The Project Gutenberg EBook of Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First
by Honore de Balzac
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Title: Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First
Author: Honore de Balzac
Release Date: June 28, 2005 [EBook #6033]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIED LIFE ***
Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
PETTY TROUBLES OF MARRIED LIFE
PART FIRST
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
PREFACE
IN WHICH EVERY ONE WILL FIND HIS OWN IMPRESSIONS OF MARRIAGE.
A friend, in speaking to you of a young woman, says: "Good family,
well bred, pretty, and three hundred thousand in her own right."
You have expressed a desire to meet this charming creature.
Usually, chance interviews are premeditated. And you speak with
this object, who has now become very timid.
YOU.--"A delightful evening!"
SHE.--"Oh! yes, sir."
You are allowed to become the suitor of this young person.
THE MOTHER-IN-LAW (to the intended groom).--"You can't imagine how
susceptible the dear girl is of attachment."
Meanwhile there is a delicate pecuniary question to be discussed
by the two families.
YOUR FATHER (to the mother-in-law).--"My property is valued at
five hundred thousand francs, my dear madame!"
YOUR FUTURE MOTHER-IN-LAW.--"And our house, my dear sir, is on a
corner lot."
A contract follows, drawn up by two hideous notaries, a small one,
and a big one.
Then the two families judge it necessary to convoy you to the
civil magistrate's and to the church, before conducting the bride
to her chamber.
Then what? . . . . . Why, then come a crowd of petty unforeseen
troubles, like the following:
PETTY TROUBLES OF MARRIED LIFE
THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL.
Is it a petty or a profound trouble? I knew not; it is profound for
your sons-in-law or daughters-in-law, but exceedingly petty for you.
"Petty! You must be joking; why, a child costs terribly dear!"
exclaims a ten-times-too-happy husband, at the baptism of his
eleventh, called the little last newcomer,--a phrase with which women
beguile their families.
"What trouble is this?" you ask me. Well! this is, like many petty
troubles of married life, a blessing for some one.
You have, four months since, married off your daughter, whom we will
call by the sweet name of CAROLINE, and whom we will make the type of
all wives. Caroline is, like all other young ladies, very charming,
and you have found for her a husband who is either a lawyer, a
captain, an engineer, a judge, or perhaps a young viscount. But he is
more likely to be what sensible families must seek,--the ideal of
their desires--the only son of a rich landed proprietor. (See the
_Preface_.)
This phoenix we will call ADOLPHE, whatever may be his position in the
world, his age, and the color of his hair.
The lawyer, the captain, the engineer, the judge, in short, the
son-in-law, Adolphe, and his family, have seen in Miss Caroline:
I.--Miss Caroline;
II.--The only daughter of your wife and you.
Here, as in the Chamber of Deputies, we are compelled to call for a
division of the house:
1.--As to your wife.
Your wife is to inherit the property of a maternal uncle, a gouty old
fellow whom she humors, nurses, caresses, and muffles up; to say
nothing of her father's fortune. Caroline has always adored her uncle,
--her uncle who trotted her on his knee, her uncle who--her uncle
whom--her uncle, in short,--whose property is estimated at two hundred
thousand.
Further, your wife is well preserved, though her age has been the
subject of mature reflection on the part of your son-in-law's
grandparents and other ancestors. After many skirmishes between the
mothers-in-law, they have at last confided to each other the little
secrets peculiar to women of ripe years.
"How is it with you, my dear madame?"
"I, thank heaven, have passed the period; and you?"
"I really hope I have, too!" says your wife.
"You can marry Caroline," says Adolphe's mother to your future
son-in-law; "Caroline will be the sole heiress of her mother, of her
uncle, and her grandfather."
2.--As to yourself.
You are also the heir of your maternal grandfather, a good old man
whose possessions will surely fall to you, for he has grown imbecile,
and is therefore incapable of making a will.
You are an amiable man, but you have been very dissipated in your
youth. Besides, you are fifty-nine years old, and your head is bald,
resembling a bare knee in the middle of a gray wig.
III.--A dowry of three hundred thousand.
IV.--Caroline's only sister, a little dunce of twelve, a sickly child,
who bids fair to fill an early grave.
V.--Your own fortune, father-in-law (in certain kinds of society they
say _papa father-in-law_) yielding an income of twenty thousand, and
which will soon be increased by an inheritance.
VI.--Your wife's fortune, which will be increased by two inheritances
--from her uncle and her grandfather. In all, thus:
Three inheritances and interest, 750,000
Your fortune, 250,000
Your wife's fortune, 250,000
__________
Total, 1,250,000
which surely cannot take wing!
Such is the autopsy of all those brilliant marriages that conduct
their processions of dancers and eaters, in white gloves, flowering at
the button-hole, with bouquets of orange flowers, furbelows, veils,
coaches and coach-drivers, from the magistrate's to the church, from
the church to the banquet, from the banquet to the dance, from the
dance to the nuptial chamber, to the music of the orchestra and the
accompaniment of the immemorial pleasantries uttered by relics of
dandies, for are there not, here and there in society, relics of
dandies, as there are relics of English horses? To be sure, and such
is the osteology of the most amorous intent.
The majority of the relatives have had a word to say about this
marriage.
Those on the side of the bridegroom:
"Adolphe has made a good thing of it."
Those on the side of the bride:
"Caroline has made a splendid match. Adolphe is an only son, and will
have an income of sixty thousand, _some day or other_!"
Some time afterwards, the happy judge, the happy engineer, the happy
captain, the happy lawyer, the happy only son of a rich landed
proprietor, in short Adolphe, comes to dine with you, accompanied by
his family.
Your daughter Caroline is exceedingly proud of the somewhat rounded
form of her waist. All women display an innocent artfulness, the first
time they find themselves facing motherhood. Like a soldier who makes
a brilliant toilet for his first battle, they love to play the pale,
the suffering; they rise in a certain manner, and walk with the
prettiest affectation. While yet flowers, they bear a fruit; they
enjoy their maternity by anticipation. All those little ways are
exceedingly charming--the first time.
Your wife, now the mother-in-law of Adolphe, subjects herself to the
pressure of tight corsets. When her daughter laughs, she weeps; when
Caroline wishes her happiness public, she tries to conceal hers. After
dinner, the discerning eye of the co-mother-in-law divines the work of
darkness.
Your wife also is an expectant mother! The news spreads like
lightning, and your oldest college friend says to you laughingly: "Ah!
so you are trying to increase the population again!"
You have some hope in a consultation that is to take place to-morrow.
You, kind-hearted man that you are, you turn red, you hope it is
merely the dropsy; but the doctors confirm the arrival of a _little
last one_!
In such circumstances some timorous husbands go to the country or make
a journey to Italy. In short, a strange confusion reigns in your
household; both you and your wife are in a false position.
"Why, you old rogue, you, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" says a
friend to you on the Boulevard.
"Well! do as much if you can," is your angry retort.
"It's as bad as being robbed on the highway!" says your son-in-law's
family. "Robbed on the highway" is a flattering expression for the
mother-in-law.
The family hopes that the child which divides the expected fortune in
three parts, will be, like all old men's children, scrofulous, feeble,
an abortion. Will it be likely to live? The family awaits the delivery
of your wife with an anxiety like that which agitated the house of
Orleans during the confinement of the Duchess de Berri: a second son
would secure the throne to the younger branch without the onerous
conditions of July; Henry V would easily seize the crown. From that
moment the house of Orleans was obliged to play double or quits: the
event gave them the game.
The mother and the daughter are put to bed nine days apart.
Caroline's first child is a pale, cadaverous little girl that will not
live.
Her mother's last child is a splendid boy, weighing twelve pounds,
with two teeth and luxuriant hair.
For sixteen years you have desired a son. This conjugal annoyance is
the only one that makes you beside yourself with joy. For your
rejuvenated wife has attained what must be called the _Indian Summer_
of women; she nurses, she has a full breast of milk! Her complexion is
fresh, her color is pure pink and white. In her forty-second year, she
affects the young woman, buys little baby stockings, walks about
followed by a nurse, embroiders caps and tries on the cunningest
headdresses. Alexandrine has resolved to instruct her daughter by her
example; she is delightful and happy. And yet this is a trouble, a
petty one for you, a serious one for your son-in-law. This annoyance
is of the two sexes, it is common to you and your wife. In short, in
this instance, your paternity renders you all the more proud from the
fact that it is incontestable, my dear sir!
REVELATIONS.
Generally speaking, a young woman does not exhibit her true character
till she has been married two or three years. She hides her faults,
without intending it, in the midst of her first joys, of her first
parties of pleasure. She goes into society to dance, she visits her
relatives to show you off, she journeys on with an escort of love's
first wiles; she is gradually transformed from girlhood to womanhood.
Then she becomes mother and nurse, and in this situation, full of
charming pangs, that leaves neither a word nor a moment for
observation, such are its multiplied cares, it is impossible to judge
of a woman. You require, then, three or four years of intimate life
before you discover an exceedingly melancholy fact, one that gives you
cause for constant terror.
Your wife, the young lady in whom the first pleasures of life and love
supplied the place of grace and wit, so arch, so animated, so
vivacious, whose least movements spoke with delicious eloquence, has
cast off, slowly, one by one, her natural artifices. At last you
perceive the truth! You try to disbelieve it, you think yourself
deceived; but no: Caroline lacks intellect, she is dull, she can
neither joke nor reason, sometimes she has little tact. You are
frightened. You find yourself forever obliged to lead this darling
through the thorny paths, where you must perforce leave your
self-esteem in tatters.
You have already been annoyed several times by replies that, in
society, were politely received: people have held their tongues
instead of smiling; but you were certain that after your departure the
women looked at each other and said: "Did you hear Madame Adolphe?"
"Your little woman, she is--"
"A regular cabbage-head."
"How could he, who is certainly a man of sense, choose--?"
"He should educate, teach his wife, or make her hold her tongue."
AXIOMS.
Axiom.--In our system of civilization a man is entirely responsible
for his wife.
Axiom.--The husband does not mould the wife.
Caroline has one day obstinately maintained, at the house of Madame de
Fischtaminel, a very distinguished lady, that her little last one
resembled neither its father nor its mother, but looked like a certain
friend of the family. She perhaps enlightens Monsieur de Fischtaminel,
and overthrows the labors of three years, by tearing down the
scaffolding of Madame de Fischtaminel's assertions, who, after this
visit, will treat you will coolness, suspecting, as she does, that you
have been making indiscreet remarks to your wife.
On another occasion, Caroline, after having conversed with a writer
about his works, counsels the poet, who is already a prolific author,
to try to write something likely to live. Sometimes she complains of
the slow attendance at the tables of people who have but one servant
and have put themselves to great trouble to receive her. Sometimes she
speaks ill of widows who marry again, before Madame Deschars who has
married a third time, and on this occasion, an ex-notary,
Nicolas-Jean-Jerome-Nepomucene-Ange-Marie-Victor-Joseph Deschars, a
friend of your father's.
In short, you are no longer yourself when you are in society with your
wife. Like a man who is riding a skittish horse and glares straight
between the beast's two ears, you are absorbed by the attention with
which you listen to your Caroline.
In order to compensate herself for the silence to which young ladies
are condemned, Caroline talks; or rather babbles. She wants to make a
sensation, and she does make a sensation; nothing stops her. She
addresses the most eminent men, the most celebrated women. She
introduces herself, and puts you on the rack. Going into society is
going to the stake.
She begins to think you are cross-grained, moody. The fact is, you are
watching her, that's all! In short, you keep her within a small circle
of friends, for she has already embroiled you with people on whom your
interests depended.
How many times have you recoiled from the necessity of a remonstrance,
in the morning, on awakening, when you had put her in a good humor for
listening! A woman rarely listens. How many times have you recoiled
from the burthen of your imperious obligations!
The conclusion of your ministerial communication can be no other than:
"You have no sense." You foresee the effect of your first lesson.
Caroline will say to herself: "Ah I have no sense! Haven't I though?"
No woman ever takes this in good part. Both of you must draw the sword
and throw away the scabbard. Six weeks after, Caroline may prove to
you that she has quite sense enough to _minotaurize_ you without your
perceiving it.
Frightened at such a prospect, you make use of all the eloquent
phrases to gild this pill. In short, you find the means of flattering
Caroline's various self-loves, for:
Axiom.--A married woman has several self-loves.
You say that you are her best friend, the only one well situated to
enlighten her; the more careful you are, the more watchful and puzzled
she is. At this moment she has plenty of sense.
You ask your dear Caroline, whose waist you clasp, how she, who is so
brilliant when alone with you, who retorts so charmingly (you remind
her of sallies that she has never made, which you put in her mouth,
and, which she smilingly accepts), how she can say this, that, and the
other, in society. She is, doubtless, like many ladies, timid in
company.
"I know," you say, "many very distinguished men who are just the
same."
You cite the case of some who are admirable tea-party oracles, but who
cannot utter half a dozen sentences in the tribune. Caroline should
keep watch over herself; you vaunt silence as the surest method of
being witty. In society, a good listener is highly prized.
You have broken the ice, though you have not even scratched its glossy
surface: you have placed your hand upon the croup of the most
ferocious and savage, the most wakeful and clear-sighted, the most
restless, the swiftest, the most jealous, the most ardent and violent,
the simplest and most elegant, the most unreasonable, the most
watchful chimera of the moral world--THE VANITY OF A WOMAN!
Caroline clasps you in her arms with a saintly embrace, thanks you for
your advice, and loves you the more for it; she wishes to be beholden
to you for everything, even for her intellect; she may be a dunce,
but, what is better than saying fine things, she knows how to do them!
