain all the
saints of Paradise. You will be able, every evening, with the assistance of
your porter, to strike the balance between the entrances and exits of visitors;
and, in order to obtain accurate results, there is nothing to prevent your
teaching him to keep a book of visitors, in double entry.
If you have a garden, cultivate a taste for dogs, and always keep at large one
of these incorruptible guardians under your windows; you will thus gain the
respect of the Minotaur, especially if you accustom your four-footed friend to
take nothing substantial excepting from the hand of your porter, so that
hard-hearted celibates may not succeed in poisoning him.
But all these precautions must be taken as a natural thing so that they may not
arouse suspicions. If husbands are so imprudent as to neglect precautions from
the moment they are married, they ought at once to sell their house and buy
another one, or, under the pretext of repairs, alter their present house in the
way prescribed.
You will without scruple banish from your apartment all sofas, ottomans,
lounges, sedan chairs and the like. In the first place, this is the kind of
furniture that adorns the homes of grocers, where they are universally found,
as they are in those of barbers; but they are essentially the furniture of
perdition; I can never see them without alarm. It has always seemed to me that
there the devil himself is lurking with his horns and cloven foot.
After all, nothing is so dangerous as a chair, and it is extremely unfortunate
that women cannot be shut up within the four walls of a bare room! What husband
is there, who on sitting down on a rickety chair is not always forced to
believe that this chair has received some of the lessons taught by the
Sofa of Crebillion junior? But happily we have arranged your apartment
on such a system of prevention that nothing so fatal can happen, or, at any
rate, not without your contributory negligence.
One fault which you must contract, and which you must never correct, will
consist in a sort of heedless curiosity, which will make you examine
unceasingly all the boxes, and turn upside down the contents of all
dressing-cases and work-baskets. You must proceed to this domiciliary visit in
a humorous mood, and gracefully, so that each time you will obtain pardon by
exciting the amusement of your wife.
You must always manifest a most profound astonishment on noticing any piece of
furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointed apartment. You must
immediately make her explain to you the advantages of the change; and then you
must ransack your mind to discover whether there be not some underhand motive
in the transaction.
This is by no means all. You have too much sense to forget that your pretty
parrot will remain in her cage only so long as that cage is beautiful. The
least accessory of her apartment ought, therefore, to breathe elegance and
taste. The general appearance should always present a simple, at the same time
a charming picture. You must constantly renew the hangings and muslin curtains.
The freshness of the decorations is too essential to permit of economy on this
point. It is the fresh chickweed each morning carefully put into the cage of
their birds, that makes their pets believe it is the verdure of the meadows. An
apartment of this character is then the ultima ratio of husbands; a wife
has nothing to say when everything is lavished on her.
Husbands who are condemned to live in rented apartments find themselves in the
most terrible situation possible. What happy or what fatal influence cannot the
porter exercise upon their lot?
Is not their home flanked on either side by other houses? It is true that by
placing the apartment of their wives on one side of the house the danger is
lessened by one-half; but are they not obliged to learn by heart and to ponder
the age, the condition, the fortune, the character, the habits of the tenants
of the next house and even to know their friends and relations?
A husband will never take lodgings on the ground floor.
Every man, however, can apply in his apartments the precautionary methods which
we have suggested to the owner of a house, and thus the tenant will have this
advantage over the owner, that the apartment, which is less spacious than the
house, is more easily guarded.
OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE.
“But no, madame, no—”
“Yes, for there is such inconvenience in the arrangement.”
“Do you think, madame, that we wish, as at the frontier, to watch the visits of
persons who cross the threshold of your apartments, or furtively leave them, in
order to see whether they bring to you articles of contraband? That would not
be proper; and there is nothing odious in our proceeding, any more than there
is anything of a fiscal character; do not be alarmed.”
The Custom House of the marriage state is, of all the expedients prescribed in
this second part, that which perhaps demands the most tact and the most skill
as well as the most knowledge acquired a priori, that is to say before
marriage. In order to carry it out, a husband ought to have made a profound
study of Lavater’s book, and to be imbued with all his principles; to have
accustomed his eye to judge and to apprehend with the most astonishing
promptitude, the slightest physical expressions by which a man reveals his
thoughts.
Lavater’s Physiognomy originated a veritable science, which has won a
place in human investigation. If at first some doubts, some jokes greeted the
appearance of this book, since then the celebrated Doctor Gall is come with his
noble theory of the skull and has completed the system of the Swiss savant, and
given stability to his fine and luminous observations. People of talent,
diplomats, women, all those who are numbered among the choice and fervent
disciples of these two celebrated men, have often had occasion to recognize
many other evident signs, by which the course of human thought is indicated.
The habits of the body, the handwriting, the sound of the voice, have often
betrayed the woman who is in love, the diplomat who is attempting to deceive,
the clever administrator, or the sovereign who is compelled to distinguish at a
glance love, treason or merit hitherto unknown. The man whose soul operates
with energy is like a poor glowworm, which without knowing it irradiates light
from every pore. He moves in a brilliant sphere where each effort makes a
burning light and outlines his actions with long streamers of fire.
These, then, are all the elements of knowledge which you should possess, for
the conjugal custom house insists simply in being able by a rapid but searching
examination to know the moral and physical condition of all who enter or leave
your house—all, that is, who have seen or intend to see your wife. A husband
is, like a spider, set at the centre of an invisible net, and receives a shock
from the least fool of a fly who touches it, and from a distance, hears, judges
and sees what is either his prey or his enemy.
Thus you must obtain means to examine the celibate who rings at your door under
two circumstances which are quite distinct, namely, when he is about to enter
and when he is inside.
At the moment of entering how many things does he utter without even opening
his mouth!
It may be by a slight wave of his hand, or by his plunging his fingers many
times into his hair, he sticks up or smoothes down his characteristic bang.
Or he hums a French or an Italian air, merry or sad, in a voice which may be
either tenor, contralto, soprano or baritone.
Perhaps he takes care to see that the ends of his necktie are properly
adjusted.
Or he smoothes down the ruffles or front of his shirt or evening-dress.
Or he tries to find out by a questioning and furtive glance whether his wig,
blonde or brown, curled or plain, is in its natural position.
Perhaps he looks at his nails to see whether they are clean and duly cut.
Perhaps with a hand which is either white or untidy, well-gloved or otherwise,
he twirls his moustache, or his whiskers, or picks his teeth with a little
tortoise-shell toothpick.
Or by slow and repeated movements he tries to place his chin exactly over the
centre of his necktie.
Or perhaps he crosses one foot over the other, putting his hands in his
pockets.
Or perhaps he gives a twist to his shoe, and looks at it as if he thought,
“Now, there’s a foot that is not badly formed.”
Or according as he has come on foot or in a carriage, he rubs off or he does
not rub off the slight patches of mud which soil his shoes.
Or perhaps he remains as motionless as a Dutchman smoking his pipe.
Or perhaps he fixes his eyes on the door and looks like a soul escaped from
Purgatory and waiting for Saint Peter with the keys.
Perhaps he hesitates to pull the bell; perhaps he seizes it negligently,
precipitately, familiarly, or like a man who is quite sure of himself.
Perhaps he pulls it timidly, producing a faint tinkle which is lost in the
silence of the apartments, as the first bell of matins in winter-time, in a
convent of Minims; or perhaps after having rung with energy, he rings again
impatient that the footman has not heard him.
Perhaps he exhales a delicate scent, as he chews a pastille.
Perhaps with a solemn air he takes a pinch of snuff, brushing off with care the
grains that might mar the whiteness of his linen.
Perhaps he looks around like a man estimating the value of the staircase lamp,
the balustrade, the carpet, as if he were a furniture dealer or a contractor.
Perhaps this celibate seems a young or an old man, is cold or hot, arrives
slowly, with an expression of sadness or merriment, etc.
You see that here, at the very foot of your staircase, you are met by an
astonishing mass of things to observe.
The light pencil-strokes, with which we have tried to outline this figure, will
suggest to you what is in reality a moral kaleidoscope with millions of
variations. And yet we have not even attempted to bring any woman on to the
threshold which reveals so much; for in that case our remarks, already
considerable in number, would have been countless and light as the grains of
sand on the seashore.
For as a matter of fact, when he stands before the shut door, a man believes
that he is quite alone; and he would have no hesitation in beginning a silent
monologue, a dreamy soliloquy, in which he revealed his desires, his
intentions, his personal qualities, his faults, his virtues, etc.; for
undoubtedly a man on a stoop is exactly like a young girl of fifteen at
confession, the evening before her first communion.
Do you want any proof of this? Notice the sudden change of face and manner in
this celibate from the very moment he steps within the house. No machinist in
the Opera, no change in the temperature in the clouds or in the sun can more
suddenly transform the appearance of a theatre, the effect of the atmosphere,
or the scenery of the heavens.
On reaching the first plank of your antechamber, instead of betraying with so
much innocence the myriad thoughts which were suggested to you on the steps,
the celibate has not a single glance to which you could attach any
significance. The mask of social convention wraps with its thick veil his whole
bearing; but a clever husband must already have divined at a single look the
object of his visit, and he reads the soul of the new arrival as if it were a
printed book.
The manner in which he approaches your wife, in which he addresses her, looks
at her, greets her and retires—there are volumes of observations, more or less
trifling, to be made on these subjects.
The tone of his voice, his bearing, his awkwardness, it may be his smile, even
his gloom, his avoidance of your eye,—all are significant, all ought to be
studied, but without apparent attention. You ought to conceal the most
disagreeable discovery you may make by an easy manner and remarks such as are
ready at hand to a man of society. As we are unable to detail the minutiae of
this subject we leave them entirely to the sagacity of the reader, who must by
this time have perceived the drift of our investigation, as well as the extent
of this science which begins at the analysis of glances and ends in the
direction of such movements as contempt may inspire in a great toe hidden under
the satin of a lady’s slipper or the leather of a man’s boot.
But the exit!—for we must allow for occasions where you have omitted your rigid
scrutiny at the threshold of the doorway, and in that case the exit becomes of
vital importance, and all the more so because this fresh study of the celibate
ought to be made on the same lines, but from an opposite point of view, from
that which we have already outlined.
In the exit the situation assumes a special gravity; for then is the moment in
which the enemy has crossed all the intrenchments within which he was subject
to our examination and has escaped into the street! At this point a man of
understanding when he sees a visitor passing under the porte-cochere
should be able to divine the import of the whole visit. The indications are
indeed fewer in number, but how distinct is their character! The denouement has
arrived and the man instantly betrays the importance of it by the frankest
expression of happiness, pain or joy.
These revelations are therefore easy to apprehend; they appear in the glance
cast either at the building or at the windows of the apartment; in a slow or
loitering gait, in the rubbing of hands, on the part of a fool, in the bounding
gait of a coxcomb, or the involuntary arrest of his footsteps, which marks the
man who is deeply moved; in a word, you see upon the stoop certain questions as
clearly proposed to you as if a provincial academy had offered a hundred crowns
for an essay; but in the exit you behold the solution of these questions
clearly and precisely given to you. Our task would be far above the power of
human intelligence if it consisted in enumerating the different ways by which
men betray their feelings, the discernment of such things is purely a matter of
tact and sentiment.
If strangers are the subject of these principles of observation, you have a
still stronger reason for submitting your wife to the formal safeguards which
we have outlined.
A married man should make a profound study of his wife’s countenance. Such a
study is easy, it is even involuntary and continuous. For him the pretty face
of his wife must needs contain no mysteries, he knows how her feelings are
depicted there and with what expression she shuns the fire of his glance.
The slightest movement of the lips, the faintest contraction of the nostrils,
scarcely perceptible changes in the expression of the eye, an altered voice,
and those indescribable shades of feeling which pass over her features, or the
light which sometimes bursts forth from them, are intelligible language to you.
The whole woman nature stands before you; all look at her, but none can
interpret her thoughts. But for you, the eye is more or less dimmed,
wide-opened or closed; the lid twitches, the eyebrow moves; a wrinkle, which
vanishes as quickly as a ripple on the ocean, furrows her brow for one moment;
the lip tightens, it is slightly curved or it is wreathed with animation—for
you the woman has spoken.
If in those puzzling moments in which a woman tries dissimulation in presence
of her husband, you have the spirit of a sphinx in seeing through her, you will
plainly observe that your custom-house restrictions are mere child’s play to
her.
When she comes home or goes out, when in a word she believes she is alone, your
wife will exhibit all the imprudence of a jackdaw and will tell her secret
aloud to herself; moreover, by her sudden change of expression the moment she
notices you (and despite the rapidity of this change, you will not fail to have
observed the expression she wore behind your back) you may read her soul as if
you were reading a book of Plain Song. Moreover, your wife will often find
herself just on the point of indulging in soliloquies, and on such occasions
her husband may recognize the secret feelings of his wife.
Is there a man as heedless of love’s mysteries as not to have admired, over and
over again, the light, mincing, even bewitching gait of a woman who flies on
her way to keep an assignation? She glides through the crowd, like a snake
through the grass. The costumes and stuffs of the latest fashion spread out
their dazzling attractions in the shop windows without claiming her attention;
on, on she goes like the faithful animal who follows the invisible tracks of
his master; she is deaf to all compliments, blind to all glances, insensible
even to the light touch of the crowd, which is inevitable amid the circulation
of Parisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her gait,
her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a thousand
indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents to the idler, and
what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to read, is the face of this
woman when she returns from the secret place of rendezvous in which her heart
ever dwells! Her happiness is impressed even on the unmistakable disarray of
her hair, the mass of whose wavy tresses has not received from the broken comb
of the celibate that radiant lustre, that elegant and well-proportioned
adjustment which only the practiced hand of her maid can give. And what
charming ease appears in her gait! How is it possible to describe the emotion
which adds such rich tints to her complexion!—which robs her eyes of all their
assurance and gives to them an expression of mingled melancholy and delight, of
shame which is yet blended with pride!
These observations, stolen from our Meditation, Of the Last Symptoms,
and which are really suggested by the situation of a woman who tries to conceal
everything, may enable you to divine by analogy the rich crop of observation
which is left for you to harvest when your wife arrives home, or when, without
having committed the great crime she innocently lets out the secrets of her
thoughts. For our own part we never see a landing without wishing to set up
there a mariner’s card and a weather-cock.
As the means to be employed for constructing a sort of domestic observatory
depend altogether on places and circumstances, we must leave to the address of
a jealous husband the execution of the methods suggested in this Meditation.
THE CHARTER OF MARRIAGE.
I acknowledge that I really know of but one house in Paris which is managed in
accordance with the system unfolded in the two preceding Meditations. But I
ought to add, also, that I have built up my system on the example of that
house. The admirable fortress I allude to belonged to a young councillor of
state, who was mad with love and jealousy.
As soon as he learned that there existed a man who was exclusively occupied in
bringing to perfection the institution of marriage in France, he had the
generosity to open the doors of his mansion to me and to show me his gyneceum.
I admired the profound genius which so cleverly disguised the precautions of
almost oriental jealousy under the elegance of furniture, beauty of carpets and
brightness of painted decorations. I agreed with him that it was impossible for
his wife to render his home a scene of treachery.
“Sir,” said I, to this Othello of the council of state who did not seem to me
peculiarly strong in the haute politique of marriage, “I have no doubt
that the viscountess is delighted to live in this little Paradise; she ought
indeed to take prodigious pleasure in it, especially if you are here often. But
the time will come when she will have had enough of it; for, my dear sir, we
grow tired of everything, even of the sublime. What will you do then, when
madame, failing to find in all your inventions their primitive charm, shall
open her mouth in a yawn, and perhaps make a request with a view to the
exercise of two rights, both of which are indispensable to her happiness:
individual liberty, that is, the privilege of going and coming according to the
caprice of her will; and the liberty of the press, that is, the privilege of
writing and receiving letters without fear of your censure?”
Scarcely had I said these words when the Vicomte de V——- grasped my arm tightly
and cried:
“Yes, such is the ingratitude of woman! If there is any thing more ungrateful
than a king, it is a nation; but, sir, woman is more ungrateful than either of
them. A married woman treats us as the citizens of a constitutional monarchy
treat their king; every measure has been taken to give these citizens a life of
prosperity in a prosperous country; the government has taken all the pains in
the world with its gendarmes, its churches, its ministry and all the
paraphernalia of its military forces, to prevent the people from dying of
hunger, to light the cities by gas at the expense of the citizens, to give
warmth to every one by means of the sun which shines at the forty-fifth degree
of latitude, and to forbid every one, excepting the tax-gatherers, to ask for
money; it has labored hard to give to all the main roads a more or less
substantial pavement—but none of these advantages of our fair Utopia is
appreciated! The citizens want something else. They are not ashamed to demand
the right of traveling over the roads at their own will, and of being informed
where that money given to the tax-gatherers goes. And, finally, the monarch
will soon be obliged, if we pay any attention to the chatter of certain
scribblers, to give to every individual a share in the throne or to adopt
certain revolutionary ideas, which are mere Punch and Judy shows for the
public, manipulated by a band of self-styled patriots, riff-raff, always ready
to sell their conscience for a million francs, for an honest woman, or for a
ducal coronet.”
“But, monsieur,” I said, interrupting him, “while I perfectly agree with you on
this last point, the question remains, how will you escape giving an answer to
the just demands of your wife?”
“Sir” he replied, “I shall do—I shall answer as the government answers, that
is, those governments which are not so stupid as the opposition would make out
to their constituents. I shall begin by solemnly interdicting any arrangement,
by virtue of which my wife will be declared entirely free. I fully recognize
her right to go wherever it seems good to her, to write to whom she chooses,
and to receive letters, the contents of which I do not know. My wife shall have
all the rights that belong to an English Parliament; I shall let her talk as
much as she likes, discuss and propose strong and energetic measures, but
without the power to put them into execution, and then after that—well, we
shall see!”
“By St. Joseph!” said I to myself, “Here is a man who understands the science
of marriage as well as I myself do. And then, you will see, sir,” I answered
aloud, in order to obtain from him the fullest revelation of his experience;
“you will see, some fine morning, that you are as big a fool as the next man.”
“Sir,” he gravely replied, “allow me to finish what I was saying. Here is what
the great politicians call a theory, but in practice they can make that theory
vanish in smoke; and ministers possess in a greater degree than even the
lawyers of Normandy, the art of making fact yield to fancy. M. de Metternich
and M. de Pilat, men of the highest authority, have been for a long time asking
each other whether Europe is in its right senses, whether it is dreaming,
whether it knows whither it is going, whether it has ever exercised its reason,
a thing impossible on the part of the masses, of nations and of women. M. de
Metternich and M. de Pilat are terrified to see this age carried away by a
passion for constitutions, as the preceding age was by the passion for
philosophy, as that of Luther was for a reform of abuses in the Roman religion;
for it truly seems as if different generations of men were like those
conspirators whose actions are directed to the same end, as soon as the
watchword has been given them. But their alarm is a mistake, and it is on this
point alone that I condemn them, for they are right in their wish to enjoy
power without permitting the middle class to come on a fixed day from the depth
of each of their six kingdoms, to torment them. How could men of such
remarkable talent fail to divine that the constitutional comedy has in it a
moral of profound meaning, and to see that it is the very best policy to give
the age a bone to exercise its teeth upon! I think exactly as they do on the
subject of sovereignty. A power is a moral being as much interested as a man is
in self-preservation. This sentiment of self-preservation is under the control
of an essential principle which may be expressed in three words—to lose
nothing. But in order to lose nothing, a power must grow or remain
indefinite, for a power which remains stationary is nullified. If it
retrogrades, it is under the control of something else, and loses its
independent existence. I am quite as well aware, as are those gentlemen, in
what a false position an unlimited power puts itself by making concessions; it
allows to another power whose essence is to expand a place within its own
sphere of activity. One of them will necessarily nullify the other, for every
existing thing aims at the greatest possible development of its own forces. A
power, therefore, never makes concessions which it does not afterwards seek to
retract. This struggle between two powers is the basis on which stands the
balance of government, whose elasticity so mistakenly alarmed the patriarch of
Austrian diplomacy, for comparing comedy with comedy the least perilous and the
most advantageous administration is found in the seesaw system of the English
and of the French politics. These two countries have said to the people, ‘You
are free;’ and the people have been satisfied; they enter the government like
the zeros which give value to the unit. But if the people wish to take an
active part in the government, immediately they are treated, like Sancho Panza,
on that occasion when the squire, having become sovereign over an island on
terra firma, made an attempt at dinner to eat the viands set before him.
“Now we ought to parody this admirable scene in the management of our homes.
Thus, my wife has a perfect right to go out, provided she tell me where she is
going, how she is going, what is the business she is engaged in when she is out
and at what hour she will return. Instead of demanding this information with
the brutality of the police, who will doubtless some day become perfect, I take
pains to speak to her in the most gracious terms. On my lips, in my eyes, in my
whole countenance, an expression plays, which indicates both curiosity and
indifference, seriousness and pleasantry, harshness and tenderness. These
little conjugal scenes are so full of vivacity, of tact and address that it is
a pleasure to take part in them. The very day on which I took from the head of
my wife the wreath of orange blossoms which she wore, I understood that we were
playing at a royal coronation—the first scene in a comic pantomime!—I have my
gendarmes!—I have my guard royal!—I have my attorney general—that I do!” he
continued enthusiastically. “Do you think that I would allow madame to go
anywhere on foot unaccompanied by a lackey in livery? Is not that the best
style? Not to count the pleasure she takes in saying to everybody, ‘I have my
people here.’ It has always been a conservative principle of mine that my times
of exercise should coincide with those of my wife, and for two years I have
proved to her that I take an ever fresh pleasure in giving her my arm. If the
weather is not suitable for walking, I try to teach her how to drive with
success a frisky horse; but I swear to you that I undertake this in such a
manner that she does not learn very quickly!—If either by chance, or prompted
by a deliberate wish, she takes measures to escape without a passport, that is
to say, alone in the carriage, have I not a driver, a footman, a groom? My
wife, therefore, go where she will, takes with her a complete Santa
Hermandad, and I am perfectly easy in mind—But, my dear sir, there is
abundance of means by which to annul the charter of marriage by our manner of
fulfilling it! I have remarked that the manners of high society induce a habit
of idleness which absorbs half of the life of a woman without permitting her to
feel that she is alive. For my part, I have formed the project of dexterously
leading my wife along, up to her fortieth year, without letting her think of
adultery, just as poor Musson used to amuse himself in leading some simple
fellow from the Rue Saint-Denis to Pierrefitte without letting him think that
he had left the shadows of St. Lew’s tower.”
“How is it,” I said, interrupting him, “that you have hit upon those admirable
methods of deception which I was intending to describe in a Meditation entitled
The Act of Putting Death into Life! Alas! I thought I was the first man
to discover that science. The epigrammatic title was suggested to me by an
account which a young doctor gave me of an excellent composition of Crabbe, as
yet unpublished. In this work, the English poet has introduced a fantastic
being called Life in Death. This personage crosses the oceans of the
world in pursuit of a living skeleton called Death in Life—I recollect
at the time very few people, among the guests of a certain elegant translator
of English poetry, understood the mystic meaning of a fable as true as it was
fanciful. Myself alone, perhaps, as I sat buried in silence, thought of the
whole generations which as they were hurried along by life, passed on their way
without living. Before my eyes rose faces of women by the million, by the
myriad, all dead, all disappointed and shedding tears of despair, as they
looked back upon the lost moments of their ignorant youth. In the distance I
saw a playful Meditation rise to birth, I heard the satanic laughter which ran
through it, and now you doubtless are about to kill it.—But come, tell me in
confidence what means you have discovered by which to assist a woman to
squander the swift moments during which her beauty is at its full flower and
her desires at their full strength.—Perhaps you have some stratagems, some
clever devices, to describe to me—”
The viscount began to laugh at this literary disappointment of mine, and he
said to me, with a self-satisfied air:
“My wife, like all the young people of our happy century, has been accustomed,
for three or four consecutive years, to press her fingers on the keys of a
piano, a long-suffering instrument. She has hammered out Beethoven, warbled the
airs of Rossini and run through the exercises of Crammer. I had already taken
pains to convince her of the excellence of music; to attain this end, I have
applauded her, I have listened without yawning to the most tiresome sonatas in
the world, and I have at last consented to give her a box at the Bouffons. I
have thus gained three quiet evenings out of the seven which God has created in
the week. I am the mainstay of the music shops. At Paris there are
drawing-rooms which exactly resemble the musical snuff-boxes of Germany. They
are a sort of continuous orchestra to which I regularly go in search of that
surfeit of harmony which my wife calls a concert. But most part of the time my
wife keeps herself buried in her music-books—”
“But, my dear sir, do you not recognize the danger that lies in cultivating in
a woman a taste for singing, and allowing her to yield to all the excitements
of a sedentary life? It is only less dangerous to make her feed on mutton and
drink cold water.”
“My wife never eats anything but the white meat of poultry, and I always take
care that a ball shall come after a concert and a reception after an Opera! I
have also succeeded in making her lie down between one and two in the day. Ah!
my dear sir, the benefits of this nap are incalculable! In the first place each
necessary pleasure is accorded as a favor, and I am considered to be constantly
carrying out my wife’s wishes. And then I lead her to imagine, without saying a
single word, that she is being constantly amused every day from six o’clock in
the evening, the time of our dinner and of her toilet, until eleven o’clock in
the morning, the time when we get up.”
“Ah! sir, how grateful you ought to be for a life which is so completely filled
up!”
“I have scarcely more than three dangerous hours a day to pass; but she has, of
course, sonatas to practice and airs to go over, and there are always rides in
the Bois de Boulogne, carriages to try, visits to pay, etc. But this is not
all. The fairest ornament of a woman is the most exquisite cleanliness. A woman
cannot be too particular in this respect, and no pains she takes can be laughed
at. Now her toilet has also suggested to me a method of thus consuming the best
hours of the day in bathing.”
“How lucky I am in finding a listener like you!” I cried; “truly, sir, you
could waste for her four hours a day, if only you were willing to teach her an
art quite unknown to the most fastidious of our modern fine ladies. Why don’t
you enumerate to the viscountess the astonishing precautions manifest in the
Oriental luxury of the Roman dames? Give her the names of the slaves merely
employed for the bath in Poppea’s palace: the unctores, the
fricatores, the alipilarili, the dropacistae, the
paratiltriae, the picatrices, the tracatrices, the swan
whiteners, and all the rest. —Talk to her about this multitude of slaves whose
names are given by Mirabeau in his Erotika Biblion. If she tries to
secure the services of all these people you will have the fine times of
quietness, not to speak of the personal satisfaction which will redound to you
yourself from the introduction into your house of the system invented by these
illustrious Romans, whose hair, artistically arranged, was deluged with
perfumes, whose smallest vein seemed to have acquired fresh blood from the
myrrh, the lint, the perfume, the douches, the flowers of the bath, all of
which were enjoyed to the strains of voluptuous music.”
“Ah! sir,” continued the husband, who was warming to his subject, “can I not
find also admirable pretexts in my solicitude for her heath? Her health, so
dear and precious to me, forces me to forbid her going out in bad weather, and
thus I gain a quarter of the year. And I have also introduced the charming
custom of kissing when either of us goes out, this parting kiss being
accompanied with the words, ‘My sweet angel, I am going out.’ Finally, I have
taken measures for the future to make my wife as truly a prisoner in the house
as the conscript in his sentry box! For I have inspired her with an incredible
enthusiasm for the sacred duties of maternity.”
“You do it by opposing her?” I asked.
“You have guessed it,” he answered, laughing. “I have maintained to her that it
is impossible for a woman of the world to discharge her duties towards society,
to manage her household, to devote herself to fashion, as well as to the wishes
of her husband, whom she loves, and, at the same time, to rear children. She
then avers that, after the example of Cato, who wished to see how the nurse
changed the swaddling bands of the infant Pompey, she would never leave to
others the least of the services required in shaping the susceptible minds and
tender bodies of these little creatures whose education begins in the cradle.
You understand, sir, that my conjugal diplomacy would not be of much service to
me unless, after having put my wife in solitary confinement, I did not also
employ a certain harmless machiavelism, which consists in begging her to do
whatever she likes, and asking her advice in every circumstance and on every
contingency. As this delusive liberty has entirely deceived a creature so
high-minded as she is, I have taken pains to stop at no sacrifice which would
convince Madame de V——- that she is the freest woman in Paris; and, in order to
attain this end, I take care not to commit those gross political blunders into
which our ministers so often fall.”
“I can see you,” said I, “when you wish to cheat your wife out of some right
granted her by the charter, I can see you putting on a mild and deliberate air,
hiding your dagger under a bouquet of roses, and as you plunge it cautiously
into her heart, saying to her with a friendly voice, ‘My darling, does it
hurt?’ and she, like those on whose toes you tread in a crowd, will probably
reply, ‘Not in the least.’”
He could not restrain a laugh and said:
“Won’t my wife be astonished at the Last Judgment?”
“I scarcely know,” I replied, “whether you or she will be most astonished.”
The jealous man frowned, but his face resumed its calmness as I added:
“I am truly grateful, sir, to the chance which has given me the pleasure of
your acquaintance. Without the assistance of your remarks I should have been
less successful than you have been in developing certain ideas which we possess
in common. I beg of you that you will give me leave to publish this
conversation. Statements which you and I find pregnant with high political
conceptions, others perhaps will think characterized by more or less cutting
irony, and I shall pass for a clever fellow in the eyes of both parties.”
While I thus tried to express my thanks to the viscount (the first husband
after my heart that I had met with), he took me once more through his
apartments, where everything seemed to be beyond criticism.
I was about to take leave of him, when opening the door of a little boudoir he
showed me a room with an air which seemed to say, “Is there any way by which
the least irregularity should occur without my seeing it?”
I replied to this silent interrogation by an inclination of the head, such as
guests make to their Amphytrion when they taste some exceptionally choice dish.
“My whole system,” he said to me in a whisper, “was suggested to me by three
words which my father heard Napoleon pronounce at a crowded council of state,
when divorce was the subject of conversation. ‘Adultery,’ he exclaimed, ‘is
merely a matter of opportunity!’ See, then, I have changed these accessories of
crime, so that they become spies,” added the councillor, pointing out to me a
divan covered with tea-colored cashmere, the cushions of which were slightly
pressed. “Notice that impression,—I learn from it that my wife has had a
headache, and has been reclining there.”
We stepped toward the divan, and saw the word FOOL lightly traced upon the
fatal cushion, by four
Things that I know not, plucked by lover’s hand
From Cypris’ orchard, where the fairy band
Are dancing, once by nobles thought to be
Worthy an order of new chivalry,
A brotherhood, wherein, with script of gold,
More mortal men than gods should be enrolled.
“Nobody in my house has black hair!” said the husband, growing pale.
I hurried away, for I was seized with an irresistible fit of laughter, which I
could not easily overcome.
“That man has met his judgment day!” I said to myself; “all the barriers by
which he has surrounded her have only been instrumental in adding to the
intensity of her pleasures!”
This idea saddened me. The adventure destroyed from summit to foundation three
of my most important Meditations, and the catholic infallibility of my book was
assailed in its most essential point. I would gladly have paid to establish the
fidelity of the Viscountess V——- a sum as great as very many people would have
offered to secure her surrender. But alas! my money will now be kept by me.
Three days afterwards I met the councillor in the foyer of the Italiens. As
soon as he saw me he rushed up. Impelled by a sort of modesty I tried to avoid
him, but grasping my arm: “Ah! I have just passed three cruel days,” he
whispered in my ear. “Fortunately my wife is as innocent as perhaps a new-born
babe—”
“You have already told me that the viscountess was extremely ingenious,” I
said, with unfeeling gaiety.
“Oh!” he said, “I gladly take a joke this evening; for this morning I had
irrefragable proofs of my wife’s fidelity. I had risen very early to finish a
piece of work for which I had been rushed, and in looking absently in my
garden, I suddenly saw the valet de chambre of a general, whose house is
next to mine, climbing over the wall. My wife’s maid, poking her head from the
vestibule, was stroking my dog and covering the retreat of the gallant. I took
my opera glass and examined the intruder—his hair was jet black!—Ah! never have
I seen a Christian face that gave me more delight! And you may well believe
that during the day all my perplexities vanished. So, my dear sir,” he
continued, “if you marry, let your dog loose and put broken bottles over the
top of your walls.”
“And did the viscountess perceive your distress during these three days?
“Do you take me for a child?” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I have never
been so merry in all my life as I have been since we met.”
“You are a great man unrecognized,” I cried, “and you are not—”
He did not permit me to conclude; for he had disappeared on seeing one of his
friends who approached as if to greet the viscountess.
Now what can we add that would not be a tedious paraphrase of the lessons
suggested by this conversation? All is included in it, either as seed or fruit.
Nevertheless, you see, O husband! that your happiness hangs on a hair.
THE THEORY OF THE BED.
It was about seven o’clock in the evening. They were seated upon the academic
armchairs, which made a semi-circle round a huge hearth, on which a coal fire
was burning fitfully—symbol of the burning subject of their important
deliberations. It was easy to guess, on seeing the grave but earnest faces of
all the members of this assembly, that they were called upon to pronounce
sentence upon the life, the fortunes and the happiness of people like
themselves. They had no commission excepting that of their conscience, and they
gathered there as the assessors of an ancient and mysterious tribunal; but they
represented interests much more important than those of kings or of peoples;
they spoke in the name of the passions and on behalf of the happiness of the
numberless generations which should succeed them.
The grandson of the celebrated Boulle was seated before a round table on which
were placed the criminal exhibits which had been collected with remarkable
intelligence. I, the insignificant secretary of the meeting, occupied a place
at this desk, where it was my office to take down a report of the meeting.
