Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE;

OR, THE MUSINGS OF AN ECLECTIC PHILOSOPHER

ON THE HAPPINESS AND UNHAPPINESS OF MARRIED LIFE


By Honore De Balzac





INTRODUCTION

“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.




FIRST PART. A GENERAL CONSIDERATION.


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_.




MEDITATION I. 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.




MEDITATION II. 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.




MEDITATION III. 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:




APHORISMS.

                                  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?




MEDITATION IV. 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.




MEDITATION V. 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.


                        CATECHISM OF MARRIAGE.


                                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.


 “MY DEAR BROTHER TOBY,

 “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.




MEDITATION VI. 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.



                               PROBLEM.

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.




MEDITATION VII. 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:


                               THEOREM.

  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.




MEDITATION VIII. 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.




MEDITATION IX. 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.





SECOND PART. MEANS OF DEFENCE, INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR.

                       “To be or not to be,
                        That is the question.”
                                 --Shakspeare, _Hamlet_.




MEDITATION X. 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.




MEDITATION XI. 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.




MEDITATION XII. 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.




MEDITATION XIII. 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.




MEDITATION XIV. 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.




MEDITATION XV. 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.




MEDITATION XVI. 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.




MEDITATION XVII. 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:


  1. TWIN BEDS.
  2. SEPARATE ROOMS.
  3. ONE BED FOR BOTH.


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-Honore, 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.


                            1. TWIN BEDS.

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.


                          2. SEPARATE ROOMS.

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.


                         3. ONE BED FOR BOTH.

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.




MEDITATION XVIII. 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!”




MEDITATION XIX. 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_.




MEDITATION XX. 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:


  1. OF MOUSE-TRAPS.
  2. OF CORRESPONDENCE.
  3. OF SPIES.
  4. THE INDEX.
  5. OF THE BUDGET.


                          1. OF MOUSE-TRAPS.

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.


                        2. OF CORRESPONDENCE.

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.


                             3. OF SPIES.

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.


                            4. THE INDEX.

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.


                          5. OF THE BUDGET.

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.




MEDITATION XXI. 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.




MEDITATION XXII. 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!





THIRD PART. RELATING TO CIVIL WAR.

                “Lovely as the seraphs of Klopstock,
                 Terrible as the devils of Milton.”
                                                --DIDEROT.




MEDITATION XXIII. 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.




MEDITATION XXIV. 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.




MEDITATION XXV. 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:


  1. OF RELIGIONS AND OF CONFESSION; CONSIDERED IN THEIR CONNECTION
     WITH MARRIAGE.
  2. OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW.
  3. OF BOARDING SCHOOL FRIENDS AND INTIMATE FRIENDS.
  4. OF THE LOVER’S ALLIES.
  5. OF THE MAID.
  6. OF THE DOCTOR.




1. OF RELIGIONS AND OF CONFESSION; CONSIDERED IN THEIR CONNECTION WITH
MARRIAGE.

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.




2. OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW.

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.




3. OF BOARDING SCHOOL FRIENDS AND INTIMATE FRIENDS.

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.




4. OF THE LOVER’S ALLIES.

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.                           5. OF THE MAID.

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.




6. OF THE DOCTOR.

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.




MEDITATION XXVI. 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:


  1. OF HEADACHES.
  2. OF NERVOUS AFFECTATIONS.
  3. OF MODESTY, IN ITS CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE.


                           1. OF HEADACHES.

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!


                     2. OF NERVOUS AFFECTATIONS.

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:


  1. CLASSIC NEUROSIS.
  2. ROMANTIC NEUROSIS.


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.


           3. OF MODESTY, IN ITS CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE.

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--


                                XCII.
                        LOVERS IGNORE MODESTY.


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.




MEDITATION XXVII. 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.




MINOTAURIC OBSERVATIONS.


                                  I.

*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_.


                                 II.

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?”


                                 III.

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.


                                 IV.

*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.”


                                  V.

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.


                                 VI.

The woman who is happy in her affections does not go much into the
world.


                                 VII.

The woman who has a lover becomes very indulgent in judging others.


                                VIII.

*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.


                                 IX.

*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!


                                  X.

A woman who was a sloven suddenly develops extreme nicety in her attire.
There is a Minotaur at hand!


                                 XI.

“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.”


                                 XII.

*The day when a wife behaves nicely to her husband--all is over.


                                XIII.

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.”


                                 XIV.

Do not trust a woman who talks of her virtue.


                                 XV.

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.


                                 XVI.

*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.”


                                XVII.

“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.”


                                XVIII.

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!


                                 XIX.

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.


                                 XX.

It is a terrible day when a husband fails to explain to himself the
motive of some action of his wife.


                                 XXI.

*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.




LAST AXIOMS.


                                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.




MEDITATION XXVIII. 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.




MEDITATION XXIX. 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!”




MEDITATION XXX. 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!”




POSTSCRIPT.

“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.”


PARIS, 1824-29.