But she desires also to be your pride! It is not a question of taste
in dress, of elegance and beauty; she wishes to make you proud of her
intelligence. You are the luckiest of men in having successfully
managed to escape from this first dangerous pass in conjugal life.
"We are going this evening to Madame Deschars', where they never know
what to do to amuse themselves; they play all sorts of forfeit games
on account of a troop of young women and girls there; you shall see!"
she says.
You are so happy at this turn of affairs, that you hum airs and
carelessly chew bits of straw and thread, while still in your shirt
and drawers. You are like a hare frisking on a flowering dew-perfumed
meadow. You leave off your morning gown till the last extremity, when
breakfast is on the table. During the day, if you meet a friend and he
happens to speak of women, you defend them; you consider women
charming, delicious, there is something divine about them.
How often are our opinions dictated to us by the unknown events of our
life!
You take your wife to Madame Deschars'. Madame Deschars is a mother
and is exceedingly devout. You never see any newspapers at her house:
she keeps watch over her daughters by three different husbands, and
keeps them all the more closely from the fact that she herself has, it
is said, some little things to reproach herself with during the career
of her two former lords. At her house, no one dares risk a jest.
Everything there is white and pink and perfumed with sanctity, as at
the houses of widows who are approaching the confines of their third
youth. It seems as if every day were Sunday there.
You, a young husband, join the juvenile society of young women and
girls, misses and young people, in the chamber of Madame Deschars. The
serious people, politicians, whist-players, and tea-drinkers, are in
the parlor.
In Madame Deschars' room they are playing a game which consists in
hitting upon words with several meanings, to fit the answers that each
player is to make to the following questions:
How do you like it?
What do you do with it?
Where do you put it?
Your turn comes to guess the word, you go into the parlor, take part
in a discussion, and return at the call of a smiling young lady. They
have selected a word that may be applied to the most enigmatical
replies. Everybody knows that, in order to puzzle the strongest heads,
the best way is to choose a very ordinary word, and to invent phrases
that will send the parlor Oedipus a thousand leagues from each of his
previous thoughts.
This game is a poor substitute for lansquenet or dice, but it is not
very expensive.
The word MAL has been made the Sphinx of this particular occasion.
Every one has determined to put you off the scent. The word, among
other acceptations, has that of _mal_ [evil], a substantive that
signifies, in aesthetics, the opposite of good; of _mal_ [pain,
disease, complaint], a substantive that enters into a thousand
pathological expressions; then _malle_ [a mail-bag], and finally
_malle_ [a trunk], that box of various forms, covered with all kinds
of skin, made of every sort of leather, with handles, that journeys
rapidly, for it serves to carry travelling effects in, as a man of
Delille's school would say.
For you, a man of some sharpness, the Sphinx displays his wiles; he
spreads his wings and folds them up again; he shows you his lion's
paws, his woman's neck, his horse's loins, and his intellectual head;
he shakes his sacred fillets, he strikes an attitude and runs away, he
comes and goes, and sweeps the place with his terrible equine tail; he
shows his shining claws, and draws them in; he smiles, frisks, and
murmurs. He puts on the looks of a joyous child and those of a matron;
he is, above all, there to make fun of you.
You ask the group collectively, "How do you like it?"
"I like it for love's sake," says one.
"I like it regular," says another.
"I like it with a long mane."
"I like it with a spring lock."
"I like it unmasked."
"I like it on horseback."
"I like it as coming from God," says Madame Deschars.
"How do you like it?" you say to your wife.
"I like it legitimate."
This response of your wife is not understood, and sends you a journey
into the constellated fields of the infinite, where the mind, dazzled
by the multitude of creations, finds it impossible to make a choice.
"Where do you put it?"
"In a carriage."
"In a garret."
"In a steamboat."
"In the closet."
"On a cart."
"In prison."
"In the ears."
"In a shop."
Your wife says to you last of all: "In bed."
You were on the point of guessing it, but you know no word that fits
this answer, Madame Deschars not being likely to have allowed anything
improper.
"What do you do with it?"
"I make it my sole happiness," says your wife, after the answers of
all the rest, who have sent you spinning through a whole world of
linguistic suppositions.
This response strikes everybody, and you especially; so you persist in
seeking the meaning of it. You think of the bottle of hot water that
your wife has put to her feet when it is cold,--of the warming pan,
above all! Now of her night-cap,--of her handkerchief,--of her curling
paper,--of the hem of her chemise,--of her embroidery,--of her flannel
jacket,--of your bandanna,--of the pillow.
In short, as the greatest pleasure of the respondents is to see their
Oedipus mystified, as each word guessed by you throws them into fits
of laughter, superior men, perceiving no word that will fit all the
explanations, will sooner give it up than make three unsuccessful
attempts. According to the law of this innocent game you are condemned
to return to the parlor after leaving a forfeit; but you are so
exceedingly puzzled by your wife's answers, that you ask what the word
was.
"Mal," exclaims a young miss.
You comprehend everything but your wife's replies: she has not played
the game. Neither Madame Deschars, nor any one of the young women
understand. She has cheated. You revolt, there is an insurrection
among the girls and young women. They seek and are puzzled. You want
an explanation, and every one participates in your desire.
"In what sense did you understand the word, my dear?" you say to
Caroline.
"Why, _male_!" [male.]
Madame Deschars bites her lips and manifests the greatest displeasure;
the young women blush and drop their eyes; the little girls open
theirs, nudge each other and prick up their ears. Your feet are glued
to the carpet, and you have so much salt in your throat that you
believe in a repetition of the event which delivered Lot from his
wife.
You see an infernal life before you; society is out of the question.
To remain at home with this triumphant stupidity is equivalent to
condemnation to the state's prison.
Axiom.--Moral tortures exceed physical sufferings by all the
difference which exists between the soul and the body.
THE ATTENTIONS OF A WIFE.
Among the keenest pleasures of bachelor life, every man reckons the
independence of his getting up. The fancies of the morning compensate
for the glooms of evening. A bachelor turns over and over in his bed:
he is free to gape loud enough to justify apprehensions of murder, and
to scream at a pitch authorizing the suspicion of joys untold. He can
forget his oaths of the day before, let the fire burn upon the hearth
and the candle sink to its socket,--in short, go to sleep again in
spite of pressing work. He can curse the expectant boots which stand
holding their black mouths open at him and pricking up their ears. He
can pretend not to see the steel hooks which glitter in a sunbeam
which has stolen through the curtains, can disregard the sonorous
summons of the obstinate clock, can bury himself in a soft place,
saying: "Yes, I was in a hurry, yesterday, but am so no longer to-day.
Yesterday was a dotard. To-day is a sage: between them stands the
night which brings wisdom, the night which gives light. I ought to go,
I ought to do it, I promised I would--I am weak, I know. But how can I
resist the downy creases of my bed? My feet feel flaccid, I think I
must be sick, I am too happy just here. I long to see the ethereal
horizon of my dreams again, those women without claws, those winged
beings and their obliging ways. In short, I have found the grain of
salt to put upon the tail of that bird that was always flying away:
the coquette's feet are caught in the line. I have her now--"
Your servant, meantime, reads your newspaper, half-opens your letters,
and leaves you to yourself. And you go to sleep again, lulled by the
rumbling of the morning wagons. Those terrible, vexatious, quivering
teams, laden with meat, those trucks with big tin teats bursting with
milk, though they make a clatter most infernal and even crush the
paving stones, seem to you to glide over cotton, and vaguely remind
you of the orchestra of Napoleon Musard. Though your house trembles in
all its timbers and shakes upon its keel, you think yourself a sailor
cradled by a zephyr.
You alone have the right to bring these joys to an end by throwing
away your night-cap as you twist up your napkin after dinner, and by
sitting up in bed. Then you take yourself to task with such reproaches
as these: "Ah, mercy on me, I must get up!" "Early to bed and early to
rise, makes a man healthy--!" "Get up, lazy bones!"
All this time you remain perfectly tranquil. You look round your
chamber, you collect your wits together. Finally, you emerge from the
bed, spontaneously! Courageously! of your own accord! You go to the
fireplace, you consult the most obliging of timepieces, you utter
hopeful sentences thus couched: "Whatshisname is a lazy creature, I
guess I shall find him in. I'll run. I'll catch him if he's gone. He's
sure to wait for me. There is a quarter of an hour's grace in all
appointments, even between debtor and creditor."
You put on your boots with fury, you dress yourself as if you were
afraid of being caught half-dressed, you have the delight of being in
a hurry, you call your buttons into action, you finally go out like a
conqueror, whistling, brandishing your cane, pricking up your ears and
breaking into a canter.
After all, you say to yourself, you are responsible to no one, you are
your own master!
But you, poor married man, you were stupid enough to say to your wife,
"To-morrow, my dear" (sometimes she knows it two days beforehand), "I
have got to get up early." Unfortunate Adolphe, you have especially
proved the importance of this appointment: "It's to--and to--and above
all to--in short to--"
Two hours before dawn, Caroline wakes you up gently and says to you
softly: "Adolphy dear, Adolphy love!"
"What's the matter? Fire?"
"No, go to sleep again, I've made a mistake; but the hour hand was on
it, any way! It's only four, you can sleep two hours more."
Is not telling a man, "You've only got two hours to sleep," the same
thing, on a small scale, as saying to a criminal, "It's five in the
morning, the ceremony will be performed at half-past seven"? Such
sleep is troubled by an idea dressed in grey and furnished with wings,
which comes and flaps, like a bat, upon the windows of your brain.
A woman in a case like this is as exact as a devil coming to claim a
soul he has purchased. When the clock strikes five, your wife's voice,
too well known, alas! resounds in your ear; she accompanies the
stroke, and says with an atrocious calmness, "Adolphe, it's five
o'clock, get up, dear."
"Ye-e-e-s, ah-h-h-h!"
"Adolphe, you'll be late for your business, you said so yourself."
"Ah-h-h-h, ye-e-e-e-s." You turn over in despair.
"Come, come, love. I got everything ready last night; now you must, my
dear; do you want to miss him? There, up, I say; it's broad daylight."
Caroline throws off the blankets and gets up: she wants to show you
that _she_ can rise without making a fuss. She opens the blinds, she
lets in the sun, the morning air, the noise of the street, and then
comes back.
"Why, Adolphe, you _must_ get up! Who ever would have supposed you had
no energy! But it's just like you men! I am only a poor, weak woman,
but when I say a thing, I do it."
You get up grumbling, execrating the sacrament of marriage. There is
not the slightest merit in your heroism; it wasn't you, but your wife,
that got up. Caroline gets you everything you want with provoking
promptitude; she foresees everything, she gives you a muffler in
winter, a blue-striped cambric shirt in summer, she treats you like a
child; you are still asleep, she dresses you and has all the trouble.
She finally thrusts you out of doors. Without her nothing would go
straight! She calls you back to give you a paper, a pocketbook, you
had forgotten. You don't think of anything, she thinks of everything!
You return five hours afterwards to breakfast, between eleven and
noon. The chambermaid is at the door, or on the stairs, or on the
landing, talking with somebody's valet: she runs in on hearing or
seeing you. Your servant is laying the cloth in a most leisurely
style, stopping to look out of the window or to lounge, and coming and
going like a person who knows he has plenty of time. You ask for your
wife, supposing that she is up and dressed.
"Madame is still in bed," says the maid.
You find your wife languid, lazy, tired and asleep. She had been awake
all night to wake you in the morning, so she went to bed again, and is
quite hungry now.
You are the cause of all these disarrangements. If breakfast is not
ready, she says it's because you went out. If she is not dressed, and
if everything is in disorder, it's all your fault. For everything
which goes awry she has this answer: "Well, you would get up so
early!" "He would get up so early!" is the universal reason. She makes
you go to bed early, because you got up early. She can do nothing all
day, because you would get up so unusually early.
Eighteen months afterwards, she still maintains, "Without me, you
would never get up!" To her friends she says, "My husband get up! If
it weren't for me, he never _would_ get up!"
To this a man whose hair is beginning to whiten, replies, "A graceful
compliment to you, madame!" This slightly indelicate comment puts an
end to her boasts.
This petty trouble, repeated several times, teaches you to live alone
in the bosom of your family, not to tell all you know, and to have no
confidant but yourself: and it often seems to you a question whether
the inconveniences of the married state do not exceed its advantages.
SMALL VEXATIONS.
You have made a transition from the frolicsome allegretto of the
bachelor to the heavy andante of the father of a family.
Instead of that fine English steed prancing and snorting between the
polished shafts of a tilbury as light as your own heart, and moving
his glistening croup under the quadruple network of the reins and
ribbons that you so skillfully manage with what grace and elegance the
Champs Elysees can bear witness--you drive a good solid Norman horse
with a steady, family gait.
You have learned what paternal patience is, and you let no opportunity
slip of proving it. Your countenance, therefore, is serious.
By your side is a domestic, evidently for two purposes like the
carriage. The vehicle is four-wheeled and hung upon English springs:
it is corpulent and resembles a Rouen scow: it has glass windows, and
an infinity of economical arrangements. It is a barouche in fine
weather, and a brougham when it rains. It is apparently light, but,
when six persons are in it, it is heavy and tires out your only horse.
On the back seat, spread out like flowers, is your young wife in full
bloom, with her mother, a big marshmallow with a great many leaves.
These two flowers of the female species twitteringly talk of you,
though the noise of the wheels and your attention to the horse, joined
to your fatherly caution, prevent you from hearing what they say.
On the front seat, there is a nice tidy nurse holding a little girl in
her lap: by her side is a boy in a red plaited shirt, who is
continually leaning out of the carriage and climbing upon the
cushions, and who has a thousand times drawn down upon himself those
declarations of every mother, which he knows to be threats and nothing
else: "Be a good boy, Adolphe, or else--" "I declare I'll never bring
you again, so there!"