“Gentlemen,” said an old man, “the first question upon which we have to
deliberate is found clearly stated in the following passage of a letter. The
letter was written to the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Anspach, by the widow
of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV, mother of the Regent: ‘The Queen
of Spain has a method of making her husband say exactly what she wishes. The
king is a religious man; he believes that he will be damned if he touched any
woman but his wife, and still this excellent prince is of a very amorous
temperament. Thus the queen obtains her every wish. She has placed castors on
her husband’s bed. If he refuses her anything, she pushes the bed away. If he
grants her request, the beds stand side by side, and she admits him into hers.
And so the king is highly delighted, since he likes ——-’ I will not go any
further, gentlemen, for the virtuous frankness of the German princess might in
this assembly be charged with immorality.”
Should wise husbands adopt these beds on castors? This is the problem which we
have to solve.
The unanimity of the vote left no doubt about the opinion of the assembly. I
was ordered to inscribe in the records, that if two married people slept on two
separate beds in the same room the beds ought not to be set on castors.
“With this proviso,” put in one of the members, “that the present decision
should have no bearing on any subsequent ruling upon the best arrangement of
the beds of married people.”
The president passed to me a choicely bound volume, in which was contained the
original edition, published in 1788, of the letters of Charlotte Elizabeth de
Baviere, widow of the Duke of Orleans, the only brother of Louis XIV, and,
while I was transcribing the passage already quoted, he said:
“But, gentlemen, you must all have received at your houses the notification in
which the second question is stated.”
“I rise to make an observation,” exclaimed the youngest of the jealous husbands
there assembled.
The president took his seat with a gesture of assent.
“Gentlemen,” said the young husband, “are we quite prepared to deliberate upon
so grave a question as that which is presented by the universally bad
arrangement of the beds? Is there not here a much wider question than that of
mere cabinet-making to decide? For my own part I see in it a question which
concerns that of universal human intellect. The mysteries of conception,
gentlemen, are still enveloped in a darkness which modern science has but
partially dissipated. We do not know how far external circumstances influence
the microscopic beings whose discovery is due to the unwearied patience of
Hill, Baker, Joblot, Eichorn, Gleichen, Spallanzani, and especially of Muller,
and last of all of M. Bory de Saint Vincent. The imperfections of the bed opens
up a musical question of the highest importance, and for my part I declare I
shall write to Italy to obtain clear information as to the manner in which beds
are generally arranged. We do not know whether there are in the Italian bed
numerous curtain rods, screws and castors, or whether the construction of beds
is in this country more faulty than everywhere else, or whether the dryness of
timber in Italy, due to the influence of the sun, does not ab ovo
produce the harmony, the sense of which is to so large an extent innate in
Italians. For these reasons I move that we adjourn.”
“What!” cried a gentleman from the West, impatiently rising to his feet, “are
we here to dilate upon the advancement of music? What we have to consider first
of all is manners, and the moral question is paramount in this discussion.”
“Nevertheless,” remarked one of the most influential members of the council,
“the suggestion of the former speaker is not in my opinion to be passed by. In
the last century, gentlemen, Sterne, one of the writers most philosophically
delightful and most delightfully philosophic, complained of the carelessness
with which human beings were procreated; ‘Shame!’ he cried ‘that he who copies
the divine physiognomy of man receives crowns and applause, but he who achieves
the masterpiece, the prototype of mimic art, feels that like virtue he must be
his own reward.’
“Ought we not to feel more interest in the improvement of the human race than
in that of horses? Gentlemen, I passed through a little town of Orleanais where
the whole population consisted of hunchbacks, of glum and gloomy people,
veritable children of sorrow, and the remark of the former speaker caused me to
recollect that all the beds were in a very bad condition and the bedchambers
presented nothing to the eyes of the married couple but what was hideous and
revolting. Ah! gentlemen, how is it possible that our minds should be in an
ideal state, when instead of the music of angels flying here and there in the
bosom of that heaven to which we have attained, our ears are assailed by the
most detestable, the most angry, the most piercing of human cries and
lamentations? We are perhaps indebted for the fine geniuses who have honored
humanity to beds which are solidly constructed; and the turbulent population
which caused the French Revolution were conceived perhaps upon a multitude of
tottering couches, with twisted and unstable legs; while the Orientals, who are
such a beautiful race, have a unique method of making their beds. I vote for
the adjournment.”
And the gentleman sat down.
A man belonging to the sect of Methodists arose. “Why should we change the
subject of debate? We are not dealing here with the improvement of the race nor
with the perfecting of the work. We must not lose sight of the interests of the
jealous husband and the principles on which moral soundness is based. Don’t you
know that the noise of which you complain seems more terrible to the wife
uncertain of her crime, than the trumpet of the Last Judgment? Can you forget
that a suit for infidelity could never be won by a husband excepting through
this conjugal noise? I will undertake, gentlemen, to refer to the divorces of
Lord Abergavenny, of Viscount Bolingbroke, of the late Queen Caroline, of Eliza
Draper, of Madame Harris, in fact, of all those who are mentioned in the twenty
volumes published by—.” (The secretary did not distinctly hear the name of the
English publisher.)
The motion to adjourn was carried. The youngest member proposed to make up a
purse for the author producing the best dissertation addressed to the society
upon a subject which Sterne considered of such importance; but at the end of
the seance eighteen shillings was the total sum found in the hat of the
president.
The above debate of the society, which had recently been formed in London for
the improvement of manners and of marriage and which Lord Byron scoffed at, was
transmitted to us by the kindness of W. Hawkins, Esq., cousin-german of the
famous Captain Clutterbuck. The extract may serve to solve any difficulties
which may occur in the theory of bed construction.
But the author of the book considers that the English society has given too
much importance to this preliminary question. There exists in fact quite as
many reasons for being a Rossinist as for being a Solidist in the
matter of beds, and the author acknowledges that it is either beneath or above
him to solve this difficulty. He thinks with Laurence Sterne that it is a
disgrace to European civilization that there exist so few physiological
observations on callipedy, and he refuses to state the results of his
Meditations on this subject, because it would be difficult to formulate them in
terms of prudery, and they would be but little understood, and misinterpreted.
Such reserve produces an hiatus in this part of the book; but the author has
the pleasant satisfaction of leaving a fourth work to be accomplished by the
next century, to which he bequeaths the legacy of all that he has not
accomplished, a negative munificence which may well be followed by all those
who may be troubled by an overplus of ideas.
The theory of the bed presents questions much more important than those put
forth by our neighbors with regard to castors and the murmurs of criminal
conversation.
We know only three ways in which a bed (in the general sense of this term) may
be arranged among civilized nations, and particularly among the privileged
classes to whom this book is addressed. These three ways are as follows:
Before applying ourselves to the examination of these three methods of living
together, which must necessarily have different influences upon the happiness
of husbands and wives, we must take a rapid survey of the practical object
served by the bed and the part it plays in the political economy of human
existence.
The most incontrovertible principle which can be laid down in this matter is,
that the bed was made to sleep upon.
It would be easy to prove that the practice of sleeping together was
established between married people but recently, in comparison with the
antiquity of marriage.
By what reasonings has man arrived at that point in which he brought in vogue a
practice so fatal to happiness, to health, even to amour-propre? Here we
have a subject which it would be curious to investigate.
If you knew one of your rivals who had discovered a method of placing you in a
position of extreme absurdity before the eyes of those who were dearest to
you—for instance, while you had your mouth crooked like that of a theatrical
mask, or while your eloquent lips, like the copper faucet of a scanty fountain,
dripped pure water—you would probably stab him. This rival is sleep. Is there a
man in the world who knows how he appears to others, and what he does when he
is asleep?
In sleep we are living corpses, we are the prey of an unknown power which
seizes us in spite of ourselves, and shows itself in the oddest shapes; some
have a sleep which is intellectual, while the sleep of others is mere stupor.
There are some people who slumber with their mouths open in the silliest
fashion.
There are others who snore loud enough to make the timbers shake.
Most people look like the impish devils that Michael Angelo sculptured, putting
out their tongues in silent mockery of the passers-by.
The only person I know of in the world who sleeps with a noble air is
Agamemnon, whom Guerin has represented lying on his bed at the moment when
Clytemnestra, urged by Egisthus, advances to slay him. Moreover, I have always
had an ambition to hold myself on my pillow as the king of kings Agamemnon
holds himself, from the day that I was seized with dread of being seen during
sleep by any other eyes than those of Providence. In the same way, too, from
the day I heard my old nurse snorting in her sleep “like a whale,” to use a
slang expression, I have added a petition to the special litany which I address
to Saint-Honoré, my patron saint, to the effect that he would save me from
indulging in this sort of eloquence.
When a man wakes up in the morning, his drowsy face grotesquely surmounted by
the folds of a silk handkerchief which falls over his left temple like a police
cap, he is certainly a laughable object, and it is difficult to recognize in
him the glorious spouse, celebrated in the strophes of Rousseau; but,
nevertheless, there is a certain gleam of life to illume the stupidity of a
countenance half dead—and if you artists wish to make fine sketches, you should
travel on the stage-coach and, when the postilion wakes up the postmaster, just
examine the physiognomies of the departmental clerks! But, were you a hundred
times as pleasant to look upon as are these bureaucratic physiognomies, at
least, while you have your mouth shut, your eyes are open, and you have some
expression in your countenance. Do you know how you looked an hour before you
awoke, or during the first hour of your sleep, when you were neither a man nor
an animal, but merely a thing, subject to the dominion of those dreams which
issue from the gate of horn? But this is a secret between your wife and God.
Is it for the purpose of insinuating the imbecility of slumber that the Romans
decorated the heads of their beds with the head of an ass? We leave to the
gentlemen who form the academy of inscriptions the elucidation of this point.
Assuredly, the first man who took it into his head, at the inspiration of the
devil, not to leave his wife, even while she was asleep, should know how to
sleep in the very best style; but do not forget to reckon among the sciences
necessary to a man on setting up an establishment, the art of sleeping with
elegance. Moreover, we will place here as a corollary to Axiom XXV of our
Marriage Catechism the two following aphorisms:
A husband should sleep as lightly as a watch-dog, so as never to be caught with
his eyes shut.
A man should accustom himself from childhood to go to bed bareheaded.
Certain poets discern in modesty, in the alleged mysteries of love, some reason
why the married couple should share the same bed; but the fact must be
recognized that if primitive men sought the shade of caverns, the mossy couch
of deep ravines, the flinty roof of grottoes to protect his pleasure, it was
because the delight of love left him without defence against his enemies. No,
it is not more natural to lay two heads upon the same pillow, than it is
reasonable to tie a strip of muslin round the neck. Civilization is come. It
has shut up a million of men within an area of four square leagues; it has
stalled them in streets, houses, apartments, rooms, and chambers eight feet
square; after a time it will make them shut up one upon another like the tubes
of a telescope.
From this cause and from many others, such as thrift, fear, and ill-concealed
jealousy, has sprung the custom of the sleeping together of the married couple;
and this custom has given rise to punctuality and simultaneity in rising and
retiring.
And here you find the most capricious thing in the world, the feeling most
pre-eminently fickle, the thing which is worthless without its own spontaneous
inspiration, which takes all its charm from the suddenness of its desires,
which owes its attractions to the genuineness of its outbursts—this thing we
call love, subjugated to a monastic rule, to that law of geometry which belongs
to the Board of Longitude!
If I were a father I should hate the child, who, punctual as the clock, had
every morning and evening an explosion of tenderness and wished me good-day and
good-evening, because he was ordered to do so. It is in this way that all that
is generous and spontaneous in human sentiment becomes strangled at its birth.
You may judge from this what love means when it is bound to a fixed hour!
Only the Author of everything can make the sun rise and set, morn and eve, with
a pomp invariably brilliant and always new, and no one here below, if we may be
permitted to use the hyperbole of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, can play the role of
the sun.
From these preliminary observations, we conclude that it is not natural for two
to lie under the canopy in the same bed;
That a man is almost always ridiculous when he is asleep;
And that this constant living together threatens the husband with inevitable
dangers.
We are going to try, therefore, to find out a method which will bring our
customs in harmony with the laws of nature, and to combine custom and nature in
a way that will enable a husband to find in the mahogany of his bed a useful
ally, and an aid in defending himself.
If the most brilliant, the best-looking, the cleverest of husbands wishes to
find himself minotaurized just as the first year of his married life ends, he
will infallibly attain that end if he is unwise enough to place two beds side
by side, under the voluptuous dome of the same alcove.
The argument in support of this may be briefly stated. The following are its
main lines:
The first husband who invented the twin beds was doubtless an obstetrician, who
feared that in the involuntary struggles of some dream he might kick the child
borne by his wife.
But no, he was rather some predestined one who distrusted his power of checking
a snore.
Perhaps it was some young man who, fearing the excess of his own tenderness,
found himself always lying at the edge of the bed and in danger of tumbling
off, or so near to a charming wife that he disturbed her slumber.
But may it not have been some Maintenon who received the suggestion from her
confessor, or, more probably, some ambitious woman who wished to rule her
husband? Or, more undoubtedly, some pretty little Pompadour overcome by that
Parisian infirmity so pleasantly described by M. de Maurepas in that quatrain
which cost him his protracted disgrace and certainly contributed to the
disasters of Louis XVI’s reign:
“Iris, we love those features sweet,
Your graces all are fresh and free;
And flowerets spring beneath your feet,
Where naught, alas! but flowers are seen.”
But why should it not have been a philosopher who dreaded the disenchantment
which a woman would experience at the sight of a man asleep? And such a one
would always roll himself up in a coverlet and keep his head bare.
Unknown author of this Jesuitical method, whoever thou art, in the devil’s
name, we hail thee as a brother! Thou hast been the cause of many disasters.
Thy work has the character of all half measures; it is satisfactory in no
respect, and shares the bad points of the two other methods without yielding
the advantages of either. How can the man of the nineteenth century, how can
this creature so supremely intelligent, who has displayed a power well-nigh
supernatural, who has employed the resources of his genius in concealing the
machinery of his life, in deifying his necessary cravings in order that he
might not despise them, going so far as to wrest from Chinese leaves, from
Egyptian beans, from seeds of Mexico, their perfume, their treasure, their
soul; going so far as to chisel the diamond, chase the silver, melt the gold
ore, paint the clay and woo every art that may serve to decorate and to dignify
the bowl from which he feeds!—how can this king, after having hidden under
folds of muslin covered with diamonds, studded with rubies, and buried under
linen, under folds of cotton, under the rich hues of silk, under the fairy
patterns of lace, the partner of his wretchedness, how can he induce her to
make shipwreck in the midst of all this luxury on the decks of two beds. What
advantage is it that we have made the whole universe subserve our existence,
our delusions, the poesy of our life? What good is it to have instituted law,
morals and religion, if the invention of an upholsterer [for probably it was an
upholsterer who invented the twin beds] robs our love of all its illusions,
strips it bare of the majestic company of its delights and gives it in their
stead nothing but what is ugliest and most odious? For this is the whole
history of the two bed system.
LXIII.
That it shall appear either sublime or grotesque are the alternatives to which
we have reduced a desire.
If it be shared, our love is sublime; but should you sleep in twin beds, your
love will always be grotesque. The absurdities which this half separation
occasions may be comprised in either one of two situations, which will give us
occasion to reveal the causes of very many marital misfortunes.
Midnight is approaching as a young woman is putting on her curl papers and
yawning as she did so. I do not know whether her melancholy proceeded from a
headache, seated in the right or left lobe of her brain, or whether she was
passing through one of those seasons of weariness during which all things
appear black to us; but to see her negligently putting up her hair for the
night, to see her languidly raising her leg to take off her garter, it seemed
to me that she would prefer to be drowned rather than to be denied the relief
of plunging her draggled life into the slumber that might restore it. At this
instant, I know not to what degree from the North Pole she stands, whether at
Spitzberg or in Greenland. Cold and indifferent she goes to bed thinking, as
Mistress Walter Shandy might have thought, that the morrow would be a day of
sickness, that her husband is coming home very late, that the beaten eggs which
she has just eaten were not sufficiently sweetened, that she owes more than
five hundred francs to her dressmaker; in fine, thinking about everything which
you may suppose would occupy the mind of a tired woman. In the meanwhile
arrives her great lout of a husband, who, after some business meeting, has
drunk punch, with a consequent elation. He takes off his boots, leaves his
stockings on a lounge, his bootjack lies before the fireplace; and wrapping his
head up in a red silk handkerchief, without giving himself the trouble to tuck
in the corners, he fires off at his wife certain interjectory phrases, those
little marital endearments, which form almost the whole conversation at those
twilight hours, where drowsy reason is no longer shining in this mechanism of
ours. “What, in bed already! It was devilish cold this evening! Why don’t you
speak, my pet? You’ve already rolled yourself up in bed, then! Ah! you are in
the dumps and pretend to be asleep!” These exclamations are mingled with yawns;
and after numberless little incidents which according to the usage of each home
vary this preface of the night, our friend flings himself into his own bed with
a heavy thud.
Alas! before a woman who is cold, how mad a man must appear when desire renders
him alternately angry and tender, insolent and abject, biting as an epigram and
soothing as a madrigal; when he enacts with more or less sprightliness the
scene where, in Venice Preserved, the genius of Orway has represented
the senator Antonio, repeating a hundred times over at the feet of Aquilina:
“Aquilina, Quilina, Lina, Aqui, Nacki!” without winning from her aught save the
stroke of her whip, inasmuch as he has undertaken to fawn upon her like a dog.
In the eyes of every woman, even of a lawful wife, the more a man shows eager
passion under these circumstances, the more silly he appears. He is odious when
he commands, he is minotaurized if he abuses his power. On this point I would
remind you of certain aphorisms in the marriage catechism from which you will
see that you are violating its most sacred precepts. Whether a woman yields, or
does not yield, this institution of twin beds gives to marriage such an element
of roughness and nakedness that the most chaste wife and the most intelligent
husband are led to immodesty.
This scene, which is enacted in a thousand ways and which may originate in a
thousand different incidents, has a sequel in that other situation which, while
it is less pleasant, is far more terrible.
One evening when I was talking about these serious matters with the late Comte
de Noce, of whom I have already had occasion to speak, a tall white-haired old
man, his intimate friend, whose name I will not give, because he is still
alive, looked at us with a somewhat melancholy air. We guessed that he was
about to relate some tale of scandal, and we accordingly watched him, somewhat
as the stenographer of the Moniteur might watch, as he mounted the
tribune, a minister whose speech had already been written out for the reporter.
The story-teller on this occasion was an old marquis, whose fortune, together
with his wife and children, had perished in the disasters of the Revolution.
The marchioness had been one of the most inconsistent women of the past
generation; the marquis accordingly was not wanting in observations on feminine
human nature. Having reached an age in which he saw nothing before him but the
gulf of the grave, he spoke about himself as if the subject of his talk were
Mark Antony or Cleopatra.
“My young friend”—he did me the honor to address me, for it was I who made the
last remark in this discussion—“your reflections make me think of a certain
evening, in the course of which one of my friends conducted himself in such a
manner as to lose forever the respect of his wife. Now, in those days a woman
could take vengeance with marvelous facility—for it was always a word and a
blow. The married couple I speak of were particular in sleeping on separate
beds, with their head under the arch of the same alcove. They came home one
night from a brilliant ball given by the Comte de Mercy, ambassador of the
emperor. The husband had lost a considerable sum at play, so he was completely
absorbed in thought. He had to pay a debt, the next day, of six thousand
crowns!—and you will recollect, Noce, that a hundred crowns couldn’t be made up
from scraping together the resources of ten such musketeers. The young woman,
as generally happens under such circumstances, was in a gale of high spirits.
‘Give to the marquis,’ she said to a valet de chambre, ‘all that he
requires for his toilet.’ In those days people dressed for the night. These
extraordinary words did not rouse the husband from his mood of abstraction, and
then madame, assisted by her maid, began to indulge in a thousand coquetries.
‘Was my appearance to your taste this evening?’ ‘You are always to my taste,’
answered the marquis, continuing to stride up and down the room. ‘You are very
gloomy! Come and talk to me, you frowning lover,’ said she, placing herself
before him in the most seductive negligee. But you can have no idea of the
enchantments of the marchioness unless you had known her. Ah! you have seen
her, Noce!” he said with a mocking smile. “Finally, in spite of all her
allurements and beauty, the marchioness was lost sight of amid thoughts of the
six thousand crowns which this fool of a husband could not get out of his head,
and she went to bed all alone. But women always have one resource left; so that
the moment that the good husband made as though he would get into his bed, the
marchioness cried, ‘Oh, how cold I am!’ ‘So am I,’ he replied. ‘How is it that
the servants have not warmed our beds?’—And then I rang.”
The Comte de Noce could not help laughing, and the old marquis, quite put out
of countenance, stopped short.
Not to divine the desire of a wife, to snore while she lies awake, to be in
Siberia when she is in the tropics, these are the slighter disadvantages of
twin beds. What risks will not a passionate woman run when she becomes aware
that her husband is a heavy sleeper?
I am indebted to Beyle for an Italian anecdote, to which his dry and sarcastic
manner lent an infinite charm, as he told me this tale of feminine hardihood.
Ludovico had his palace at one end of the town of Milan; at the other was that
of the Countess of Pernetti. At midnight, on a certain occasion, Ludovico
resolved, at the peril of his life, to make a rash expedition for the sake of
gazing for one second on the face he adored, and accordingly appeared as if by
magic in the palace of his well-beloved. He reached the nuptial chamber. Elisa
Pernetti, whose heart most probably shared the desire of her lover, heard the
sound of his footsteps and divined his intention. She saw through the walls of
her chamber a countenance glowing with love. She rose from her marriage bed,
light as a shadow she glided to the threshold of her door, with a look she
embraced him, she seized his hand, she made a sign to him, she drew him in.
“But he will kill you!” said he.
“Perhaps so.”
But all this amounts to nothing. Let us grant that most husbands sleep lightly.
Let us grant that they sleep without snoring, and that they always discern the
degree of latitude at which their wives are to be found. Moreover, all the
reasons which we have given why twin beds should be condemned, let us consider
but dust in the balance. But, after all, a final consideration would make us
also proscribe the use of beds ranged within the limits of the same alcove.
To a man placed in the position of a husband, there are circumstances which
have led us to consider the nuptial couch as an actual means of defence. For it
is only in bed that a man can tell whether his wife’s love is increasing or
decreasing. It is the conjugal barometer. Now to sleep in twin beds is to wish
for ignorance. You will understand, when we come to treat of civil war
(See Part Third) of what extreme usefulness a bed is and how many secrets a
wife reveals in bed, without knowing it.
Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good nature of
such an institution as that of twin beds.
It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the world.
Shame and anathema to him who conceived it!
But in proportion as this method is pernicious in the case of young married
people, it is salutary and advantageous for those who have reached the
twentieth year of married life. Husband and wife can then most conveniently
indulge their duets of snoring. It will, moreover, be more convenient for their
various maladies, whether rheumatism, obstinate gout, or even the taking of a
pinch of snuff; and the cough or the snore will not in any respect prove a
greater hindrance than it is found to be in any other arrangement.
We have not thought it necessary to mention the exceptional cases which
authorize a husband to resort to twin beds. However, the opinion of Bonaparte
was that when once there had taken place an interchange of life and breath
(such are his words), nothing, not even sickness, should separate married
people. This point is so delicate that it is not possible here to treat it
methodically.
Certain narrow minds will object that there are certain patriarchal families
whose legislation of love is inflexible in the matter of two beds and an
alcove, and that, by this arrangement, they have been happy from generation to
generation. But, the only answer that the author vouchsafes to this is that he
knows a great many respectable people who pass their lives in watching games of
billiards.
There cannot be found in Europe a hundred husbands of each nation sufficiently
versed in the science of marriage, or if you like, of life, to be able to dwell
in an apartment separate from that of their wives.
The power of putting this system into practice shows the highest degree of
intellectual and masculine force.
The married couple who dwell in separate apartments have become either
divorced, or have attained to the discovery of happiness. They either abominate
or adore each other. We will not undertake to detail here the admirable
precepts which may be deduced from this theory whose end is to make constancy
and fidelity easy and delightful. It may be sufficient to declare that by this
system alone two married people can realize the dream of many noble souls. This
will be understood by all the faithful.
As for the profane, their curious questionings will be sufficiently answered by
the remark that the object of this institution is to give happiness to one
woman. Which among them will be willing to deprive general society of any share
in the talents with which they think themselves endowed, to the advantage of
one woman? Nevertheless, the rendering of his mistress happy gives any one the
fairest title to glory which can be earned in this valley of Jehosaphat, since,
according to Genesis, Eve was not satisfied even with a terrestrial Paradise.
She desired to taste the forbidden fruit, the eternal emblem of adultery.
But there is an insurmountable reason why we should refrain from developing
this brilliant theory. It would cause a digression from the main theme of our
work. In the situation which we have supposed to be that of a married
establishment, a man who is sufficiently unwise to sleep apart from his wife
deserves no pity for the disaster which he himself invites.
Let us then resume our subject. Every man is not strong enough to undertake to
occupy an apartment separate from that of his wife; although any man might
derive as much good as evil from the difficulties which exist in using but one
bed.
We now proceed to solve the difficulties which superficial minds may detect in
this method, for which our predilection is manifest.
But this paragraph, which is in some sort a silent one, inasmuch as we leave it
to the commentaries which will be made in more than one home, may serve as a
pedestal for the imposing figure of Lycurgus, that ancient legislator, to whom
the Greeks are indebted for their profoundest thoughts on the subject of
marriage. May his system be understood by future generations! And if modern
manners are too much given to softness to adopt his system in its entirety,
they may at least be imbued with the robust spirit of this admirable code.
On a night in December, Frederick the Great looked up at the sky, whose stars
were twinkling with that clear and living light which presages heavy frost, and
he exclaimed, “This weather will result in a great many soldiers to Prussia.”
The king expressed here, by a single phrase, the principal disadvantage which
results from the constant living together of married people. Although it may be
permitted to Napoleon and to Frederick to estimate the value of a woman more or
less according to the number of her children, yet a husband of talent ought,
according to the maxims of the thirteenth Meditation, to consider
child-begetting merely as a means of defence, and it is for him to know to what
extent it may take place.
The observation leads into mysteries from which the physiological Muse recoils.
She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chambers while they are
occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and there are occasions on which she
retires. For, since it is at this passage in my book that the Muse is inclined
to put her white hands before her eyes so as to see nothing, like the young
girl looking through the interstices of her tapering fingers, she will take
advantage of this attack of modesty, to administer a reprimand to our manners.
In England the nuptial chamber is a sacred place. The married couple alone have
the privilege of entering it, and more than one lady, we are told, makes her
bed herself. Of all the crazes which reign beyond the sea, why should the only
one which we despise be precisely that, whose grace and mystery ought
undoubtedly to meet the approval of all tender souls on this continent? Refined
women condemn the immodesty with which strangers are introduced into the
sanctuary of marriage. As for us, who have energetically anathematized women
who walk abroad at the time when they expect soon to be confined, our opinion
cannot be doubted. If we wish the celibate to respect marriage, married people
ought to have some regard for the inflammability of bachelors.
To sleep every night with one’s wife may seem, we confess, an act of the most
insolent folly.
Many husbands are inclined to ask how a man, who desires to bring marriage to
perfection, dare prescribe to a husband a rule of conduct which would be fatal
in a lover.
Nevertheless, such is the decision of a doctor of arts and sciences conjugal.
In the first place, without making a resolution never to sleep by himself, this
is the only course left to a husband, since we have demonstrated the dangers of
the preceding systems. We must now try to prove that this last method yields
more advantage and less disadvantage than the two preceding methods, that is,
so far as relates to the critical position in which a conjugal establishment
stands.
Our observations on the twin beds ought to have taught husbands that they
should always be strung into the same degree of fervor as that which prevails
in the harmonious organization of their wives. Now it seems to us that this
perfect equality in feelings would naturally be created under the white Aegis,
which spreads over both of them its protecting sheet; this at the outset is an
immense advantage, and really nothing is easier to verify at any moment than
the degree of love and expansion which a woman reaches when the same pillow
receives the heads of both spouses.
Man [we speak now of the species] walks about with a memorandum always
totalized, which shows distinctly and without error the amount of passion which
he carries within him. This mysterious gynometer is traced in the hollow of the
hand, for the hand is really that one of our members which bears the impress
most plainly of our characters. Chirology is a fifth work which I bequeath to
my successors, for I am contented here to make known but the elements of this
interesting science.
The hand is the essential organ of touch. Touch is the sense which very nearly
takes the place of all the others, and which alone is indispensable. Since the
hand alone can carry out all that a man desires, it is to an extent action
itself. The sum total of our vitality passes through it; and men of powerful
intellects are usually remarkable for their shapely hands, perfection in that
respect being a distinguishing trait of their high calling.
Jesus Christ performed all His miracles by the imposition of hands. The hand is
the channel through which life passes. It reveals to the physician all the
mysteries of our organism. It exhales more than any other part of our bodies
the nervous fluid, or that unknown substance, which for want of another term we
style will. The eye can discover the mood of our soul but the hand
betrays at the same time the secrets of the body and those of the soul. We can
acquire the faculty of imposing silence on our eyes, on our lips, on our brows,
and on our forehead; but the hand never dissembles and nothing in our features
can be compared to the richness of its expression. The heat and cold which it
feels in such delicate degrees often escape the notice of other senses in
thoughtless people; but a man knows how to distinguish them, however little
time he may have bestowed in studying the anatomy of sentiments and the affairs
of human life. Thus the hand has a thousand ways of becoming dry, moist, hot,
cold, soft, rough, unctuous. The hand palpitates, becomes supple, grows hard
and again is softened. In fine it presents a phenomenon which is inexplicable
so that one is tempted to call it the incarnation of thought. It causes the
despair of the sculptor and the painter when they wish to express the changing
labyrinth of its mysterious lineaments. To stretch out your hand to a man is to
save him, it serves as a ratification of the sentiments we express. The
sorcerers of every age have tried to read our future destines in those lines
which have nothing fanciful in them, but absolutely correspond with the
principles of each one’s life and character. When she charges a man with want
of tact, which is merely touch, a woman condemns him without hope. We use the
expressions, the “Hand of Justice,” the “Hand of God;” and a coup de
main means a bold undertaking.
To understand and recognize the hidden feelings by the atmospheric variations
of the hand, which a woman almost always yields without distrust, is a study
less unfruitful and surer than that of physiognomy.
In this way you will be able, if you acquire this science, to wield vast power,
and to find a clue which will guide you through the labyrinth of the most
impenetrable heart. This will render your living together free from very many
mistakes, and, at the same time, rich in the acquisition of many a treasure.
Buffon and certain physiologists affirm that our members are more completely
exhausted by desire than by the most keen enjoyments. And really, does not
desire constitute of itself a sort of intuitive possession? Does it not stand
in the same relation to visible action, as those incidents in our mental life,
in which we take part in a dream, stand to the incidents of our actual life?
This energetic apprehension of things, does it not call into being an internal
emotion more powerful than that of the external action? If our gestures are
only the accomplishment of things already enacted by our thought, you may
easily calculate how desire frequently entertained must necessarily consume the
vital fluids. But the passions which are no more than the aggregation of
desires, do they not furrow with the wrinkle of their lightning the faces of
the ambitious, of gamblers, for instance, and do they not wear out their bodies
with marvelous swiftness?
These observations, therefore, necessarily contain the germs of a mysterious
system equally favored by Plato and by Epicurus; we will leave it for you to
meditate upon, enveloped as it is in the veil which enshrouds Egyptian statues.
But the greatest mistake that a man commits is to believe that love can belong
only to those fugitive moments which, according to the magnificent expression
of Bossuet, are like to the nails scattered over a wall: to the eye they appear
numerous; but when they are collected they make but a handful.
Love consists almost always in conversation. There are few things inexhaustible
in a lover: goodness, gracefulness and delicacy. To feel everything, to divine
everything, to anticipate everything; to reproach without bringing affliction
upon a tender heart; to make a present without pride; to double the value of a
certain action by the way in which it is done; to flatter rather by actions
than by words; to make oneself understood rather than to produce a vivid
impression; to touch without striking; to make a look and the sound of the
voice produce the effect of a caress; never to produce embarrassment; to amuse
without offending good taste; always to touch the heart; to speak to the
soul—this is all that women ask. They will abandon all the delights of all the
nights of Messalina, if only they may live with a being who will yield them
those caresses of the soul, for which they are so eager, and which cost nothing
to men if only they have a little consideration.
This outline comprises a great portion of such secrets as belong to the nuptial
couch. There are perhaps some witty people who may take this long definition of
politeness for a description of love, while in any case it is no more than a
recommendation to treat your wife as you would treat the minister on whose
good-will depends your promotion to the post you covet.
I hear numberless voices crying out that this book is a special advocate for
women and neglects the cause of men;
That the majority of women are unworthy of these delicate attentions and would
abuse them;
That there are women given to licentiousness who would not lend themselves to
very much of what they would call mystification;
That women are nothing but vanity and think of nothing but dress;
That they have notions which are truly unreasonable;
That they are very often annoyed by an attention;
That they are fools, they understand nothing, are worth nothing, etc.
In answer to all these clamors we will write here the following phrases, which,
placed between two spaces, will perhaps have the air of a thought, to quote an
expression of Beaumarchais.
LXIV.
A wife is to her husband just what her husband has made her.
The reasons why the single bed must triumph over the other two methods of
organizing the nuptial couch are as follows: In the single couch we have a
faithful interpreter to translate with profound truthfulness the sentiments of
a woman, to render her a spy over herself, to keep her at the height of her
amorous temperature, never to leave her, to have the power of hearing her
breathe in slumber, and thus to avoid all the nonsense which is the ruin of so
many marriages.
As it is impossible to receive benefits without paying for them, you are bound
to learn how to sleep gracefully, to preserve your dignity under the silk
handkerchief that wraps your head, to be polite, to see that your slumber is
light, not to cough too much, and to imitate those modern authors who write
more prefaces than books.
OF MARITAL REVOLUTIONS.
The time always comes in which nations and women even the most stupid perceive
that their innocence is being abused. The cleverest policy may for a long time
proceed in a course of deceit; but it would be very happy for men if they could
carry on their deceit to an infinite period; a vast amount of bloodshed would
then be avoided, both in nations and in families.
Nevertheless, we hope that the means of defence put forth in the preceding
Meditations will be sufficient to deliver a certain number of husbands from the
clutches of the Minotaur! You must agree with the doctor that many a love
blindly entered upon perishes under the treatment of hygiene or dies away,
thanks to marital policy. Yes [what a consoling mistake!] many a lover will be
driven away by personal efforts, many a husband will learn how to conceal under
an impenetrable veil the machinery of his machiavelism, and many a man will
have better success than the old philosopher who cried: Nolo coronari!
But we are here compelled to acknowledge a mournful truth. Despotism has its
moments of secure tranquillity. Her reign seems like the hour which precedes
the tempest, and whose silence enables the traveler, stretched upon the faded
grass, to hear at a mile’s distance, the song of the cicada. Some fine morning
an honest woman, who will be imitated by a great portion of our own women,
discerns with an eagle eye the clever manoeuvres which have rendered her the
victim of an infernal policy. She is at first quite furious at having for so
long a time preserved her virtue. At what age, in what day, does this terrible
revolution occur? This question of chronology depends entirely upon the genius
of each husband; for it is not the vocation of all to put in practice with the
same talent the precepts of our conjugal gospel.
“A man must have very little love,” the mystified wife will exclaim, “to enter
upon such calculations as these! What! From the first day I have been to him
perpetually an object of suspicion! It is monstrous, even a woman would be
incapable of such artful and cruel treachery!”
This is the question. Each husband will be able to understand the variations of
this complaint which will be made in accordance with the character of the young
Fury, of whom he has made a companion.
A woman by no means loses her head under these circumstances; she holds her
tongue and dissembles. Her vengeance will be concealed. Only you will have some
symptoms of hesitation to contend with on the arrival of the crisis, which we
presume you to have reached on the expiration of the honeymoon; but you will
also have to contend against a resolution. She has determined to revenge
herself. From that day, so far as regards you, her mask, like her heart, has
turned to bronze. Formerly you were an object of indifference to her; you are
becoming by degrees absolutely insupportable. The Civil War commences only at
the moment in which, like the drop of water which makes the full glass
overflow, some incident, whose more or less importance we find difficulty in
determining, has rendered you odious. The lapse of time which intervenes
between this last hour, the limit of your good understanding, and the day when
your wife becomes cognizant of your artifices, is nevertheless quite sufficient
to permit you to institute a series of defensive operations, which we will now
explain.
Up to this time you have protected your honor solely by the exertion of a power
entirely occult. Hereafter the wheels of your conjugal machinery must be set
going in sight of every one. In this case, if you would prevent a crime you
must strike a blow. You have begun by negotiating, you must end by mounting
your horse, sabre in hand, like a Parisian gendarme. You must make your horse
prance, you must brandish your sabre, you must shout strenuously, and you must
endeavor to calm the revolt without wounding anybody.
Just as the author has found a means of passing from occult methods to methods
that are patent, so it is necessary for the husband to justify the sudden
change in his tactics; for in marriage, as in literature, art consists entirely
in the gracefulness of the transitions. This is of the highest importance for
you. What a frightful position you will occupy if your wife has reason to
complain of your conduct at the moment, which is, perhaps, the most critical of
your whole married life!
You must therefore find some means or other to justify the secret tyranny of
your initial policy; some means which still prepare the mind of your wife for
the severe measures which you are about to take; some means which so far from
forfeiting her esteem will conciliate her; some means which will gain her
pardon, which will restore some little of that charm of yours, by which you won
her love before your marriage.
“But what policy is it that demands this course of action? Is there such a
policy?”
Certainly there is.
But what address, what tact, what histrionic art must a husband possess in
order to display the mimic wealth of that treasure which we are about to reveal
to him! In order to counterfeit the passion whose fire is to make you a new man
in the presence of your wife, you will require all the cunning of Talma.
This passion is JEALOUSY.
“My husband is jealous. He has been so from the beginning of our marriage. He
has concealed this feeling from me by his usual refined delicacy. Does he love
me still? I am going to do as I like with him!”
Such are the discoveries which a woman is bound to make, one after another, in
accordance with the charming scenes of the comedy which you are enacting for
your amusement; and a man of the world must be an actual fool, if he fails in
making a woman believe that which flatters her.
With what perfection of hypocrisy must you arrange, step by step, your
hypocritical behavior so as to rouse the curiosity of your wife, to engage her
in a new study, and to lead her astray among the labyrinths of your thought!
Ye sublime actors! Do ye divine the diplomatic reticence, the gestures of
artifice, the veiled words, the looks of doubtful meaning which some evening
may induce your wife to attempt the capture of your secret thoughts?
Ah! to laugh in your sleeve while you are exhibiting the fierceness of a tiger;
neither to lie nor to tell the truth; to comprehend the capricious mood of a
woman, and yet to make her believe that she controls you, while you intend to
bind her with a collar of iron! O comedy that has no audience, which yet is
played by one heart before another heart and where both of you applaud because
both of you think that you have obtained success!
She it is who will tell you that you are jealous, who will point out to you
that she knows you better than you know yourself, who will prove to you the
uselessness of your artifices and who perhaps will defy you. She triumphs in
the excited consciousness of the superiority which she thinks she possesses
over you; you of course are ennobled in her eyes; for she finds your conduct
quite natural. The only thing she feels is that your want of confidence was
useless; if she wished to betray, who could hinder her?
Then, some evening, you will burst into a passion, and, as some trifle affords
you a pretext, you will make a scene, in the course of which your anger will
make you divulge the secret of your distress. And here comes in the
promulgation of our new code.
Have no fear that a woman is going to trouble herself about this. She needs
your jealousy, she rather likes your severity. This comes from the fact that in
the first place she finds there a justification for her own conduct; and then
she finds immense satisfaction in playing before other people the part of a
victim. What delightful expressions of sympathy will she receive! Afterwards
she will use this as a weapon against you, in the expectation thereby of
leading you into a pitfall.
She sees in your conduct the source of a thousand more pleasures in her future
treachery, and her imagination smiles at all the barricades with which you
surround her, for will she not have the delight of surmounting them all?
Women understand better than we do the art of analyzing the two human feelings,
which alternately form their weapons of attack, or the weapons of which they
are victims. They have the instinct of love, because it is their whole life,
and of jealousy, because it is almost the only means by which they can control
us. Within them jealousy is a genuine sentiment and springs from the instinct
of self-preservation; it is vital to their life or death. But with men this
feeling is absolutely absurd when it does not subserve some further end.
To entertain feelings of jealousy towards the woman you love, is to start from
a position founded on vicious reasoning. We are loved, or we are not loved; if
a man entertains jealousy under either of these circumstances, it is a feeling
absolutely unprofitable to him; jealousy may be explained as fear, fear in
love. But to doubt one’s wife is to doubt one’s self.
To be jealous is to exhibit, at once, the height of egotism, the error of
amour-propre, the vexation of morbid vanity. Women rather encourage this
ridiculous feeling, because by means of it they can obtain cashmere shawls,
silver toilet sets, diamonds, which for them mark the high thermometer mark of
their power. Moreover, unless you appear blinded by jealousy, your wife will
not keep on her guard; for there is no pitfall which she does not distrust,
excepting that which she makes for herself.
Thus the wife becomes the easy dupe of a husband who is clever enough to give
to the inevitable revolution, which comes sooner or later, the advantageous
results we have indicated.
You must import into your establishment that remarkable phenomenon whose
existence is demonstrated in the asymptotes of geometry. Your wife will always
try to minotaurize you without being successful. Like those knots which are
never so tight as when one tries to loosen them, she will struggle to the
advantage of your power over her, while she believes that she is struggling for
her independence.
The highest degree of good play on the part of a prince lies in persuading his
people that he goes to war for them, while all the time he is causing them to
be killed for his throne.
But many husbands will find a preliminary difficulty in executing this plan of
campaign. If your wife is a woman of profound dissimulation, the question is,
what signs will indicate to her the motives of your long mystification?
It will be seen that our Meditation on the Custom House, as well as that on the
Bed, has already revealed certain means of discerning the thought of a woman;
but we make no pretence in this book of exhaustively stating the resources of
human wit, which are immeasurable. Now here is a proof of this. On the day of
the Saturnalia the Romans discovered more features in the character of their
slaves, in ten minutes, than they would have found out during the rest of the
year! You ought therefore to ordain Saturnalia in your establishment, and to
imitate Gessler, who, when he saw William Tell shoot the apple off his son’s
head, was forced to remark, “Here is a man whom I must get rid of, for he could
not miss his aim if he wished to kill me.”
You understand, then, that if your wife wishes to drink Roussillon wine, to eat
mutton chops, to go out at all hours and to read the encyclopaedia, you are
bound to take her very seriously. In the first place, she will begin to
distrust you against her own wish, on seeing that your behaviour towards her is
quite contrary to your previous proceedings. She will suppose that you have
some ulterior motive in this change of policy, and therefore all the liberty
that you give her will make her so anxious that she cannot enjoy it. As regards
the misfortunes that this change may bring, the future will provide for them.
In a revolution the primary principle is to exercise a control over the evil
which cannot be prevented and to attract the lightning by rods which shall lead
it to the earth.
And now the last act of the comedy is in preparation.
The lover who, from the day when the feeblest of all first symptoms shows
itself in your wife until the moment when the marital revolution takes place,
has jumped upon the stage, either as a material creature or as a being of the
imagination—the LOVER, summoned by a sign from her, now declares: “Here I am!”
OF THE LOVER.
We offer the following maxims for your consideration:
We should despair of the human race if these maxims had been made before 1830;
but they set forth in so clear a manner the agreements and difficulties which
distinguish you, your wife and a lover; they so brilliantly describe what your
policy should be, and demonstrate to you so accurately the strength of the
enemy, that the teacher has put his amour-propre aside, and if by chance
you find here a single new thought, send it to the devil, who suggested this
work.
LXV.
To speak of love is to make love.
LXVI.
In a lover the coarsest desire always shows itself as a burst of honest
admiration.
LXVII.
A lover has all the good points and all the bad points which are lacking in a
husband.
LXVIII.
A lover not only gives life to everything, he makes one forget life; the
husband does not give life to anything.
LXIX. All the affected airs of sensibility which a woman puts on invariably
deceive a lover; and on occasions when a husband shrugs his shoulders, a lover
is in ecstasies.
LXX.
A lover betrays by his manner alone the degree of intimacy in which he stands
to a married woman.
LXXI. A woman does not always know why she is in love. It is rarely that a man
falls in love without some selfish purpose. A husband should discover this
secret motive of egotism, for it will be to him the lever of Archimedes.
LXXII.
A clever husband never betrays his supposition that his wife has a lover.
LXXIII. The lover submits to all the caprices of a woman; and as a man is never
vile while he lies in the arms of his mistress, he will take the means to
please her that a husband would recoil from.
LXXIV.
A lover teaches a wife all that her husband has concealed from her.
LXXV. All the sensations which a woman yields to her lover, she gives in
exchange; they return to her always intensified; they are as rich in what they
give as in what they receive. This is the kind of commerce in which almost all
husbands end by being bankrupt.
LXXVI. A lover speaks of nothing to a woman but that which exalts her; while a
husband, although he may be a loving one, can never refrain from giving advice
which always has the appearance of reprimand.
LXXVII.
A lover always starts from his mistress to himself; with a husband the contrary
is the case.
LXXVIII. A lover always has a desire to appear amiable. There is in this
sentiment an element of exaggeration which leads to ridicule; study how to take
advantage of this.
LXXIX. When a crime has been committed the magistrate who investigates the case
knows [excepting in the case of a released convict who commits murder in jail]
that there are not more than five persons to whom he can attribute the act. He
starts from this premise a series of conjectures. The husband should reason
like the judge; there are only three people in society whom he can suspect when
seeking the lover of his wife.
LXXX.
A lover is never in the wrong.
LXXXI. The lover of a married woman says to her: “Madame, you have need of
rest. You have to give an example of virtue to your children. You have sworn to
make your husband happy, and although he has some faults—he has fewer than I
have—he is worthy of your esteem. Nevertheless you have sacrificed everything
for me. Do not let a single murmur escape you; for regret is an offence which I
think worthy of a severer penalty than the law decrees against infidelity. As a
reward for these sacrifices, I will bring you as much pleasure as pain.” And
the incredible part about it is, that the lover triumphs. The form which his
speech takes carries it. He says but one phrase: “I love you.” A lover is a
herald who proclaims either the merit, the beauty, or the wit of a woman. What
does a husband proclaim?
To sum up all, the love which a married woman inspires, or that which she gives
back, is the least creditable sentiment in the world; in her it is boundless
vanity; in her lover it is selfish egotism. The lover of a married woman
contracts so many obligations, that scarcely three men in a century are met
with who are capable of discharging them. He ought to dedicate his whole life
to his mistress, but he always ends by deserting her; both parties are aware of
this, and, from the beginning of social life, the one has always been sublime
in self-sacrifice, the other an ingrate. The infatuation of love always rouses
the pity of the judges who pass sentence on it. But where do you find such love
genuine and constant? What power must a husband possess to struggle
successfully against a man who casts over a woman a spell strong enough to make
her submit to such misfortunes!
We think, then, as a general rule, a husband, if he knows how to use the means
of defence which we have outlined, can lead his wife up to her twenty-seventh
year, not without her having chosen a lover, but without her having committed
the great crime. Here and there we meet with men endowed with deep marital
genius, who can keep their wives, body and soul to themselves alone up to their
thirtieth or thirty-fifth year; but these exceptions cause a sort of scandal
and alarm. The phenomenon scarcely ever is met with excepting in the country,
where life is transparent and people live in glass houses and the husband
wields immense power. The miraculous assistance which men and things thus give
to a husband always vanishes in the midst of a city whose population reaches to
two hundred and fifty thousand.
It would therefore almost appear to be demonstrated that thirty is the age of
virtue. At that critical period, a woman becomes so difficult to guard, that in
order successfully to enchain her within the conjugal Paradise, resort must be
had to those last means of defence which remain to be described, and which we
will reveal in the Essay on Police, the Art of Returning Home,
and Catastrophes.
ESSAY ON POLICE.
The police of marriage consist of all those means which are given you by law,
manners, force, and stratagem for preventing your wife in her attempt to
accomplish those three acts which in some sort make up the life of love:
writing, seeing and speaking.
The police combine in greater or less proportion the means of defence put forth
in the preceding Meditations. Instinct alone can teach in what proportions and
on what occasions these compounded elements are to be employed. The whole
system is elastic; a clever husband will easily discern how it must be bent,
stretched or retrenched. By the aid of the police a man can guide his wife to
her fortieth year pure from any fault.
We will divide this treatise on Police into five captions:
In spite of the grave crisis which the husband has reached, we do not suppose
that the lover has completely acquired the freedom of the city in the marital
establishment. Many husbands often suspect that their wives have a lover, and
yet they do not know upon which of the five or six chosen ones of whom we have
spoken their suspicions ought to fall. This hesitation doubtless springs from
some moral infirmity, to whose assistance the professor must come.
Fouche had in Paris three or four houses resorted to by people of the highest
distinction; the mistresses of these dwellings were devoted to him. This
devotion cost a great deal of money to the state. The minister used to call
these gatherings, of which nobody at the time had any suspicion, his
mouse-traps. More than one arrest was made at the end of the ball at
which the most brilliant people of Paris had been made accomplices of this
oratorian.
The act of offering some fragments of roasted nuts, in order to see your wife
put her white hand in the trap, is certainly exceedingly delicate, for a woman
is certain to be on her guard; nevertheless, we reckon upon at least three
kinds of mouse-traps: The Irresistible, The Fallacious, and that
which is Touch and Go.
The Irresistible.
Suppose two husbands, we will call them A and B, wish to discover who are the
lovers of their wives. We will put the husband A at the centre of a table
loaded with the finest pyramids of fruit, of crystals, of candies and of
liqueurs, and the husband B shall be at whatever point of this brilliant circle
you may please to suppose. The champagne has gone round, every eye is sparkling
and every tongue is wagging.
HUSBAND A. (peeling a chestnut)—Well, as for me, I admire literary people, but
from a distance. I find them intolerable; in conversation they are despotic; I
do not know what displeases me more, their faults or their good qualities. In
short (he swallows his chestnut), people of genius are like tonics—you like,
but you must use them temperately.
WIFE B. (who has listened attentively)—But, M. A., you are very exacting (with
an arch smile); it seems to me that dull people have as many faults as people
of talent, with this difference perhaps, that the former have nothing to atone
for them!
HUSBAND A. (irritably)—You will agree at least, madame, that they are not very
amiable to you.
WIFE B. (with vivacity)—Who told you so?
HUSBAND A. (smiling)—Don’t they overwhelm you all the time with their
superiority? Vanity so dominates their souls that between you and them the
effort is reciprocal—
THE MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE. (aside to Wife A)—You well deserved it, my dear.
(Wife A shrugs her shoulders.)
HUSBAND A. (still continuing)—Then the habit they have of combining ideas which
reveal to them the mechanism of feeling! For them love is purely physical and
every one knows that they do not shine.
WIFE B. (biting her lips, interrupting him)—It seems to me, sir, that we are
the sole judges in this matter. I can well understand why men of the world do
not like men of letters! But it is easier to criticise than to imitate them.
HUSBAND A. (disdainfully)—Oh, madame, men of the world can assail the authors
of the present time without being accused of envy. There is many a gentleman of
the drawing-room, who if he undertook to write—
WIFE B. (with warmth)—Unfortunately for you, sir, certain friends of yours in
the Chamber have written romances; have you been able to read them?—But really,
in these days, in order to attain the least originality, you must undertake
historic research, you must—
HUSBAND B. (making no answer to the lady next him and speaking aside) —Oh! Oh!
Can it be that it is M. de L——-, author of the Dreams of a Young Girl,
whom my wife is in love with?—That is singular; I thought that it was Doctor
M——-. But stay! (Aloud.) Do you know, my dear, that you are right in what you
say? (All laugh.) Really, I should prefer to have always artists and men of
letters in my drawing-room—(aside) when we begin to receive!—rather than to see
there other professional men. In any case artists speak of things about which
every one is enthusiastic, for who is there who does not believe in good taste?
But judges, lawyers, and, above all, doctors—Heavens! I confess that to hear
them constantly speaking about lawsuits and diseases, those two human ills—
WIFE A. (sitting next to Husband B, speaking at the same time)—What is that you
are saying, my friend? You are quite mistaken. In these days nobody wishes to
wear a professional manner; doctors, since you have mentioned doctors, try to
avoid speaking of professional matters. They talk politics, discuss the
fashions and the theatres, they tell anecdotes, they write books better than
professional authors do; there is a vast difference between the doctors of
to-day and those of Moliere—
HUSBAND A. (aside)—Whew! Is it possible my wife is in love with Dr. M——-? That
would be odd. (Aloud.) That is quite possible, my dear, but I would not give a
sick dog in charge of a physician who writes.
WIFE A. (interrupting her husband)—I know people who have five or six offices,
yet the government has the greatest confidence in them; anyway, it is odd that
you should speak in this way, you who were one of Dr. M——-’s great cases—
HUSBAND A. (aside)—There can be no doubt of it!
The Fallacious.
A HUSBAND. (as he reaches home)—My dear, we are invited by Madame de
Fischtaminel to a concert which she is giving next Tuesday. I reckoned on going
there, as I wanted to speak with a young cousin of the minister who was among
the singers; but he is gone to Frouville to see his aunt. What do you propose
doing?
HIS WIFE.—These concerts tire me to death!—You have to sit nailed to your chair
whole hours without saying a word.—Besides, you know quite well that we dine
with my mother on that day, and it is impossible to miss paying her a visit.
HER HUSBAND. (carelessly)—Ah! that is true.
(Three days afterwards.)
THE HUSBAND. (as he goes to bed)—What do you think, my darling? To-morrow I
will leave you at your mother’s, for the count has returned from Frouville and
will be at Madame de Fischtaminel’s concert.
HIS WIFE. (vivaciously)—But why should you go alone? You know how I adore
music!
The Touch and Go Mouse-Trap.
THE WIFE.—Why did you go away so early this evening?
THE HUSBAND. (mysteriously)—Ah! It is a sad business, and all the more so
because I don’t know how I can settle it.
THE WIFE.—What is it all about, Adolph? You are a wretch if you do not tell me
what you are going to do!
THE HUSBAND.—My dear, that ass of a Prosper Magnan is fighting a duel with M.
de Fontanges, on account of an Opera singer.—But what is the matter with you?
THE WIFE.—Nothing.—It is very warm in this room and I don’t know what ails me,
for the whole day I have been suffering from sudden flushing of the face.
THE HUSBAND. (aside)—She is in love with M. de Fontanges. (Aloud.) Celestine!
(He shouts out still louder.) Celestine! Come quick, madame is ill!
You will understand that a clever husband will discover a thousand ways of
setting these three kinds of traps.
To write a letter, and to have it posted; to get an answer, to read it and burn
it; there we have correspondence stated in the simplest terms.
Yet consider what immense resources are given by civilization, by our manners
and by our love to the women who wish to conceal these material actions from
the scrutiny of a husband.
The inexorable box which keeps its mouth open to all comers receives its
epistolary provender from all hands.
There is also the fatal invention of the General Delivery. A lover finds in the
world a hundred charitable persons, male and female, who, for a slight
consideration, will slip the billets-doux into the amorous and intelligent hand
of his fair mistress.
A correspondence is a variable as Proteus. There are sympathetic inks. A young
celibate has told us in confidence that he has written a letter on the fly-leaf
of a new book, which, when the husband asked for it of the bookseller, reached
the hands of his mistress, who had been prepared the evening before for this
charming article.
A woman in love, who fears her husband’s jealousy, will write and read
billets-doux during the time consecrated to those mysterious occupations during
which the most tyrannical husband must leave her alone.
Moreover, all lovers have the art of arranging a special code of signals, whose
arbitrary import it is difficult to understand. At a ball, a flower placed in
some odd way in the hair; at the theatre, a pocket handkerchief unfolded on the
front of the box; rubbing the nose, wearing a belt of a particular color,
putting the hat on one side, wearing one dress oftener than another, singing a
certain song in a concert or touching certain notes on the piano; fixing the
eyes on a point agreed; everything, in fact, from the hurdy-gurdy which passes
your windows and goes away if you open the shutter, to the newspaper
announcement of a horse for sale—all may be reckoned as correspondence.
How many times, in short, will a wife craftily ask her husband to do such and
such commission for her, to go to such and such a shop or house, having
previously informed her lover that your presence at such or such a place means
yes or no?
On this point the professor acknowledges with shame that there is no possible
means of preventing correspondence between lovers. But a little machiavelism on
the part of the husband will be much more likely to remedy the difficulty than
any coercive measures.
An agreement, which should be kept sacred between married people, is their
solemn oath that they will respect each other’s sealed letters. Clever is the
husband who makes this pledge on his wedding-day and is able to keep it
conscientiously.
In giving your wife unrestrained liberty to write and to receive letters, you
will be enabled to discern the moment she begins to correspond with a lover.
But suppose your wife distrusts you and covers with impenetrable clouds the
means she takes to conceal from you her correspondence. Is it not then time to
display that intellectual power with which we armed you in our Meditation
entitled Of the Custom House? The man who does not see when his wife
writes to her lover, and when she receives an answer, is a failure as a
husband.
The proposed study which you ought to bestow upon the movements, the actions,
the gestures, the looks of your wife, will be perhaps troublesome and wearying,
but it will not last long; the only point is to discover when your wife and her
lover correspond and in what way.
We cannot believe that a husband, even of moderate intelligence, will fail to
see through this feminine manoeuvre, when once he suspects its existence.
Meanwhile, you can judge from a single incident what means of police and of
restraint remain to you in the event of such a correspondence.
A young lawyer, whose ardent passion exemplified certain of the principles
dwelt upon in this important part of our work, had married a young person whose
love for him was but slight; yet this circumstance he looked upon as an
exceedingly happy one; but at the end of his first year of marriage he
perceived that his dear Anna [for Anna was her name] had fallen in love with
the head clerk of a stock-broker.
Adolph was a young man of about twenty-five, handsome in face and as fond of
amusement as any other celibate. He was frugal, discreet, possessed of an
excellent heart, rode well, talked well, had fine black hair always curled, and
dressed with taste. In short, he would have done honor and credit to a duchess.
The advocate was ugly, short, stumpy, square-shouldered, mean-looking, and,
moreover, a husband. Anna, tall and pretty, had almond eyes, white skin and
refined features. She was all love; and passion lighted up her glance with a
bewitching expression. While her family was poor, Maitre Lebrun had an income
of twelve thousand francs. That explains all.
One evening Lebrun got home looking extremely chop-fallen. He went into his
study to work; but he soon came back shivering to his wife, for he had caught a
fever and hurriedly went to bed. There he lay groaning and lamenting for his
clients and especially for a poor widow whose fortune he was to save the very
next day by effecting a compromise. An appointment had been made with certain
business men and he was quite incapable of keeping it. After having slept for a
quarter of an hour, he begged his wife in a feeble voice to write to one of his
intimate friends, asking him to take his (Lebrun’s) place next day at the
conference. He dictated a long letter and followed with his eye the space taken
up on the paper by his phrases. When he came to begin the second page of the
last sheet, the advocate set out to describe to his confrere the joy which his
client would feel on the signing of the compromise, and the fatal page began
with these words:
“My good friend, go for Heaven’s sake to Madame Vernon’s at once; you are
expected with impatience there; she lives at No. 7 Rue de Sentier. Pardon my
brevity; but I count on your admirable good sense to guess what I am unable to
explain.
“Tout a vous,”
“Give me the letter,” said the lawyer, “that I may see whether it is correct
before signing it.”
The unfortunate wife, who had been taken off her guard by this letter, which
bristled with the most barbarous terms of legal science, gave up the letter. As
soon as Lebrun got possession of the wily script he began to complain, to twist
himself about, as if in pain, and to demand one little attention after another
of his wife. Madame left the room for two minutes during which the advocate
leaped from his bed, folded a piece of paper in the form of a letter and hid
the missive written by his wife. When Anna returned, the clever husband seized
the blank paper, made her address it to the friend of his, to whom the letter
which he had taken out was written, and the poor creature handed the blank
letter to his servant. Lebrun seemed to grow gradually calmer; he slept or
pretended to do so, and the next morning he still affected to feel strange
pains. Two days afterwards he tore off the first leaf of the letter and put an
“e” to the word tout in the phrase “tout a vous.”[*] He folded
mysteriously the paper which contained the innocent forgery, sealed it, left
his bedroom and called the maid, saying to her:
[*] Thus giving a feminine ending to the signature, and lending the impression
that the note emanated from the wife personally—J.W.M.
“Madame begs that you will take this to the house of M. Adolph; now, be quick
about it.”
He saw the chambermaid leave the house and soon afterwards he, on a plea of
business, went out, hurried to Rue de Sentier, to the address indicated, and
awaited the arrival of his rival at the house of a friend who was in the secret
of his stratagem. The lover, intoxicated with happiness, rushed to the place
and inquired for Madame de Vernon; he was admitted and found himself face to
face with Maitre Lebrun, who showed a countenance pale but chill, and gazed at
him with tranquil but implacable glance.
“Sir,” he said in a tone of emotion to the young clerk, whose heart palpitated
with terror, “you are in love with my wife, and you are trying to please her; I
scarcely know how to treat you in return for this, because in your place and at
your age I should have done exactly the same. But Anna is in despair; you have
disturbed her happiness, and her heart is filled with the torments of hell.
Moreover, she has told me all, a quarrel soon followed by a reconciliation
forced her to write the letter which you have received, and she has sent me
here in her place. I will not tell you, sir, that by persisting in your plan of
seduction you will cause the misery of her you love, that you will forfeit her
my esteem, and eventually your own; that your crime will be stamped on the
future by causing perhaps sorrow to my children. I will not even speak to you
of the bitterness you will infuse into my life;—unfortunately these are
commonplaces! But I declare to you, sir, that the first step you take in this
direction will be the signal for a crime; for I will not trust the risk of a
duel in order to stab you to the heart!”
And the eyes of the lawyer flashed ominously.
“Now, sir,” he went on in a gentler voice, “you are young, you have a generous
heart. Make a sacrifice for the future happiness of her you love; leave her and
never see her again. And if you must needs be a member of my family, I have a
young aunt who is yet unsettled in life; she is charming, clever and rich. Make
her acquaintance, and leave a virtuous woman undisturbed.”
This mixture of raillery and intimidation, together with the unwavering glance
and deep voice of the husband, produced a remarkable impression on the lover.
He remained for a moment utterly confused, like people overcome with passion
and deprived of all presence of mind by a sudden shock. If Anna has since then
had any lovers [which is a pure hypothesis] Adolph certainly is not one of
them.
This occurrence may help you to understand that correspondence is a
double-edged weapon which is of as much advantage for the defence of the
husband as for the inconsistency of the wife. You should therefore encourage
correspondence for the same reason that the prefect of police takes special
care that the street lamps of Paris are kept lighted.
To come so low as to beg servants to reveal secrets to you, and to fall lower
still by paying for a revelation, is not a crime; it is perhaps not even a
dastardly act, but it is certainly a piece of folly; for nothing will ever
guarantee to you the honesty of a servant who betrays her mistress, and you can
never feel certain whether she is operating in your interest or in that of your
wife. This point therefore may be looked upon as beyond controversy.
Nature, that good and tender parent, has set round about the mother of a family
the most reliable and the most sagacious of spies, the most truthful and at the
same time the most discreet in the world. They are silent and yet they speak,
they see everything and appear to see nothing.
One day I met a friend of mine on the boulevard. He invited me to dinner, and
we went to his house. Dinner had been already served, and the mistress of the
house was helping her two daughters to plates of soup.
“I see here my first symptoms,” I said to myself.
We sat down. The first word of the husband, who spoke without thinking, and for
the sake of talking, was the question:
“Has any one been here to-day?”
“Not a soul,” replied his wife, without lifting her eyes.
I shall never forget the quickness with which the two daughters looked up to
their mother. The elder girl, aged eight, had something especially peculiar in
her glance. There was at the same time revelation and mystery, curiosity and
silence, astonishment and apathy in that look. If there was anything that could
be compared to the speed with which the light of candor flashed from their
eyes, it was the prudent reserve with which both of them closed down, like
shutters, the folds of their white eyelids.
Ye sweet and charming creatures, who from the age of nine even to the age of
marriage too often are the torment of a mother even when she is not a coquette,
is it by the privilege of your years or the instinct of your nature that your
young ears catch the faint sound of a man’s voice through walls and doors, that
your eyes are awake to everything, and that your young spirit busies itself in
divining all, even the meaning of a word spoken in the air, even the meaning of
your mother’s slightest gesture?
There is something of gratitude, something in fact instinctive, in the
predilection of fathers for their daughters and mothers for their sons.
But the act of setting spies which are in some way inanimate is mere dotage,
and nothing is easier than to find a better plan than that of the beadle, who
took it into his head to put egg-shells in his bed, and who obtained no other
sympathy from his confederate than the words, “You are not very successful in
breaking them.”
The Marshal de Saxe did not give much consolation to his Popeliniere when they
discovered in company that famous revolving chimney, invented by the Duc de
Richelieu.
“That is the finest piece of horn work that I have ever seen!” cried the victor
of Fontenoy.
Let us hope that your espionage will not give you so troublesome a lesson. Such
misfortunes are the fruits of the civil war and we do not live in that age.
The Pope puts books only on the Index; you will mark with a stigma of
reprobation men and things.
It is forbidden to madame to go into a bath except in her own house.
It is forbidden to madame to receive into her house him whom you suspect of
being her lover, and all those who are the accomplices of their love.
It is forbidden to madame to take a walk without you.
But the peculiarities which in each household originate from the diversity of
characters, the numberless incidents of passion, and the habits of the married
people give to this black book so many variations, the lines in it are
multiplied or erased with such rapidity that a friend of the author has called
this Index The History of Changes in the Marital Church.
There are only two things which can be controlled or prescribed in accordance
with definite rules; the first is the country, the second is the promenade.
A husband ought never to take his wife to the country nor permit her to go
there. Have a country home if you like, live there, entertain there nobody
excepting ladies or old men, but never leave your wife alone there. But to take
her, for even half a day, to the house of another man is to show yourself as
stupid as an ostrich.
To keep guard over a wife in the country is a task most difficult of
accomplishment. Do you think that you will be able to be in the thickets, to
climb the trees, to follow the tracks of a lover over the grass trodden down at
night, but straightened by the dew in the morning and refreshed by the rays of
the sun? Can you keep your eye on every opening in the fence of the park? Oh!
the country and the Spring! These are the two right arms of the celibate.
When a woman reaches the crisis at which we suppose her to be, a husband ought
to remain in town till the declaration of war, or to resolve on devoting
himself to all the delights of a cruel espionage.
With regard to the promenade: Does madame wish to go to parties, to the
theatre, to the Bois de Boulogne, to purchase her dresses, to find out what is
the fashion? Madame shall go, shall see everything in the respectable company
of her lord and master.
If she take advantage of the moment when a business appointment, which you
cannot fail to keep, detains you, in order to obtain your tacit permission to
some meditated expedition; if in order to obtain that permission she displays
all the witcheries of those cajoleries in which women excel and whose powerful
influence you ought already to have known, well, well, the professor implores
you to allow her to win you over, while at the same time you sell dear the boon
she asks; and above all convince this creature, whose soul is at once as
changeable as water and as firm as steel, that it is impossible for you from
the importance of your work to leave your study.
But as soon as your wife has set foot upon the street, if she goes on foot,
don’t give her time to make fifty steps; follow and track her in such a way
that you will not be noticed.