His mamma is secretly tired to death of this noisy little boy: he has
provoked her twenty times, and twenty times the face of the little
girl asleep has calmed her.
"I am his mother," she says to herself. And so she finally manages to
keep her little Adolphe quiet.
You have put your triumphant idea of taking your family to ride into
execution. You left your home in the morning, all the opposite
neighbors having come to their windows, envying you the privilege
which your means give you of going to the country and coming back
again without undergoing the miseries of a public conveyance. So you
have dragged your unfortunate Norman horse through Paris to Vincennes,
from Vincennes to Saint Maur, from Saint Maur to Charenton, from
Charenton opposite some island or other which struck your wife and
mother-in-law as being prettier than all the landscapes through which
you had driven them.
"Let's go to Maison's!" somebody exclaims.
So you go to Maison's, near Alfort. You come home by the left bank of
the Seine, in the midst of a cloud of very black Olympian dust. The
horse drags your family wearily along. But alas! your pride has fled,
and you look without emotion upon his sunken flanks, and upon two
bones which stick out on each side of his belly. His coat is roughened
by the sweat which has repeatedly come out and dried upon him, and
which, no less than the dust, has made him gummy, sticky and shaggy.
The horse looks like a wrathy porcupine: you are afraid he will be
foundered, and you caress him with the whip-lash in a melancholy way
that he perfectly understands, for he moves his head about like an
omnibus horse, tired of his deplorable existence.
You think a good deal of this horse; your consider him an excellent
one and he cost you twelve hundred francs. When a man has the honor of
being the father of a family, he thinks as much of twelve hundred
francs as you think of this horse. You see at once the frightful
amount of your extra expenses, in case Coco should have to lie by. For
two days you will have to take hackney coaches to go to your business.
You wife will pout if she can't go out: but she will go out, and take
a carriage. The horse will cause the purchase of numerous extras,
which you will find in your coachman's bill,--your only coachman, a
model coachman, whom you watch as you do a model anybody.
To these thoughts you give expression in the gentle movement of the
whip as it falls upon the animal's ribs, up to his knees in the black
dust which lines the road in front of La Verrerie.
At this moment, little Adolphe, who doesn't know what to do in this
rolling box, has sadly twisted himself up into a corner, and his
grandmother anxiously asks him, "What is the matter?"
"I'm hungry," says the child.
"He's hungry," says the mother to her daughter.
"And why shouldn't he be hungry? It is half-past five, we are not at
the barrier, and we started at two!"
"Your husband might have treated us to dinner in the country."
"He'd rather make his horse go a couple of leagues further, and get
back to the house."
"The cook might have had the day to herself. But Adolphe is right,
after all: it's cheaper to dine at home," adds the mother-in-law.
"Adolphe," exclaims your wife, stimulated by the word "cheaper," "we
go so slow that I shall be seasick, and you keep driving right in this
nasty dust. What are you thinking of? My gown and hat will be ruined!"
"Would you rather ruin the horse?" you ask, with the air of a man who
can't be answered.
"Oh, no matter for your horse; just think of your son who is dying of
hunger: he hasn't tasted a thing for seven hours. Whip up your old
horse! One would really think you cared more for your nag than for
your child!"
You dare not give your horse a single crack with the whip, for he
might still have vigor enough left to break into a gallop and run
away.
"No, Adolphe tries to vex me, he's going slower," says the young wife
to her mother. "My dear, go as slow as you like. But I know you'll say
I am extravagant when you see me buying another hat."
Upon this you utter a series of remarks which are lost in the racket
made by the wheels.
"What's the use of replying with reasons that haven't got an ounce of
common-sense?" cries Caroline.
You talk, turning your face to the carriage and then turning back to
the horse, to avoid an accident.
"That's right, run against somebody and tip us over, do, you'll be rid
of us. Adolphe, your son is dying of hunger. See how pale he is!"
"But Caroline," puts in the mother-in-law, "he's doing the best he
can."
Nothing annoys you so much as to have your mother-in-law take your
part. She is a hypocrite and is delighted to see you quarreling with
her daughter. Gently and with infinite precaution she throws oil on
the fire.
When you arrive at the barrier, your wife is mute. She says not a
word, she sits with her arms crossed, and will not look at you. You
have neither soul, heart, nor sentiment. No one but you could have
invented such a party of pleasure. If you are unfortunate enough to
remind Caroline that it was she who insisted on the excursion, that
morning, for her children's sake, and in behalf of her milk--she
nurses the baby--you will be overwhelmed by an avalanche of frigid and
stinging reproaches.
You bear it all so as "not to turn the milk of a nursing mother, for
whose sake you must overlook some little things," so your atrocious
mother-in-law whispers in your ear.
All the furies of Orestes are rankling in your heart.
In reply to the sacramental words pronounced by the officer of the
customs, "Have you anything to declare?" your wife says, "I declare a
great deal of ill-humor and dust."
She laughs, the officer laughs, and you feel a desire to tip your
family into the Seine.
Unluckily for you, you suddenly remember the joyous and perverse young
woman who wore a pink bonnet and who made merry in your tilbury six
years before, as you passed this spot on your way to the chop-house on
the river's bank. What a reminiscence! Was Madame Schontz anxious
about babies, about her bonnet, the lace of which was torn to pieces
in the bushes? No, she had no care for anything whatever, not even for
her dignity, for she shocked the rustic police of Vincennes by the
somewhat daring freedom of her style of dancing.
You return home, you have frantically hurried your Norman horse, and
have neither prevented an indisposition of the animal, nor an
indisposition of your wife.
That evening, Caroline has very little milk. If the baby cries and if
your head is split in consequence, it is all your fault, as you
preferred the health of your horse to that of your son who was dying
of hunger, and of your daughter whose supper has disappeared in a
discussion in which your wife was right, _as she always is_.
"Well, well," she says, "men are not mothers!"
As you leave the chamber, you hear your mother-in-law consoling her
daughter by these terrible words: "Come, be calm, Caroline: that's the
way with them all: they are a selfish lot: your father was just like
that!"
THE ULTIMATUM.
It is eight o'clock; you make your appearance in the bedroom of your
wife. There is a brilliant light. The chambermaid and the cook hover
lightly about. The furniture is covered with dresses and flowers tried
on and laid aside.
The hair-dresser is there, an artist par excellence, a sovereign
authority, at once nobody and everything. You hear the other domestics
going and coming: orders are given and recalled, errands are well or
ill performed. The disorder is at its height. This chamber is a studio
from whence to issue a parlor Venus.
Your wife desires to be the fairest at the ball which you are to
attend. Is it still for your sake, or only for herself, or is it for
somebody else? Serious questions these.
The idea does not even occur to you.
You are squeezed, hampered, harnessed in your ball accoutrement: you
count your steps as you walk, you look around, you observe, you
contemplate talking business on neutral ground with a stock-broker, a
notary or a banker, to whom you would not like to give an advantage
over you by calling at their house.
A singular fact which all have probably observed, but the causes of
which can hardly be determined, is the peculiar repugnance which men
dressed and ready to go to a party have for discussions or to answer
questions. At the moment of starting, there are few husbands who are
not taciturn and profoundly absorbed in reflections which vary with
their characters. Those who reply give curt and peremptory answers.
But women, at this time, are exceedingly aggravating. They consult
you, they ask your advice upon the best way of concealing the stem of
a rose, of giving a graceful fall to a bunch of briar, or a happy turn
to a scarf. As a neat English expression has it, "they fish for
compliments," and sometimes for better than compliments.
A boy just out of school would discern the motive concealed behind the
willows of these pretexts: but your wife is so well known to you, and
you have so often playfully joked upon her moral and physical
perfections, that you are harsh enough to give your opinion briefly
and conscientiously: you thus force Caroline to put that decisive
question, so cruel to women, even those who have been married twenty
years:
"So I don't suit you then?"
Drawn upon the true ground by this inquiry, you bestow upon her such
little compliments as you can spare and which are, as it were, the
small change, the sous, the liards of your purse.
"The best gown you ever wore!" "I never saw you so well dressed."
"Blue, pink, yellow, cherry [take your pick], becomes you charmingly."
"Your head-dress is quite original." "As you go in, every one will
admire you." "You will not only be the prettiest, but the best
dressed." "They'll all be mad not to have your taste." "Beauty is a
natural gift: taste is like intelligence, a thing that we may be proud
of."
"Do you think so? Are you in earnest, Adolphe?"
Your wife is coquetting with you. She chooses this moment to force
from you your pretended opinion of one and another of her friends, and
to insinuate the price of the articles of her dress you so much
admire. Nothing is too dear to please you. She sends the cook out of
the room.
"Let's go," you say.
She sends the chambermaid out after having dismissed the hair-dresser,
and begins to turn round and round before her glass, showing off to
you her most glorious beauties.
"Let's go," you say.
"You are in a hurry," she returns.
And she goes on exhibiting herself with all her little airs, setting
herself off like a fine peach magnificently exhibited in a fruiterer's
window. But since you have dined rather heartily, you kiss her upon
the forehead merely, not feeling able to countersign your opinions.
Caroline becomes serious.
The carriage waits. All the household looks at Caroline as she goes
out: she is the masterpiece to which all have contributed, and
everybody admires the common work.
Your wife departs highly satisfied with herself, but a good deal
displeased with you. She proceeds loftily to the ball, just as a
picture, caressed by the painter and minutely retouched in the studio,
is sent to the annual exhibition in the vast bazaar of the Louvre.
Your wife, alas! sees fifty women handsomer than herself: they have
invented dresses of the most extravagant price, and more or less
original: and that which happens at the Louvre to the masterpiece,
happens to the object of feminine labor: your wife's dress seems pale
by the side of another very much like it, but the livelier color of
which crushes it. Caroline is nobody, and is hardly noticed. When
there are sixty handsome women in a room, the sentiment of beauty is
lost, beauty is no longer appreciated. Your wife becomes a very
ordinary affair. The petty stratagem of her smile, made perfect by
practice, has no meaning in the midst of countenances of noble
expression, of self-possessed women of lofty presence. She is
completely put down, and no one asks her to dance. She tries to force
an expression of pretended satisfaction, but, as she is not satisfied,
she hears people say, "Madame Adolphe is looking very ill to-night."
Women hypocritically ask her if she is indisposed and "Why don't you
dance?" They have a whole catalogue of malicious remarks veneered with
sympathy and electroplated with charity, enough to damn a saint, to
make a monkey serious, and to give the devil the shudders.
You, who are innocently playing cards or walking backwards and
forwards, and so have not seen one of the thousand pin-pricks with
which your wife's self-love has been tattooed, you come and ask her in
a whisper, "What is the matter?"
"Order _my_ carriage!"
This _my_ is the consummation of marriage. For two years she has said
"_my husband's_ carriage," "_the_ carriage," "_our_ carriage," and now
she says "_my_ carriage."
You are in the midst of a game, you say, somebody wants his revenge,
or you must get your money back.
Here, Adolphe, we allow that you have sufficient strength of mind to
say yes, to disappear, and _not_ to order the carriage.
You have a friend, you send him to dance with your wife, for you have
commenced a system of concessions which will ruin you. You already
dimly perceive the advantage of a friend.
Finally, you order the carriage. You wife gets in with concentrated
rage, she hurls herself into a corner, covers her face with her hood,
crosses her arms under her pelisse, and says not a word.
O husbands! Learn this fact; you may, at this fatal moment, repair and
redeem everything: and never does the impetuosity of lovers who have
been caressing each other the whole evening with flaming gaze fail to
do it! Yes, you can bring her home in triumph, she has now nobody but
you, you have one more chance, that of taking your wife by storm! But
no, idiot, stupid and indifferent that you are, you ask her, "What is
the matter?"
Axiom.--A husband should always know what is the matter with his wife,
for she always knows what is not.
"I'm cold," she says.
"The ball was splendid."
"Pooh! nobody of distinction! People have the mania, nowadays, to
invite all Paris into a hole. There were women even on the stairs:
their gowns were horribly smashed, and mine is ruined."
"We had a good time."
"Ah, you men, you play and that's the whole of it. Once married, you
care about as much for your wives as a lion does for the fine arts."
"How changed you are; you were so gay, so happy, so charming when we
arrived."
"Oh, you never understand us women. I begged you to go home, and you
left me there, as if a woman ever did anything without a reason. You
are not without intelligence, but now and then you are so queer I
don't know what you are thinking about."
Once upon this footing, the quarrel becomes more bitter. When you give
your wife your hand to lift her from the carriage, you grasp a woman
of wood: she gives you a "thank you" which puts you in the same rank
as her servant. You understood your wife no better before than you do
after the ball: you find it difficult to follow her, for instead of
going up stairs, she flies up. The rupture is complete.
The chambermaid is involved in your disgrace: she is received with
blunt No's and Yes's, as dry as Brussells rusks, which she swallows
with a slanting glance at you. "Monsieur's always doing these things,"
she mutters.
You alone might have changed Madame's temper. She goes to bed; she has
her revenge to take: you did not comprehend her. Now she does not
comprehend you. She deposits herself on her side of the bed in the
most hostile and offensive posture: she is wrapped up in her chemise,
in her sack, in her night-cap, like a bale of clocks packed for the
East Indies. She says neither good-night, nor good-day, nor dear, nor
Adolphe: you don't exist, you are a bag of wheat.
Your Caroline, so enticing five hours before in this very chamber
where she frisked about like an eel, is now a junk of lead. Were you
the Tropical Zone in person, astride of the Equator, you could not
melt the ice of this little personified Switzerland that pretends to
be asleep, and who could freeze you from head to foot, if she liked.
Ask her one hundred times what is the matter with her, Switzerland
replies by an ultimatum, like the Diet or the Conference of London.
Nothing is the matter with her: she is tired: she is going to sleep.
The more you insist, the more she erects bastions of ignorance, the
more she isolates herself by chevaux-de-frise. If you get impatient,
Caroline begins to dream! You grumble, you are lost.
Axiom.--Inasmuch as women are always willing and able to explain their
strong points, they leave us to guess at their weak ones.
Caroline will perhaps also condescend to assure you that she does not
feel well. But she laughs in her night-cap when you have fallen
asleep, and hurls imprecations upon your slumbering body.
WOMEN'S LOGIC.
You imagine you have married a creature endowed with reason: you are
woefully mistaken, my friend.
Axiom.--Sensitive beings are not sensible beings.
Sentiment is not argument, reason is not pleasure, and pleasure is
certainly not a reason.
"Oh! sir!" she says.
Reply "Ah! yes! Ah!" You must bring forth this "ah!" from the very
depths of your thoracic cavern, as you rush in a rage from the house,
or return, confounded, to your study.
Why? Now? Who has conquered, killed, overthrown you! Your wife's
logic, which is not the logic of Aristotle, nor that of Ramus, nor
that of Kant, nor that of Condillac, nor that of Robespierre, nor that
of Napoleon: but which partakes of the character of all these logics,
and which we must call the universal logic of women, the logic of
English women as it is that of Italian women, of the women of Normandy
and Brittany (ah, these last are unsurpassed!), of the women of Paris,
in short, that of the women in the moon, if there are women in that
nocturnal land, with which the women of the earth have an evident
understanding, angels that they are!
The discussion began after breakfast. Discussions can never take place
in a household save at this hour. A man could hardly have a discussion
with his wife in bed, even if he wanted to: she has too many
advantages over him, and can too easily reduce him to silence. On
leaving the nuptial chamber with a pretty woman in it, a man is apt to
be hungry, if he is young. Breakfast is usually a cheerful meal, and
cheerfulness is not given to argument. In short, you do not open the
business till you have had your tea or your coffee.
You have taken it into your head, for instance, to send your son to
school. All fathers are hypocrites and are never willing to confess
that their own flesh and blood is very troublesome when it walks about
on two legs, lays its dare-devil hands on everything, and is
everywhere at once like a frisky pollywog. Your son barks, mews, and
sings; he breaks, smashes and soils the furniture, and furniture is
dear; he makes toys of everything, he scatters your papers, and he
cuts paper dolls out of the morning's newspaper before you have read
it.
His mother says to him, referring to anything of yours: "Take it!" but
in reference to anything of hers she says: "Take care!"
She cunningly lets him have your things that she may be left in peace.
Her bad faith as a good mother seeks shelter behind her child, your
son is her accomplice. Both are leagued against you like Robert
Macaire and Bertrand against the subscribers to their joint stock
company. The boy is an axe with which foraging excursions are
performed in your domains. He goes either boldly or slyly to maraud in
your wardrobe: he reappears caparisoned in the drawers you laid aside
that morning, and brings to the light of day many articles condemned
to solitary confinement. He brings the elegant Madame Fischtaminel, a
friend whose good graces you cultivate, your girdle for checking
corpulency, bits of cosmetic for dyeing your moustache, old waistcoats
discolored at the arm-holes, stockings slightly soiled at the heels
and somewhat yellow at the toes. It is quite impossible to remark that
these stains are caused by the leather!
Your wife looks at your friend and laughs; you dare not be angry, so
you laugh too, but what a laugh! The unfortunate all know that laugh.
Your son, moreover, gives you a cold sweat, if your razors happen to
be out of their place. If you are angry, the little rebel laughs and
shows his two rows of pearls: if you scold him, he cries. His mother
rushes in! And what a mother she is! A mother who will detest you if
you don't give him the razor! With women there is no middle ground; a
man is either a monster or a model.
At certain times you perfectly understand Herod and his famous decrees
relative to the Massacre of the Innocents, which have only been
surpassed by those of the good Charles X!
Your wife has returned to her sofa, you walk up and down, and stop,
and you boldly introduce the subject by this interjectional remark:
"Caroline, we must send Charles to boarding school."
"Charles cannot go to boarding school," she returns in a mild tone.
"Charles is six years old, the age at which a boy's education begins."
"In the first place," she replies, "it begins at seven. The royal
princes are handed over to their governor by their governess when they
are seven. That's the law and the prophets. I don't see why you
shouldn't apply to the children of private people the rule laid down
for the children of princes. Is your son more forward than theirs? The
king of Rome--"
"The king of Rome is not a case in point."
"What! Is not the king of Rome the son of the Emperor? [Here she
changes the subject.] Well, I declare, you accuse the Empress, do you?
Why, Doctor Dubois himself was present, besides--"
"I said nothing of the kind."
"How you do interrupt, Adolphe."
"I say that the king of Rome [here you begin to raise your voice], the
king of Rome, who was hardly four years old when he left France, is no
example for us."
"That doesn't prevent the fact of the Duke de Bordeaux's having been
placed in the hands of the Duke de Riviere, his tutor, at seven
years." [Logic.]
"The case of the young Duke of Bordeaux is different."
"Then you confess that a boy can't be sent to school before he is
seven years old?" she says with emphasis. [More logic.]
"No, my dear, I don't confess that at all. There is a great deal of
difference between private and public education."
"That's precisely why I don't want to send Charles to school yet. He
ought to be much stronger than he is, to go there."
"Charles is very strong for his age."
"Charles? That's the way with men! Why, Charles has a very weak
constitution; he takes after you. [Here she changes from _tu_ to
_vous_.] But if you are determined to get rid of your son, why put him
out to board, of course. I have noticed for some time that the dear
child annoys you."
"Annoys me? The idea! But we are answerable for our children, are we
not? It is time Charles' education was began: he is getting very bad
habits here, he obeys no one, he thinks himself perfectly free to do
as he likes, he hits everybody and nobody dares to hit him back. He
ought to be placed in the midst of his equals, or he will grow up with
the most detestable temper."
"Thank you: so I am bringing Charles up badly!"
"I did not say that: but you will always have excellent reasons for
keeping him at home."
Here the _vous_ becomes reciprocal and the discussion takes a bitter
turn on both sides. Your wife is very willing to wound you by saying
_vous_, but she feels cross when it becomes mutual.
"The long and the short of it is that you want to get my child away,
you find that he is between us, you are jealous of your son, you want
to tyrannize over me at your ease, and you sacrifice your boy! Oh, I
am smart enough to see through you!"
"You make me out like Abraham with his knife! One would think there
were no such things as schools! So the schools are empty; nobody sends
their children to school!"
"You are trying to make me appear ridiculous," she retorts. "I know
that there are schools well enough, but people don't send boys of six
there, and Charles shall not start now."
"Don't get angry, my dear."
"As if I ever get angry! I am a woman and know how to suffer in
silence."
"Come, let us reason together."
"You have talked nonsense enough."
"It is time that Charles should learn to read and write; later in
life, he will find difficulties sufficient to disgust him."
Here, you talk for ten minutes without interruption, and you close
with an appealing "Well?" armed with an intonation which suggests an
interrogation point of the most crooked kind.
"Well!" she replies, "it is not yet time for Charles to go to school."
You have gained nothing at all.
"But, my dear, Monsieur Deschars certainly sent his little Julius to
school at six years. Go and examine the schools and you will find lots
of little boys of six there."
You talk for ten minutes more without the slightest interruption, and
then you ejaculate another "Well?"
"Little Julius Deschars came home with chilblains," she says.
"But Charles has chilblains here."
"Never," she replies, proudly.
In a quarter of an hour, the main question is blocked by a side
discussion on this point: "Has Charles had chilblains or not?"
You bandy contradictory allegations; you no longer believe each other;
you must appeal to a third party.
Axiom.--Every household has its Court of Appeals which takes no notice
of the merits, but judges matters of form only.
The nurse is sent for. She comes, and decides in favor of your wife.
It is fully decided that Charles has never had chilblains.
Caroline glances triumphantly at you and utters these monstrous words:
"There, you see Charles can't possibly go to school!"
You go out breathless with rage. There is no earthly means of
convincing your wife that there is not the slightest reason for your
son's not going to school in the fact that he has never had
chilblains.
That evening, after dinner, you hear this atrocious creature finishing
a long conversation with a woman with these words: "He wanted to send
Charles to school, but I made him see that he would have to wait."
Some husbands, at a conjuncture like this, burst out before everybody;
their wives take their revenge six weeks later, but the husbands gain
this by it, that Charles is sent to school the very day he gets into
any mischief. Other husbands break the crockery, and keep their rage
to themselves. The knowing ones say nothing and bide their time.
A woman's logic is exhibited in this way upon the slightest occasion,
about a promenade or the proper place to put a sofa. This logic is
extremely simple, inasmuch as it consists in never expressing but one
idea, that which contains the expression of their will. Like
everything pertaining to female nature, this system may be resolved
into two algebraic terms--Yes: no. There are also certain little
movements of the head which mean so much that they may take the place
of either.
THE JESUITISM OF WOMEN.
The most jesuitical Jesuit of Jesuits is yet a thousand times less
jesuitical than the least jesuitical woman,--so you may judge what
Jesuits women are! They are so jesuitical that the cunningest Jesuit
himself could never guess to what extent of jesuitism a woman may go,
for there are a thousand ways of being jesuitical, and a woman is such
an adroit Jesuit, that she has the knack of being a Jesuit without
having a jesuitical look. You can rarely, though you can sometimes,
prove to a Jesuit that he is one: but try once to demonstrate to a
woman that she acts or talks like a Jesuit. She would be cut to pieces
rather than confess herself one.
She, a Jesuit! The very soul of honor and loyalty! She a Jesuit! What
do you mean by "Jesuit?" She does not know what a Jesuit is: what is a
Jesuit? She has never seen or heard of a Jesuit! It's you who are a
Jesuit! And she proves with jesuitical demonstration that you are a
subtle Jesuit.
Here is one of the thousand examples of a woman's jesuitism, and this
example constitutes the most terrible of the petty troubles of married
life; it is perhaps the most serious.
Induced by a desire the thousandth time expressed by Caroline, who
complained that she had to go on foot or that she could not buy a new
hat, a new parasol, a new dress, or any other article of dress, often
enough:
That she could not dress her baby as a sailor, as a lancer, as an
artilleryman of the National Guard, as a Highlander with naked legs
and a cap and feather, in a jacket, in a roundabout, in a velvet sack,
in boots, in trousers: that she could not buy him toys enough, nor
mechanical moving mice and Noah's Arks enough:
That she could not return Madame Deschars or Madame de Fischtaminel
their civilities, a ball, a party, a dinner: nor take a private box at
the theatre, thus avoiding the necessity of sitting cheek by jowl with
men who are either too polite or not enough so, and of calling a cab
at the close of the performance; apropos of which she thus discourses:
"You think it cheaper, but you are mistaken: men are all the same! I
soil my shoes, I spoil my hat, my shawl gets wet and my silk stockings
get muddy. You economize twenty francs by not having a carriage,--no
not twenty, sixteen, for your pay four for the cab--and you lose fifty
francs' worth of dress, besides being wounded in your pride on seeing
a faded bonnet on my head: you don't see why it's faded, but it's
those horrid cabs. I say nothing of the annoyance of being tumbled and
jostled by a crowd of men, for it seems you don't care for that!"
That she could not buy a piano instead of hiring one, nor keep up with
the fashions; (there are some women, she says, who have all the new
styles, but just think what they give in return! She would rather
throw herself out of the window than imitate them! She loves you too
much. Here she sheds tears. She does not understand such women). That
she could not ride in the Champs Elysees, stretched out in her own
carriage, like Madame de Fischtaminel. (There's a woman who
understands life: and who has a well-taught, well-disciplined and very
contented husband: his wife would go through fire and water for him!)
Finally, beaten in a thousand conjugal scenes, beaten by the most
logical arguments (the late logicians Tripier and Merlin were nothing
to her, as the preceding chapter has sufficiently shown you), beaten
by the most tender caresses, by tears, by your own words turned
against you, for under circumstances like these, a woman lies in wait
in her house like a jaguar in the jungle; she does not appear to
listen to you, or to heed you; but if a single word, a wish, a
gesture, escapes you, she arms herself with it, she whets it to an
edge, she brings it to bear upon you a hundred times over; beaten by
such graceful tricks as "If you will do so and so, I will do this and
that;" for women, in these cases, become greater bargainers than the
Jews and Greeks (those, I mean, who sell perfumes and little girls),
than the Arabs (those, I mean, who sell little boys and horses),
greater higglers than the Swiss and the Genevese, than bankers, and,
what is worse than all, than the Genoese!
Finally, beaten in a manner which may be called beaten, you determine
to risk a certain portion of your capital in a business undertaking.
One evening, at twilight, seated side by side, or some morning on
awakening, while Caroline, half asleep, a pink bud in her white linen,
her face smiling in her lace, is beside you, you say to her, "You want
this, you say, or you want that: you told me this or you told me
that:" in short, you hastily enumerate the numberless fancies by which
she has over and over again broken your heart, for there is nothing
more dreadful than to be unable to satisfy the desires of a beloved
wife, and you close with these words:
"Well, my dear, an opportunity offers of quintupling a hundred
thousand francs, and I have decided to make the venture."
She is wide awake now, she sits up in bed, and gives you a kiss, ah!
this time, a real good one!
"You are a dear boy!" is her first word.