It is possible that there exist certain Werthers whose refined and delicate
souls recoil from this inquisition. But this is not more blamable than that of
a landed proprietor who rises at night and looks through the windows for the
purpose of keeping watch over the peaches on his espaliers. You will
probably by this course of action obtain, before the crime is committed, exact
information with regard to the apartments which so many lovers rent in the city
under fictitious names. If it happens [which God forbid!] that your wife enters
a house suspected by you, try to find out if the place has several exits.
Should your wife take a hack, what have you to fear? Is there not a prefect of
police, to whom all husbands ought to decree a crown of solid gold, and has he
not set up a little shed or bench where there is a register, an incorruptible
guardian of public morality? And does he not know all the comings and goings of
these Parisian gondolas?
One of the vital principles of our police will consist in always following your
wife to the furnishers of your house, if she is accustomed to visit them. You
will carefully find out whether there is any intimacy between her and her
draper, her dressmaker or her milliner, etc. In this case you will apply the
rules of the conjugal Custom House, and draw your own conclusions.
If in your absence your wife, having gone out against your will, tells you that
she had been to such a place, to such a shop, go there yourself the next day
and try to find out whether she has spoken the truth.
But passion will dictate to you, even better than the Meditation, the various
resources of conjugal tyranny, and we will here cut short these tiresome
instructions.
In outlining the portrait of a sane and sound husband (See Meditation on the
Predestined), we urgently advise that he should conceal from his wife the
real amount of his income.
In relying upon this as the foundation stone of our financial system we hope to
do something towards discounting the opinion, so very generally held, that a
man ought not to give the handling of his income to his wife. This principle is
one of the many popular errors and is one of the chief causes of
misunderstanding in the domestic establishment.
But let us, in the first place, deal with the question of heart, before we
proceed to that of money.
To draw up a little civil list for your wife and for the requirements of the
house and to pay her money as if it were a contribution, in twelve equal
portions month by month, has something in it that is a little mean and close,
and cannot be agreeable to any but sordid and mistrustful souls. By acting in
this way you prepare for yourself innumerable annoyances.
I could wish that during the first year of your mellifluous union, scenes more
or less delightful, pleasantries uttered in good taste, pretty purses and
caresses might accompany and might decorate the handing over of this monthly
gift; but the time will come when the self-will of your wife or some unforeseen
expenditure will compel her to ask a loan of the Chamber; I presume that you
will always grant her the bill of indemnity, as our unfaithful deputies never
fail to do. They pay, but they grumble; you must pay and at the same time
compliment her. I hope it will be so.
But in the crisis which we have reached, the provisions of the annual budget
can never prove sufficient. There must be an increase of fichus, of bonnets, of
frocks; there is an expense which cannot be calculated beforehand demanded by
the meetings, by the diplomatic messengers, by the ways and means of love, even
while the receipts remain the same as usual. Then must commence in your
establishment a course of education the most odious, and the most dreadful
which a woman can undergo. I know but few noble and generous souls who value,
more than millions, purity of heart, frankness of soul, and who would a
thousand times more readily pardon a passion than a lie, whose instinctive
delicacy has divined the existence of this plague of the soul, the lowest step
in human degradation.
Under these circumstances there occur in the domestic establishment the most
delightful scenes of love. It is then that a woman becomes utterly pliant and
like to the most brilliant of all the strings of a harp, when thrown before the
fire; she rolls round you, she clasps you, she holds you tight; she defers to
all your caprices; never was her conversation so full of tenderness; she
lavishes her endearments upon you, or rather she sells them to you; she at last
becomes lower than a chorus girl, for she prostitutes herself to her husband.
In her sweetest kisses there is money; in all her words there is money. In
playing this part her heart becomes like lead towards you. The most polished,
the most treacherous usurer never weighs so completely with a single glance the
future value in bullion of a son of a family who may sign a note to him, than
your wife appraises one of your desires as she leaps from branch to branch like
an escaping squirrel, in order to increase the sum of money she may demand by
increasing the appetite which she rouses in you. You must not expect to get
scot-free from such seductions. Nature has given boundless gifts of coquetry to
a woman, the usages of society have increased them tenfold by its fashions, its
dresses, its embroideries and its tippets.
“If I ever marry,” one of the most honorable generals of our ancient army used
to say, “I won’t put a sou among the wedding presents—”
“What will you put there then, general?” asked a young girl.
“The key of my safe.”
The young girl made a curtsey of approbation. She moved her little head with a
quiver like that of the magnetic needle; raised her chin slightly as if she
would have said:
“I would gladly marry the general in spite of his forty-five years.”
But with regard to money, what interest can you expect your wife to take in a
machine in which she is looked upon as a mere bookkeeper?
Now look at the other system.
In surrendering to your wife, with an avowal of absolute confidence in her,
two-thirds of your fortune and letting her as mistress control the conjugal
administration, you win from her an esteem which nothing can destroy, for
confidence and high-mindedness find powerful echoes in the heart of a woman.
Madame will be loaded with a responsibility which will often raise a barrier
against extravagances, all the stronger because it is she herself who has
created it in her heart. You yourself have made a portion of the work, and you
may be sure that from henceforth your wife will never perhaps dishonor herself.
Moreover, by seeking in this way a method of defence, consider what admirable
aids are offered to you by this plan of finances.
You will have in your house an exact estimate of the morality of your wife,
just as the quotations of the Bourse give you a just estimate of the degree of
confidence possessed by the government.
And doubtless, during the first years of your married life, your wife will take
pride in giving you every luxury and satisfaction which your money can afford.
She will keep a good table, she will renew the furniture, and the carriages;
she will always keep in her drawer a sum of money sacred to her well-beloved
and ready for his needs. But of course, in the actual circumstances of life,
the drawer will be very often empty and monsieur will spend a great deal too
much. The economies ordered by the Chamber never weigh heavily upon the clerks
whose income is twelve hundred francs; and you will be the clerk at twelve
hundred francs in your own house. You will laugh in your sleeve, because you
will have saved, capitalized, invested one-third of your income during a long
time, like Louis XV, who kept for himself a little separate treasury, “against
a rainy day,” he used to say.
Thus, if your wife speaks of economy, her discourse will be equal to the
varying quotations of the money-market. You will be able to divine the whole
progress of the lover by these financial fluctuations, and you will have
avoided all difficulties. E sempre bene.
If your wife fails to appreciate the excessive confidence, and dissipates in
one day a large proportion of your fortune, in the first place it is not
probable that this prodigality will amount to one-third of the revenue which
you have been saving for ten years; moreover you will learn, from the
Meditation on Catastrophes, that in the very crisis produced by the
follies of your wife, you will have brilliant opportunities of slaying the
Minotaur.
But the secret of the treasure which has been amassed by your thoughtfulness
need never be known till after your death; and if you have found it necessary
to draw upon it, in order to assist your wife, you must always let it be
thought that you have won at play, or made a loan from a friend.
These are the true principles which should govern the conjugal budget.
The police of marriage has its martyrology. We will cite but one instance which
will make plain how necessary it is for husbands who resort to severe measures
to keep watch over themselves as well as over their wives.
An old miser who lived at T——-, a pleasure resort if there ever was one, had
married a young and pretty woman, and he was so wrapped up in her and so
jealous that love triumphed over avarice; he actually gave up trade in order to
guard his wife more closely, but his only real change was that his covetousness
took another form. I acknowledge that I owe the greater portion of the
observations contained in this essay, which still is doubtless incomplete, to
the person who made a study of this remarkable marital phenomenon, to portray
which, one single detail will be amply sufficient. When he used to go to the
country, this husband never went to bed without secretly raking over the
pathways of his park, and he had a special rake for the sand of his terraces.
He had made a close study of the footprints made by the different members of
his household; and early in the morning he used to go and identify the tracks
that had been made there.
“All this is old forest land,” he used to say to the person I have referred to,
as he showed him over the park; “for nothing can be seen through the
brushwood.”
His wife fell in love with one of the most charming young men of the town. This
passion had continued for nine years bright and fresh in the hearts of the two
lovers, whose sole avowal had been a look exchanged in a crowded ball-room; and
while they danced together their trembling hands revealed through the scented
gloves the depth of their love. From that day they had both of them taken great
delight on those trifles which happy lovers never disdain. One day the young
man led his only confidant, with a mysterious air, into a chamber where he kept
under glass globes upon his table, with more care than he would have bestowed
upon the finest jewels in the world, the flowers that, in the excitement of the
dance, had fallen from the hair of his mistress, and the finery which had been
caught in the trees which she had brushed through in the park. He also
preserved there the narrow footprint left upon the clay soil by the lady’s
step.
“I could hear,” said this confidant to me afterwards, “the violent and
repressed palpitations of his heart sounding in the silence which we preserved
before the treasures of this museum of love. I raised my eyes to the ceiling,
as if to breathe to heaven the sentiment which I dared not utter. ‘Poor
humanity!’ I thought. ‘Madame de ——- told me that one evening at a ball you had
been found nearly fainting in her card-room?’ I remarked to him.
“‘I can well believe it,’ said he casting down his flashing glance, ‘I had
kissed her arm!—But,’ he added as he pressed my hand and shot at me a glance
that pierced my heart, ‘her husband at that time had the gout which threatened
to attack his stomach.’”
Some time afterwards, the old man recovered and seemed to take a new lease of
life; but in the midst of his convalescence he took to his bed one morning and
died suddenly. There were such evident symptoms of poisoning in the condition
of the dead man that the officers of justice were appealed to, and the two
lovers were arrested. Then was enacted at the court of assizes the most
heartrending scene that ever stirred the emotions of the jury. At the
preliminary examination, each of the two lovers without hesitation confessed to
the crime, and with one thought each of them was solely bent on saving, the one
her lover, the other his mistress. There were two found guilty, where justice
was looking for but a single culprit. The trial was entirely taken up with the
flat contradictions which each of them, carried away by the fury of devoted
love, gave to the admissions of the other. There they were united for the first
time, but on the criminals’ bench with a gendarme seated between them. They
were found guilty by the unanimous verdict of a weeping jury. No one among
those who had the barbarous courage to witness their conveyance to the scaffold
can mention them to-day without a shudder. Religion had won for them a
repentance for their crime, but could not induce them to abjure their love. The
scaffold was their nuptial bed, and there they slept together in the long night
of death.
THE ART OF RETURNING HOME.
Finding himself incapable of controlling the boiling transports of his anxiety,
many a husband makes the mistake of coming home and rushing into the presence
of his wife, with the object of triumphing over her weakness, like those bulls
of Spain, which, stung by the red banderillo, disembowel with furious
horns horses, matadors, picadors, toreadors and their attendants.
But oh! to enter with a tender gentle mien, like Mascarillo, who expects a
beating and becomes merry as a lark when he finds his master in a good humor!
Well—that is the mark of a wise man!—
“Yes, my darling, I know that in my absence you could have behaved badly!
Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy, but you have
only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your considerateness. Go on in
the same way and you will earn my eternal gratitude.”
Such are the ideas which ought to be expressed by your face and bearing, but
perhaps all the while you say to yourself:
“Probably he has been here!”
Always to bring home a pleasant face, is a rule which admits of no exception.
But the art of never leaving your house without returning when the police have
revealed to you a conspiracy—to know how to return at the right time—this is
the lesson which is hard to learn. In this matter everything depends upon tact
and penetration. The actual events of life always transcend anything that is
imaginable.
The manner of coming home is to be regulated in accordance with a number of
circumstances. For example:
Lord Catesby was a man of remarkable strength. It happened one day that he was
returning from a fox hunt, to which he had doubtless promised to go, with some
ulterior view, for he rode towards the fence of his park at a point where, he
said, he saw an extremely fine horse. As he had a passion for horses, he drew
near to examine this one close at hand, There he caught sight of Lady Catesby,
to whose rescue it was certainly time to go, if he were in the slightest degree
jealous for his own honor. He rushed upon the gentleman he saw there, and
seizing him by the belt he hurled him over the fence on to the road side.
“Remember, sir,” he said calmly, “it rests with me to decide whether it well be
necessary to address you hereafter and ask for satisfaction on this spot.”
“Very well, my lord; but would you have the goodness to throw over my horse
also?”
But the phlegmatic nobleman had already taken the arm of his wife as he gravely
said:
“I blame you very much, my dear creature, for not having told me that I was to
love you for two. Hereafter every other day I shall love you for the gentleman
yonder, and all other days for myself.”
This adventure is regarded in England as one of the best returns home that were
ever known. It is true it consisted in uniting, with singular felicity,
eloquence of deed to that of word.
But the art of re-entering your home, principles of which are nothing else but
natural deductions from the system of politeness and dissimulation which have
been commended in preceding Meditations, is after all merely to be studied in
preparation for the conjugal catastrophes which we will now consider.
OF CATASTROPHES.
The word Catastrophe is a term of literature which signifies the final
climax of a play.
To bring about a catastrophe in the drama which you are playing is a method of
defence which is as easy to undertake as it is certain to succeed. In advising
to employ it, we would not conceal from you its perils.
The conjugal catastrophe may be compared to one of those high fevers which
either carry off a predisposed subject or completely restore his health. Thus,
when the catastrophe succeeds, it keeps a woman for years in the prudent realms
of virtue.
Moreover, this method is the last of all those which science has been able to
discover up to this present moment.
The massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Sicilian Vespers, the death of Lucretia,
the two embarkations of Napoleon at Frejus are examples of political
catastrophe. It will not be in your power to act on such a large scale;
nevertheless, within their own area, your dramatic climaxes in conjugal life
will not be less effective than these.
But since the art of creating a situation and of transforming it, by the
introduction of natural incidents, constitutes genius; since the return to
virtue of a woman, whose foot has already left some tracks upon the sweet and
gilded sand which mark the pathway of vice, is the most difficult to bring
about of all denouements, and since genius neither knows it nor teaches it, the
practitioner in conjugal laws feels compelled to confess at the outset that he
is incapable of reducing to definite principles a science which is as
changeable as circumstances, as delusive as opportunity, and as indefinable as
instinct.
If we may use an expression which neither Diderot, d’Alembert nor Voltaire, in
spite of every effort, have been able to engraft on our language, a conjugal
catastrophe se subodore is scented from afar; so that our only course
will be to sketch out imperfectly certain conjugal situations of an analogous
kind, thus imitating the philosopher of ancient time who, seeking in vain to
explain motion, walked forward in his attempt to comprehend laws which were
incomprehensible.
A husband, in accordance with the principles comprised in our Meditation on
Police, will expressly forbid his wife to receive the visits of a
celibate whom he suspects of being her lover, and whom she has promised never
again to see. Some minor scenes of the domestic interior we leave for
matrimonial imaginations to conjure up; a husband can delineate them much
better than we can; he will betake himself in thought back to those days when
delightful longings invited sincere confidences and when the workings of his
policy put into motion certain adroitly handled machinery.
Let us suppose, in order to make more interesting the natural scene to which I
refer, that you who read are a husband, whose carefully organized police has
made the discovery that your wife, profiting by the hours devoted by you to a
ministerial banquet, to which she probably procured you an invitation, received
at your house M. A——z.
Here we find all the conditions necessary to bring about the finest possible of
conjugal catastrophes.
You return home just in time to find your arrival has coincided with that of M.
A——z, for we would not advise you to have the interval between acts too long.
But in what mood should you enter? Certainly not in accordance with the rules
of the previous Meditation. In a rage then? Still less should you do that. You
should come in with good-natured carelessness, like an absent-minded man who
has forgotten his purse, the statement which he has drawn up for the minister,
his pocket-handkerchief or his snuff-box.
In that case you will either catch two lovers together, or your wife,
forewarned by the maid, will have hidden the celibate.
Now let us consider these two unique situations.
But first of all we will observe that husbands ought always to be in a position
to strike terror in their homes and ought long before to make preparations for
the matrimonial second of September.
Thus a husband, from the moment that his wife has caused him to perceive
certain first symptoms, should never fail to give, time after time, his
personal opinion on the course of conduct to be pursued by a husband in a great
matrimonial crisis.
“As for me,” you should say, “I should have no hesitation in killing the man I
caught at my wife’s feet.”
With regard to the discussion that you will thus give rise to, you will be led
on to aver that the law ought to have given to the husband, as it did in
ancient Rome, the right of life and death over his children, so that he could
slay those who were spurious.
These ferocious opinions, which really do not bind you to anything, will
impress your wife with salutary terror; you will enumerate them lightly, even
laughingly—and say to her, “Certainly, my dear, I would kill you right gladly.
Would you like to be murdered by me?”
A woman cannot help fearing that this pleasantry may some day become a very
serious matter, for in these crimes of impulse there is a certain proof of
love; and then women who know better than any one else how to say true things
laughingly at times suspect their husbands of this feminine trick.
When a husband surprises his wife engaged in even innocent conversation with
her lover, his face still calm, should produce the effect mythologically
attributed to the celebrated Gorgon.
In order to produce a favorable catastrophe at this juncture, you must act in
accordance with the character of your wife, either play a pathetic scene a la
Diderot, or resort to irony like Cicero, or rush to your pistols loaded with a
blank charge, or even fire them off, if you think that a serious row is
indispensable.
A skillful husband may often gain a great advantage from a scene of
unexaggerated sentimentality. He enters, he sees the lover and transfixes him
with a glance. As soon as the celibate retires, he falls at the feet of his
wife, he declaims a long speech, in which among other phrases there occurs
this:
“Why, my dear Caroline, I have never been able to love you as I should!”
He weeps, and she weeps, and this tearful catastrophe leaves nothing to be
desired.
We would explain, apropos of the second method by which the catastrophe may be
brought about, what should be the motives which lead a husband to vary this
scene, in accordance with the greater or less degree of strength which his
wife’s character possesses.
Let us pursue this subject.
If by good luck it happens that your wife has put her lover in a place of
concealment, the catastrophe will be very much more successful.
Even if the apartment is not arranged according to the principles prescribed in
the Meditation, you will easily discern the place into which the celibate has
vanished, although he be not, like Lord Byron’s Don Juan, bundled up under the
cushion of a divan. If by chance your apartment is in disorder, you ought to
have sufficient discernment to know that there is only one place in which a man
could bestow himself. Finally, if by some devilish inspiration he has made
himself so small that he has squeezed into some unimaginable lurking-place (for
we may expect anything from a celibate), well, either your wife cannot help
casting a glance towards this mysterious spot, or she will pretend to look in
an exactly opposite direction, and then nothing is easier for a husband than to
set a mouse-trap for his wife.
The hiding-place being discovered, you must walk straight up to the lover. You
must meet him face to face!
And now you must endeavor to produce a fine effect. With your face turned
three-quarters towards him, you must raise your head with an air of
superiority. This attitude will enhance immensely the effect which you aim at
producing.
The most essential thing to do at this moment, is to overwhelm the celibate by
some crushing phrase which you have been manufacturing all the time; when you
have thus floored him, you will coldly show him the door. You will be very
polite, but as relentless as the executioner’s axe, and as impassive as the
law. This freezing contempt will already probably have produced a revolution in
the mind of your wife. There must be no shouts, no gesticulations, no
excitement. “Men of high social rank,” says a young English author, “never
behave like their inferiors, who cannot lose a fork without sounding the alarm
throughout the whole neighborhood.”
When the celibate has gone, you will find yourself alone with your wife, and
then is the time when you must subjugate her forever.
You should therefore stand before her, putting on an air whose affected
calmness betrays the profoundest emotion; then you must choose from among the
following topics, which we have rhetorically amplified, and which are most
congenial to your feelings: “Madame,” you must say, “I will speak to you
neither of your vows, nor of my love; for you have too much sense and I have
too much pride to make it possible that I should overwhelm you with those
execrations, which all husbands have a right to utter under these
circumstances; for the least of the mistakes that I should make, if I did so,
is that I would be fully justified. I will not now, even if I could, indulge
either in wrath or resentment. It is not I who have been outraged; for I have
too much heart to be frightened by that public opinion which almost always
treats with ridicule and condemnation a husband whose wife has misbehaved. When
I examine my life, I see nothing there that makes this treachery deserved by
me, as it is deserved by many others. I still love you. I have never been
false, I will not say to my duty, for I have found nothing onerous in adoring
you, but not even to those welcome obligations which sincere feeling imposes
upon us both. You have had all my confidence and you have also had the
administration of my fortune. I have refused you nothing. And now this is the
first time that I have turned to you a face, I will not say stern, but which is
yet reproachful. But let us drop this subject, for it is of no use for me to
defend myself at a moment when you have proved to me with such energy that
there is something lacking in me, and that I am not intended by nature to
accomplish the difficult task of rendering you happy. But I would ask you, as a
friend speaking to a friend, how could you have the heart to imperil at the
same time the lives of three human creatures: that of the mother of my
children, who will always be sacred to me; that of the head of the family; and
finally of him—who loves—[she perhaps at these words will throw herself at your
feet; you must not permit her to do so; she is unworthy of kneeling there]. For
you no longer love me, Eliza. Well, my poor child [you must not call her my
poor child excepting when the crime has not been committed]—why deceive
ourselves? Why do you not answer me? If love is extinguished between a married
couple, cannot friendship and confidence still survive? Are we not two
companions united in making the same journey? Can it be said that during the
journey the one must never hold out his hand to the other to raise up a comrade
or to prevent a comrade’s fall? But I have perhaps said too much and I am
wounding your pride—Eliza! Eliza!”
Now what the deuce would you expect a woman to answer? Why a catastrophe
naturally follows, without a single word.
In a hundred women there may be found at least a good half dozen of feeble
creatures who under this violent shock return to their husbands never perhaps
again to leave them, like scorched cats that dread the fire. But this scene is
a veritable alexipharmaca, the doses of which should be measured out by prudent
hands.
For certain women of delicate nerves, whose souls are soft and timid, it would
be sufficient to point out the lurking-place where the lover lies, and say: “M.
A——z is there!” [at this point shrug your shoulders]. “How can you thus run the
risk of causing the death of two worthy people? I am going out; let him escape
and do not let this happen again.”
But there are women whose hearts, too violently strained in these terrible
catastrophes, fail them and they die; others whose blood undergoes a change,
and they fall a prey to serious maladies; others actually go out of their
minds. These are examples of women who take poison or die suddenly—and we do
not suppose that you wish the death of the sinner.
Nevertheless, the most beautiful and impressionable of all the queens of
France, the charming and unfortunate Mary Stuart, after having seen Rizzio
murdered almost in her arms, fell in love, nevertheless, with the Earl of
Bothwell; but she was a queen and queens are abnormal in disposition.
We will suppose, then, that the woman whose portrait adorns our first
Meditation is a little Mary Stuart, and we will hasten to raise the curtain for
the fifth act in this grand drama entitled Marriage.
A conjugal catastrophe may burst out anywhere, and a thousand incidents which
we cannot describe may give it birth. Sometimes it is a handkerchief, as in
Othello; or a pair of slippers, as in Don Juan; sometimes it is
the mistake of your wife, who cries out—“Dear Alphonse!” instead of “Dear
Adolph!” Sometimes a husband, finding out that his wife is in debt, will go and
call on her chief creditor, and will take her some morning to his house, as if
by chance, in order to bring about a catastrophe. “Monsieur Josse, you are a
jeweler and you sell your jewels with a readiness which is not equaled by the
readiness of your debtors to pay for them. The countess owes you thirty
thousand francs. If you wish to be paid to-morrow [tradesmen should always be
visited at the end of the month] come to her at noon; her husband will be in
the chamber. Do not attend to any sign which she may make to impose silence
upon you—speak out boldly. I will pay all.”
So that the catastrophe in the science of marriage is what figures are in
arithmetic.
All the principles of higher conjugal philosophy, on which are based the means
of defence outlined in this second part of our book, are derived from the
nature of human sentiments, and we have found them in different places in the
great book of the world. Just as persons of intellect instinctively apply the
laws of taste whose principles they would find difficulty in formulating, so we
have seen numberless people of deep feeling employing with singular felicity
the precepts which we are about to unfold, yet none of them consciously acted
on a definite system. The sentiments which this situation inspired only
revealed to them incomplete fragments of a vast system; just as the scientific
men of the sixteenth century found that their imperfect microscopes did not
enable them to see all the living organisms, whose existence had yet been
proved to them by the logic of their patient genius.
We hope that the observations already made in this book, and in those which
follow, will be of a nature to destroy the opinion which frivolous men
maintain, namely that marriage is a sinecure. According to our view, a husband
who gives way to ennui is a heretic, and more than that, he is a man who lives
quite out of sympathy with the marriage state, of whose importance he has no
conception. In this connection, these Meditations perhaps will reveal to very
many ignorant men the mysteries of a world before which they stand with open
eyes, yet without seeing it.
We hope, moreover, that these principles when well applied will produce many
conversions, and that among the pages that separate this second part from that
entitled Civil War many tears will be shed and many vows of repentance
breathed.
Yes, among the four hundred thousand honest women whom we have so carefully
sifted out from all the European nations, we indulge the belief that there are
a certain number, say three hundred thousand, who will be sufficiently
self-willed, charming, adorable, and bellicose to raise the standard of
Civil War.
To arms then, to arms!
“Lovely as the seraphs of Klopstock,
Terrible as the devils of Milton.”
—DIDEROT.
OF MANIFESTOES.
The Preliminary precepts, by which science has been enabled at this point to
put weapons into the hand of a husband, are few in number; it is not of so much
importance to know whether he will be vanquished, as to examine whether he can
offer any resistance in the conflict.
Meanwhile, we will set up here certain beacons to light up the arena where a
husband is soon to find himself, in alliance with religion and law, engaged
single-handed in a contest with his wife, who is supported by her native craft
and the whole usages of society as her allies.
LXXXII.
Anything may be expected and anything may be supposed of a woman who is in
love.
LXXXIII.
The actions of a woman who intends to deceive her husband are almost always the
result of study, but never dictated by reason.
LXXXIV. The greater number of women advance like the fleas, by erratic leaps
and bounds, They owe their escape to the height or depth of their first ideas,
and any interruption of their plans rather favors their execution. But they
operate only within a narrow area which it is easy for the husband to make
still narrower; and if he keeps cool he will end by extinguishing this piece of
living saltpetre.
LXXXV.
A husband should never allow himself to address a single disparaging remark to
his wife, in presence of a third party.
LXXXVI. The moment a wife decides to break her marriage vow she reckons her
husband as everything or nothing. All defensive operations must start from this
proposition.
LXXXVII. The life of a woman is either of the head, of the heart, or of
passion. When a woman reaches the age to form an estimate of life, her husband
ought to find out whether the primary cause of her intended infidelity proceeds
from vanity, from sentiment or from temperament. Temperament may be remedied
like disease; sentiment is something in which the husband may find great
opportunities of success; but vanity is incurable. A woman whose life is of the
head may be a terrible scourge. She combines the faults of a passionate woman
with those of the tender-hearted woman, without having their palliations. She
is destitute alike of pity, love, virtue or sex.
LXXXVIII. A woman whose life is of the head will strive to inspire her husband
with indifference; the woman whose life is of the heart, with hatred; the
passionate woman, with disgust.
LXXXIX.
A husband never loses anything by appearing to believe in the fidelity of his
wife, by preserving an air of patience and by keeping silence. Silence
especially troubles a woman amazingly.
XC. To show himself aware of the passion of his wife is the mark of a fool; but
to affect ignorance of all proves that a man has sense, and this is in fact the
only attitude to take. We are taught, moreover, that everybody in France is
sensible.
XCI. The rock most to be avoided is ridicule.—“At least, let us be affectionate
in public,” ought to be the maxim of a married establishment. For both the
married couple to lose honor, esteem, consideration, respect and all that is
worth living for in society, is to become a nonentity.
These axioms relate to the contest alone. As for the catastrophe, others will
be needed for that.
We have called this crisis Civil War for two reasons; never was a war
more really intestine and at the same time so polite as this war. But in what
point and in what manner does this fatal war break out? You do not believe that
your wife will call out regiments and sound the trumpet, do you? She will,
perhaps, have a commanding officer, but that is all. And this feeble army corps
will be sufficient to destroy the peace of your establishment.
“You forbid me to see the people that I like!” is an exordium which has served
for a manifesto in most homes. This phrase, with all the ideas that are
concomitant, is oftenest employed by vain and artificial women.
The most usual manifesto is that which is proclaimed in the conjugal bed, the
principal theatre of war. This subject will be treated in detail in the
Meditation entitled: Of Various Weapons, in the paragraph, Of Modesty
in its Connection with Marriage.
Certain women of a lymphatic temperament will pretend to have the spleen and
will even feign death, if they can only gain thereby the benefit of a secret
divorce.
But most of them owe their independence to the execution of a plan, whose
effect upon the majority of husbands is unfailing and whose perfidies we will
now reveal.
One of the greatest of human errors springs from the belief that our honor and
our reputation are founded upon our actions, or result from the approbation
which the general conscience bestows upon on conduct. A man who lives in the
world is born to be a slave to public opinion. Now a private man in France has
less opportunity of influencing the world than his wife, although he has ample
occasion for ridiculing it. Women possess to a marvelous degree the art of
giving color by specious arguments to the recriminations in which they indulge.
They never set up any defence, excepting when they are in the wrong, and in
this proceeding they are pre-eminent, knowing how to oppose arguments by
precedents, proofs by assertions, and thus they very often obtain victory in
minor matters of detail. They see and know with admirable penetration, when one
of them presents to another a weapon which she herself is forbidden to whet. It
is thus that they sometimes lose a husband without intending it. They apply the
match and long afterwards are terror-stricken at the conflagration.
As a general thing, all women league themselves against a married man who is
accused of tyranny; for a secret tie unites them all, as it unites all priests
of the same religion. They hate each other, yet shield each other. You can
never gain over more than one of them; and yet this act of seduction would be a
triumph for your wife.
You are, therefore, outlawed from the feminine kingdom. You see ironical smiles
on every lip, you meet an epigram in every answer. These clever creatures force
their daggers and amuse themselves by sculpturing the handle before dealing you
a graceful blow.
The treacherous art of reservation, the tricks of silence, the malice of
suppositions, the pretended good nature of an inquiry, all these arts are
employed against you. A man who undertakes to subjugate his wife is an example
too dangerous to escape destruction from them, for will not his conduct call up
against them the satire of every husband? Moreover, all of them will attack
you, either by bitter witticisms, or by serious arguments, or by the hackneyed
maxims of gallantry. A swarm of celibates will support all their sallies and
you will be assailed and persecuted as an original, a tyrant, a bad bed-fellow,
an eccentric man, a man not to be trusted.
Your wife will defend you like the bear in the fable of La Fontaine; she will
throw paving stones at your head to drive away the flies that alight on it. She
will tell you in the evening all the things that have been said about you, and
will ask an explanation of acts which you never committed, and of words which
you never said. She professes to have justified you for faults of which you are
innocent; she has boasted of a liberty which she does not possess, in order to
clear you of the wrong which you have done in denying that liberty. The
deafening rattle which your wife shakes will follow you everywhere with its
obtrusive din. Your darling will stun you, will torture you, meanwhile arming
herself by making you feel only the thorns of married life. She will greet you
with a radiant smile in public, and will be sullen at home. She will be dull
when you are merry, and will make you detest her merriment when you are moody.
Your two faces will present a perpetual contrast.
Very few men have sufficient force of mind not to succumb to this preliminary
comedy, which is always cleverly played, and resembles the hourra raised
by the Cossacks, as they advance to battle. Many husbands become irritated and
fall into irreparable mistakes. Others abandon their wives. And, indeed, even
those of superior intelligence do not know how to get hold of the enchanted
ring, by which to dispel this feminine phantasmagoria.
Two-thirds of such women are enabled to win their independence by this single
manoeuvre, which is no more than a review of their forces. In this case the war
is soon ended.
But a strong man who courageously keeps cool throughout this first assault will
find much amusement in laying bare to his wife, in a light and bantering way,
the secret feelings which make her thus behave, in following her step by step
through the labyrinth which she treads, and telling her in answer to her every
remark, that she is false to herself, while he preserves throughout a tone of
pleasantry and never becomes excited.
Meanwhile war is declared, and if her husband has not been dazzled by these
first fireworks, a woman has yet many other resources for securing her triumph;
and these it is the purpose of the following Meditations to discover.
PRINCIPLES OF STRATEGY.
The Archduke Charles published a very fine treatise on military under the title
Principles of Strategy in Relation to the Campaigns of 1796. These
principles seem somewhat to resemble poetic canons prepared for poems already
published. In these days we are become very much more energetic, we invent
rules to suit works and works to suit rules. But of what use were ancient
principles of military art in presence of the impetuous genius of Napoleon? If,
to-day, however, we reduce to a system the lessons taught by this great captain
whose new tactics have destroyed the ancient ones, what future guarantee do we
possess that another Napoleon will not yet be born? Books on military art meet,
with few exceptions, the fate of ancient works on Chemistry and Physics.
Everything is subject to change, either constant or periodic.
This, in a few words, is the history of our work.
So long as we have been dealing with a woman who is inert or lapped in slumber,
nothing has been easier than to weave the meshes with which we have bound her;
but the moment she wakes up and begins to struggle, all is confusion and
complication. If a husband would make an effort to recall the principles of the
system which we have just described in order to involve his wife in the nets
which our second part has set for her, he would resemble Wurmser, Mack and
Beaulieu arranging their halts and their marches while Napoleon nimbly turns
their flank, and makes use of their own tactics to destroy them.
This is just what your wife will do.
How is it possible to get at the truth when each of you conceals it under the
same lie, each setting the same trap for the other? And whose will be the
victory when each of you is caught in a similar snare?
“My dear, I have to go out; I have to pay a visit to Madame So and So. I have
ordered the carriage. Would you like to come with me? Come, be good, and go
with your wife.”
You say to yourself:
“She would be nicely caught if I consented! She asks me only to be refused.”