We will not mention her last, for it is an enormous and
unpronounceable onomatope.
"Now," she says, "tell me all about it."
You try to explain the nature of the affair. But in the first place,
women do not understand business, and in the next they do not wish to
seem to understand it. Your dear, delighted Caroline says you were
wrong to take her desires, her groans, her sighs for new dresses, in
earnest. She is afraid of your venture, she is frightened at the
directors, the shares, and above all at the running expenses, and
doesn't exactly see where the dividend comes in.
Axiom.--Women are always afraid of things that have to be divided.
In short, Caroline suspects a trap: but she is delighted to know that
she can have her carriage, her box, the numerous styles of dress for
her baby, and the rest. While dissuading you from engaging in the
speculation, she is visibly glad to see you investing your money in
it.
FIRST PERIOD.--"Oh, I am the happiest woman on the face of the earth!
Adolphe has just gone into the most splendid venture. I am going to
have a carriage, oh! ever so much handsomer than Madame de
Fischtaminel's; hers is out of fashion. Mine will have curtains with
fringes. My horses will be mouse-colored, hers are bay,--they are as
common as coppers."
"What is this venture, madame?"
"Oh, it's splendid--the stock is going up; he explained it to me
before he went into it, for Adolphe never does anything without
consulting me."
"You are very fortunate."
"Marriage would be intolerable without entire confidence, and Adolphe
tells me everything."
Thus, Adolphe, you are the best husband in Paris, you are adorable,
you are a man of genius, you are all heart, an angel. You are petted
to an uncomfortable degree. You bless the marriage tie. Caroline
extols men, calling them "kings of creation," women were made for
them, man is naturally generous, and matrimony is a delightful
institution.
For three, sometimes six, months, Caroline executes the most brilliant
concertos and solos upon this delicious theme: "I shall be rich! I
shall have a thousand a month for my dress: I am going to keep my
carriage!"
If your son is alluded to, it is merely to ask about the school to
which he shall be sent.
SECOND PERIOD.--"Well, dear, how is your business getting on?--What
has become of it?--How about that speculation which was to give me a
carriage, and other things?--It is high time that affair should come
to something.--It is a good while cooking.--When _will_ it begin to
pay? Is the stock going up?--There's nobody like you for hitting upon
ventures that never amount to anything."
One day she says to you, "Is there really an affair?"
If you mention it eight or ten months after, she returns:
"Ah! Then there really _is_ an affair!"
This woman, whom you thought dull, begins to show signs of
extraordinary wit, when her object is to make fun of you. During this
period, Caroline maintains a compromising silence when people speak of
you, or else she speaks disparagingly of men in general: "Men are not
what they seem: to find them out you must try them." "Marriage has its
good and its bad points." "Men never can finish anything."
THIRD PERIOD.--_Catastrophe_.--This magnificent affair which was to
yield five hundred per cent, in which the most cautious, the best
informed persons took part--peers, deputies, bankers--all of them
Knights of the Legion of Honor--this venture has been obliged to
liquidate! The most sanguine expect to get ten per cent of their
capital back. You are discouraged.
Caroline has often said to you, "Adolphe, what is the matter? Adolphe,
there is something wrong."
Finally, you acquaint Caroline with the fatal result: she begins by
consoling you.
"One hundred thousand francs lost! We shall have to practice the
strictest economy," you imprudently add.
The jesuitism of woman bursts out at this word "economy." It sets fire
to the magazine.
"Ah! that's what comes of speculating! How is it that _you, ordinarily
so prudent_, could go and risk a hundred thousand francs! _You know I
was against it from the beginning!_ BUT YOU WOULD NOT LISTEN TO ME!"
Upon this, the discussion grows bitter.
You are good for nothing--you have no business capacity; women alone
take clear views of things. You have risked your children's bread,
though she tried to dissuade you from it.--You cannot say it was for
her. Thank God, she has nothing to reproach herself with. A hundred
times a month she alludes to your disaster: "If my husband had not
thrown away his money in such and such a scheme, I could have had this
and that." "The next time you want to go into an affair, perhaps
you'll consult me!" Adolphe is accused and convicted of having
foolishly lost one hundred thousand francs, without an object in view,
like a dolt, and without having consulted his wife. Caroline advises
her friends not to marry. She complains of the incapacity of men who
squander the fortunes of their wives. Caroline is vindictive, she
makes herself generally disagreeable. Pity Adolphe! Lament, ye
husbands! O bachelors, rejoice and be exceeding glad!
MEMORIES AND REGRETS.
After several years of wedded life, your love has become so placid,
that Caroline sometimes tries, in the evening, to wake you up by
various little coquettish phrases. There is about you a certain
calmness and tranquillity which always exasperates a lawful wife.
Women see in it a sort of insolence: they look upon the indifference
of happiness as the fatuity of confidence, for of course they never
imagine their inestimable equalities can be regarded with disdain:
their virtue is therefore enraged at being so cordially trusted in.
In this situation, which is what every couple must come to, and which
both husband and wife must expect, no husband dares confess that the
constant repetition of the same dish has become wearisome; but his
appetite certainly requires the condiments of dress, the ideas excited
by absence, the stimulus of an imaginary rivalry.
In short, at this period, you walk very comfortably with your wife on
your arm, without pressing hers against your heart with the solicitous
and watchful cohesion of a miser grasping his treasure. You gaze
carelessly round upon the curiosities in the street, leading your wife
in a loose and distracted way, as if you were towing a Norman scow.
Come now, be frank! If, on passing your wife, an admirer were gently
to press her, accidentally or purposely, would you have the slightest
desire to discover his motives? Besides, you say, no woman would seek
to bring about a quarrel for such a trifle. Confess this, too, that
the expression "such a trifle" is exceedingly flattering to both of
you.
You are in this position, but you have as yet proceeded no farther.
Still, you have a horrible thought which you bury in the depths of
your heart and conscience: Caroline has not come up to your
expectations. Caroline has imperfections, which, during the high tides
of the honey-moon, were concealed under the water, but which the ebb
of the gall-moon has laid bare. You have several times run against
these breakers, your hopes have been often shipwrecked upon them, more
than once your desires--those of a young marrying man--(where, alas,
is that time!) have seen their richly laden gondolas go to pieces
there: the flower of the cargo went to the bottom, the ballast of the
marriage remained. In short, to make use of a colloquial expression,
as you talk over your marriage with yourself you say, as you look at
Caroline, "_She is not what I took her to be!_"
Some evening, at a ball, in society, at a friend's house, no matter
where, you meet a sublime young woman, beautiful, intellectual and
kind: with a soul, oh! a soul of celestial purity, and of miraculous
beauty! Yes, there is that unchangeable oval cut of face, those
features which time will never impair, that graceful and thoughtful
brow. The unknown is rich, well-educated, of noble birth: she will
always be what she should be, she knows when to shine, when to remain
in the background: she appears in all her glory and power, the being
you have dreamed of, your wife that should have been, she whom you
feel you could love forever. She would always have flattered your
little vanities, she would understand and admirably serve your
interests. She is tender and gay, too, this young lady who reawakens
all your better feelings, who rekindles your slumbering desires.
You look at Caroline with gloomy despair, and here are the
phantom-like thoughts which tap, with wings of a bat, the beak of
a vulture, the body of a death's-head moth, upon the walls of the
palace in which, enkindled by desire, glows your brain like a lamp
of gold:
FIRST STANZA. Ah, dear me, why did I get married? Fatal idea! I
allowed myself to be caught by a small amount of cash. And is it
really over? Cannot I have another wife? Ah, the Turks manage things
better! It is plain enough that the author of the Koran lived in the
desert!
SECOND STANZA. My wife is sick, she sometimes coughs in the morning.
If it is the design of Providence to remove her from the world, let it
be speedily done for her sake and for mine. The angel has lived long
enough.
THIRD STANZA. I am a monster! Caroline is the mother of my children!
You go home, that night, in a carriage with your wife: you think her
perfectly horrible: she speaks to you, but you answer in
monosyllables. She says, "What is the matter?" and you answer,
"Nothing." She coughs, you advise her to see the doctor in the
morning. Medicine has its hazards.
FOURTH STANZA. I have been told that a physician, poorly paid by the
heirs of his deceased patient, imprudently exclaimed, "What! they cut
down my bill, when they owe me forty thousand a year." _I_ would not
haggle over fees!
"Caroline," you say to her aloud, "you must take care of yourself;
cross your shawl, be prudent, my darling angel."
Your wife is delighted with you since you seem to take such an
interest in her. While she is preparing to retire, you lie stretched
out upon the sofa. You contemplate the divine apparition which opens
to you the ivory portals of your castles in the air. Delicious
ecstasy! 'Tis the sublime young woman that you see before you! She is
as white as the sail of the treasure-laden galleon as it enters the
harbor of Cadiz. Your wife, happy in your admiration, now understands
your former taciturnity. You still see, with closed eyes, the sublime
young woman; she is the burden of your thoughts, and you say aloud:
FIFTH AND LAST STANZA. Divine! Adorable! Can there be another woman
like her? Rose of Night! Column of ivory! Celestial maiden! Morning
and Evening Star!
Everyone says his prayers; you have said four.
The next morning, your wife is delightful, she coughs no more, she has
no need of a doctor; if she dies, it will be of good health; you
launched four maledictions upon her, in the name of your sublime young
woman, and four times she blessed you for it. Caroline does not know
that in the depths of your heart there wriggles a little red fish like
a crocodile, concealed beneath conjugal love like the other would be
hid in a basin.
A few days before, your wife had spoken of you in rather equivocal
terms to Madame de Fischtaminel: your fair friend comes to visit her,
and Caroline compromises you by a long and humid gaze; she praises you
and says she never was happier.
You rush out in a rage, you are beside yourself, and are glad to meet
a friend, that you may work off your bile.
"Don't you ever marry, George; it's better to see your heirs carrying
away your furniture while the death-rattle is in your throat, better
to go through an agony of two hours without a drop to cool your
tongue, better to be assassinated by inquiries about your will by a
nurse like the one in Henry Monnier's terrible picture of a
'Bachelor's Last Moments!' Never marry under any pretext!"
Fortunately you see the sublime young woman no more. You are saved
from the tortures to which a criminal passion was leading you. You
fall back again into the purgatory of your married bliss; but you
begin to be attentive to Madame de Fischtaminel, with whom you were
dreadfully in love, without being able to get near her, while you were
a bachelor.
OBSERVATIONS.
When you have arrived at this point in the latitude or longitude of
the matrimonial ocean, there appears a slight chronic, intermittent
affection, not unlike the toothache. Here, I see, you stop me to ask,
"How are we to find the longitude in this sea? When can a husband be
sure he has attained this nautical point? And can the danger be
avoided?"
You may arrive at this point, look you, as easily after ten months as
ten years of wedlock; it depends upon the speed of the vessel, its
style of rigging, upon the trade winds, the force of the currents, and
especially upon the composition of the crew. You have this advantage
over the mariner, that he has but one method of calculating his
position, while husbands have at least a thousand of reckoning theirs.
EXAMPLE: Caroline, your late darling, your late treasure, who is now
merely your humdrum wife, leans much too heavily upon your arm while
walking on the boulevard, or else says it is much more elegant not to
take your arm at all;
Or else she notices men, older or younger as the case may be, dressed
with more or less taste, whereas she formerly saw no one whatever,
though the sidewalk was black with hats and traveled by more boots
than slippers;
Or, when you come home, she says, "It's no one but my husband:"
instead of saying "Ah! 'tis Adolphe!" as she used to say with a
gesture, a look, an accent which caused her admirers to think, "Well,
here's a happy woman at last!" This last exclamation of a woman is
suitable for two eras,--first, while she is sincere; second, while she
is hypocritical, with her "Ah! 'tis Adolphe!" When she exclaims, "It's
only my husband," she no longer deigns to play a part.
Or, if you come home somewhat late--at eleven, or at midnight--you
find her--snoring! Odious symptom!
Or else she puts on her stockings in your presence. Among English
couples, this never happens but once in a lady's married life; the
next day she leaves for the Continent with some captain or other, and
no longer thinks of putting on her stockings at all.
Or else--but let us stop here.
This is intended for the use of mariners and husbands who are
weatherwise.
THE MATRIMONIAL GADFLY.
Very well! In this degree of longitude, not far from a tropical sign
upon the name of which good taste forbids us to make a jest at once
coarse and unworthy of this thoughtful work, a horrible little
annoyance appears, ingeniously called the Matrimonial Gadfly, the most
provoking of all gnats, mosquitoes, blood-suckers, fleas and
scorpions, for no net was ever yet invented that could keep it off.
The gadfly does not immediately sting you; it begins by buzzing in
your ears, and _you do not at first know what it is_.
Thus, apropos of nothing, in the most natural way in the world,
Caroline says: "Madame Deschars had a lovely dress on, yesterday."
"She is a woman of taste," returns Adolphe, though he is far from
thinking so.
"Her husband gave it to her," resumes Caroline, with a shrug of her
shoulders.
"Ah!"
"Yes, a four hundred franc dress! It's the very finest quality of
velvet."
"Four hundred francs!" cries Adolphe, striking the attitude of the
apostle Thomas.
"But then there are two extra breadths and enough for a high waist!"
"Monsieur Deschars does things on a grand scale," replies Adolphe,
taking refuge in a jest.
"All men don't pay such attentions to their wives," says Caroline,
curtly.
"What attentions?"
"Why, Adolphe, thinking of extra breadths and of a waist to make the
dress good again, when it is no longer fit to be worn low in the
neck."
Adolphe says to himself, "Caroline wants a dress."
Poor man!