Then you reply to her:
“Just at the moment I have some business with Monsieur Blank, for he has to
give a report in a business matter which deeply concerns us both, and I must
absolutely see him. Then I must go to the Minister of Finance. So your
arrangement will suit us both.”
“Very well, dearest, go and dress yourself, while Celine finishes dressing me;
but don’t keep me waiting.”
“I am ready now, love,” you cry out, at the end of ten minutes, as you stand
shaved and dressed.
But all is changed. A letter has arrived; madame is not well; her dress fits
badly; the dressmaker has come; if it is not the dressmaker it is your mother.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred husbands will leave the house satisfied, believing
that their wives are well guarded, when, as a matter of fact, the wives have
gotten rid of them.
A lawful wife who from her husband cannot escape, who is not distressed by
pecuniary anxiety, and who in order to give employment to a vacant mind,
examines night and day the changing tableaux of each day’s experience, soon
discovers the mistake she has made in falling into a trap or allowing herself
to be surprised by a catastrophe; she will then endeavor to turn all these
weapons against you.
There is a man in society, the sight of whom is strangely annoying to your
wife; she can tolerate neither his tone, his manners nor his way of regarding
things. Everything connected with him is revolting to her; she is persecuted by
him, he is odious to her; she hopes that no one will tell him this. It seems
almost as if she were attempting to oppose you; for this man is one for whom
you have the highest esteem. You like his disposition because he flatters you;
and thus your wife presumes that your esteem for him results from flattered
vanity. When you give a ball, an evening party or a concert, there is almost a
discussion on this subject, and madame picks a quarrel with you, because you
are compelling her to see people who are not agreeable to her.
“At least, sir, I shall never have to reproach myself with omitting to warn
you. That man will yet cause you trouble. You should put some confidence in
women when they pass sentence on the character of a man. And permit me to tell
you that this baron, for whom you have such a predilection, is a very dangerous
person, and you are doing very wrong to bring him to your house. And this is
the way you behave; you absolutely force me to see one whom I cannot tolerate,
and if I ask you to invite Monsieur A——-, you refuse to do so, because you
think that I like to have him with me! I admit that he talks well, that he is
kind and amiable; but you are more to me than he can ever be.”
These rude outlines of feminine tactics, which are emphasized by insincere
gestures, by looks of feigned ingenuousness, by artful intonations of the voice
and even by the snare of cunning silence, are characteristic to some degree of
their whole conduct.
There are few husbands who in such circumstances as these do not form the idea
of setting a mouse-trap; they welcome as their guests both Monsieur A——- and
the imaginary baron who represents the person whom their wives abhor, and they
do so in the hope of discovering a lover in the celibate who is apparently
beloved.
Oh yes, I have often met in the world young men who were absolutely starlings
in love and complete dupes of a friendship which women pretended to show them,
women who felt themselves obliged to make a diversion and to apply a blister to
their husbands as their husbands had previously done to them! These poor
innocents pass their time in running errands, in engaging boxes at the theatre,
in riding in the Bois de Boulogne by the carriages of their pretended
mistresses; they are publicly credited with possessing women whose hands they
have not even kissed. Vanity prevents them from contradicting these flattering
rumors, and like the young priests who celebrate masses without a Host, they
enjoy a mere show passion, and are veritable supernumeraries of love.
Under these circumstances sometimes a husband on returning home asks the
porter: “Has no one been here?”—“M. le Baron came past at two o’clock to see
monsieur; but as he found no one was in but madame he went away; but Monsieur
A——- is with her now.”
You reach the drawing-room, you see there a young celibate, sprightly, scented,
wearing a fine necktie, in short a perfect dandy. He is a man who holds you in
high esteem; when he comes to your house your wife listens furtively for his
footsteps; at a ball she always dances with him. If you forbid her to see him,
she makes a great outcry and it is not till many years afterwards [see
Meditation on Las Symptoms] that you see the innocence of Monsieur A——-
and the culpability of the baron.
We have observed and noted as one of the cleverest manoeuvres, that of a young
woman who, carried away by an irresistible passion, exhibited a bitter hatred
to the man she did not love, but lavished upon her lover secret intimations of
her love. The moment that her husband was persuaded that she loved the
Cicisbeo and hated the Patito, she arranged that she and the
Patito should be found in a situation whose compromising character she
had calculated in advance, and her husband and the execrated celibate were thus
induced to believe that her love and her aversion were equally insincere. When
she had brought her husband into the condition of perplexity, she managed that
a passionate letter should fall into his hands. One evening in the midst of the
admirable catastrophe which she had thus brought to a climax, madame threw
herself at her husband’s feet, wet them with her tears, and thus concluded the
climax to her own satisfaction.
“I esteem and honor you profoundly,” she cried, “for keeping your own counsel
as you have done. I am in love! Is this a sentiment which is easy for me to
repress? But what I can do is to confess the fact to you; to implore you to
protect me from myself, to save me from my own folly. Be my master and be a
stern master to me; take me away from this place, remove me from what has
caused all this trouble, console me; I will forget him, I desire to do so. I do
not wish to betray you. I humbly ask your pardon for the treachery love has
suggested to me. Yes, I confess to you that the love which I pretended to have
for my cousin was a snare set to deceive you. I love him with the love of
friendship and no more.—Oh! forgive me! I can love no one but”—her voice was
choked in passionate sobs—“Oh! let us go away, let us leave Paris!”
She began to weep; her hair was disheveled, her dress in disarray; it was
midnight, and her husband forgave her. From henceforth, the cousin made his
appearance without risk, and the Minotaur devoured one victim more.
What instructions can we give for contending with such adversaries as these?
Their heads contain all the diplomacy of the congress of Vienna; they have as
much power when they are caught as when they escape. What man has a mind supple
enough to lay aside brute force and strength and follow his wife through such
mazes as these?
To make a false plea every moment, in order to elicit the truth, a true plea in
order to unmask falsehood; to charge the battery when least expected, and to
spike your gun at the very moment of firing it; to scale the mountain with the
enemy, in order to descend to the plain again five minutes later; to accompany
the foe in windings as rapid, as obscure as those of a plover on the breezes;
to obey when obedience is necessary, and to oppose when resistance is inertial;
to traverse the whole scale of hypotheses as a young artist with one stroke
runs from the lowest to the highest note of his piano; to divine at last the
secret purpose on which a woman is bent; to fear her caresses and to seek
rather to find out what are the thoughts that suggested them and the pleasure
which she derived from them—this is mere child’s pay for the man of intellect
and for those lucid and searching imaginations which possess the gift of doing
and thinking at the same time. But there are a vast number of husbands who are
terrified at the mere idea of putting in practice these principles in their
dealings with a woman.
Such men as these prefer passing their lives in making huge efforts to become
second-class chess-players, or to pocket adroitly a ball in billiards.
Some of them will tell you that they are incapable of keeping their minds on
such a constant strain and breaking up the habits of their life. In that case
the woman triumphs. She recognizes that in mind and energy she is her husband’s
superior, although the superiority may be but temporary; and yet there rises in
her a feeling of contempt for the head of the house.
If many man fail to be masters in their own house this is not from lack of
willingness, but of talent. As for those who are ready to undergo the toils of
this terrible duel, it is quite true that they must needs possess great moral
force.
And really, as soon as it is necessary to display all the resources of this
secret strategy, it is often useless to attempt setting any traps for these
satanic creatures. Once women arrive at a point when they willfully deceive,
their countenances become as inscrutable as vacancy. Here is an example which
came within my own experience.
A very young, very pretty, and very clever coquette of Paris had not yet risen.
Seated by her bed was one of her dearest friends. A letter arrived from
another, a very impetuous fellow, to whom she had allowed the right of speaking
to her like a master. The letter was in pencil and ran as follows:
“I understand that Monsieur C——- is with you at this moment. I am waiting for
him to blow his brains out.”
Madame D——- calmly continued the conversation with Monsieur C——-. She asked him
to hand her a little writing desk of red leather which stood on the table, and
he brought it to her.
“Thanks, my dear,” she said to him; “go on talking, I am listening to you.”
C——- talked away and she replied, all the while writing the following note:
“As soon as you become jealous of C——- you two can blow out each other’s brains
at your pleasure. As for you, you may die; but brains —you haven’t any brains
to blow out.”
“My dear friend,” she said to C——-, “I beg you will light this candle. Good,
you are charming. And now be kind enough to leave me and let me get up, and
give this letter to Monsieur d’H——-, who is waiting at the door.”
All this was said with admirable coolness. The tones and intonations of her
voice, the expression of her face showed no emotion. Her audacity was crowned
with complete success. On receiving the answer from the hand of Monsieur C——-,
Monsieur d’H——- felt his wrath subside. He was troubled with only one thing and
that was how to disguise his inclination to laugh.
The more torch-light one flings into the immense cavern which we are now trying
to illuminate, the more profound it appears. It is a bottomless abyss. It
appears to us that our task will be accomplished more agreeably and more
instructively if we show the principles of strategy put into practice in the
case of a woman, when she has reached a high degree of vicious accomplishment.
An example suggests more maxims and reveals the existence of more methods than
all possible theories.
One day at the end of a dinner given to certain intimate friends by Prince
Lebrun, the guests, heated by champagne, were discussing the inexhaustible
subject of feminine artifice. The recent adventure which was credited to the
Countess R. D. S. J. D. A——-, apropos of a necklace, was the subject first
broached. A highly esteemed artist, a gifted friend of the emperor, was
vigorously maintaining the opinion, which seemed somewhat unmanly, that it was
forbidden to a man to resist successfully the webs woven by a woman.
“It is my happy experience,” he said, “that to them nothing is sacred.”
The ladies protested.
“But I can cite an instance in point.”
“It is an exception!”
“Let us hear the story,” said a young lady.
“Yes, tell it to us,” cried all the guests.
The prudent old gentleman cast his eyes around, and, after having formed his
conclusions as to the age of the ladies, smiled and said:
“Since we are all experienced in life, I consent to relate the adventure.”
Dead silence followed, and the narrator read the following from a little book
which he had taken from his pocket:
I was head over ears in love with the Comtesse de ——-. I was twenty and I was
ingenuous. She deceived me. I was angry; she threw me over. I was ingenuous, I
repeat, and I was grieved to lose her. I was twenty; she forgave me. And as I
was twenty, as I was always ingenuous, always deceived, but never again thrown
over by her, I believed myself to have been the best beloved of lovers,
consequently the happiest of men. The countess had a friend, Madame de T——-,
who seemed to have some designs on me, but without compromising her dignity;
for she was scrupulous and respected the proprieties. One day while I was
waiting for the countess in her Opera box, I heard my name called from a
contiguous box. It was Madame de T——-.
“What,” she said, “already here? Is this fidelity or merely a want of something
to do? Won’t you come to me?”
Her voice and her manner had a meaning in them, but I was far from inclined at
that moment to indulge in a romance.
“Have you any plans for this evening?” she said to me. “Don’t make any! If I
cheer your tedious solitude you ought to be devoted to me. Don’t ask any
questions, but obey. Call my servants.”
I answered with a bow and on being requested to leave the Opera box, I obeyed.
“Go to this gentleman’s house,” she said to the lackey. “Say he will not be
home till to-morrow.”
She made a sign to him, he went to her, she whispered in his ear, and he left
us. The Opera began. I tried to venture on a few words, but she silenced me;
some one might be listening. The first act ended, the lackey brought back a
note, and told her that everything was ready. Then she smiled, asked for my
hand, took me off, put me in her carriage, and I started on my journey quite
ignorant of my destination. Every inquiry I made was answered by a peal of
laughter. If I had not been aware that this was a woman of great passion, that
she had long loved the Marquis de V——-, that she must have known I was aware of
it, I should have believed myself in good luck; but she knew the condition of
my heart, and the Comtesse de ——-. I therefore rejected all presumptuous ideas
and bided my time. At the first stop, a change of horses was supplied with the
swiftness of lightning and we started afresh. The matter was becoming serious.
I asked with some insistency, where this joke was to end.
“Where?” she said, laughing. “In the pleasantest place in the world, but can’t
you guess? I’ll give you a thousand chances. Give it up, for you will never
guess. We are going to my husband’s house. Do you know him?”
“Not in the least.”
“So much the better, I thought you didn’t. But I hope you will like him. We
have lately become reconciled. Negotiations went on for six months; and we have
been writing to one another for a month. I think it is very kind of me to go
and look him up.”
“It certainly is, but what am I going to do there? What good will I be in this
reconciliation?”
“Ah, that is my business. You are young, amiable, unconventional; you suit me
and will save me from the tediousness of a tete-a-tete.”
“But it seems odd to me, to choose the day or the night of a reconciliation to
make us acquainted; the awkwardness of the first interview, the figure all
three of us will cut,—I don’t see anything particularly pleasant in that.”
“I have taken possession of you for my own amusement!” she said with an
imperious air, “so please don’t preach.”
I saw she was decided, so surrendered myself to circumstances. I began to laugh
at my predicament and we became exceedingly merry. We again changed horses. The
mysterious torch of night lit up a sky of extreme clearness and shed around a
delightful twilight. We were approaching the spot where our tete-a-tete must
end. She pointed out to me at intervals the beauty of the landscape, the
tranquillity of the night, the all-pervading silence of nature. In order to
admire these things in company as it was natural we should, we turned to the
same window and our faces touched for a moment. In a sudden shock she seized my
hand, and by a chance which seemed to me extraordinary, for the stone over
which our carriage had bounded could not have been very large, I found Madame
de T——- in my arms. I do not know what we were trying to see; what I am sure of
is that the objects before our eyes began in spite of the full moon to grow
misty, when suddenly I was released from her weight, and she sank into the back
cushions of the carriage.
“Your object,” she said, rousing herself from a deep reverie, “is possibly to
convince me of the imprudence of this proceeding. Judge, therefore, of my
embarrassment!”
“My object!” I replied, “what object can I have with regard to you? What a
delusion! You look very far ahead; but of course the sudden surprise or turn of
chance may excuse anything.”
“You have counted, then, upon that chance, it seems to me?”
We had reached our destination, and before we were aware of it, we had entered
the court of the chateau. The whole place was brightly lit up. Everything wore
a festal air, excepting the face of its master, who at the sight of me seemed
anything but delighted. He came forward and expressed in somewhat hesitating
terms the tenderness proper to the occasion of a reconciliation. I understood
later on that this reconciliation was absolutely necessary from family reasons.
I was presented to him and was coldly greeted. He extended his hand to his
wife, and I followed the two, thinking of my part in the past, in the present
and in the future. I passed through apartments decorated with exquisite taste.
The master in this respect had gone beyond all the ordinary refinement of
luxury, in the hope of reanimating, by the influence of voluptuous imagery, a
physical nature that was dead. Not knowing what to say, I took refuge in
expressions of admiration. The goddess of the temple, who was quite ready to do
the honors, accepted my compliments.
“You have not seen anything,” she said. “I must take you to the apartments of
my husband.”
“Madame, five years ago I caused them to be pulled down.”
“Oh! Indeed!” said she.
At the dinner, what must she do but offer the master some fish, on which he
said to her:
“Madame, I have been living on milk for the last three years.”
“Oh! Indeed!” she said again.
Can any one imagine three human beings as astonished as we were to find
ourselves gathered together? The husband looked at me with a supercilious air,
and I paid him back with a look of audacity.
Madame de T——- smiled at me and was charming to me; Monsieur de T——- accepted
me as a necessary evil. Never in all my life have I taken part in a dinner
which was so odd as that. The dinner ended, I thought that we would go to bed
early—that is, I thought that Monsieur de T——- would. As we entered the
drawing-room:
“I appreciate, madame,” said he, “your precaution in bringing this gentleman
with you. You judged rightly that I should be but poor company for the evening,
and you have done well, for I am going to retire.”
Then turning to me, he added in a tone of profound sarcasm:
“You will please to pardon me, and obtain also pardon from madame.”
He left us. My reflections? Well, the reflections of a twelvemonth were then
comprised in those of a minute. When we were left alone, Madame de T——- and I,
we looked at each other so curiously that, in order to break through the
awkwardness, she proposed that we should take a turn on the terrace while we
waited, as she said, until the servants had supped.
It was a superb night. It was scarcely possible to discern surrounding objects,
they seemed to be covered with a veil, that imagination might be permitted to
take a loftier flight. The gardens, terraced on the side of a mountain, sloped
down, platform after platform, to the banks of the Seine, and the eye took in
the many windings of the stream covered with islets green and picturesque.
These variations in the landscape made up a thousand pictures which gave to the
spot, naturally charming, a thousand novel features. We walked along the most
extensive of these terraces, which was covered with a thick umbrage of trees.
She had recovered from the effects of her husband’s persiflage, and as we
walked along she gave me her confidence. Confidence begets confidence, and as I
told her mine, all she said to me became more intimate and more interesting.
Madame de T——- at first gave me her arm; but soon this arm became interlaced in
mine, I know not how, but in some way almost lifted her up and prevented her
from touching the ground. The position was agreeable, but became at last
fatiguing. We had been walking for a long time and we still had much to say to
each other. A bank of turf appeared and she sat down without withdrawing her
arm. And in this position we began to sound the praises of mutual confidence,
its charms and its delights.
“Ah!” she said to me, “who can enjoy it more than we and with less cause of
fear? I know well the tie that binds you to another, and therefore have nothing
to fear.”
Perhaps she wished to be contradicted. But I answered not a word. We were then
mutually persuaded that it was possible for us to be friends without fear of
going further.
“But I was afraid, however,” I said, “that that sudden jolt in the carriage and
the surprising consequences may have frightened you.”
“Oh, I am not so easily alarmed!”
“I fear it has left a little cloud on your mind?”
“What must I do to reassure you?”
“Give me the kiss here which chance—”
“I will gladly do so; for if I do not, your vanity will lead you to think that
I fear you.”
I took the kiss.
It is with kisses as with confidences, the first leads to another. They are
multiplied, they interrupt conversation, they take its place; they scarce leave
time for a sigh to escape. Silence followed. We could hear it, for silence may
be heard. We rose without a word and began to walk again.
“We must go in,” said she, “for the air of the river is icy, and it is not
worth while—”
“I think to go in would be more dangerous,” I answered.
“Perhaps so! Never mind, we will go in.”
“Why, is this out of consideration for me? You wish doubtless to save me from
the impressions which I may receive from such a walk as this —the consequences
which may result. Is it for me—for me only—?”
“You are modest,” she said smiling, “and you credit me with singular
consideration.”
“Do you think so? Well, since you take it in this way, we will go in; I demand
it.”
A stupid proposition, when made by two people who are forcing themselves to say
something utterly different from what they think.
Then she compelled me to take the path that led back to the chateau. I do not
know, at least I did not then know, whether this course was one which she
forced upon herself, whether it was the result of a vigorous resolution, or
whether she shared my disappointment in seeing an incident which had begun so
well thus suddenly brought to a close but by a mutual instinct our steps
slackened and we pursued our way gloomily dissatisfied the one with the other
and with ourselves. We knew not the why and the wherefore of what we were
doing. Neither of us had the right to demand or even to ask anything. We had
neither of us any ground for uttering a reproach. O that we had got up a
quarrel! But how could I pick one with her? Meanwhile we drew nearer and
nearer, thinking how we might evade the duty which we had so awkwardly imposed
upon ourselves. We reached the door, when Madame de T——- said to me:
“I am angry with you! After the confidences I have given you, not to give me a
single one! You have not said a word about the countess. And yet it is so
delightful to speak of the one we love! I should have listened with such
interest! It was the very best I could do after I had taken you away from her!”
“Cannot I reproach you with the same thing?” I said, interrupting her, “and if
instead of making me a witness to this singular reconciliation in which I play
so odd a part, you had spoken to me of the marquis—”
“Stop,” she said, “little as you know of women, you are aware that their
confidences must be waited for, not asked. But to return to yourself. Are you
very happy with my friend? Ah! I fear the contrary—”
“Why, madame, should everything that the public amuses itself by saying claim
our belief?”
“You need not dissemble. The countess makes less a mystery of things than you
do. Women of her stamp do not keep the secrets of their loves and of their
lovers, especially when you are prompted by discretion to conceal her triumph.
I am far from accusing her of coquetry; but a prude has as much vanity as a
coquette.—Come, tell me frankly, have you not cause of complaint against her?”
“But, madame, the air is really too icy for us to stay here. Would you like to
go in?” said I with a smile.
“Do you find it so?—That is singular. The air is quite warm.”
She had taken my arm again, and we continued to walk, although I did not know
the direction which we took. All that she had hinted at concerning the lover of
the countess, concerning my mistress, together with this journey, the incident
which took place in the carriage, our conversation on the grassy bank, the time
of night, the moonlight—all made me feel anxious. I was at the same time
carried along by vanity, by desire, and so distracted by thought, that I was
too excited perhaps to take notice of all that I was experiencing. And, while I
was overwhelmed with these mingled feelings, she continued talking to me of the
countess, and my silence confirmed the truth of all that she chose to say about
her. Nevertheless, certain passages in her talk recalled me to myself.
“What an exquisite creature she is!” she was saying. “How graceful! On her lips
the utterances of treachery sound like witticism; an act of infidelity seems
the prompting of reason, a sacrifice to propriety; while she is never reckless,
she is always lovable; she is seldom tender and never sincere; amorous by
nature, prudish on principle; sprightly, prudent, dexterous though utterly
thoughtless, varied as Proteus in her moods, but charming as the Graces in her
manner; she attracts but she eludes. What a number of parts I have seen her
play! Entre nous, what a number of dupes hang round her! What fun she
has made of the baron, what a life she has led the marquis! When she took you,
it was merely for the purpose of throwing the two rivals off the scent; they
were on the point of a rupture; for she had played with them too long, and they
had had time to see through her. But she brought you on the scene. Their
attention was called to you, she led them to redouble their pursuit, she was in
despair over you, she pitied you, she consoled you— Ah! how happy is a clever
woman when in such a game as this she professes to stake nothing of her own!
But yet, is this true happiness?”
This last phrase, accompanied by a significant sigh, was a master-stroke. I
felt as if a bandage had fallen from my eyes, without seeing who had put it
there. My mistress appeared to me the falsest of women, and I believed that I
held now the only sensible creature in the world. Then I sighed without knowing
why. She seemed grieved at having given me pain and at having in her excitement
drawn a picture, the truth of which might be open to suspicion, since it was
the work of a woman. I do not know how I answered; for without realizing the
drift of all I heard, I set out with her on the high road of sentiment, and we
mounted to such lofty heights of feeling that it was impossible to guess what
would be the end of our journey. It was fortunate that we also took the path
towards a pavilion which she pointed out to me at the end of the terrace, a
pavilion, the witness of many sweet moments. She described to me the furnishing
of it. What a pity that she had not the key! As she spoke we reached the
pavilion and found that it was open. The clearness of the moonlight outside did
not penetrate, but darkness has many charms. We trembled as we went in. It was
a sanctuary. Might it not be the sanctuary of love? We drew near a sofa and sat
down, and there we remained a moment listening to our heart-beats. The last ray
of the moon carried away the last scruple. The hand which repelled me felt my
heart beat. She struggled to get away, but fell back overcome with tenderness.
We talked together through that silence in the language of thought. Nothing is
more rapturous than these mute conversations. Madame de T——- took refuge in my
arms, hid her head in my bosom, sighed and then grew calm under my caresses.
She grew melancholy, she was consoled, and she asked of love all that love had
robbed her of. The sound of the river broke the silence of night with a gentle
murmur, which seemed in harmony with the beating of our hearts. Such was the
darkness of the place it was scarcely possible to discern objects; but through
the transparent crepe of a fair summer’s night, the queen of that lovely place
seemed to me adorable.
“Oh!” she said to me with an angelic voice, “let us leave this dangerous spot.
Resistance here is beyond our strength.”
She drew me away and we left the pavilion with regret.
“Ah! how happy is she!” cried Madame de T——-.
“Whom do you mean?” I asked.
“Did I speak?” said she with a look of alarm.
And then we reached the grassy bank, and stopped there involuntarily. “What a
distance there is,” she said to me, “between this place and the pavilion!”
“Yes indeed,” said I. “But must this bank be always ominous? Is there a regret?
Is there—?”
I do not know by what magic it took place; but at this point the conversation
changed and became less serious. She ventured even to speak playfully of the
pleasures of love, to eliminate from them all moral considerations, to reduce
them to their simplest elements, and to prove that the favors of lovers were
mere pleasure, that there were no pledges—philosophically speaking—excepting
those which were given to the world, when we allowed it to penetrate our
secrets and joined it in the acts of indiscretion.
“How mild is the night,” she said, “which we have by chance picked out! Well,
if there are reasons, as I suppose there are, which compel us to part
to-morrow, our happiness, ignored as it is by all nature, will not leave us any
ties to dissolve. There will, perhaps, be some regrets, the pleasant memory of
which will give us reparation; and then there will be a mutual understanding,
without all the delays, the fuss and the tyranny of legal proceedings. We are
such machines—and I blush to avow it—that in place of all the shrinkings that
tormented me before this scene took place, I was half inclined to embrace the
boldness of these principles, and I felt already disposed to indulge in the
love of liberty.
“This beautiful night,” she continued, “this lovely scenery at this moment have
taken on fresh charms. O let us never forget this pavilion! The chateau,” she
added smilingly, “contains a still more charming place, but I dare not show you
anything; you are like a child, who wishes to touch everything and breaks
everything that he touches.”
Moved by a sentiment of curiosity I protested that I was a very good child. She
changed the subject.
“This night,” she said, “would be for me without a regret if I were not vexed
with myself for what I said to you about the countess. Not that I wish to find
fault with you. Novelty attracts me. You have found me amiable, I should like
to believe in your good faith. But the dominion of habit takes a long time to
break through and I have not learned the secret of doing this—By the bye, what
do you think of my husband?”
“Well, he is rather cross, but I suppose he could not be otherwise to me.”
“Oh, that is true, but his way of life isn’t pleasant, and he could not see you
here with indifference. He might be suspicious even of our friendship.”
“Oh! he is so already.”
“Confess that he has cause. Therefore you must not prolong this visit; he might
take it amiss. As soon as any one arrives—” and she added with a smile, “some
one is going to arrive—you must go. You have to keep up appearance, you know.
Remember his manner when he left us to-night.”
I was tempted to interpret this adventure as a trap, but as she noticed the
impression made by her words, she added:
“Oh, he was very much gayer when he was superintending the arrangement of the
cabinet I told you about. That was before my marriage. This passage leads to my
apartment. Alas! it testifies to the cunning artifices to which Monsieur de
T——- has resorted in protecting his love for me.”
“How pleasant it would be,” I said to her, keenly excited by the curiosity she
had roused in me, “to take vengeance in this spot for the insults which your
charms have suffered, and to seek to make restitution for the pleasures of
which you have been robbed.”
She doubtless thought this remark in good taste, but she said: “You promised to
be good!”
I threw a veil over the follies which every age will pardon to youth, on the
ground of so many balked desires and bitter memories. In the morning, scarcely
raising her liquid eyes, Madame de T——-, fairer than ever, said to me:
“Now will you ever love the countess as much as you do me?”
I was about to answer when her maid, her confidante, appeared saying:
“You must go. It is broad daylight, eleven o’clock, and the chateau is already
awake.”
All had vanished like a dream! I found myself wandering through the corridors
before I had recovered my senses. How could I regain my apartment, not knowing
where it was? Any mistake might bring about an exposure. I resolved on a
morning walk. The coolness of the fresh air gradually tranquilized my
imagination and brought me back to the world of reality; and now instead of a
world of enchantment I saw myself in my soul, and my thoughts were no longer
disturbed but followed each other in connected order; in fact, I breathed once
more. I was, above all things, anxious to learn what I was to her so lately
left—I who knew that she had been desperately in love with the Marquis de V——-.
Could she have broken with him? Had she taken me to be his successor, or only
to punish him? What a night! What an adventure! Yes, and what a delightful
woman! While I floated on the waves of these thoughts, I heard a sound near at
hand. I raised my eyes, I rubbed them, I could not believe my senses. Can you
guess who it was? The Marquis de V——-!
“You did not expect to see me so early, did you?” he said. “How has it all gone
off?”
“Did you know that I was here?” I asked in utter amazement.
“Oh, yes, I received word just as you left Paris. Have you played your part
well? Did not the husband think your visit ridiculous? Was he put out? When are
you going to take leave? You had better go, I have made every provision for
you. I have brought you a good carriage. It is at your service. This is the way
I requite you, my dear friend. You may rely on me in the future, for a man is
grateful for such services as yours.”
These last words gave me the key to the whole mystery, and I saw how I stood.
“But why should you have come so soon?” I asked him; “it would have been more
prudent to have waited a few days.”
“I foresaw that; and it is only chance that has brought me here. I am supposed
to be on my way back from a neighboring country house. But has not Madame de
T——- taken you into her secret? I am surprised at her want of confidence, after
all you have done for us.”
“My dear friend,” I replied, “she doubtless had her reasons. Perhaps I did not
play my part very well.”
“Has everything been very pleasant? Tell me the particulars; come, tell me.”
“Now wait a moment. I did not know that this was to be a comedy; and although
Madame de T——- gave me a part in the play—”
“It wasn’t a very nice one.”
“Do not worry yourself; there are no bad parts for good actors.”
“I understand, you acquitted yourself well.”
“Admirably.”
“And Madame de T——-?”
“Is adorable.”
“To think of being able to win such a woman!” said he, stopping short in our
walk, and looking triumphantly at me. “Oh, what pains I have taken with her!
And I have at last brought her to a point where she is perhaps the only woman
in Paris on whose fidelity a man may infallibly count!”
“You have succeeded—?”
“Yes; in that lies my special talent. Her inconstancy was mere frivolity,
unrestrained imagination. It was necessary to change that disposition of hers,
but you have no idea of her attachment to me. But really, is she not charming?”
“I quite agree with you.”
“And yet entre nous I recognize one fault in her. Nature in giving her
everything, has denied her that flame divine which puts the crown on all other
endowments; while she rouses in others the ardor of passion, she feels none
herself, she is a thing of marble.”
“I am compelled to believe you, for I have had no opportunity of judging, but
do you think that you know that woman as well as if you were her husband? It is
possible to be deceived. If I had not dined yesterday with the veritable—I
should take you—”
“By the way, has he been good?”
“Oh, I was received like a dog!”
“I understand. Let us go in, let us look for Madame de T——-. She must be up by
this time.”
“But should we not out of decency begin with the husband?” I said to him.
“You are right. Let us go to your room, I wish to put on a little powder. But
tell me, did he really take you for her lover?”
“You may judge by the way he receives me; but let us go at once to his
apartment.”
I wished to avoid having to lead him to an apartment whose whereabouts I did
not know; but by chance we found it. The door was open and there I saw my
valet de chambre asleep on an armchair. A candle was going out on a
table beside him. He drowsily offered a night robe to the marquis. I was on
pins and needles; but the marquis was in a mood to be easily deceived, took the
man for a mere sleepy-head, and made a joke of the matter. We passed on to the
apartment of Monsieur de T——-. There was no misunderstanding the reception
which he accorded me, and the welcome, the compliments which he addressed to
the marquis, whom he almost forced to stay. He wished to take him to madame in
order that she might insist on his staying. As for me, I received no such
invitation. I was reminded that my health was delicate, the country was damp,
fever was in the air, and I seemed so depressed that the chateau would prove
too gloomy for me. The marquis offered me his chaise and I accepted it. The
husband seemed delighted and we were all satisfied. But I could not refuse
myself the pleasure of seeing Madame de T——- once more. My impatience was
wonderful. My friend conceived no suspicions from the late sleep of his
mistress.
“Isn’t this fine?” he said to me as we followed Monsieur de T——-. “He couldn’t
have spoken more kindly if she had dictated his words. He is a fine fellow. I
am not in the least annoyed by this reconciliation; they will make a good home
together, and you will agree with me, that he could not have chosen a wife
better able to do the honors.”
“Certainly,” I replied.
“However pleasant the adventure has been,” he went on with an air of mystery,
“you must be off! I will let Madame de T——- understand that her secret will be
well kept.”
“On that point, my friend, she perhaps counts more on me than on you; for you
see her sleep is not disturbed by the matter.”
“Oh! I quite agree that there is no one like you for putting a woman to sleep.”
“Yes, and a husband too, and if necessary a lover, my dear friend.”
At last Monsieur de T——- was admitted to his wife’s apartment, and there we
were all summoned.
“I trembled,” said Madame de T——- to me, “for fear you would go before I awoke,
and I thank you for saving me the annoyance which that would have caused me.”
“Madame,” I said, and she must have perceived the feeling that was in my
tones—“I come to say good-bye.”
She looked at me and at the marquis with an air of disquietude; but the
self-satisfied, knowing look of her lover reassured her. She laughed in her
sleeve with me as if she would console me as well as she could, without
lowering herself in my eyes.
“He has played his part well,” the marquis said to her in a low voice, pointing
to me, “and my gratitude—”
“Let us drop the subject,” interrupted Madame de T——-; “you may be sure that I
am well aware of all I owe him.”
At last Monsieur de T——-, with a sarcastic remark, dismissed me; my friend
threw the dust in his eyes by making fun of me; and I paid back both of them by
expressing my admiration for Madame de T——-, who made fools of us all without
forfeiting her dignity. I took myself off; but Madame de T——- followed me,
pretending to have a commission to give me.
“Adieu, monsieur!” she said, “I am indebted to you for the very great pleasure
you have given me; but I have paid you back with a beautiful dream,” and she
looked at me with an expression of subtle meaning. “But adieu, and forever! You
have plucked a solitary flower, blossoming in its loveliness, which no man—”
She stopped and her thought evaporated in a sigh; but she checked the rising
flood of sensibility and smiled significantly.
“The countess loves you,” she said. “If I have robbed her of some transports, I
give you back to her less ignorant than before. Adieu! Do not make mischief
between my friend and me.”
She wrung my hand and left me.