Some time afterward, Monsieur Deschars furnishes his wife's chamber
anew. Then he has his wife's diamonds set in the prevailing fashion.
Monsieur Deschars never goes out without his wife, and never allows
his wife to go out without offering her his arm.
If you bring Caroline anything, no matter what, it is never equal to
what Monsieur Deschars has done. If you allow yourself the slightest
gesture or expression a little livelier than usual, if you speak a
little bit loud, you hear the hissing and viper-like remark:
"You wouldn't see Monsieur Deschars behaving like this! Why don't you
take Monsieur Deschars for a model?"
In short, this idiotic Monsieur Deschars is forever looming up in your
household on every conceivable occasion.
The expression--"Do you suppose Monsieur Deschars ever allows himself"
--is a sword of Damocles, or what is worse, a Damocles pin: and your
self-love is the cushion into which your wife is constantly sticking
it, pulling it out, and sticking it in again, under a variety of
unforeseen pretexts, at the same time employing the most winning terms
of endearment, and with the most agreeable little ways.
Adolphe, stung till he finds himself tattooed, finally does what is
done by police authorities, by officers of government, by military
tacticians. He casts his eye on Madame de Fischtaminel, who is still
young, elegant and a little bit coquettish, and places her (this had
been the rascal's intention for some time) like a blister upon
Caroline's extremely ticklish skin.
O you, who often exclaim, "I don't know what is the matter with my
wife!" you will kiss this page of transcendent philosophy, for you
will find in it _the key to every woman's character_! But as to
knowing women as well as I know them, it will not be knowing them
much; they don't know themselves! In fact, as you well know, God was
Himself mistaken in the only one that He attempted to manage and to
whose manufacture He had given personal attention.
Caroline is very willing to sting Adolphe at all hours, but this
privilege of letting a wasp off now and then upon one's consort (the
legal term), is exclusively reserved to the wife. Adolphe is a monster
if he starts off a single fly at Caroline. On her part, it is a
delicious joke, a new jest to enliven their married life, and one
dictated by the purest intentions; while on Adolphe's part, it is a
piece of cruelty worthy a Carib, a disregard of his wife's heart, and
a deliberate plan to give her pain. But that is nothing.
"So you are really in love with Madame de Fischtaminel?" Caroline
asks. "What is there so seductive in the mind or the manners of the
spider?"
"Why, Caroline--"
"Oh, don't undertake to deny your eccentric taste," she returns,
checking a negation on Adolphe's lips. "I have long seen that you
prefer that Maypole [Madame de Fischtaminel is thin] to me. Very well!
go on; you will soon see the difference."
Do you understand? You cannot suspect Caroline of the slightest
inclination for Monsieur Deschars, a low, fat, red-faced man, formerly
a notary, while you are in love with Madame de Fischtaminel! Then
Caroline, the Caroline whose simplicity caused you such agony,
Caroline who has become familiar with society, Caroline becomes acute
and witty: you have two gadflies instead of one.
The next day she asks you, with a charming air of interest, "How are
you coming on with Madame de Fischtaminel?"
When you go out, she says: "Go and drink something calming, my dear."
For, in their anger with a rival, all women, duchesses even, will use
invectives, and even venture into the domain of Billingsgate; they
make an offensive weapon of anything and everything.
To try to convince Caroline that she is mistaken and that you are
indifferent to Madame de Fischtaminel, would cost you dear. This is a
blunder that no sensible man commits; he would lose his power and
spike his own guns.
Oh! Adolphe, you have arrived unfortunately at that season so
ingeniously called the _Indian Summer of Marriage_.
You must now--pleasing task!--win your wife, your Caroline, over
again, seize her by the waist again, and become the best of husbands
by trying to guess at things to please her, so as to act according to
her whims instead of according to your will. This is the whole
question henceforth.
HARD LABOR.
Let us admit this, which, in our opinion, is a truism made as good as
new:
Axiom.--Most men have some of the wit required by a difficult
position, when they have not the whole of it.
As for those husbands who are not up to their situation, it is
impossible to consider their case here: without any struggle whatever
they simply enter the numerous class of the _Resigned_.
Adolphe says to himself: "Women are children: offer them a lump of
sugar, and you will easily get them to dance all the dances that
greedy children dance; but you must always have a sugar plum in hand,
hold it up pretty high, and--take care that their fancy for sweetmeats
does not leave them. Parisian women--and Caroline is one--are very
vain, and as for their voracity--don't speak of it. Now you cannot
govern men and make friends of them, unless you work upon them through
their vices, and flatter their passions: my wife is mine!"
Some days afterward, during which Adolphe has been unusually attentive
to his wife, he discourses to her as follows:
"Caroline, dear, suppose we have a bit of fun: you'll put on your new
gown--the one like Madame Deschars!--and we'll go to see a farce at
the Varieties."
This kind of proposition always puts a wife in the best possible
humor. So away you go! Adolphe has ordered a dainty little dinner for
two, at Borrel's _Rocher de Cancale_.
"As we are going to the Varieties, suppose we dine at the tavern,"
exclaims Adolphe, on the boulevard, with the air of a man suddenly
struck by a generous idea.
Caroline, delighted with this appearance of good fortune, enters a
little parlor where she finds the cloth laid and that neat little
service set, which Borrel places at the disposal of those who are rich
enough to pay for the quarters intended for the great ones of the
earth, who make themselves small for an hour.
Women eat little at a formal dinner: their concealed harness hampers
them, they are laced tightly, and they are in the presence of women
whose eyes and whose tongues are equally to be dreaded. They prefer
fancy eating to good eating, then: they will suck a lobster's claw,
swallow a quail or two, punish a woodcock's wing, beginning with a bit
of fresh fish, flavored by one of those sauces which are the glory of
French cooking. France is everywhere sovereign in matters of taste: in
painting, fashions, and the like. Gravy is the triumph of taste, in
cookery. So that grisettes, shopkeepers' wives and duchesses are
delighted with a tasty little dinner washed down with the choicest
wines, of which, however, they drink but little, the whole concluded
by fruit such as can only be had at Paris; and especially delighted
when they go to the theatre to digest the little dinner, and listen,
in a comfortable box, to the nonsense uttered upon the stage, and to
that whispered in their ears to explain it. But then the bill of the
restaurant is one hundred francs, the box costs thirty, the carriage,
dress, gloves, bouquet, as much more. This gallantry amounts to the
sum of one hundred and sixty francs, which is hard upon four thousand
francs a month, if you go often to the Comic, the Italian, or the
Grand, Opera. Four thousand francs a month is the interest of a
capital of two millions. But then the honor of being a husband is
fully worth the price!
Caroline tells her friends things which she thinks exceedingly
flattering, but which cause a sagacious husband to make a wry face.
"Adolphe has been delightful for some time past. I don't know what I
have done to deserve so much attention, but he overpowers me. He gives
value to everything by those delicate ways which have such an effect
upon us women. After taking me Monday to the _Rocher de Cancale_ to
dine, he declared that Very was as good a cook as Borrel, and he gave
me the little party of pleasure that I told you of all over again,
presenting me at dessert with a ticket for the opera. They sang
'William Tell,' which, you know, is my craze."
"You are lucky indeed," returns Madame Deschars with evident jealousy.
"Still, a wife who discharges all her duties, deserves such luck, it
seems to me."
When this terrible sentiment falls from the lips of a married woman,
it is clear that she _does her duty_, after the manner of school-boys,
for the reward she expects. At school, a prize is the object: in
marriage, a shawl or a piece of jewelry. No more love, then!
"As for me,"--Madame Deschars is piqued--"I am reasonable. Deschars
committed such follies once, but I put a stop to it. You see, my dear,
we have two children, and I confess that one or two hundred francs are
quite a consideration for me, as the mother of a family."
"Dear me, madame," says Madame de Fischtaminel, "it's better that our
husbands should have cosy little times with us than with--"
"Deschars!--" suddenly puts in Madame Deschars, as she gets up and
says good-bye.
The individual known as Deschars (a man nullified by his wife) does
not hear the end of the sentence, by which he might have learned that
a man may spend his money with other women.
Caroline, flattered in every one of her vanities, abandons herself to
the pleasures of pride and high living, two delicious capital sins.
Adolphe is gaining ground again, but alas! (this reflection is worth a
whole sermon in Lent) sin, like all pleasure, contains a spur. Vice is
like an Autocrat, and let a single harsh fold in a rose-leaf irritate
it, it forgets a thousand charming bygone flatteries. With Vice a
man's course must always be crescendo!--and forever.
Axiom.--Vice, Courtiers, Misfortune and Love, care only for the
PRESENT.
At the end of a period of time difficult to determine, Caroline looks
in the glass, at dessert, and notices two or three pimples blooming
upon her cheeks, and upon the sides, lately so pure, of her nose. She
is out of humor at the theatre, and you do not know why, you, so
proudly striking an attitude in your cravat, you, displaying your
figure to the best advantage, as a complacent man should.
A few days after, the dressmaker arrives. She tries on a gown, she
exerts all her strength, but cannot make the hooks and eyes meet. The
waiting maid is called. After a two horse-power pull, a regular
thirteenth labor of Hercules, a hiatus of two inches manifests itself.
The inexorable dressmaker cannot conceal from Caroline the fact that
her form is altered. Caroline, the aerial Caroline, threatens to
become like Madame Deschars. In vulgar language, she is getting stout.
The maid leaves her in a state of consternation.
"What! am I to have, like that fat Madame Deschars, cascades of flesh
a la Rubens! That Adolphe is an awful scoundrel. Oh, I see, he wants
to make me an old mother Gigogne, and destroy my powers of
fascination!"
Thenceforward Caroline is willing to go to the opera, she accepts two
seats in a box, but she considers it very distingue to eat sparingly,
and declines the dainty dinners of her husband.
"My dear," she says, "a well-bred woman should not go often to these
places; you may go once for a joke; but as for making a habitual thing
of it--fie, for shame!"
Borrel and Very, those masters of the art, lose a thousand francs a
day by not having a private entrance for carriages. If a coach could
glide under an archway, and go out by another door, after leaving its
fair occupants on the threshold of an elegant staircase, how many of
them would bring the landlord fine, rich, solid old fellows for
customers!
Axiom.--Vanity is the death of good living.
Caroline very soon gets tired of the theatre, and the devil alone can
tell the cause of her disgust. Pray excuse Adolphe! A husband is not
the devil.
Fully one-third of the women of Paris are bored by the theatre. Many
of them are tired to death of music, and go to the opera for the
singers merely, or rather to notice the difference between them in
point of execution. What supports the theatre is this: the women are a
spectacle before and after the play. Vanity alone will pay the
exorbitant price of forty francs for three hours of questionable
pleasure, in a bad atmosphere and at great expense, without counting
the colds caught in going out. But to exhibit themselves, to see and
be seen, to be the observed of five hundred observers! What a glorious
mouthful! as Rabelais would say.
To obtain this precious harvest, garnered by self-love, a woman must
be looked at. Now a woman with her husband is very little looked at.
Caroline is chagrined to see the audience entirely taken up with women
who are _not_ with their husbands, with eccentric women, in short.
Now, as the very slight return she gets from her efforts, her dresses,
and her attitudes, does not compensate, in her eyes, for her fatigue,
her display and her weariness, it is very soon the same with the
theatre as it was with the good cheer; high living made her fat, the
theatre is making her yellow.
Here Adolphe--or any other man in Adolphe's place--resembles a certain
Languedocian peasant who suffered agonies from an agacin, or, in
French, corn,--but the term in Lanquedoc is so much prettier, don't
you think so? This peasant drove his foot at each step two inches into
the sharpest stones along the roadside, saying to the agacin, "Devil
take you! Make me suffer again, will you?"
"Upon my word," says Adolphe, profoundly disappointed, the day when he
receives from his wife a refusal, "I should like very much to know
what would please you!"
Caroline looks loftily down upon her husband, and says, after a pause
worthy of an actress, "I am neither a Strasburg goose nor a giraffe!"
"'Tis true, I might lay out four thousand francs a month to better
effect," returns Adolphe.
"What do you mean?"
"With the quarter of that sum, presented to estimable burglars,
youthful jail-birds and honorable criminals, I might become somebody,
a Man in the Blue Cloak on a small scale; and then a young woman is
proud of her husband," Adolphe replies.
This answer is the grave of love, and Caroline takes it in very bad
part. An explanation follows. This must be classed among the thousand
pleasantries of the following chapter, the title of which ought to
make lovers smile as well as husbands. If there are yellow rays of
light, why should there not be whole days of this extremely
matrimonial color?
FORCED SMILES.
On your arrival in this latitude, you enjoy numerous little scenes,
which, in the grand opera of marriage, represent the intermezzos, and
of which the following is a type:
You are one evening alone after dinner, and you have been so often
alone already that you feel a desire to say sharp little things to
each other, like this, for instance:
"Take care, Caroline," says Adolphe, who has not forgotten his many
vain efforts to please her. "I think your nose has the impertinence to
redden at home quite well as at the restaurant."
"This is not one of your amiable days!"
General Rule.--No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly
advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.
"Perhaps it's because you are laced too tight. Women make themselves
sick that way."
The moment a man utters these words to a woman, no matter whom, that
woman,--who knows that stays will bend,--seizes her corset by the
lower end, and bends it out, saying, with Caroline:
"Look, you can get your hand in! I never lace tight."
"Then it must be your stomach."
"What has the stomach got to do with the nose?"
"The stomach is a centre which communicates with all the organs."
"So the nose is an organ, is it?"
"Yes."
"Your organ is doing you a poor service at this moment." She raises
her eyes and shrugs her shoulders. "Come, Adolphe, what have I done?"