More than once the ladies who had mislaid their fans blushed as they listened
to the old gentleman, whose brilliant elocution won their indulgence for
certain details which we have suppressed, as too erotic for the present age;
nevertheless, we may believe that each lady complimented him in private; for
some time afterwards he gave to each of them, as also to the masculine guests,
a copy of this charming story, twenty-five copies of which were printed by
Pierre Didot. It is from copy No. 24 that the author has transcribed this tale,
hitherto unpublished, and, strange to say, attributed to Dorat. It has the
merit of yielding important lessons for husbands, while at the same time it
gives the celibates a delightful picture of morals in the last century.
OF ALLIES.
Of all the miseries that civil war can bring upon a country the greatest lies
in the appeal which one of the contestants always ends by making to some
foreign government.
Unhappily we are compelled to confess that all women make this great mistake,
for the lover is only the first of their soldiers. It may be a member of their
family or at least a distant cousin. This Meditation, then, is intended to
answer the inquiry, what assistance can each of the different powers which
influence human life give to your wife? or better than that, what artifices
will she resort to to arm them against you?
Two beings united by marriage are subject to the laws of religion and society;
to those of private life, and, from considerations of health, to those of
medicine. We will therefore divide this important Meditation into six
paragraphs:
La Bruyere has very wittily said, “It is too much for a husband to have ranged
against him both devotion and gallantry; a woman ought to choose but one of
them for her ally.”
The author thinks that La Bruyere is mistaken.
Up to the age of thirty the face of a woman is a book written in a foreign
tongue, which one may still translate in spite of all the feminisms of
the idiom; but on passing her fortieth year a woman becomes an insoluble
riddle; and if any one can see through an old woman, it is another old woman.
Some diplomats have attempted on more than one occasion the diabolical task of
gaining over the dowagers who opposed their machinations; but if they have ever
succeeded it was only after making enormous concessions to them; for diplomats
are practiced people and we do not think that you can employ their recipe in
dealing with your mother-in-law. She will be the first aid-de-camp of her
daughter, for if the mother did not take her daughter’s side, it would be one
of those monstrous and unnatural exceptions, which unhappily for husbands are
extremely rare.
When a man is so happy as to possess a mother-in-law who is well-preserved, he
may easily keep her in check for a certain time, although he may not know any
young celibate brave enough to assail her. But generally husbands who have the
slightest conjugal genius will find a way of pitting their own mother against
that of their wife, and in that case they will naturally neutralize each
other’s power.
To be able to keep a mother-in-law in the country while he lives in Paris, and
vice versa, is a piece of good fortune which a husband too rarely meets with.
What of making mischief between the mother and the daughter?—That may be
possible; but in order to accomplish such an enterprise he must have the
metallic heart of Richelieu, who made a son and a mother deadly enemies to each
other. However, the jealousy of a husband who forbids his wife to pray to male
saints and wishes her to address only female saints, would allow her liberty to
see her mother.
Many sons-in-law take an extreme course which settles everything, which
consists in living on bad terms with their mothers-in-law. This unfriendliness
would be very adroit policy, if it did not inevitably result in drawing tighter
the ties that unite mother and daughter. These are about all the means which
you have for resisting maternal influence in your home. As for the services
which your wife can claim from her mother, they are immense; and the assistance
which she may derive from the neutrality of her mother is not less powerful.
But on this point everything passes out of the domain of science, for all is
veiled in secrecy. The reinforcements which a mother brings up in support of a
daughter are so varied in nature, they depend so much on circumstances, that it
would be folly to attempt even a nomenclature for them. Yet you may write out
among the most valuable precepts of this conjugal gospel, the following maxims.
A husband should never let his wife visit her mother unattended.
A husband ought to study all the reasons why all the celibates under forty who
form her habitual society are so closely united by ties of friendship to his
mother-in-law; for, if a daughter rarely falls in love with the lover of her
mother, her mother has always a weak spot for her daughter’s lover.
Louise de L——-, daughter of an officer killed at Wagram, had been the object of
Napoleon’s special protection. She left Ecouen to marry a commissary general,
the Baron de V——-, who is very rich.
Louise was eighteen and the baron forty. She was ordinary in face and her
complexion could not be called white, but she had a charming figure, good eyes,
a small foot, a pretty hand, good taste and abundant intelligence. The baron,
worn out by the fatigues of war and still more by the excesses of a stormy
youth, had one of those faces upon which the Republic, the Directory, the
Consulate and the Empire seemed to have set their impress.
He became so deeply in love with his wife, that he asked and obtained from the
Emperor a post at Paris, in order that he might be enabled to watch over his
treasure. He was as jealous as Count Almaviva, still more from vanity than from
love. The young orphan had married her husband from necessity, and, flattered
by the ascendancy she wielded over a man much older than herself, waited upon
his wishes and his needs; but her delicacy was offended from the first days of
their marriage by the habits and ideas of a man whose manners were tinged with
republican license. He was a predestined.
I do not know exactly how long the baron made his honeymoon last, nor when war
was declared in his household; but I believe it happened in 1816, at a very
brilliant ball given by Monsieur D——-, a commissariat officer, that the
commissary general, who had been promoted head of the department, admired the
beautiful Madame B——-, the wife of a banker, and looked at her much more
amorously than a married man should have allowed himself to do.
At two o’clock in the morning it happened that the banker, tired of waiting any
longer, went home leaving his wife at the ball.
“We are going to take you home to your house,” said the baroness to Madame
B——-. “Monsieur de V——-, offer your arm to Emilie!”
And now the baron is seated in his carriage next to a woman who, during the
whole evening, had been offered and had refused a thousand attentions, and from
whom he had hoped in vain to win a single look. There she was, in all the
lustre of her youth and beauty, displaying the whitest shoulders and the most
ravishing lines of beauty. Her face, which still reflected the pleasures of the
evening, seemed to vie with the brilliancy of her satin gown; her eyes to rival
the blaze of her diamonds; and her skin to cope with the soft whiteness of the
marabouts which tied in her hair, set off the ebon tresses and the ringlets
dangling from her headdress. Her tender voice would stir the chords of the most
insensible hearts; in a word, so powerfully did she wake up love in the human
breast that Robert d’Abrissel himself would perhaps have yielded to her.
The baron glanced at his wife, who, overcome with fatigue, had sunk to sleep in
a corner of the carriage. He compared, in spite of himself, the toilette of
Louise and that of Emilie. Now on occasions of this kind the presence of a wife
is singularly calculated to sharpen the unquenchable desires of a forbidden
love. Moreover, the glances of the baron, directed alternately to his wife and
to her friend, were easy to interpret, and Madame B——- interpreted them.
“Poor Louise,” she said, “she is overtired. Going out does not suit her, her
tastes are so simple. At Ecouen she was always reading—”
“And you, what used you to do?”
“I, sir? Oh, I thought about nothing but acting comely. It was my passion!”
“But why do you so rarely visit Madame de V——-? We have a country house at
Saint-Prix, where we could have a comedy acted, in a little theatre which I
have built there.”
“If I have not visited Madame de V——-, whose fault is it?” she replied. “You
are so jealous that you will not allow her either to visit her friends or to
receive them.”
“I jealous!” cried Monsieur de V——-, “after four years of marriage, and after
having had three children!”
“Hush,” said Emilie, striking the fingers of the baron with her fan, “Louise is
not asleep!”
The carriage stopped, and the baron offered his hand to his wife’s fair friend
and helped her to get out.
“I hope,” said Madame B——-, “that you will not prevent Louise from coming to
the ball which I am giving this week.”
The baron made her a respectful bow.
This ball was a triumph of Madame B——-’s and the ruin of the husband of Louise;
for he became desperately enamored of Emilie, to whom he would have sacrificed
a hundred lawful wives.
Some months after that evening on which the baron gained some hopes of
succeeding with his wife’s friend, he found himself one morning at the house of
Madame B——-, when the maid came to announce the Baroness de V——-.
“Ah!” cried Emilie, “if Louise were to see you with me at such an hour as this,
she would be capable of compromising me. Go into that closet and don’t make the
least noise.”
The husband, caught like a mouse in a trap, concealed himself in the closet.
“Good-day, my dear!” said the two women, kissing each other.
“Why are you come so early?” asked Emilie.
“Oh! my dear, cannot you guess? I came to have an understanding with you!”
“What, a duel?”
“Precisely, my dear. I am not like you, not I! I love my husband and am jealous
of him. You! you are beautiful, charming, you have the right to be a coquette,
you can very well make fun of B——-, to whom your virtue seems to be of little
importance. But as you have plenty of lovers in society, I beg you that you
will leave me my husband. He is always at your house, and he certainly would
not come unless you were the attraction.”
“What a very pretty jacket you have on.”
“Do you think so? My maid made it.”
“Then I shall get Anastasia to take a lesson from Flore—”
“So, then, my dear, I count on your friendship to refrain from bringing trouble
in my house.”
“But, my child, I do not know how you can conceive that I should fall in love
with your husband; he is coarse and fat as a deputy of the centre. He is short
and ugly—Ah! I will allow that he is generous, but that is all you can say for
him, and this is a quality which is all in all only to opera girls; so that you
can understand, my dear, that if I were choosing a lover, as you seem to
suppose I am, I wouldn’t choose an old man like your baron. If I have given him
any hopes, if I have received him, it was certainly for the purpose of amusing
myself, and of giving you liberty; for I believed you had a weakness for young
Rostanges.”
“I?” exclaimed Louise, “God preserve me from it, my dear; he is the most
intolerable coxcomb in the world. No, I assure you, I love my husband! You may
laugh as you choose; it is true. I know it may seem ridiculous, but consider,
he has made my fortune, he is no miser, and he is everything to me, for it has
been my unhappy lot to be left an orphan. Now even if I did not love him, I
ought to try to preserve his esteem. Have I a family who will some day give me
shelter?”
“Come, my darling, let us speak no more about it,” said Emilie, interrupting
her friend, “for it tires me to death.”
After a few trifling remarks the baroness left.
“How is this, monsieur?” cried Madame B——-, opening the door of the closet
where the baron was frozen with cold, for this incident took place in winter;
“how is this? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for not adoring a little wife who
is so interesting? Don’t speak to me of love; you may idolize me, as you say
you do, for a certain time, but you will never love me as you love Louise. I
can see that in your heart I shall never outweigh the interest inspired by a
virtuous wife, children, and a family circle. I should one day be deserted and
become the object of your bitter reflections. You would coldly say of me ‘I
have had that woman!’ That phrase I have heard pronounced by men with the most
insulting indifference. You see, monsieur, that I reason in cold blood, and
that I do not love you, because you never would be able to love me.”
“What must I do then to convince you of my love?” cried the baron, fixing his
gaze on the young woman.
She had never appeared to him so ravishingly beautiful as at that moment, when
her soft voice poured forth a torrent of words whose sternness was belied by
the grace of her gestures, by the pose of her head and by her coquettish
attitude.
“Oh, when I see Louise in possession of a lover,” she replied, “when I know
that I am taking nothing away from her, and that she has nothing to regret in
losing your affection; when I am quite sure that you love her no longer, and
have obtained certain proof of your indifference towards her—Oh, then I may
listen to you!—These words must seem odious to you,” she continued in an
earnest voice; “and so indeed they are, but do not think that they have been
pronounced by me. I am the rigorous mathematician who makes his deductions from
a preliminary proposition. You are married, and do you deliberately set about
making love to some one else? I should be mad to give any encouragement to a
man who cannot be mine eternally.”
“Demon!” exclaimed the husband. “Yes, you are a demon, and not a woman!”
“Come now, you are really amusing!” said the young woman as she seized the
bell-rope.
“Oh! no, Emilie,” continued the lover of forty, in a calmer voice. “Do not
ring; stop, forgive me! I will sacrifice everything for you.”
“But I do not promise you anything!” she answered quickly with a laugh.
“My God! How you make me suffer!” he exclaimed.
“Well, and have not you in your life caused the unhappiness of more than one
person?” she asked. “Remember all the tears which have been shed through you
and for you! Oh, your passion does not inspire me with the least pity. If you
do not wish to make me laugh, make me share your feelings.”
“Adieu, madame, there is a certain clemency in your sternness. I appreciate the
lesson you have taught me. Yes, I have many faults to expiate.”
“Well then, go and repent of them,” she said with a mocking smile; “in making
Louise happy you will perform the rudest penance in your power.”
They parted. But the love of the baron was too violent to allow of Madame
B——-’s harshness failing to accomplish her end, namely, the separation of the
married couple.
At the end of some months the Baron de V——- and his wife lived apart, though
they lived in the same mansion. The baroness was the object of universal pity,
for in public she always did justice to her husband and her resignation seemed
wonderful. The most prudish women of society found nothing to blame in the
friendship which united Louise to the young Rostanges. And all was laid to the
charge of Monsieur de V——-’s folly.
When this last had made all the sacrifices that a man could make for Madame
B——-, his perfidious mistress started for the waters of Mount Dore, for
Switzerland and for Italy, on the pretext of seeking the restoration of her
health.
The baron died of inflammation of the liver, being attended during his sickness
by the most touching ministrations which his wife could lavish upon him; and
judging from the grief which he manifested at having deserted her, he seemed
never to have suspected her participation in the plan which had been his ruin.
This anecdote, which we have chosen from a thousand others, exemplifies the
services which two women can render each other.
From the words—“Let me have the pleasure of bringing my husband” up to the
conception of the drama, whose denouement was inflammation of the liver, every
female perfidy was assembled to work out the end. Certain incidents will, of
course, be met with which diversify more or less the typical example which we
have given, but the march of the drama is almost always the same. Moreover a
husband ought always to distrust the woman friends of his wife. The subtle
artifices of these lying creatures rarely fail of their effect, for they are
seconded by two enemies, who always keep close to a man—and these are vanity
and desire.
The man who hastens to tell another man that he has dropped a thousand franc
bill from his pocket-book, or even that the handkerchief is coming out of his
pocket, would think it a mean thing to warn him that some one was carrying off
his wife. There is certainly something extremely odd in this moral
inconsistency, but after all it admits of explanation. Since the law cannot
exercise any interference with matrimonial rights, the citizens have even less
right to constitute themselves a conjugal police; and when one restores a
thousand franc bill to him who has lost it, he acts under a certain kind of
obligation, founded on the principle which says, “Do unto others as ye would
they should do unto you!”
But by what reasoning can justification be found for the help which one
celibate never asks in vain, but always receives from another celibate in
deceiving a husband, and how shall we qualify the rendering of such help? A man
who is incapable of assisting a gendarme in discovering an assassin, has no
scruple in taking a husband to a theatre, to a concert or even to a
questionable house, in order to help a comrade, whom he would not hesitate to
kill in a duel to-morrow, in keeping an assignation, the result of which is to
introduce into a family a spurious child, and to rob two brothers of a portion
of their fortune by giving them a co-heir whom they never perhaps would
otherwise have had; or to effect the misery of three human beings. We must
confess that integrity is a very rare virtue, and, very often, the man that
thinks he has most actually has least. Families have been divided by feuds, and
brothers have been murdered, which events would never have taken place if some
friend had refused to perform what passes to the world as a harmless trick.
It is impossible for a man to be without some hobby or other, and all of us are
devoted either to hunting, fishing, gambling, music, money, or good eating.
Well, your ruling passion will always be an accomplice in the snare which a
lover sets for you, the invisible hand of this passion will direct your
friends, or his, whether they consent or not, to play a part in the little
drama when they want to take you away from home, or to induce you to leave your
wife to the mercy of another. A lover will spend two whole months, if
necessary, in planning the construction of the mouse-trap.
I have seen the most cunning men on earth thus taken in.
There was a certain retired lawyer of Normandy. He lived in the little town of
B——-, where a regiment of the chasseurs of Cantal were garrisoned. A
fascinating officer of this regiment had fallen in love with the wife of this
pettifogger, and the regiment was leaving before the two lovers had been able
to enjoy the least privacy. It was the fourth military man over whom the lawyer
had triumphed. As he left the dinner-table one evening, about six o’clock, the
husband took a walk on the terrace of his garden from which he could see the
whole country side. The officers arrived at this moment to take leave of him.
Suddenly the flame of a conflagration burst forth on the horizon. “Heavens! La
Daudiniere is on fire!” exclaimed the major. He was an old simple-minded
soldier, who had dined at home. Every one mounted horse. The young wife smiled
as she found herself alone, for her lover, hidden in the coppice, had said to
her, “It is a straw stack on fire!” The flank of the husband was turned with
all the more facility in that a fine courser was provided for him by the
captain, and with a delicacy very rare in the cavalry, the lover actually
sacrificed a few moments of his happiness in order to catch up with the
cavalcade, and return in company with the husband.
Marriage is a veritable duel, in which persistent watchfulness is required in
order to triumph over an adversary; for, if you are unlucky enough to turn your
head, the sword of the celibate will pierce you through and through.
The prettiest waiting-maid I have ever seen is that of Madame V——y, a lady who
to-day plays at Paris a brilliant part among the most fashionable women, and
passes for a wife who keeps on excellent terms with her husband. Mademoiselle
Celestine is a person whose points of beauty are so numerous that, in order to
describe her, it would be necessary to translate the thirty verses which we are
told form an inscription in the seraglio of the Grand Turk and contain each of
them an excellent description of one of the thirty beauties of women.
“You show a great deal of vanity in keeping near you such an accomplished
creature,” said a lady to the mistress of the house.
“Ah! my dear, some day perhaps you will find yourself jealous of me in
possessing Celestine.”
“She must be endowed with very rare qualities, I suppose? She perhaps dresses
you well?”
“Oh, no, very badly!”
“She sews well?”
“She never touches her needle.”
“She is faithful?”
“She is one of those whose fidelity costs more than the most cunning
dishonesty.”
“You astonish me, my dear; she is then your foster-sister?”
“Not at all; she is positively good for nothing, but she is more useful to me
than any other member of my household. If she remains with me ten years, I have
promised her twenty thousand francs. It will be money well earned, and I shall
not forget to give it!” said the young woman, nodding her head with a meaning
gesture.
At last the questioner of Madame V——y understood.
When a woman has no friend of her own sex intimate enough to assist her in
proving false to marital love, her maid is a last resource which seldom fails
in bringing about the desired result.
Oh! after ten years of marriage to find under his roof, and to see all the
time, a young girl of from sixteen to eighteen, fresh, dressed with taste, the
treasures of whose beauty seem to breathe defiance, whose frank bearing is
irresistibly attractive, whose downcast eyes seem to fear you, whose timid
glance tempts you, and for whom the conjugal bed has no secrets, for she is at
once a virgin and an experienced woman! How can a man remain cold, like St.
Anthony, before such powerful sorcery, and have the courage to remain faithful
to the good principles represented by a scornful wife, whose face is always
stern, whose manners are always snappish, and who frequently refuses to be
caressed? What husband is stoical enough to resist such fires, such frosts?
There, where you see a new harvest of pleasure, the young innocent sees an
income, and your wife her liberty. It is a little family compact, which is
signed in the interest of good will.
In this case, your wife acts with regard to marriage as young fashionables do
with regard to their country. If they are drawn for the army, they buy a man to
carry the musket, to die in their place and to spare them the hardships of
military life.
In compromises of this sort there is not a single woman who does not know how
to put her husband in the wrong. I have noticed that, by a supreme stroke of
diplomacy, the majority of wives do not admit their maids into the secret of
the part which they give them to play. They trust to nature, and assume an
affected superiority over the lover and his mistress.
These secret perfidies of women explain to a great degree the odd features of
married life which are to be observed in the world; and I have heard women
discuss, with profound sagacity, the dangers which are inherent in this
terrible method of attack, and it is necessary to know thoroughly both the
husband and the creature to whom he is to be abandoned, in order to make
successful use of her. Many a woman, in this connection, has been the victim of
her own calculations.
Moreover, the more impetuous and passionate a husband shows himself, the less
will a woman dare to employ this expedient; but a husband caught in this snare
will never have anything to say to his stern better-half, when the maid, giving
evidence of the fault she has committed, is sent into the country with an
infant and a dowry.
The doctor is one of the most potent auxiliaries of an honest woman, when she
wishes to acquire a friendly divorce from her husband. The services that the
doctor renders, most of the time without knowing it, to a woman, are of such
importance that there does not exist a single house in France where the doctor
is chosen by any one but the wife.
All doctors know what great influence women have on their reputation; thus we
meet with few doctors who do not study to please the ladies. When a man of
talent has become celebrated it is true that he does not lend himself to the
crafty conspiracies which women hatch; but without knowing it he becomes
involved in them.
I suppose that a husband taught by the adventures of his own youth makes up his
mind to pick out a doctor for his wife, from the first days of his marriage. So
long as his feminine adversary fails to conceive the assistance that she may
derive from this ally, she will submit in silence; but later on, if all her
allurements fail to win over the man chosen by her husband, she will take a
more favorable opportunity to give her husband her confidence, in the following
remarkable manner.
“I don’t like the way in which the doctor feels my pulse!”
And of course the doctor is dropped.
Thus it happens that either a woman chooses her doctor, wins over the man who
has been imposed upon her, or procures his dismissal. But this contest is very
rare; the majority of young men who marry are acquainted with none but
beardless doctors whom they have no anxiety to procure for their wives, and
almost always the Esculapius of the household is chosen by the feminine power.
Thus it happens that some fine morning the doctor, when he leaves the chamber
of madame, who has been in bed for a fortnight, is induced by her to say to
you:
“I do not say that the condition of madame presents any serious symptoms; but
this constant drowsiness, this general listlessness, and her natural tendency
to a spinal affection demand great care. Her lymph is inspissated. She wants a
change of air. She ought to be sent either to the waters of Bareges or to the
waters of Plombieres.”
“All right, doctor.”
You allow your wife to go to Plombieres; but she goes there because Captain
Charles is quartered in the Vosges. She returns in capital health and the
waters of Plombieres have done wonders for her. She has written to you every
day, she has lavished upon you from a distance every possible caress. The
danger of a spinal affection has utterly disappeared.
There is extant a little pamphlet, whose publication was prompted doubtless by
hate. It was published in Holland, and it contains some very curious details of
the manner in which Madame de Maintenon entered into an understanding with
Fagon, for the purposes of controlling Louis XIV. Well, some morning your
doctor will threaten you, as Fagon threatened his master, with a fit of
apoplexy, if you do not diet yourself. This witty work of satire, doubtless the
production of some courtier, entitled “Madame de Saint Tron,” has been
interpreted by the modern author who has become proverbial as “the young
doctor.” But his delightful sketch is very much superior to the work whose
title I cite for the benefit of the book-lovers, and we have great pleasure in
acknowledging that the work of our clever contemporary has prevented us, out of
regard for the glory of the seventeenth century, from publishing the fragment
of the old pamphlet.
Very frequently a doctor becomes duped by the judicious manoeuvres of a young
and delicate wife, and comes to you with the announcement:
“Sir, I would not wish to alarm madame with regard to her condition; but I will
advise you, if you value her health, to keep her in perfect tranquillity. The
irritation at this moment seems to threaten the chest, and we must gain control
of it; there is need of rest for her, perfect rest; the least agitation might
change the seat of the malady. At this crisis, the prospect of bearing a child
would be fatal to her.”
“But, doctor—”
“Ah, yes! I know that!”
He laughs and leaves the house.
Like the rod of Moses, the doctor’s mandate makes and unmakes generations. The
doctor will restore you to your marriage bed with the same arguments that he
used in debarring you. He treats your wife for complaints which she has not, in
order to cure her of those which she has, and all the while you have no idea of
it; for the scientific jargon of doctors can only be compared to the layers in
which they envelop their pills.
An honest woman in her chamber with the doctor is like a minister sure of a
majority; she has it in her power to make a horse, or a carriage, according to
her good pleasure and her taste; she will send you away or receive you, as she
likes. Sometimes she will pretend to be ill in order to have a chamber separate
from yours; sometimes she will surround herself with all the paraphernalia of
an invalid; she will have an old woman for a nurse, regiments of vials and of
bottles, and, environed by these ramparts, will defy you by her invalid airs.
She will talk to you in such a depressing way of the electuaries and of the
soothing draughts which she has taken, of the agues which she has had, of her
plasters and cataplasms, that she will fill you with disgust at these sickly
details, if all the time these sham sufferings are not intended to serve as
engines by means of which, eventually, a successful attack may be made on that
singular abstraction known as your honor.
In this way your wife will be able to fortify herself at every point of contact
which you possess with the world, with society and with life. Thus everything
will take arms against you, and you will be alone among all these enemies. But
suppose that it is your unprecedented privilege to possess a wife who is
without religious connections, without parents or intimate friends; that you
have penetration enough to see through all the tricks by which your wife’s
lover tries to entrap you; that you still have sufficient love for your fair
enemy to resist all the Martons of the earth; that, in fact, you have for your
doctor a man who is so celebrated that he has no time to listen to the
maunderings of your wife; or that if your Esculapius is madame’s vassal, you
demand a consultation, and an incorruptible doctor intervenes every time the
favorite doctor prescribes a remedy that disquiets you; even in that case, your
prospects will scarcely be more brilliant. In fact, even if you do not succumb
to this invasion of allies, you must not forget that, so far, your adversary
has not, so to speak, struck the decisive blow. If you hold out still longer,
your wife, having flung round you thread upon thread, as a spider spins his
web, an invisible net, will resort to the arms which nature has given her,
which civilization has perfected, and which will be treated of in the next
Meditation.
OF DIFFERENT WEAPONS.
A weapon is anything which is used for the purpose of wounding. From this point
of view, some sentiments prove to be the most cruel weapons which man can
employ against his fellow man. The genius of Schiller, lucid as it was
comprehensive, seems to have revealed all the phenomena which certain ideas
bring to light in the human organization by their keen and penetrating action.
A man may be put to death by a thought. Such is the moral of those heartrending
scenes, when in The Brigands the poet shows a young man, with the aid of
certain ideas, making such powerful assaults on the heart of an old man, that
he ends by causing the latter’s death. The time is not far distant when science
will be able to observe the complicated mechanism of our thoughts and to
apprehend the transmission of our feelings. Some developer of the occult
sciences will prove that our intellectual organization constitutes nothing more
than a kind of interior man, who projects himself with less violence than the
exterior man, and that the struggle which may take place between two such
powers as these, although invisible to our feeble eyes, is not a less mortal
struggle than that in which our external man compels us to engage.
But these considerations belong to a different department of study from that in
which we are now engaged; these subjects we intend to deal with in a future
publication; some of our friends are already acquainted with one of the most
important,—that, namely, entitled “THE PATHOLOGY OF SOCIAL LIFE, or
Meditations mathematical, physical, chemical and transcendental on the
manifestations of thought, taken under all the forms which are produced by the
state of society, whether by living, marriage, conduct, veterinary medicine, or
by speech and action, etc.,” in which all these great questions are fully
discussed. The aim of this brief metaphysical observation is only to remind you
that the higher classes of society reason too well to admit of their being
attacked by any other than intellectual arms.
Although it is true that tender and delicate souls are found enveloped in a
body of metallic hardness, at the same time there are souls of bronze enveloped
in bodies so supple and capricious that their grace attracts the friendship of
others, and their beauty calls for a caress. But if you flatter the exterior
man with your hand, the Homo duplex, the interior man, to use an
expression of Buffon, immediately rouses himself and rends you with his keen
points of contact.
This description of a special class of human creatures, which we hope you will
not run up against during your earthly journey, presents a picture of what your
wife may be to you. Every one of the sentiments which nature has endowed your
heart with, in their gentlest form, will become a dagger in the hand of your
wife. You will be stabbed every moment, and you will necessarily succumb; for
your love will flow like blood from every wound.
This is the last struggle, but for her it also means victory.
In order to carry out the distinction which we think we have established among
three sorts of feminine temperament, we will divide this Meditation into three
parts, under the following titles:
Women are constantly the dupes or the victims of excessive sensibility; but we
have already demonstrated that with the greater number of them this delicacy of
soul must needs, almost without their knowing it, receive many rude blows, from
the very fact of their marriage. (See Meditations entitled The
Predestined and Of the Honeymoon.) Most of the means of defence
instinctively employed by husbands are nothing but traps set for the liveliness
of feminine affections.
Now the moment comes when the wife, during the Civil War, traces by a single
act of thought the history of her moral life, and is irritated on perceiving
the prodigious way in which you have taken advantage of her sensibility. It is
very rarely that women, moved either by an innate feeling for revenge, which
they themselves can never explain, or by their instinct of domination, fail to
discover that this quality in their natural machinery, when brought into play
against the man, is inferior to no other instrument for obtaining ascendancy
over him.
With admirable cleverness, they proceed to find out what chords in the hearts
of their husbands are most easily touched; and when once they discover this
secret, they eagerly proceed to put it into practice; then, like a child with a
mechanical toy, whose spring excites their curiosity, they go on employing it,
carelessly calling into play the movements of the instrument, and satisfied
simply with their success in doing so. If they kill you, they will mourn over
you with the best grace in the world, as the most virtuous, the most excellent,
the most sensible of men.
In this way your wife will first arm herself with that generous sentiment which
leads us to respect those who are in pain. The man most disposed to quarrel
with a woman full of life and health becomes helpless before a woman who is
weak and feeble. If your wife has not attained the end of her secret designs,
by means of those various methods already described, she will quickly seize
this all-powerful weapon. In virtue of this new strategic method, you will see
the young girl, so strong in life and beauty, whom you had wedded in her
flower, metamorphosing herself into a pale and sickly woman.
Now headache is an affection which affords infinite resources to a woman. This
malady, which is the easiest of all to feign, for it is destitute of any
apparent symptom, merely obliges her to say: “I have a headache.” A woman
trifles with you and there is no one in the world who can contradict her skull,
whose impenetrable bones defy touch or ocular test. Moreover, headache is, in
our opinion, the queen of maladies, the pleasantest and the most terrible
weapon employed by wives against their husbands. There are some coarse and
violent men who have been taught the tricks of women by their mistresses, in
the happy hours of their celibacy, and so flatter themselves that they are
never to be caught by this vulgar trap. But all their efforts, all their
arguments end by being vanquished before the magic of these words: “I have a
headache.” If a husband complains, or ventures on a reproach, if he tries to
resist the power of this Il buondo cani of marriage, he is lost.
Imagine a young woman, voluptuously lying on a divan, her head softly supported
by a cushion, one hand hanging down; on a small table close at hand is her
glass of lime-water. Now place by her side a burly husband. He has made five or
six turns round the room; but each time he has turned on his heels to begin his
walk all over again, the little invalid has made a slight movement of her
eyebrows in a vain attempt to remind him that the slightest noise fatigues her.
At last he musters all his courage and utters a protest against her pretended
malady, in the bold phrase:
“And have you really a headache?”
At these words the young woman slightly raises her languid head, lifts an arm,
which feebly falls back again upon her divan, raises her eyes to the ceiling,
raises all that she has power to raise; then darting at you a leaden glance,
she says in a voice of remarkable feebleness:
“Oh! What can be the matter with me? I suffer the agonies of death! And this is
all the comfort you give me! Ah! you men, it is plainly seen that nature has
not given you the task of bringing children into the world. What egoists and
tyrants you are! You take us in all the beauty of our youth, fresh, rosy, with
tapering waist, and then all is well! When your pleasures have ruined the
blooming gifts which we received from nature, you never forgive us for having
forfeited them to you! That was all understood. You will allow us to have
neither the virtues nor the sufferings of our condition. You must needs have
children, and we pass many nights in taking care of them. But child-bearing has
ruined our health, and left behind the germs of serious maladies.—Oh, what pain
I suffer! There are few women who are not subject to headaches; but your wife
must be an exception. You even laugh at our sufferings; that is
generosity!—please don’t walk about —I should not have expected this of
you!—Stop the clock; the click of the pendulum rings in my head. Thanks! Oh,
what an unfortunate creature I am! Have you a scent-bottle with you? Yes, oh!
for pity’s sake, allow me to suffer in peace, and go away; for this scent
splits my head!”
What can you say in reply? Do you not hear within you a voice which cries, “And
what if she is actually suffering?” Moreover, almost all husbands evacuate the
field of battle very quietly, while their wives watch them from the corner of
their eyes, marching off on tip-toe and closing the door quietly on the chamber
henceforth to be considered sacred by them.
Such is the headache, true or false, which is patronized at your home. Then the
headache begins to play a regular role in the bosom of your family. It is a
theme on which a woman can play many admirable variations. She sets it forth in
every key. With the aid of the headache alone a wife can make a husband
desperate. A headache seizes madame when she chooses, where she chooses, and as
much as she chooses. There are headaches of five days, of ten minutes, periodic
or intermittent headaches.
You sometimes find your wife in bed, in pain, helpless, and the blinds of her
room are closed. The headache has imposed silence on every one, from the
regions of the porter’s lodge, where he is cutting wood, even to the garret of
your groom, from which he is throwing down innocent bundles of straw. Believing
in this headache, you leave the house, but on your return you find that madame
has decamped! Soon madame returns, fresh and ruddy:
“The doctor came,” she says, “and advised me to take exercise, and I find
myself much better!”
Another day you wish to enter madame’s room.
“Oh, sir,” says the maid, showing the most profound astonishment, “madame has
her usual headache, and I have never seen her in such pain! The doctor has been
sent for.”
“You are a happy man,” said Marshal Augereau to General R——-, “to have such a
pretty wife!”
“To have!” replied the other. “If I have my wife ten days in the year, that is
about all. These confounded women have always either the headache or some other
thing!”
The headache in France takes the place of the sandals, which, in Spain, the
Confessor leaves at the door of the chamber in which he is with his penitent.
If your wife, foreseeing some hostile intentions on your part, wishes to make
herself as inviolable as the charter, she immediately gets up a little headache
performance. She goes to bed in a most deliberate fashion, she utters shrieks
which rend the heart of the hearer. She goes gracefully through a series of
gesticulations so cleverly executed that you might think her a professional
contortionist. Now what man is there so inconsiderate as to dare to speak to a
suffering woman about desires which, in him, prove the most perfect health?
Politeness alone demands of him perfect silence. A woman knows under these
circumstances that by means of this all-powerful headache, she can at her will
paste on her bed the placard which sends back home the amateurs who have been
allured by the announcement of the Comedie Francaise, when they read the words:
“Closed through the sudden indisposition of Mademoiselle Mars.”
O headache, protectress of love, tariff of married life, buckler against which
all married desires expire! O mighty headache! Can it be possible that lovers
have never sung thy praises, personified thee, or raised thee to the skies? O
magic headache, O delusive headache, blest be the brain that first invented
thee! Shame on the doctor who shall find out thy preventive! Yes, thou art the
only ill that women bless, doubtless through gratitude for the good things thou
dispensest to them, O deceitful headache! O magic headache!
There is, however, a power which is superior even to that of the headache; and
we must avow to the glory of France, that this power is one of the most recent
which has been won by Parisian genius. As in the case with all the most useful
discoveries of art and science, no one knows to whose intellect it is due.
Only, it is certain that it was towards the middle of the last century that
“Vapors” made their first appearance in France. Thus while Papin was applying
the force of vaporized water in mechanical problems, a French woman, whose name
unhappily is unknown, had the glory of endowing her sex with the faculty of
vaporizing their fluids. Very soon the prodigious influence obtained by vapors
was extended to the nerves; it was thus in passing from fibre to fibre that the
science of neurology was born. This admirable science has since then led such
men as Philips and other clever physiologists to the discovery of the nervous
fluid in its circulation; they are now perhaps on the eve of identifying its
organs, and the secret of its origin and of its evaporation. And thus, thanks
to certain quackeries of this kind, we may be enabled some day to penetrate the
mysteries of that unknown power which we have already called more than once in
the present book, the Will. But do not let us trespass on the territory
of medical philosophy. Let us consider the nerves and the vapors solely in
their connection with marriage.
Victims of Neurosis (a pathological term under which are comprised all
affections of the nervous system) suffer in two ways, as far as married women
are concerned; for our physiology has the loftiest disdain for medical
classifications. Thus we recognize only:
The classic affection has something bellicose and excitable on it. Those who
thus suffer are as violent in their antics as pythonesses, as frantic as
monads, as excited as bacchantes; it is a revival of antiquity,
pure and simple.
The romantic sufferers are mild and plaintive as the ballads sung amid the
mists of Scotland. They are pallid as young girls carried to their bier by the
dance or by love; they are eminently elegiac and they breathe all the
melancholy of the North.
That woman with black hair, with piercing eye, with high color, with dry lips
and a powerful hand, will become excited and convulsive; she represents the
genius of classic neurosis; while a young blonde woman, with white skin, is the
genius of romantic neurosis; to one belongs the empire gained by nerves, to the
other the empire gained by vapors.
Very frequently a husband, when he comes home, finds his wife in tears.
“What is the matter, my darling?”
“It is nothing.”
“But you are in tears!”
“I weep without knowing why. I am quite sad! I saw faces in the clouds, and
those faces never appear to me except on the eve of some disaster—I think I
must be going to die.”
Then she talks to you in a low voice of her dead father, of her dead uncle, of
her dead grandfather, of her dead cousin. She invokes all these mournful
shades, she feels as if she had all their sicknesses, she is attacked with all
the pains they felt, she feels her heart palpitate with excessive violence, she
feels her spleen swelling. You say to yourself, with a self-satisfied air:
“I know exactly what this is all about!”
And then you try to soothe her; but you find her a woman who yawns like an open
box, who complains of her chest, who begins to weep anew, who implores you to
leave her to her melancholy and her mournful memories. She talks to you about
her last wishes, follows her own funeral, is buried, plants over her tomb the
green canopy of a weeping willow, and at the very time when you would like to
raise a joyful epithalamium, you find an epitaph to greet you all in black.
Your wish to console her melts away in the cloud of Ixion.
There are women of undoubted fidelity who in this way extort from their feeling
husbands cashmere shawls, diamonds, the payment of their debts, or the rent of
a box at the theatre; but almost always vapors are employed as decisive weapons
in Civil War.
On the plea of her spinal affection or of her weak chest, a woman takes pains
to seek out some distraction or other; you see her dressing herself in soft
fabrics like an invalid with all the symptoms of spleen; she never goes out
because an intimate friend, her mother or her sister, has tried to tear her
away from that divan which monopolizes her and on which she spends her life in
improvising elegies. Madame is going to spend a fortnight in the country
because the doctor orders it. In short, she goes where she likes and does what
she likes. Is it possible that there can be a husband so brutal as to oppose
such desires, by hindering a wife from going to seek a cure for her cruel
sufferings? For it has been established after many long discussions that in the
nerves originate the most fearful torture.
But it is especially in bed that vapors play their part. There when a woman has
not a headache she has her vapors; and when she has neither vapors nor
headache, she is under the protection of the girdle of Venus, which, as you
know, is a myth.
Among the women who fight with you the battle of vapors, are some more blonde,
more delicate, more full of feeling than others, and who possess the gift of
tears. How admirably do they know how to weep! They weep when they like, as
they like and as much as they like. They organize a system of offensive warfare
which consists of manifesting sublime resignation, and they gain victories
which are all the more brilliant, inasmuch as they remain all the time in
excellent health.
Does a husband, irritated beyond all measure, at last express his wishes to
them? They regard him with an air of submission, bow their heads and keep
silence. This pantomime almost always puts a husband to rout. In conjugal
struggles of this kind, a man prefers a woman should speak and defend herself,
for then he may show elation or annoyance; but as for these women, not a word.
Their silence distresses you and you experience a sort of remorse, like the
murderer who, when he finds his victim offers no resistance, trembles with
redoubled fear. He would prefer to slay him in self-defence. You return to the
subject. As you draw near, your wife wipes away her tears and hides her
handkerchief, so as to let you see that she has been weeping. You are melted,
you implore your little Caroline to speak, your sensibility has been touched
and you forget everything; then she sobs while she speaks, and speaks while she
sobs. This is a sort of machine eloquence; she deafens you with her tears, with
her words which come jerked out in confusion; it is the clapper and torrent of
a mill.
French women and especially Parisians possess in a marvelous degree the secret
by which such scenes are enacted, and to these scenes their voices, their sex,
their toilet, their manner give a wonderful charm. How often do the tears upon
the cheeks of these adorable actresses give way to a piquant smile, when they
see their husbands hasten to break the silk lace, the weak fastening of their
corsets, or to restore the comb which holds together the tresses of their hair
and the bunch of golden ringlets always on the point of falling down?
But how all these tricks of modernity pale before the genius of antiquity,
before nervous attacks which are violent, before the Pyrrhic dance of married
life! Oh! how many hopes for a lover are there in the vivacity of those
convulsive movements, in the fire of those glances, in the strength of those
limbs, beautiful even in contortion! It is then that a woman is carried away
like an impetuous wind, darts forth like the flames of a conflagration,
exhibits a movement like a billow which glides over the white pebbles. She is
overcome with excess of love, she sees the future, she is the seer who
prophesies, but above all, she sees the present moment and tramples on her
husband, and impresses him with a sort of terror.
The sight of his wife flinging off vigorous men as if they were so many
feathers, is often enough to deter a man from ever striving to wrong her. He
will be like the child who, having pulled the trigger of some terrific engine,
has ever afterwards an incredible respect for the smallest spring. I have known
a man, gentle and amiable in his ways, whose eyes were fixed upon those of his
wife, exactly as if he had been put into a lion’s cage, and some one had said
to him that he must not irritate the beast, if he would escape with his life.
Nervous attacks of this kind are very fatiguing and become every day more rare.
Romanticism, however, has maintained its ground.
Sometimes, we meet with phlegmatic husbands, those men whose love is long
enduring, because they store up their emotions, whose genius gets the upper
hand of these headaches and nervous attacks; but these sublime creatures are
rare. Faithful disciples of the blessed St. Thomas, who wished to put his
finger into the wound, they are endowed with an incredulity worthy of an
atheist. Imperturbable in the midst of all these fraudulent headaches and all
these traps set by neurosis, they concentrate their attention on the comedy
which is being played before them, they examine the actress, they search for
one of the springs that sets her going; and when they have discovered the
mechanism of this display, they arm themselves by giving a slight impulse to
the puppet-valve, and thus easily assure themselves either of the reality of
the disease or the artifices of these conjugal mummeries.
But if by study which is almost superhuman in its intensity a husband escapes
all the artifices which lawless and untamable love suggests to women, he will
beyond doubt be overcome by the employment of a terrible weapon, the last which
a woman would resort to, for she never destroys with her own hands her empire
over her husband without some sort of repugnance. But this is a poisoned weapon
as powerful as the fatal knife of the executioner. This reflection brings us to
the last paragraph of the present Meditation.
Before taking up the subject of modesty, it may perhaps be necessary to inquire
whether there is such a thing. Is it anything in a woman but well understood
coquetry? Is it anything but a sentiment that claims the right, on a woman’s
part, to dispose of her own body as she chooses, as one may well believe, when
we consider that half the women in the world go almost naked? Is it anything
but a social chimera, as Diderot supposed, reminding us that this sentiment
always gives way before sickness and before misery?
Justice may be done to all these questions.
An ingenious author has recently put forth the view that men are much more
modest than women. He supports this contention by a great mass of surgical
experiences; but, in order that his conclusions merit our attention, it would
be necessary that for a certain time men were subjected to treatment by women
surgeons.
The opinion of Diderot is of still less weight.
To deny the existence of modesty, because it disappears during those crises in
which almost all human sentiments are annihilated, is as unreasonable as to
deny that life exists because death sooner or later comes.
Let us grant, then, that one sex has as much modesty as the other, and let us
inquire in what modesty consists.
Rousseau makes modesty the outcome of all those coquetries which females
display before males. This opinion appears to us equally mistaken.
The writers of the eighteenth century have doubtless rendered immense services
to society; but their philosophy, based as it is upon sensualism, has never
penetrated any deeper than the human epidermis. They have only considered the
exterior universe; and so they have retarded, for some time, the moral
development of man and the progress of science which will always draw its first
principles from the Gospel, principles hereafter to be best understood by the
fervent disciples of the Son of Man.
The study of thought’s mysteries, the discovery of those organs which belong to
the human soul, the geometry of its forces, the phenomena of its active power,
the appreciation of the faculty by which we seem to have an independent power
of bodily movement, so as to transport ourselves whither we will and to see
without the aid of bodily organs, —in a word the laws of thought’s dynamic and
those of its physical influence,—these things will fall to the lot of the next
century, as their portion in the treasury of human sciences. And perhaps we, of
the present time, are merely occupied in quarrying the enormous blocks which
later on some mighty genius will employ in the building of a glorious edifice.
Thus the error of Rousseau is simply the error of his age. He explains modesty
by the relations of different human beings to each other instead of explaining
it by the moral relations of each one with himself. Modesty is no more
susceptible of analysis than conscience; and this perhaps is another way of
saying that modesty is the conscience of the body; for while conscience directs
our sentiments and the least movement of our thoughts towards the good, modesty
presides over external movements. The actions which clash with our interests
and thus disobey the laws of conscience wound us more than any other; and if
they are repeated call forth our hatred. It is the same with acts which violate
modesty in their relations to love, which is nothing but the expression of our
whole sensibility. If extreme modesty is one of the conditions on which the
reality of marriage is based, as we have tried to prove [See Conjugal
Catechism, Meditation IV.], it is evident that immodesty will destroy it.
But this position, which would require long deductions for the acceptance of
the physiologist, women generally apply, as it were, mechanically; for society,
which exaggerates everything for the benefit of the exterior man, develops this
sentiment of women from childhood, and around it are grouped almost every other
sentiment. Moreover, the moment that this boundless veil, which takes away the
natural brutality from the least gesture, is dragged down, woman disappears.
Heart, mind, love, grace, all are in ruins. In a situation where the virginal
innocence of a daughter of Tahiti is most brilliant, the European becomes
detestable. In this lies the last weapon which a wife seizes, in order to
escape from the sentiment which her husband still fosters towards her. She is
powerful because she had made herself loathsome; and this woman, who would
count it as the greatest misfortune that her lover should be permitted to see
the slightest mystery of her toilette, is delighted to exhibit herself to her
husband in the most disadvantageous situation that can possibly be imagined.
It is by means of this rigorous system that she will try to banish you from the
conjugal bed. Mrs. Shandy may be taken to mean us harm in bidding the father of
Tristram wind up the clock; so long as your wife is not blamed for the pleasure
she takes in interrupting you by the most imperative questions. Where there
formerly was movement and life is now lethargy and death. An act of love
becomes a transaction long discussed and almost, as it were, settled by
notarial seal. But we have in another place shown that we never refuse to seize
upon the comic element in a matrimonial crisis, although here we may be
permitted to disdain the diversion which the muse of Verville and of Marshall
have found in the treachery of feminine manoeuvres, the insulting audacity of
their talk, amid the cold-blooded cynicism which they exhibit in certain
situations. It is too sad to laugh at, and too funny to mourn over. When a
woman resorts to such extreme measures, worlds at once separate her from her
husband. Nevertheless, there are some women to whom Heaven has given the gift
of being charming under all circumstances, who know how to put a certain witty
and comic grace into these performances, and who have such smooth tongues, to
use the expression of Sully, that they obtain forgiveness for their caprices
and their mockeries, and never estrange the hearts of their husbands.
What soul is so robust, what man so violently in love as to persist in his
passion, after ten years of marriage, in presence of a wife who loves him no
longer, who gives him proofs of this every moment, who repulses him, who
deliberately shows herself bitter, caustic, sickly and capricious, and who will
abjure her vows of elegance and cleanliness, rather than not see her husband
turn away from her; in presence of a wife who will stake the success of her
schemes upon the horror caused by her indecency?
All this, my dear sir, is so much more horrible because—
We have now arrived at the last infernal circle in the Divine Comedy of
Marriage. We are at the very bottom of Hell. There is something inexpressibly
terrible in the situation of a married woman at the moment when unlawful love
turns her away from her duties as mother and wife. As Diderot has very well put
it, “infidelity in a woman is like unbelief in a priest, the last extreme of
human failure; for her it is the greatest of social crimes, since it implies in
her every other crime besides, and indeed either a wife profanes her lawless
love by continuing to belong to her husband, or she breaks all the ties which
attach her to her family, by giving herself over altogether to her lover. She
ought to choose between the two courses, for her sole possible excuse lies in
the intensity of her love.”
She lives then between the claims of two obligations. It is a dilemma; she will
work either the unhappiness of her lover, if he is sincere in his passion, or
that of her husband, if she is still beloved by him.
It is to this frightful dilemma of feminine life that all the strange
inconsistencies of women’s conduct is to be attributed. In this lies the origin
of all their lies, all their perfidies; here is the secret of all their
mysteries. It is something to make one shudder. Moreover, even as simply based
upon cold-blooded calculations, the conduct of a woman who accepts the
unhappiness which attends virtue and scorns the bliss which is bought by crime,
is a hundred times more reasonable. Nevertheless, almost all women will risk
suffering in the future and ages of anguish for the ecstasy of one half hour.
If the human feeling of self-preservation, if the fear of death does not check
them, how fruitless must be the laws which send them for two years to the
Madelonnettes? O sublime infamy! And when one comes to think that he for whom
these sacrifices are to be made is one of our brethren, a gentleman to whom we
would not trust our fortune, if we had one, a man who buttons his coat just as
all of us do, it is enough to make one burst into a roar of laughter so loud,
that starting from the Luxembourg it would pass over the whole of Paris and
startle an ass browsing in the pasture at Montmartre.
It will perhaps appear extraordinary that in speaking of marriage we have
touched upon so many subjects; but marriage is not only the whole of human
life, it is the whole of two human lives. Now just as the addition of a figure
to the drawing of a lottery multiplies the chances a hundredfold, so one single
life united to another life multiplies by a startling progression the risks of
human life, which are in any case so manifold.
OF THE LAST SYMPTOMS.
The author of this book has met in the world so many people possessed by a
fanatic passion for a knowledge of the mean time, for watches with a second
hand, and for exactness in the details of their existence, that he has
considered this Meditation too necessary for the tranquillity of a great number
of husbands, to be omitted. It would have been cruel to leave men, who are
possessed with the passion for learning the hour of the day, without a compass
whereby to estimate the last variations in the matrimonial zodiac, and to
calculate the precise moment when the sign of the Minotaur appears on the
horizon. The knowledge of conjugal time would require a whole book for its
exposition, so fine and delicate are the observations required by the task. The
master admits that his extreme youth has not permitted him as yet to note and
verify more than a few symptoms; but he feels a just pride, on his arrival at
the end of his difficult enterprise, from the consciousness that he is leaving
to his successors a new field of research; and that in a matter apparently so
trite, not only was there much to be said, but also very many points are found
remaining which may yet be brought into the clear light of observation. He
therefore presents here without order or connection the rough outlines which he
has so far been able to execute, in the hope that later he may have leisure to
co-ordinate them and to arrange them in a complete system. If he has been so
far kept back in the accomplishment of a task of supreme national importance,
he believes, he may say, without incurring the charge of vanity, that he has
here indicated the natural division of those symptoms. They are necessarily of
two kinds: the unicorns and the bicorns. The unicorn Minotaur is the least
mischievous. The two culprits confine themselves to a platonic love, in which
their passion, at least, leaves no visible traces among posterity; while the
bicorn Minotaur is unhappiness with all its fruits.
We have marked with an asterisk the symptoms which seem to concern the latter
kind.
*When, after remaining a long time aloof from her husband, a woman makes
overtures of a very marked character in order to attract his love, she acts in
accordance with the axiom of maritime law, which says: The flag protects the
cargo.
A woman is at a ball, one of her friends comes up to her and says:
“Your husband has much wit.”
“You find it so?”
Your wife discovers that it is time to send your boy to a boarding school, with
whom, a little time ago, she was never going to part.
*In Lord Abergavenny’s suit for divorce, the valet de chambre deposed
that “the countess had such a detestation of all that belonged to my lord that
he had very often seen her burning the scraps of paper which he had touched in
her room.”
If an indolent woman becomes energetic, if a woman who formerly hated study
learns a foreign language; in short, every appearance of a complete change in
character is a decisive symptom.
The woman who is happy in her affections does not go much into the world.
The woman who has a lover becomes very indulgent in judging others.
*A husband gives to his wife a hundred crowns a month for dress; and, taking
everything into account, she spends at least five hundred francs without being
a sou in debt; the husband is robbed every night with a high hand by escalade,
but without burglarious breaking in.
*A married couple slept in the same bed; madame was always sick. Now they sleep
apart, she has no more headache, and her health becomes more brilliant than
ever; an alarming symptom!
A woman who was a sloven suddenly develops extreme nicety in her attire. There
is a Minotaur at hand!
“Ah! my dear, I know no greater torment than not to be understood.”
“Yes, my dear, but when one is—”
“Oh, that scarcely ever happens.”
“I agree with you that it very seldom does. Ah! it is great happiness, but
there are not two people in the world who are able to understand you.”
*The day when a wife behaves nicely to her husband—all is over.
I asked her: “Where have you been, Jeanne?”
“I have been to your friend’s to get your plate that you left there.”
“Ah, indeed! everything is still mine,” I said. The following year I repeated
the question under similar circumstances.
“I have been to bring back our plate.”
“Well, well, part of the things are still mine,” I said. But after that, when I
questioned her, she spoke very differently.
“You wish to know everything, like great people, and you have only three
shirts. I went to get my plate from my friend’s house, where I had stopped.”
“I see,” I said, “nothing is left me.”
Do not trust a woman who talks of her virtue.
Some one said to the Duchess of Chaulnes, whose life was despaired of:
“The Duke of Chaulnes would like to see you once more.”
“Is he there?”
“Yes.”
“Let him wait; he shall come in with the sacraments.” This minotauric anecdote
has been published by Chamfort, but we quote it here as typical.
*Some women try to persuade their husbands that they have duties to perform
towards certain persons.
“I am sure that you ought to pay a visit to such and such a man. . . . We
cannot avoid asking such and such a man to dinner.”
“Come, my son, hold yourself straight: try to acquire good manners! Watch such
and such a man! See how he walks! Notice the way in which he dresses.”
When a woman utters the name of a man but twice a day, there is perhaps some
uncertainty about her feelings toward him—but if thrice? —Oh! oh!
When a woman goes home with a man who is neither a lawyer nor a minister, to
the door of his apartment, she is very imprudent.
It is a terrible day when a husband fails to explain to himself the motive of
some action of his wife.
*The woman who allows herself to be found out deserves her fate.
What should be the conduct of a husband, when he recognizes a last symptom
which leaves no doubt as to the infidelity of his wife? There are only two
courses open; that of resignation or that of vengeance; there is no third
course. If vengeance is decided upon, it should be complete.
The husband who does not separate himself forever from his wife is a veritable
simpleton. If a wife and husband think themselves fit for that union of
friendship which exists between men, it is odious in the husband to make his
wife feel his superiority over her.
Here are some anecdotes, most of them as yet unpublished, which indicate pretty
plainly, in my opinion, the different shades of conduct to be observed by a
husband in like case.
M. de Roquemont slept once a month in the chamber of his wife, and he used to
say, as he went away:
“I wash my hands of anything that may happen.”
There is something disgusting in that remark, and perhaps something profound in
its suggestion of conjugal policy.
A diplomat, when he saw his wife’s lover enter, left his study and, going to
his wife’s chamber, said to the two:
“I hope you will at least refrain from fighting.”
This was good humor.
M. de Boufflers was asked what he would do if on returning after a long absence
he found his wife with child?
“I would order my night dress and slippers to be taken to her room.”
This was magnanimity.
“Madame, if this man ill treats you when you are alone, it is your own fault;
but I will not permit him to behave ill towards you in my presence, for this is
to fail in politeness in me.”
This was nobility.
The sublime is reached in this connection when the square cap of the judge is
placed by the magistrate at the foot of the bed wherein the two culprits are
asleep.
There are some fine ways of taking vengeance. Mirabeau has admirably described
in one of the books he wrote to make a living the mournful resignation of that
Italian lady who was condemned by her husband to perish with him in the
Maremma.
XCIII.
It is no act of vengeance to surprise a wife and her lover and to kill them
locked in each other’s arms; it is a great favor to them both.
XCIV.
A husband will be best avenged by his wife’s lover.
OF COMPENSATIONS.
The marital catastrophe which a certain number of husbands cannot avoid, almost
always forms the closing scene of the drama. At that point all around you is
tranquil. Your resignation, if you are resigned, has the power of awakening
keen remorse in the soul of your wife and of her lover; for their happiness
teaches them the depth of the wound they have inflicted upon you. You are, you
may be sure, a third element in all their pleasures. The principle of
kindliness and goodness which lies at the foundation of the human soul, is not
so easily repressed as people think; moreover the two people who are causing
you tortures are precisely those for whom you wish the most good.
In the conversations so sweetly familiar which link together the pleasures of
love, and form in some way to lovers the caresses of thought, your wife often
says to your rival:
“Well, I assure you, Auguste, that in any case I should like to see my poor
husband happy; for at bottom he is good; if he were not my husband, but were
only my brother, there are so many things I would do to please him! He loves
me, and—his friendship is irksome to me.”
“Yes, he is a fine fellow!”
Then you become an object of respect to the celibate, who would yield to you
all the indemnity possible for the wrong he has done you; but he is repelled by
the disdainful pride which gives a tone to your whole conversation, and is
stamped upon your face.
So that actually, during the first moments of the Minotaur’s arrival, a man is
like an actor who feels awkward in a theatre where he is not accustomed to
appear. It is very difficult to bear the affront with dignity; but though
generosity is rare, a model husband is sometimes found to possess it.
Eventually you are little by little won over by the charming way in which your
wife makes herself agreeable to you. Madame assumes a tone of friendship which
she never henceforth abandons. The pleasant atmosphere of your home is one of
the chief compensations which renders the Minotaur less odious to a husband.
But as it is natural to man to habituate himself to the hardest conditions, in
spite of the sentiment of outraged nobility which nothing can change, you are
gradually induced by a fascination whose power is constantly around you, to
accept the little amenities of your position.
Suppose that conjugal misfortune has fallen upon an epicure. He naturally
demands the consolations which suit his taste. His sense of pleasure takes
refuge in other gratifications, and forms other habits. You shape your life in
accordance with the enjoyment of other sensations.
One day, returning from your government office, after lingering for a long time
before the rich and tasteful book shop of Chevet, hovering in suspense between
the hundred francs of expense, and the joys of a Strasbourg pate de fois
gras, you are struck dumb on finding this pate proudly installed on
the sideboard of your dining-room. Is this the vision offered by some
gastronomic mirage? In this doubting mood you approach with firm step, for a
pate is a living creature, and seem to neigh as you scent afar off the
truffles whose perfumes escape through the gilded enclosure. You stoop over it
two distinct times; all the nerve centres of your palate have a soul; you taste
the delights of a genuine feast, etc.; and during this ecstasy a feeling of
remorse seizes upon you, and you go to your wife’s room.
“Really, my dear girl, we have not means which warrant our buying
pates.”
“But it costs us nothing!”
“Oh! ho!”
“Yes, it is M. Achille’s brother who sent it to him.”
You catch sight of M. Achille in a corner. The celibate greets you, he is
radiant on seeing that you have accepted the pate. You look at your
wife, who blushes; you stroke your beard a few times; and, as you express no
thanks, the two lovers divine your acceptance of the compensation.
A sudden change in the ministry takes place. A husband, who is Councillor of
State, trembles for fear of being wiped from the roll, when the night before he
had been made director-general; all the ministers are opposed to him and he has
turned Constitutionalist. Foreseeing his disgrace he has betaken himself to
Auteuil, in search of consolation from an old friend who quotes Horace and
Tibullus to him. On returning home he sees the table laid as if to receive the
most influential men of the assembly.
“In truth, madame,” he says with acrimony as he enters his wife’s room, where
she is finishing her toilette, “you seem to have lost your habitual tact. This
is a nice time to be giving dinner parties! Twenty persons will soon learn—”
“That you are director-general!” she cries, showing him a royal despatch.
He is thunderstruck. He takes the letter, he turns it now one way, now another;
he opens it. He sits down and spreads it out.
“I well know,” he says, “that justice would be rendered me under whatever
ministers I served.”
“Yes, my dear! But M. Villeplaine has answered for you with his life, and his
eminence the Cardinal de ——- of whom he is the—”
“M. de Villeplaine?”
This is such a munificent recompense, that the husband adds with the smile of a
director-general:
“Why, deuce take it, my dear, this is your doing!”
“Ah! don’t thank me for it; Adolphe did it from personal attachment to you.”
On a certain evening a poor husband was kept at home by a pouring rain, or
tired, perhaps, of going to spend his evening in play, at the cafe, or in the
world, and sick of all this he felt himself carried away by an impulse to
follow his wife to the conjugal chamber. There he sank into an arm-chair and
like any sultan awaited his coffee, as if he would say:
“Well, after all, she is my wife!”
The fair siren herself prepares the favorite draught; she strains it with
special care, sweetens it, tastes it, and hands it to him; then, with a smile,
she ventures like a submissive odalisque to make a joke, with a view to
smoothing the wrinkles on the brow of her lord and master. Up to that moment he
had thought his wife stupid; but on hearing a sally as witty as that which even
you would cajole with, madame, he raises his head in the way peculiar to dogs
who are hunting the hare.
“Where the devil did she get that—but it’s a random shot!” he says to himself.
From the pinnacle of his own greatness he makes a piquant repartee. Madame
retorts, the conversation becomes as lively as it is interesting, and this
husband, a very superior man, is quite astonished to discover the wit of his
wife, in other respects, an accomplished woman; the right word occurs to her
with wonderful readiness; her tact and keenness enable her to meet an innuendo
with charming originality. She is no longer the same woman. She notices the
effect she produces upon her husband, and both to avenge herself for his
neglect and to win his admiration for the lover from whom she has received, so
to speak, the treasures of her intellect, she exerts herself, and becomes
actually dazzling. The husband, better able than any one else to appreciate a
species of compensation which may have some influence on his future, is led to
think that the passions of women are really necessary to their mental culture.
But how shall we treat those compensations which are most pleasing to husbands?
Between the moment when the last symptoms appear, and the epoch of conjugal
peace, which we will not stop to discuss, almost a dozen years have elapsed.
During this interval and before the married couple sign the treaty which, by
means of a sincere reconciliation of the feminine subject with her lawful lord,
consecrates their little matrimonial restoration, in order to close in, as
Louis XVIII said, the gulf of revolutions, it is seldom that the honest woman
has but one lover. Anarchy has its inevitable phases. The stormy domination of
tribunes is supplanted by that of the sword and the pen, for few loves are met
with whose constancy outlives ten years. Therefore, since our calculations
prove that an honest woman has merely paid strictly her physiological or
diabolical dues by rendering but three men happy, it is probable that she has
set foot in more than one region of love. Sometimes it may happen that in an
interregnum of love too long protracted, the wife, whether from whim,
temptation or the desire of novelty, undertakes to seduce her own husband.
Imagine charming Mme. de T——-, the heroine of our Meditation of
Strategy, saying with a fascinating smile:
“I never before found you so agreeable!”
By flattery after flattery, she tempts, she rouses curiosity, she soothes, she
rouses in you the faintest spark of desire, she carries you away with her, and
makes you proud of yourself. Then the right of indemnifications for her husband
comes. On this occasion the wife confounds the imagination of her husband. Like
cosmopolitan travelers she tells tales of all the countries which she had
traversed. She intersperses her conversation with words borrowed from several
languages. The passionate imagery of the Orient, the unique emphasis of Spanish
phraseology, all meet and jostle one another. She opens out the treasures of
her notebook with all the mysteries of coquetry, she is delightful, you never
saw her thus before! With that remarkable art which women alone possess of
making their own everything that has been told them, she blends all shades and
variations of character so as to create a manner peculiarly her own. You
received from the hands of Hymen only one woman, awkward and innocent; the
celibate returns you a dozen of them. A joyful and rapturous husband sees his
bed invaded by the giddy and wanton courtesans, of whom we spoke in the
Meditation on The First Symptoms. These goddesses come in groups, they
smile and sport under the graceful muslin curtains of the nuptial bed. The
Phoenician girl flings to you her garlands, gently sways herself to and fro;
the Chalcidian woman overcomes you by the witchery of her fine and snowy feet;
the Unelmane comes and speaking the dialect of fair Ionia reveals the treasures
of happiness unknown before, and in the study of which she makes you experience
but a single sensation.
Filled with regret at having disdained so many charms, and frequently tired of
finding too often as much perfidiousness in priestesses of Venus as in honest
women, the husband sometimes hurries on by his gallantry the hour of
reconciliation desired of worthy people. The aftermath of bliss is gathered
even with greater pleasure, perhaps, than the first crop. The Minotaur took
your gold, he makes restoration in diamonds. And really now seems the time to
state a fact of the utmost importance. A man may have a wife without possessing
her. Like most husbands you had hitherto received nothing from yours, and the
powerful intervention of the celibate was needed to make your union complete.
How shall we give a name to this miracle, perhaps the only one wrought upon a
patient during his absence? Alas, my brothers, we did not make Nature!
But how many other compensations, not less precious, are there, by which the
noble and generous soul of the young celibate may many a time purchase his
pardon! I recollect witnessing one of the most magnificent acts of reparation
which a lover should perform toward the husband he is minotaurizing.
One warm evening in the summer of 1817, I saw entering one of the rooms of
Tortoni one of the two hundred young men whom we confidently style our friends;
he was in the full bloom of his modesty. A lovely woman, dressed in perfect
taste, and who had consented to enter one of the cool parlors devoted to people
of fashion, had stepped from an elegant carriage which had stopped on the
boulevard, and was approaching on foot along the sidewalk. My young friend, the
celibate, then appeared and offered his arm to his queen, while the husband
followed holding by the hand two little boys, beautiful as cupids. The two
lovers, more nimble than the father of the family, reached in advance of him
one of the small rooms pointed out by the attendant. In crossing the vestibule
the husband knocked up against some dandy, who claimed that he had been
jostled. Then arose a quarrel, whose seriousness was betrayed by the sharp
tones of the altercation. The moment the dandy was about to make a gesture
unworthy of a self-respecting man, the celibate intervened, seized the dandy by
the arm, caught him off his guard, overcame and threw him to the ground; it was
magnificent. He had done the very thing the aggressor was meditating, as he
exclaimed:
“Monsieur!”
This “Monsieur” was one of the finest things I have ever heard. It was as if
the young celibate had said: “This father of a family belongs to me; as I have
carried off his honor, it is mine to defend him. I know my duty, I am his
substitute and will fight for him.” The young woman behaved superbly! Pale, and
bewildered, she took the arm of her husband, who continued his objurgations;
without a word she led him away to the carriage, together with her children.
She was one of those women of the aristocracy, who also know how to retain
their dignity and self-control in the midst of violent emotions.
“O Monsieur Adolphe!” cried the young lady as she saw her friend with an air of
gayety take his seat in the carriage.
“It is nothing, madame, he is one of my friends; we have shaken hands.”
Nevertheless, the next morning, the courageous celibate received a sword thrust
which nearly proved fatal, and confined him six months to his bed. The
attentions of the married couple were lavished upon him. What numerous
compensations do we see here! Some years afterwards, an old uncle of the
husband, whose opinions did not fit in with those of the young friend of the
house, and who nursed a grudge against him on account of some political
discussion, undertook to have him driven from the house. The old fellow went so
far as to tell his nephew to choose between being his heir and sending away the
presumptuous celibate. It was then that the worthy stockbroker said to his
uncle:
“Ah, you must never think, uncle, that you will succeed in making me
ungrateful! But if I tell him to do so this young man will let himself be
killed for you. He has saved my credit, he would go through fire and water for
me, he has relieved me of my wife, he has brought me clients, he has procured
for me almost all the business in the Villele loans—I owe my life to him, he is
the father of my children; I can never forget all this.”