"Nothing. I'm only joking, and I am unfortunate enough not to please
you," returns Adolphe, smiling.
"My misfortune is being your wife! Oh, why am I not somebody else's!"
"That's what _I_ say!"
"If I were, and if I had the innocence to say to you, like a coquette
who wishes to know how far she has got with a man, 'the redness of my
nose really gives me anxiety,' you would look at me in the glass with
all the affectations of an ape, and would reply, 'O madame, you do
yourself an injustice; in the first place, nobody sees it: besides, it
harmonizes with your complexion; then again we are all so after
dinner!' and from this you would go on to flatter me. Do I ever tell
you that you are growing fat, that you are getting the color of a
stone-cutter, and that I prefer thin and pale men?"
They say in London, "Don't touch the axe!" In France we ought to say,
"Don't touch a woman's nose."
"And all this about a little extra natural vermilion!" exclaims
Adolphe. "Complain about it to Providence, whose office it is to put a
little more color in one place than another, not to me, who loves you,
who desires you to be perfect, and who merely says to you, take care!"
"You love me too much, then, for you've been trying, for some time
past, to find disagreeable things to say to me. You want to run me
down under the pretext of making me perfect--people said I _was_
perfect, five years ago."
"I think you are better than perfect, you are stunning!"
"With too much vermilion?"
Adolphe, who sees the atmosphere of the north pole upon his wife's
face, sits down upon a chair by her side. Caroline, unable decently to
go away, gives her gown a sort of flip on one side, as if to produce a
separation. This motion is performed by some women with a provoking
impertinence: but it has two significations; it is, as whist players
would say, either a signal _for trumps_ or a _renounce_. At this time,
Caroline renounces.
"What is the matter?" says Adolphe.
"Will you have a glass of sugar and water?" asks Caroline, busying
herself about your health, and assuming the part of a servant.
"What for?"
"You are not amiable while digesting, you must be in pain. Perhaps you
would like a drop of brandy in your sugar and water? The doctor spoke
of it as an excellent remedy."
"How anxious you are about my stomach!"
"It's a centre, it communicates with the other organs, it will act
upon your heart, and through that perhaps upon your tongue."
Adolphe gets up and walks about without saying a word, but he reflects
upon the acuteness which his wife is acquiring: he sees her daily
gaining in strength and in acrimony: she is getting to display an art
in vexation and a military capacity for disputation which reminds him
of Charles XII and the Russians. Caroline, during this time, is busy
with an alarming piece of mimicry: she looks as if she were going to
faint.
"Are you sick?" asks Adolphe, attacked in his generosity, the place
where women always have us.
"It makes me sick at my stomach, after dinner, to see a man going back
and forth so, like the pendulum of a clock. But it's just like you:
you are always in a fuss about something. You are a queer set: all men
are more or less cracked."
Adolphe sits down by the fire opposite to his wife, and remains there
pensive: marriage appears to him like an immense dreary plain, with
its crop of nettles and mullen stalks.
"What, are you pouting?" asks Caroline, after a quarter of an hour's
observation of her husband's countenance.
"No, I am meditating," replied Adolphe.
"Oh, what an infernal temper you've got!" she returns, with a shrug of
the shoulders. "Is it for what I said about your stomach, your shape
and your digestion? Don't you see that I was only paying you back for
your vermilion? You'll make me think that men are as vain as women.
[Adolphe remains frigid.] It is really quite kind in you to take our
qualities. [Profound silence.] I made a joke and you got angry [she
looks at Adolphe], for you are angry. I am not like you: I cannot bear
the idea of having given you pain! Nevertheless, it's an idea that a
man never would have had, that of attributing your impertinence to
something wrong in your digestion. It's not my Dolph, it's his stomach
that was bold enough to speak. I did not know you were a
ventriloquist, that's all."
Caroline looks at Adolphe and smiles: Adolphe is as stiff as if he
were glued.
"No, he won't laugh! And, in your jargon, you call this having
character. Oh, how much better we are!"
She goes and sits down in Adolphe's lap, and Adolphe cannot help
smiling. This smile, extracted as if by a steam engine, Caroline has
been on the watch for, in order to make a weapon of it.
"Come, old fellow, confess that you are wrong," she says. "Why pout?
Dear me, I like you just as you are: in my eyes you are as slender as
when I married you, and slenderer perhaps."
"Caroline, when people get to deceive themselves in these little
matters, where one makes concessions and the other does not get angry,
do you know what it means?"
"What does it mean?" asks Caroline, alarmed at Adolphe's dramatic
attitude.
"That they love each other less."
"Oh! you monster, I understand you: you were angry so as to make me
believe you loved me!"
Alas! let us confess it, Adolphe tells the truth in the only way he
can--by a laugh.
"Why give me pain?" she says. "If I am wrong in anything, isn't it
better to tell me of it kindly, than brutally to say [here she raises
her voice], 'Your nose is getting red!' No, that is not right! To
please you, I will use an expression of the fair Fischtaminel, 'It's
not the act of a gentleman!'"
Adolphe laughs and pays the expenses of the reconciliation; but
instead of discovering therein what will please Caroline and what will
attach her to him, he finds out what attaches him to her.
NOSOGRAPHY OF THE VILLA.
Is it advantageous for a man not to know what will please his wife
after their marriage? Some women (this still occurs in the country)
are innocent enough to tell promptly what they want and what they
like. But in Paris, nearly every woman feels a kind of enjoyment in
seeing a man wistfully obedient to her heart, her desires, her
caprices--three expressions for the same thing!--and anxiously going
round and round, half crazy and desperate, like a dog that has lost
his master.
They call this _being loved_, poor things! And a good many of them say
to themselves, as did Caroline, "How will he manage?"
Adolphe has come to this. In this situation of things, the worthy and
excellent Deschars, that model of the citizen husband, invites the
couple known as Adolphe and Caroline to help him and his wife
inaugurate a delightful country house. It is an opportunity that the
Deschars have seized upon, the folly of a man of letters, a charming
villa upon which he lavished one hundred thousand francs and which has
been sold at auction for eleven thousand. Caroline has a new dress to
air, or a hat with a weeping willow plume--things which a tilbury will
set off to a charm. Little Charles is left with his grandmother. The
servants have a holiday. The youthful pair start beneath the smile of
a blue sky, flecked with milk-while clouds merely to heighten the
effect. They breathe the pure air, through which trots the heavy
Norman horse, animated by the influence of spring. They soon reach
Marnes, beyond Ville d'Avray, where the Deschars are spreading
themselves in a villa copied from one at Florence, and surrounded by
Swiss meadows, though without all the objectionable features of the
Alps.
"Dear me! what a delightful thing a country house like this must be!"
exclaims Caroline, as she walks in the admirable wood that skirts
Marnes and Ville d'Avray. "It makes your eyes as happy as if they had
a heart in them."
Caroline, having no one to take but Adolphe, takes Adolphe, who
becomes her Adolphe again. And then you should see her run about like
a fawn, and act once more the sweet, pretty, innocent, adorable
school-girl that she was! Her braids come down! She takes off her
bonnet, and holds it by the strings! She is young, pink and white
again. Her eyes smile, her mouth is a pomegranate endowed with
sensibility, with a sensibility which seems quite fresh.
"So a country house would please you very much, would it, darling?"
says Adolphe, clasping Caroline round the waist, and noticing that she
leans upon him as if to show the flexibility of her form.
"What, will you be such a love as to buy me one? But remember, no
extravagance! Seize an opportunity like the Deschars."
"To please you and to find out what is likely to give you pleasure,
such is the constant study of your own Dolph."
They are alone, at liberty to call each other their little names of
endearment, and run over the whole list of their secret caresses.
"Does he really want to please his little girly?" says Caroline,
resting her head on the shoulder of Adolphe, who kisses her forehead,
saying to himself, "Gad! I've got her now!"
Axiom.--When a husband and a wife have got each other, the devil only
knows which has got the other.
The young couple are captivating, whereupon the stout Madame Deschars
gives utterance to a remark somewhat equivocal for her, usually so
stern, prudish and devout.
"Country air has one excellent property: it makes husbands very
amiable."
M. Deschars points out an opportunity for Adolphe to seize. A house is
to be sold at Ville d'Avray, for a song, of course. Now, the country
house is a weakness peculiar to the inhabitant of Paris. This
weakness, or disease, has its course and its cure. Adolphe is a
husband, but not a doctor. He buys the house and takes possession with
Caroline, who has become once more his Caroline, his Carola, his fawn,
his treasure, his girly girl.
The following alarming symptoms now succeed each other with frightful
rapidity: a cup of milk, baptized, costs five sous; when it is
anhydrous, as the chemists say, ten sous. Meat costs more at Sevres
than at Paris, if you carefully examine the qualities. Fruit cannot be
had at any price. A fine pear costs more in the country than in the
(anhydrous!) garden that blooms in Chevet's window.
Before being able to raise fruit for oneself, from a Swiss meadow
measuring two square yards, surrounded by a few green trees which look
as if they were borrowed from the scenic illusions of a theatre, the
most rural authorities, being consulted on the point, declare that you
must spend a great deal of money, and--wait five years! Vegetables
dash out of the husbandman's garden to reappear at the city market.
Madame Deschars, who possesses a gate-keeper that is at the same time
a gardener, confesses that the vegetables raised on her land, beneath
her glass frames, by dint of compost and top-soil, cost her twice as
much as those she used to buy at Paris, of a woman who had rent and
taxes to pay, and whose husband was an elector. Despite the efforts
and pledges of the gate-keeper-gardener, early peas and things at
Paris are a month in advance of those in the country.
From eight in the evening to eleven our couple don't know what to do,
on account of the insipidity of the neighbors, their small ideas, and
the questions of self-love which arise out of the merest trifles.
Monsieur Deschars remarks, with that profound knowledge of figures
which distinguishes the ex-notary, that the cost of going to Paris and
back, added to the interest of the cost of his villa, to the taxes,
wages of the gate-keeper and his wife, are equal to a rent of three
thousand francs a year. He does not see how he, an ex-notary, allowed
himself to be so caught! For he has often drawn up leases of chateaux
with parks and out-houses, for three thousand a year.
It is agreed by everybody in the parlor of Madame Deschars, that a
country house, so far from being a pleasure, is an unmitigated
nuisance.
"I don't see how they sell a cabbage for one sou at market, which has
to be watered every day from its birth to the time you eat it," says
Caroline.
"The way to get along in the country," replies a little retired
grocer, "is to stay there, to live there, to become country-folks, and
then everything changes."
On going home, Caroline says to her poor Adolphe, "What an idea that
was of yours, to buy a country house! The best way to do about the
country is to go there on visits to other people."
Adolphe remembers an English proverb, which says, "Don't have a
newspaper or a country seat of your own: there are plenty of idiots
who will have them for you."
"Bah!" returns Adolph, who was enlightened once for all upon women's
logic by the Matrimonial Gadfly, "you are right: but then you know the
baby is in splendid health, here."
Though Adolphe has become prudent, this reply awakens Caroline's
susceptibilities. A mother is very willing to think exclusively of her
child, but she does not want him to be preferred to herself. She is
silent; the next day, she is tired to death of the country. Adolphe
being absent on business, she waits for him from five o'clock to
seven, and goes alone with little Charles to the coach office. She
talks for three-quarters of an hour of her anxieties. She was afraid
to go from the house to the office. Is it proper for a young woman to
be left alone, so? She cannot support such an existence.
The country house now creates a very peculiar phase; one which
deserves a chapter to itself.
TROUBLE WITHIN TROUBLE.
Axiom.--There are parentheses in worry.
EXAMPLE--A great deal of evil has been said of the stitch in the side;
but it is nothing to the stitch to which we now refer, which the
pleasures of the matrimonial second crop are everlastingly reviving,
like the hammer of a note in the piano. This constitutes an irritant,
which never flourishes except at the period when the young wife's
timidity gives place to that fatal equality of rights which is at once
devastating France and the conjugal relation. Every season has its
peculiar vexation.
Caroline, after a week spent in taking note of her husband's absences,
perceives that he passes seven hours a day away from her. At last,
Adolphe, who comes home as gay as an actor who has been applauded,
observes a slight coating of hoar frost upon Caroline's visage. After
making sure that the coldness of her manner has been observed,
Caroline puts on a counterfeit air of interest,--the well-known
expression of which possesses the gift of making a man inwardly
swear,--and says: "You must have had a good deal of business to-day,
dear?"
"Oh, lots!"
"Did you take many cabs?"
"I took seven francs' worth."
"Did you find everybody in?"
"Yes, those with whom I had appointments."
"When did you make appointments with them? The ink in your inkstand is
dried up; it's like glue; I wanted to write, and spent a whole hour in
moistening it, and even then only produced a thick mud fit to mark
bundles with for the East Indies."
Here any and every husband looks suspiciously at his better half.
"It is probable that I wrote them at Paris--"
"What business was it, Adolphe?"
"Why, I thought you knew. Shall I run over the list? First, there's
Chaumontel's affair--"
"I thought Monsieur Chaumontel was in Switzerland--"
"Yes, but he has representatives, a lawyer--"
"Didn't you do anything else but business?" asks Caroline,
interrupting Adolphe.
Here she gives him a direct, piercing look, by which she plunges into
her husband's eyes when he least expects it: a sword in a heart.
"What could I have done? Made a little counterfeit money, run into
debt, or embroidered a sampler?"
"Oh, dear, I don't know. And I can't even guess. I am too dull, you've
told me so a hundred times."
"There you go, and take an expression of endearment in bad part. How
like a woman that is!"
"Have you concluded anything?" she asks, pretending to take an
interest in business.
"No, nothing,"
"How many persons have you seen?"