In this case the compensations may be looked upon as complete; but
unfortunately there are compensations of all kinds. There are those which must
be considered negative, deluding, and those which are both in one.
I knew a husband of advanced years who was possessed by the demon of gambling.
Almost every evening his wife’s lover came and played with him. The celibate
gave him a liberal share of the pleasures which come from games of hazard, and
knew how to lose to him a certain number of francs every month; but madame used
to give them to him, and the compensation was a deluding one.
You are a peer of France, and you have no offspring but daughters. Your wife is
brought to bed of a boy! The compensation is negative.
The child who is to save your name from oblivion is like his mother. The
duchess persuades you that the child is yours. The negative compensation
becomes deluding.
Here is one of the most charming compensations known. One morning the Prince de
Ligne meets his wife’s lover and rushes up to him, laughing wildly:
“My friend,” he says to him, “I cuckolded you, last night!”
If some husbands attain to conjugal peace by quiet methods, and carry so
gracefully the imaginary ensigns of matrimonial pre-eminence, their philosophy
is doubtless based on the comfortabilisme of accepting certain
compensations, a comfortabilisme which indifferent men cannot imagine.
As years roll by the married couple reach the last stage in that artificial
existence to which their union has condemned them.
OF CONJUGAL PEACE.
My imagination has followed marriage through all the phases of its fantastic
life in so fraternal a spirit, that I seem to have grown old with the house I
made my home so early in life at the commencement of this work.
After experiencing in thought the ardor of man’s first passion; and outlining,
in however imperfect a way, the principal incidents of married life; after
struggling against so many wives that did not belong to me, exhausting myself
in conflict with so many personages called up from nothingness, and joining so
many battles, I feel an intellectual lassitude, which makes me see everything
in life hang, as it were, in mournful crape. I seem to have a catarrh, to look
at everything through green spectacles, I feel as if my hands trembled, as if I
must needs employ the second half of my existence and of my book in apologizing
for the follies of the first half.
I see myself surrounded by tall children of whom I am not the father, and
seated beside a wife I never married. I think I can feel wrinkles furrowing my
brow. The fire before which I am placed crackles, as if in derision, the room
is ancient in its furniture; I shudder with sudden fright as I lay my hand upon
my heart, and ask myself: “Is that, too, withered?”
I am like an old attorney, unswayed by any sentiment whatever. I never accept
any statement unless it be confirmed, according to the poetic maxim of Lord
Byron, by the testimony of at least two false witnesses. No face can delude me.
I am melancholy and overcast with gloom. I know the world and it has no more
illusions for me. My closest friends have proved traitors. My wife and myself
exchange glances of profound meaning and the slightest word either of us utters
is a dagger which pierces the heart of the other through and through. I
stagnate in a dreary calm. This then is the tranquillity of old age! The old
man possesses in himself the cemetery which shall soon possess him. He is
growing accustomed to the chill of the tomb. Man, according to philosophers,
dies in detail; at the same time he may be said even to cheat death; for that
which his withered hand has laid hold upon, can it be called life?
Oh, to die young and throbbing with life! ’Tis a destiny enviable indeed! For
is not this, as a delightful poet has said, “to take away with one all one’s
illusions, to be buried like an Eastern king, with all one’s jewels and
treasures, with all that makes the fortune of humanity!”
How many thank-offerings ought we to make to the kind and beneficent spirit
that breathes in all things here below! Indeed, the care which nature takes to
strip us piece by piece of our raiment, to unclothe the soul by enfeebling
gradually our hearing, sight, and sense of touch, in making slower the
circulation of our blood, and congealing our humors so as to make us as
insensible to the approach of death as we were to the beginnings of life, this
maternal care which she lavishes on our frail tabernacle of clay, she also
exhibits in regard to the emotions of man, and to the double existence which is
created by conjugal love. She first sends us Confidence, which with extended
hand and open heart says to us: “Behold, I am thine forever!” Lukewarmness
follows, walking with languid tread, turning aside her blonde face with a yawn,
like a young widow obliged to listen to the minister of state who is ready to
sign for her a pension warrant. Then Indifference comes; she stretches herself
on the divan, taking no care to draw down the skirts of her robe which Desire
but now lifted so chastely and so eagerly. She casts a glance upon the nuptial
bed, with modesty and without shamelessness; and, if she longs for anything, it
is for the green fruit that calls up again to life the dulled papillae with
which her blase palate is bestrewn. Finally the philosophical Experience of
Life presents herself, with careworn and disdainful brow, pointing with her
finger to the results, and not the causes of life’s incidents; to the tranquil
victory, not to the tempestuous combat. She reckons up the arrearages, with
farmers, and calculates the dowry of a child. She materializes everything. By a
touch of her wand, life becomes solid and springless; of yore, all was fluid,
now it is crystallized into rock. Delight no longer exists for our hearts, it
has received its sentence, ’twas but mere sensation, a passing paroxysm. What
the soul desires to-day is a condition of fixity; and happiness alone is
permanent, and consists in absolute tranquillity, in the regularity with which
eating and sleeping succeed each other, and the sluggish organs perform their
functions.
“This is horrible!” I cried; “I am young and full of life! Perish all the books
in the world rather than my illusions should perish!”
I left my laboratory and plunged into the whirl of Paris. As I saw the fairest
faces glide by before me, I felt that I was not old. The first young woman who
appeared before me, lovely in face and form and dressed to perfection, with one
glance of fire made all the sorcery whose spells I had voluntarily submitted to
vanish into thin air. Scarcely had I walked three steps in the Tuileries
gardens, the place which I had chosen as my destination, before I saw the
prototype of the matrimonial situation which has last been described in this
book. Had I desired to characterize, to idealize, to personify marriage, as I
conceived it to be, it would have been impossible for the Creator himself to
have produced so complete a symbol of it as I then saw before me.
Imagine a woman of fifty, dressed in a jacket of reddish brown merino, holding
in her left hand a green cord, which was tied to the collar of an English
terrier, and with her right arm linked with that of a man in knee-breeches and
silk stockings, whose hat had its brim whimsically turned up, while snow-white
tufts of hair like pigeon plumes rose at its sides. A slender queue, thin as a
quill, tossed about on the back of his sallow neck, which was thick, as far as
it could be seen above the turned down collar of a threadbare coat. This couple
assumed the stately tread of an ambassador; and the husband, who was at least
seventy, stopped complaisantly every time the terrier began to gambol. I
hastened to pass this living impersonation of my Meditation, and was surprised
to the last degree to recognize the Marquis de T——-, friend of the Comte de
Noce, who had owed me for a long time the end of the interrupted story which I
related in the Theory of the Bed. [See Meditation XVII.]
“I have the honor to present to you the Marquise de T——-,” he said to me.
I made a low bow to a lady whose face was pale and wrinkled; her forehead was
surmounted by a toupee, whose flattened ringlets, ranged around it, deceived no
one, but only emphasized, instead of concealing, the wrinkles by which it was
deeply furrowed. The lady was slightly roughed, and had the appearance of an
old country actress.
“I do not see, sir, what you can say against a marriage such as ours,” said the
old man to me.
“The laws of Rome forefend!” I cried, laughing.
The marchioness gave me a look filled with inquietude as well as
disapprobation, which seemed to say, “Is it possible that at my age I have
become but a concubine?”
We sat down upon a bench, in the gloomy clump of trees planted at the corner of
the high terrace which commands La Place Louis XV, on the side of the
Garde-Meuble. Autumn had already begun to strip the trees of their foliage, and
was scattering before our eyes the yellow leaves of his garland; but the sun
nevertheless filled the air with grateful warmth.
“Well, is your work finished?” asked the old man, in the unctuous tones
peculiar to men of the ancient aristocracy.
And with these words he gave a sardonic smile, as if for commentary.
“Very nearly, sir,” I replied. “I have come to the philosophic situation, which
you appear to have reached, but I confess that I—”
“You are searching for ideas?” he added—finishing for me a sentence, which I
confess I did not know how to end.
“Well,” he continued, “you may boldly assume, that on arriving at the winter of
his life, a man—a man who thinks, I mean—ends by denying that love has any
existence, in the wild form with which our illusions invested it!”
“What! would you deny the existence of love on the day after that of marriage?”
“In the first place, the day after would be the very reason; but my marriage
was a commercial speculation,” replied he, stooping to speak into my ear. “I
have thereby purchased the care, the attention, the services which I need; and
I am certain to obtain all the consideration my age demands; for I have willed
all my property to my nephew, and as my wife will be rich only during my life,
you can imagine how—”
I turned on the old marquis a look so piercing that he wrung my hand and said:
“You seem to have a good heart, for nothing is certain in this life—”
“Well, you may be sure that I have arranged a pleasant surprise for her in my
will,” he replied, gayly.
“Come here, Joseph,” cried the marchioness, approaching a servant who carried
an overcoat lined with silk. “The marquis is probably feeling the cold.”
The old marquis put on his overcoat, buttoned it up, and taking my arm, led me
to the sunny side of the terrace.
“In your work,” he continued, “you have doubtless spoken of the love of a young
man. Well, if you wish to act up to the scope which you give to your work—in
the word ec—elec—”
“Eclectic,” I said, smiling, seeing he could not remember this philosophic
term.
“I know the word well!” he replied. “If then you wish to keep your vow of
eclecticism, you should be willing to express certain virile ideas on the
subject of love which I will communicate to you, and I will not grudge you the
benefit of them, if benefit there be; I wish to bequeath my property to you,
but this will be all that you will get of it.”
“There is no money fortune which is worth as much as a fortune of ideas if they
be valuable ideas! I shall, therefore, listen to you with a grateful mind.”
“There is no such thing as love,” pursued the old man, fixing his gaze upon me.
“It is not even a sentiment, it is an unhappy necessity, which is midway
between the needs of the body and those of the soul. But siding for a moment
with your youthful thoughts, let us try to reason upon this social malady. I
suppose that you can only conceive of love as either a need or a sentiment.”
I made a sign of assent.
“Considered as a need,” said the old man, “love makes itself felt last of all
our needs, and is the first to cease. We are inclined to love in our twentieth
year, to speak in round numbers, and we cease to do so at fifty. During these
thirty years, how often would the need be felt, if it were not for the
provocation of city manners, and the modern custom of living in the presence of
not one woman, but of women in general? What is our debt to the perpetuation of
the race? It probably consists in producing as many children as we have
breasts—so that if one dies the other may live. If these two children were
always faithfully produced, what would become of nations? Thirty millions of
people would constitute a population too great for France, for the soil is not
sufficient to guarantee more than ten millions against misery and hunger.
Remember that China is reduced to the expedient of throwing its children into
the water, according to the accounts of travelers. Now this production of two
children is really the whole of marriage. The superfluous pleasures of marriage
are not only profligate, but involve an immense loss to the man, as I will now
demonstrate. Compare then with this poverty of result, and shortness of
duration, the daily and perpetual urgency of other needs of our existence.
Nature reminds us every hour of our real needs; and, on the other hand, refuses
absolutely to grant the excess which our imagination sometimes craves in love.
It is, therefore, the last of our needs, and the only one which may be
forgotten without causing any disturbance in the economy of the body. Love is a
social luxury like lace and diamonds. But if we analyze it as a sentiment, we
find two distinct elements in it; namely, pleasure and passion. Now analyze
pleasure. Human affections rest upon two foundations, attraction and repulsion.
Attraction is a universal feeling for those things which flatter our instinct
of self-preservation; repulsion is the exercise of the same instinct when it
tells us that something is near which threatens it with injury. Everything
which profoundly moves our organization gives us a deeper sense of our
existence; such a thing is pleasure. It is contracted of desire, of effort, and
the joy of possessing something or other. Pleasure is a unique element in life,
and our passions are nothing but modifications, more or less keen, of pleasure;
moreover, familiarity with one pleasure almost always precludes the enjoyment
of all others. Now, love is the least keen and the least durable of our
pleasures. In what would you say the pleasure of love consists? Does it lie in
the beauty of the beloved? In one evening you may obtain for money the
loveliest odalisques; but at the end of a month you will in this way have burnt
out all your sentiment for all time. Would you love a women because she is well
dressed, elegant, rich, keeps a carriage, has commercial credit? Do not call
this love, for it is vanity, avarice, egotism. Do you love her because she is
intellectual? You are in that case merely obeying the dictates of literary
sentiment.”
“But,” I said, “love only reveals its pleasures to those who mingle in one
their thoughts, their fortunes, their sentiments, their souls, their lives—”
“Oh dear, dear!” cried the old man, in a jeering tone. “Can you show me five
men in any nation who have sacrificed anything for a woman? I do not say their
life, for that is a slight thing,—the price of a human life under Napoleon was
never more than twenty thousand francs; and there are in France to-day two
hundred and fifty thousand brave men who would give theirs for two inches of
red ribbon; while seven men have sacrificed for a woman ten millions on which
they might have slept in solitude for a whole night. Dubreuil and Phmeja are
still rarer than is the love of Dupris and Bolingbroke. These sentiments
proceed from an unknown cause. But you have brought me thus to consider love as
a passion. Yes, indeed, it is the last of them all and the most contemptible.
It promises everything, and fulfils nothing. It comes, like love, as a need,
the last, and dies away the first. Ah, talk to me of revenge, hatred, avarice,
of gaming, of ambition, of fanaticism. These passions have something virile in
them; these sentiments are imperishable; they make sacrifices every day, such
as love only makes by fits and starts. But,” he went on, “suppose you abjure
love. At first there will be no disquietudes, no anxieties, no worry, none of
those little vexations that waste human life. A man lives happy and tranquil;
in his social relations he becomes infinitely more powerful and influential.
This divorce from the thing called love is the primary secret of power in all
men who control large bodies of men; but this is a mere trifle. Ah! if you knew
with what magic influence a man is endowed, what wealth of intellectual force,
what longevity in physical strength he enjoys, when detaching himself from
every species of human passion he spends all his energy to the profit of his
soul! If you could enjoy for two minutes the riches which God dispenses to the
enlightened men who consider love as merely a passing need which it is
sufficient to satisfy for six months in their twentieth year; to the men who,
scorning the luxurious and surfeiting beefsteaks of Normandy, feed on the roots
which God has given in abundance, and take their repose on a bed of withered
leaves, like the recluses of the Thebaid!—ah! you would not keep on three
seconds the wool of fifteen merinos which covers you; you would fling away your
childish switch, and go to live in the heaven of heavens! There you would find
the love you sought in vain amid the swine of earth; there you would hear a
concert of somewhat different melody from that of M. Rossini, voices more
faultless than that of Malibran. But I am speaking as a blind man might, and
repeating hearsays. If I had not visited Germany about the year 1791, I should
know nothing of all this. Yes!—man has a vocation for the infinite. There
dwells within him an instinct that calls him to God. God is all, gives all,
brings oblivion on all, and thought is the thread which he has given us as a
clue to communication with himself!”
He suddenly stopped, and fixed his eyes upon the heavens.
“The poor fellow has lost his wits!” I thought to myself.
“Sir,” I said to him, “it would be pushing my devotion to eclectic philosophy
too far to insert your ideas in my book; they would destroy it. Everything in
it is based on love, platonic and sensual. God forbid that I should end my book
by such social blasphemies! I would rather try to return by some pantagruelian
subtlety to my herd of celibates and honest women, with many an attempt to
discover some social utility in their passions and follies. Oh! if conjugal
peace leads us to arguments so disillusionizing and so gloomy as these, I know
a great many husbands who would prefer war to peace.”
“At any rate, young man,” the old marquis cried, “I shall never have to
reproach myself with refusing to give true directions to a traveler who had
lost his way.”
“Adieu, thou old carcase!” I said to myself; “adieu, thou walking marriage!
Adieu, thou stick of a burnt-out fire-work! Adieu, thou machine! Although I
have given thee from time to time some glimpses of people dear to me, old
family portraits,—back with you to the picture dealer’s shop, to Madame de
T——-, and all the rest of them; take your place round the bier with
undertaker’s mutes, for all I care!”
CONCLUSION.
A recluse, who was credited with the gift of second sight, having commanded the
children of Israel to follow him to a mountain top in order to hear the
revelation of certain mysteries, saw that he was accompanied by a crowd which
took up so much room on the road that, prophet as he was, his
amour-propre was vastly tickled.
But as the mountain was a considerable distance off, it happened that at the
first halt, an artisan remembered that he had to deliver a new pair of slippers
to a duke and peer, a publican fell to thinking how he had some specie to
negotiate, and off they went.
A little further on two lovers lingered under the olive trees and forgot the
discourse of the prophet; for they thought that the promised land was the spot
where they stood, and the divine word was heard when they talked to one
another.
The fat people, loaded with punches a la Sancho, had been wiping their
foreheads with their handkerchiefs, for the last quarter of an hour, and began
to grow thirsty, and therefore halted beside a clear spring.
Certain retired soldiers complained of the corns which tortured them, and spoke
of Austerlitz, and of their tight boots.
At the second halt, certain men of the world whispered together:
“But this prophet is a fool.”
“Have you ever heard him?”
“I? I came from sheer curiosity.”
“And I because I saw the fellow had a large following.” (The last man who spoke
was a fashionable.)
“He is a mere charlatan.”
The prophet kept marching on. But when he reached the plateau, from which a
wide horizon spread before him, he turned back, and saw no one but a poor
Israelite, to whom he might have said as the Prince de Ligne to the wretched
little bandy-legged drummer boy, whom he found on the spot where he expected to
see a whole garrison awaiting him: “Well, my readers, it seems that you have
dwindled down to one.”
Thou man of God who has followed me so far—I hope that a short recapitulation
will not terrify thee, and I have traveled on under the impression that thou,
like me, hast kept saying to thyself, “Where the deuce are we going?”
Well, well, this is the place and the time to ask you, respected reader, what
your opinion is with regard to the renewal of the tobacco monopoly, and what
you think of the exorbitant taxes on wines, on the right to carry firearms, on
gaming, on lotteries, on playing cards, on brandy, on soap, cotton, silks, etc.
“I think that since all these duties make up one-third of the public revenues,
we should be seriously embarrassed if—”
So that, my excellent model husband, if no one got drunk, or gambled, or
smoked, or hunted, in a word if we had neither vices, passions, nor maladies in
France, the State would be within an ace of bankruptcy; for it seems that the
capital of our national income consists of popular corruptions, as our commerce
is kept alive by national luxury. If you cared to look a little closer into the
matter you would see that all taxes are based upon some moral malady. As a
matter of fact, if we continue this philosophical scrutiny it will appear that
the gendarmes would want horses and leather breeches, if every one kept the
peace, and if there were neither foes nor idle people in the world. Therefore
impose virtue on mankind! Well, I consider that there are more parallels than
people think between my honest woman and the budget, and I will undertake to
prove this by a short essay on statistics, if you will permit me to finish my
book on the same lines as those on which I have begun it. Will you grant that a
lover must put on more clean shirts than are worn by either a husband, or a
celibate unattached? This to me seems beyond doubt. The difference between a
husband and a lover is seen even in the appearance of their toilette. The one
is careless, he is unshaved, and the other never appears excepting in full
dress. Sterne has pleasantly remarked that the account book of the laundress
was the most authentic record he knew, as to the life of Tristram Shandy; and
that it was easy to guess from the number of shirts he wore what passages of
his book had cost him most. Well, with regard to lovers the account book of
their laundresses is the most faithful historic record as well as the most
impartial account of their various amours. And really a prodigious quantity of
tippets, cravats, dresses, which are absolutely necessary to coquetry, is
consumed in the course of an amour. A wonderful prestige is gained by white
stockings, the lustre of a collar, or a shirt-waist, the artistically arranged
folds of a man’s shirt, or the taste of his necktie or his collar. This will
explain the passages in which I said of the honest woman [Meditation II], “She
spends her life in having her dresses starched.” I have sought information on
this point from a lady in order to learn accurately at what sum was to be
estimated the tax thus imposed by love, and after fixing it at one hundred
francs per annum for a woman, I recollect what she said with great good humor:
“It depends on the character of the man, for some are so much more particular
than others.” Nevertheless, after a very profound discussion, in which I
settled upon the sum for the celibates, and she for her sex, it was agreed
that, one thing with another, since the two lovers belong to the social sphere
which this work concerns, they ought to spend between them, in the matter
referred to, one hundred and fifty francs more than in time of peace.
By a like treaty, friendly in character and long discussed, we arranged that
there should be a collective difference of four hundred francs between the
expenditure for all parts of the dress on a war footing, and for that on a
peace footing. This provision was considered very paltry by all the powers,
masculine or feminine, whom we consulted. The light thrown upon these delicate
matters by the contributions of certain persons suggested to us the idea of
gathering together certain savants at a dinner party, and taking their wise
counsels for our guidance in these important investigations. The gathering took
place. It was with glass in hand and after listening to many brilliant speeches
that I received for the following chapters on the budget of love, a sort of
legislative sanction. The sum of one hundred francs was allowed for porters and
carriages. Fifty crowns seemed very reasonable for the little patties that
people eat on a walk, for bouquets of violets and theatre tickets. The sum of
two hundred francs was considered necessary for the extra expense of dainties
and dinners at restaurants. It was during this discussion that a young
cavalryman, who had been made almost tipsy by the champagne, was called to
order for comparing lovers to distilling machines. But the chapter that gave
occasion for the most violent discussion, and the consideration of which was
adjourned for several weeks, when a report was made, was that concerning
presents. At the last session, the refined Madame de D——- was the first
speaker; and in a graceful address, which testified to the nobility of her
sentiments, she set out to demonstrate that most of the time the gifts of love
had no intrinsic value. The author replied that all lovers had their portraits
taken. A lady objected that a portrait was invested capital, and care should
always be taken to recover it for a second investment. But suddenly a gentleman
of Provence rose to deliver a philippic against women. He spoke of the
greediness which most women in love exhibited for furs, satins, silks, jewels
and furniture; but a lady interrupted him by asking if Madame d’O——-y, his
intimate friend, had not already paid his debts twice over.
“You are mistaken, madame,” said the Provencal, “it was her husband.”
“The speaker is called to order,” cried the president, “and condemned to dine
the whole party, for having used the word husband.”
The Provencal was completely refuted by a lady who undertook to prove that
women show much more self-sacrifice in love than men; that lovers cost very
dear, and that the honest woman may consider herself very fortunate if she gets
off with spending on them two thousand francs for a single year. The discussion
was in danger of degenerating into an exchange of personalities, when a
division was called for. The conclusions of the committee were adopted by vote.
The conclusions were, in substance, that the amount for presents between lovers
during the year should be reckoned at five hundred francs, but that in this
computation should be included: (1) the expense of expeditions into the
country; (2) the pharmaceutical expenses, occasioned by the colds caught from
walking in the damp pathways of parks, and in leaving the theatre, which
expenses are veritable presents; (3) the carrying of letters, and law expenses;
(4) journeys, and expenses whose items are forgotten, without counting the
follies committed by the spenders; inasmuch as, according to the investigations
of the committee, it had been proved that most of a man’s extravagant
expenditure profited the opera girls, rather than the married women. The
conclusion arrived at from this pecuniary calculation was that, in one way or
another, a passion costs nearly fifteen hundred francs a year, which were
required to meet the expense borne more unequally by lovers, but which would
not have occurred, but for their attachment. There was also a sort of unanimity
in the opinion of the council that this was the lowest annual figure which
would cover the cost of a passion. Now, my dear sir, since we have proved, by
the statistics of our conjugal calculations [See Meditations I, II, and III.]
and proved irrefragably, that there exists a floating total of at least fifteen
hundred thousand unlawful passions, it follows:
That the criminal conversations of a third among the French population
contribute a sum of nearly three thousand millions to that vast circulation of
money, the true blood of society, of which the budget is the heart;
That the honest woman not only gives life to the children of the peerage, but
also to its financial funds;
That manufacturers owe their prosperity to this systolic movement;
That the honest woman is a being essentially budgetative, and active as
a consumer;
That the least decline in public love would involve incalculable miseries to
the treasury, and to men of invested fortunes;
That a husband has at least a third of his fortune invested in the inconstancy
of his wife, etc.
I am well aware that you are going to open your mouth and talk to me about
manners, politics, good and evil. But, my dear victim of the Minotaur, is not
happiness the object which all societies should set before them? Is it not this
axiom that makes these wretched kings give themselves so much trouble about
their people? Well, the honest woman has not, like them, thrones, gendarmes and
tribunals; she has only a bed to offer; but if our four hundred thousand women
can, by this ingenious machine, make a million celibates happy, do not they
attain in a mysterious manner, and without making any fuss, the end aimed at by
a government, namely, the end of giving the largest possible amount of
happiness to the mass of mankind?
“Yes, but the annoyances, the children, the troubles—”
Ah, you must permit me to proffer the consolatory thought with which one of our
wittiest caricaturists closes his satiric observations: “Man is not perfect!”
It is sufficient, therefore, that our institutions have no more disadvantages
than advantages in order to be reckoned excellent; for the human race is not
placed, socially speaking, between the good and the bad, but between the bad
and the worse. Now if the work, which we are at present on the point of
concluding, has had for its object the diminution of the worse, as it is found
in matrimonial institutions, in laying bare the errors and absurdities due to
our manners and our prejudices, we shall certainly have won one of the fairest
titles that can be put forth by a man to a place among the benefactors of
humanity. Has not the author made it his aim, by advising husbands, to make
women more self-restrained and consequently to impart more violence to
passions, more money to the treasury, more life to commerce and agriculture?
Thanks to this last Meditation he can flatter himself that he has strictly kept
the vow of eclecticism, which he made in projecting the work, and he hopes he
has marshaled all details of the case, and yet like an attorney-general
refrained from expressing his personal opinion. And really what do you want
with an axiom in the present matter? Do you wish that this book should be a
mere development of the last opinion held by Tronchet, who in his closing days
thought that the law of marriage had been drawn up less in the interest of
husbands than of children? I also wish it very much. Would you rather desire
that this book should serve as proof to the peroration of the Capuchin, who
preached before Anne of Austria, and when he saw the queen and her ladies
overwhelmed by his triumphant arguments against their frailty, said as he came
down from the pulpit of truth, “Now you are all honorable women, and it is we
who unfortunately are sons of Samaritan women”? I have no objection to that
either. You may draw what conclusion you please; for I think it is very
difficult to put forth two contrary opinions, without both of them containing
some grains of truth. But the book has not been written either for or against
marriage; all I have thought you needed was an exact description of it. If an
examination of the machine shall lead us to make one wheel of it more perfect;
if by scouring away some rust we have given more elastic movement to its
mechanism; then give his wage to the workman. If the author has had the
impertinence to utter truths too harsh for you, if he has too often spoken of
rare and exceptional facts as universal, if he has omitted the commonplaces
which have been employed from time immemorial to offer women the incense of
flattery, oh, let him be crucified! But do not impute to him any motive of
hostility to the institution itself; he is concerned merely for men and women.
He knows that from the moment marriage ceases to defeat the purpose of
marriage, it is unassailable; and, after all, if there do arise serious
complaints against this institution, it is perhaps because man has no memory
excepting for his disasters, that he accuses his wife, as he accuses his life,
for marriage is but a life within a life. Yet people whose habit it is to take
their opinions from newspapers would perhaps despise a book in which they see
the mania of eclecticism pushed too far; for then they absolutely demand
something in the shape of a peroration, it is not hard to find one for them.
And since the words of Napoleon served to start this book, why should it not
end as it began? Before the whole Council of State the First Consul pronounced
the following startling phrase, in which he at the same time eulogized and
satirized marriage, and summed up the contents of this book:
“If a man never grew old, I would never wish him to have a wife!”
“And so you are going to be married?” asked the duchess of the author who had
read his manuscript to her.
She was one of those ladies to whom the author has already paid his respects in
the introduction of this work.
“Certainly, madame,” I replied. “To meet a woman who has courage enough to
become mine, would satisfy the wildest of my hopes.”
“Is this resignation or infatuation?”
“That is my affair.”
“Well, sir, as you are doctor of conjugal arts and sciences, allow me to tell
you a little Oriental fable, that I read in a certain sheet, which is published
annually in the form of an almanac. At the beginning of the Empire ladies used
to play at a game in which no one accepted a present from his or her partner in
the game, without saying the word, Diadeste. A game lasted, as you may
well suppose, during a week, and the point was to catch some one receiving some
trifle or other without pronouncing the sacramental word.”
“Even a kiss?”
“Oh, I have won the Diadeste twenty times in that way,” she laughingly
replied.
“It was, I believe, from the playing of this game, whose origin is Arabian or
Chinese, that my apologue takes its point. But if I tell you,” she went on,
putting her finger to her nose, with a charming air of coquetry, “let me
contribute it as a finale to your work.”
“This would indeed enrich me. You have done me so many favors already, that I
cannot repay—”
She smiled slyly, and replied as follows:
A philosopher had compiled a full account of all the tricks that women could
possibly play, and in order to verify it, he always carried it about with him.
One day he found himself in the course of his travels near an encampment of
Arabs. A young woman, who had seated herself under the shade of a palm tree,
rose on his approach. She kindly asked him to rest himself in her tent, and he
could not refuse. Her husband was then absent. Scarcely had the traveler seated
himself on a soft rug, when the graceful hostess offered him fresh dates, and a
cup of milk; he could not help observing the rare beauty of her hands as she
did so. But, in order to distract his mind from the sensations roused in him by
the fair young Arabian girl, whose charms were most formidable, the sage took
his book, and began to read.
The seductive creature piqued by this slight said to him in a melodious voice:
“That book must be very interesting since it seems to be the sole object worthy
of your attention. Would it be taking a liberty to ask what science it treats
of?”
The philosopher kept his eyes lowered as he replied:
“The subject of this book is beyond the comprehension of ladies.”
This rebuff excited more than ever the curiosity of the young Arabian woman.
She put out the prettiest little foot that had ever left its fleeting imprint
on the shifting sands of the desert. The philosopher was perturbed, and his
eyes were too powerfully tempted to resist wandering from these feet, which
betokened so much, up to the bosom, which was still more ravishingly fair; and
soon the flame of his admiring glance was mingled with the fire that sparkled
in the pupils of the young Asiatic. She asked again the name of the book in
tones so sweet that the philosopher yielded to the fascination, and replied:
“I am the author of the book; but the substance of it is not mine: it contains
an account of all the ruses and stratagems of women.”
“What! Absolutely all?” said the daughter of the desert.
“Yes, all! And it has been only by a constant study of womankind that I have
come to regard them without fear.”
“Ah!” said the young Arabian girl, lowering the long lashes of her white
eyelids.
Then, suddenly darting the keenest of her glances at the pretended sage, she
made him in one instant forget the book and all its contents. And now our
philosopher was changed to the most passionate of men. Thinking he saw in the
bearing of the young woman a faint trace of coquetry, the stranger was
emboldened to make an avowal. How could he resist doing so? The sky was blue,
the sand blazed in the distance like a scimitar of gold, the wind of the desert
breathed love, and the woman of Arabia seemed to reflect all the fire with
which she was surrounded; her piercing eyes were suffused with a mist; and by a
slight nod of the head she seemed to make the luminous atmosphere undulate, as
she consented to listen to the stranger’s words of love. The sage was
intoxicated with delirious hopes, when the young woman, hearing in the distance
the gallop of a horse which seemed to fly, exclaimed:
“We are lost! My husband is sure to catch us. He is jealous as a tiger, and
more pitiless than one. In the name of the prophet, if you love your life,
conceal yourself in this chest!”
The author, frightened out of his wits, seeing no other way of getting out of a
terrible fix, jumped into the box, and crouched down there. The woman closed
down the lid, locked it, and took the key. She ran to meet her husband, and
after some caresses which put him into a good humor, she said:
“I must relate to you a very singular adventure I have just had.”
“I am listening, my gazelle,” replied the Arab, who sat down on a rug and
crossed his feet after the Oriental manner.
“There arrived here to-day a kind of philosopher,” she began, “he professes to
have compiled a book which describes all the wiles of which my sex is capable;
and then this sham sage made love to me.”
“Well, go on!” cried the Arab.
“I listened to his avowal. He was young, ardent—and you came just in time to
save my tottering virtue.”
The Arab leaped to his feet like a lion, and drew his scimitar with a shout of
fury. The philosopher heard all from the depths of the chest and consigned to
Hades his book, and all the men and women of Arabia Petraea.
“Fatima!” cried the husband, “if you would save your life, answer me —Where is
the traitor?”
Terrified at the tempest which she had roused, Fatima threw herself at her
husband’s feet, and trembling beneath the point of his sword, she pointed out
the chest with a prompt though timid glance of her eye. Then she rose to her
feet, as if in shame, and taking the key from her girdle presented it to the
jealous Arab; but, just as he was about to open the chest, the sly creature
burst into a peal of laughter. Faroun stopped with a puzzled expression, and
looked at his wife in amazement.
“So I shall have my fine chain of gold, after all!” she cried, dancing for joy.
“You have lost the Diadeste. Be more mindful next time.”
The husband, thunderstruck, let fall the key, and offered her the longed-for
chain on bended knee, and promised to bring to his darling Fatima all the
jewels brought by the caravan in a year, if she would refrain from winning the
Diadeste by such cruel stratagems. Then, as he was an Arab, and did not
like forfeiting a chain of gold, although his wife had fairly won it, he
mounted his horse again, and galloped off, to complain at his will, in the
desert, for he loved Fatima too well to let her see his annoyance. The young
woman then drew forth the philosopher from the chest, and gravely said to him,
“Do not forget, Master Doctor, to put this feminine trick into your
collection.”
“Madame,” said I to the duchess, “I understand! If I marry, I am bound to be
unexpectedly outwitted by some infernal trick or other; but I shall in that
case, you may be quite sure, furnish a model household for the admiration of my
contemporaries.”