"Eleven, without counting those who were walking in the streets."
"How you answer me!"
"Yes, and how you question me! As if you'd been following the trade of
an examining judge for the last ten years!"
"Come, tell me all you've done to-day, it will amuse me. You ought to
try to please me while you are here! I'm dull enough when you leave me
alone all day long."
"You want me to amuse you by telling you about business?"
"Formerly, you told me everything--"
This friendly little reproach disguises the certitude that Caroline
wishes to enjoy respecting the serious matters which Adolphe wishes to
conceal. Adolphe then undertakes to narrate how he has spent the day.
Caroline affects a sort of distraction sufficiently well played to
induce the belief that she is not listening.
"But you said just now," she exclaims, at the moment when Adolphe is
getting into a snarl, "that you had paid seven francs for cabs, and
you now talk of a hack! You took it by the hour, I suppose? Did you do
your business in a hack?" she asks, railingly.
"Why should hacks be interdicted?" inquires Adolphe, resuming his
narrative.
"Haven't you been to Madame de Fischtaminel's?" she asks in the middle
of an exceedingly involved explanation, insolently taking the words
out of your mouth.
"Why should I have been there?"
"It would have given me pleasure: I wanted to know whether her parlor
is done."
"It is."
"Ah! then you _have_ been there?"
"No, her upholsterer told me."
"Do you know her upholsterer?"
"Yes."
"Who is it?"
"Braschon."
"So you met the upholsterer?"
"Yes."
"You said you only went in carriages."
"Yes, my dear, but to get carriages, you have to go and--"
"Pooh! I dare say Braschon was in the carriage, or the parlor was--one
or the other is equally probable."
"You won't listen," exclaims Adolphe, who thinks that a long story
will lull Caroline's suspicions.
"I've listened too much already. You've been lying for the last hour,
worse than a drummer."
"Well, I'll say nothing more."
"I know enough. I know all I wanted to know. You say you've seen
lawyers, notaries, bankers: now you haven't seen one of them! Suppose
I were to go to-morrow to see Madame de Fischtaminel, do you know what
she would say?"
Here, Caroline watches Adolphe closely: but Adolphe affects a delusive
calmness, in the middle of which Caroline throws out her line to fish
up a clue.
"Why, she would say that she had had the pleasure of seeing you! How
wretched we poor creatures are! We never know what you are doing: here
we are stuck, chained at home, while you are off at your business!
Fine business, truly! If I were in your place, I would invent business
a little bit better put together than yours! Ah, you set us a worthy
example! They say women are perverse. Who perverted them?"
Here Adolphe tries, by looking fixedly at Caroline, to arrest the
torrent of words. Caroline, like a horse who has just been touched up
by the lash, starts off anew, and with the animation of one of
Rossini's codas:
"Yes, it's a very neat idea, to put your wife out in the country so
that you may spend the day as you like at Paris. So this is the cause
of your passion for a country house! Snipe that I was, to be caught in
the trap! You are right, sir, a villa is very convenient: it serves
two objects. But the wife can get along with it as well as the
husband. You may take Paris and its hacks! I'll take the woods and
their shady groves! Yes, Adolphe, I am really satisfied, so let's say
no more about it."
Adolphe listens to sarcasm for an hour by the clock.
"Have you done, dear?" he asks, profiting by an instant in which she
tosses her head after a pointed interrogation.
Then Caroline concludes thus: "I've had enough of the villa, and I'll
never set foot in it again. But I know what will happen: you'll keep
it, probably, and leave me in Paris. Well, at Paris, I can at least
amuse myself, while you go with Madame de Fischtaminel to the woods.
What is a _Villa Adolphini_ where you get nauseated if you go six
times round the lawn? where they've planted chair-legs and
broom-sticks on the pretext of producing shade? It's like a furnace:
the walls are six inches thick! and my gentleman is absent seven hours
a day! That's what a country seat means!"
"Listen to me, Caroline."
"I wouldn't so much mind, if you would only confess what you did
to-day. You don't know me yet: come, tell me, I won't scold you. I
pardon you beforehand for all that you've done."
Adolphe, who knows the consequences of a confession too well to make
one to his wife, replies--"Well, I'll tell you."
"That's a good fellow--I shall love you better."
"I was three hours--"
"I was sure of it--at Madame de Fischtaminel's!"
"No, at our notary's, as he had got me a purchaser; but we could not
come to terms: he wanted our villa furnished. When I left there, I
went to Braschon's, to see how much we owed him--"
"You made up this romance while I was talking to you! Look me in the
face! I'll go to see Braschon to-morrow."
Adolphe cannot restrain a nervous shudder.
"You can't help laughing, you monster!"
"I laugh at your obstinacy."
"I'll go to-morrow to Madame de Fischtaminel's."
"Oh, go wherever you like!"
"What brutality!" says Caroline, rising and going away with her
handkerchief at her eyes.
The country house, so ardently longed for by Caroline, has now become
a diabolical invention of Adolphe's, a trap into which the fawn has
fallen.
Since Adolphe's discovery that it is impossible to reason with
Caroline, he lets her say whatever she pleases.
Two months after, he sells the villa which cost him twenty-two
thousand francs for seven thousand! But he gains this by the
adventure--he finds out that the country is not the thing that
Caroline wants.
The question is becoming serious. Nature, with its woods, its forests,
its valleys, the Switzerland of the environs of Paris, the artificial
rivers, have amused Caroline for barely six months. Adolphe is tempted
to abdicate and take Caroline's part himself.
A HOUSEHOLD REVOLUTION.
One morning, Adolphe is seized by the triumphant idea of letting
Caroline find out for herself what she wants. He gives up to her the
control of the house, saying, "Do as you like." He substitutes the
constitutional system for the autocratic system, a responsible
ministry for an absolute conjugal monarchy. This proof of confidence
--the object of much secret envy--is, to women, a field-marshal's
baton. Women are then, so to speak, mistresses at home.
After this, nothing, not even the memory of the honey-moon, can be
compared to Adolphe's happiness for several days. A woman, under such
circumstances, is all sugar. She is too sweet: she would invent the
art of petting and cosseting and of coining tender little names, if
this matrimonial sugar-plummery had not existed ever since the
Terrestrial Paradise. At the end of the month, Adolphe's condition is
like that of children towards the close of New Year's week. So
Caroline is beginning to say, not in words, but in acts, in manner, in
mimetic expressions: "It's difficult to tell _what_ to do to please a
man!"
Giving up the helm of the boat to one's wife, is an exceedingly
ordinary idea, and would hardly deserve the qualification of
"triumphant," which we have given it at the commencement of this
chapter, if it were not accompanied by that of taking it back again.
Adolphe was seduced by a wish, which invariably seizes persons who are
the prey of misfortune, to know how far an evil will go!--to try how
much damage fire will do when left to itself, the individual
possessing, or thinking he possesses, the power to arrest it. This
curiosity pursues us from the cradle to the grave. Then, after his
plethora of conjugal felicity, Adolphe, who is treating himself to a
farce in his own house, goes through the following phases:
FIRST EPOCH. Things go on altogether too well. Caroline buys little
account books to keep a list of her expenses in, she buys a nice
little piece of furniture to store her money in, she feeds Adolphe
superbly, she is happy in his approbation, she discovers that very
many articles are needed in the house. It is her ambition to be an
incomparable housekeeper. Adolphe, who arrogates to himself the right
of censorship, no longer finds the slightest suggestion to make.
When he dresses himself, everything is ready to his hands. Not even in
Armide's garden was more ingenious tenderness displayed than that of
Caroline. For her phoenix husband, she renews the wax upon his razor
strap, she substitutes new suspenders for old ones. None of his
button-holes are ever widowed. His linen is as well cared for as that
of the confessor of the devotee, all whose sins are venial. His
stockings are free from holes. At table, his tastes, his caprices
even, are studied, consulted: he is getting fat! There is ink in his
inkstand, and the sponge is always moist. He never has occasion to
say, like Louis XIV, "I came near having to wait!" In short, he hears
himself continually called _a love of a man_. He is obliged to
reproach Caroline for neglecting herself: she does not pay sufficient
attention to her own needs. Of this gentle reproach Caroline takes
note.
SECOND EPOCH. The scene changes, at table. Everything is exceedingly
dear. Vegetables are beyond one's means. Wood sells as if it came from
Campeche. Fruit? Oh! as to fruit, princes, bankers and great lords
alone can eat it. Dessert is a cause of ruin. Adolphe often hears
Caroline say to Madame Deschars: "How do you manage?" Conferences are
held in your presence upon the proper way to keep cooks under the
thumb.
A cook who entered your service without effects, without clothes, and
without talent, has come to get her wages in a blue merino gown, set
off by an embroidered neckerchief, her ears embellished with a pair of
ear-rings enriched with small pearls, her feet clothed in comfortable
shoes which give you a glimpse of neat cotton stockings. She has two
trunks full of property, and keeps an account at the savings bank.
Upon this Caroline complains of the bad morals of the lower classes:
she complains of the education and the knowledge of figures which
distinguish domestics. From time to time she utters little axioms like
the following: There are some mistakes you _must_ make!--It's only
those who do nothing who do everything well.--She has the anxieties
that belong to power.--Ah! men are fortunate in not having a house to
keep.--Women bear the burden of the innumerable details.
THIRD EPOCH. Caroline, absorbed in the idea that you should eat merely
to live, treats Adolphe to the delights of a cenobitic table.
Adolphe's stockings are either full of holes or else rough with the
lichen of hasty mendings, for the day is not long enough for all that
his wife has to do. He wears suspenders blackened by use. His linen is
old and gapes like a door-keeper, or like the door itself. At a time
when Adolphe is in haste to conclude a matter of business, it takes
him an hour to dress: he has to pick out his garments one by one,
opening many an article before finding one fit to wear. But Caroline
is charmingly dressed. She has pretty bonnets, velvet boots,
mantillas. She has made up her mind, she conducts her administration
in virtue of this principle: Charity well understood begins at home.
When Adolphe complains of the contrast between his poverty-stricken
wardrobe and Caroline's splendor, she says, "Why, you reproached me
with buying nothing for myself!"
The husband and the wife here begin to bandy jests more or less
acrimonious. One evening Caroline makes herself very agreeable, in
order to insinuate an avowal of a rather large deficit, just as the
ministry begins to eulogize the tax-payers, and boast of the wealth of
the country, when it is preparing to bring forth a bill for an
additional appropriation. There is this further similitude that both
are done in the chamber, whether in administration or in housekeeping.
From this springs the profound truth that the constitutional system is
infinitely dearer than the monarchical system. For a nation as for a
household, it is the government of the happy balance, of mediocrity,
of chicanery.
Adolphe, enlightened by his past annoyances, waits for an opportunity
to explode, and Caroline slumbers in a delusive security.
What starts the quarrel? Do we ever know what electric current
precipitates the avalanche or decides a revolution? It may result from
anything or nothing. But finally, Adolphe, after a period to be
determined in each case by the circumstances of the couple, utters
this fatal phrase, in the midst of a discussion: "Ah! when I was a
bachelor!"
Her husband's bachelor life is to a woman what the phrase, "My dear
deceased," is to a widow's second husband. These two stings produce
wounds which are never completely healed.
Then Adolphe goes on like General Bonaparte haranguing the Five
Hundred: "We are on a volcano!--The house no longer has a head, the
time to come to an understanding has arrived.--You talk of happiness,
Caroline, but you have compromised, imperiled it by your exactions,
you have violated the civil code: you have mixed yourself up in the
discussions of business, and you have invaded the conjugal authority.
--We must reform our internal affairs."
Caroline does not shout, like the Five Hundred, "Down with the
dictator!" For people never shout a man down, when they feel that they
can put him down.
"When I was a bachelor I had none but new stockings! I had a clean
napkin every day on my plate. The restaurateur only fleeced me of a
determinate sum. I have given up to you my beloved liberty! What have
you done with it?"
"Am I then so very wrong, Adolphe, to have sought to spare you
numerous cares?" says Caroline, taking an attitude before her husband.
"Take the key of the money-box back,--but do you know what will
happen? I am ashamed, but you will compel me to go on to the stage to
get the merest necessaries of life. Is this what you want? Degrade
your wife, or bring in conflict two contrary, hostile interests--"
Such, for three quarters of the French people is an exact definition
of marriage.
"Be perfectly easy, dear," resumes Caroline, seating herself in her
chair like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, "I will never ask you for
anything. I am not a beggar! I know what I'll do--you don't know me
yet."
"Well, what will you do?" asks Adolphe; "it seems impossible to joke
or have an explanation with you women. What will you do?"
"It doesn't concern you at all."
"Excuse me, madame, quite the contrary. Dignity, honor--"
"Oh, have no fear of that, sir. For your sake more than for my own, I
will keep it a dead secret."
"Come, Caroline, my own Carola, what do you mean to do?"
Caroline darts a viper-like glance at Adolphe, who recoils and
proceeds to walk up and down the room.
"There now, tell me, what will you do?" he repeats after much too
prolonged a silence.
"I shall go to work, sir!"
At this sublime declaration, Adolphe executes a movement in retreat,
detecting a bitter exasperation, and feeling the sharpness of a north
wind which had never before blown in the matrimonial chamber.
THE ART OF BEING A VICTIM.
On and after the Revolution, our vanquished Caroline adopts an
infernal system, the effect of which is to make you regret your
victory every hour. She becomes the opposition! Should Adolphe have
one more such triumph, he would appear before the Court of Assizes,
accused of having smothered his wife between two mattresses, like
Shakespeare's Othello. Caroline puts on the air of a martyr; her
submission is positively killing. On every occasion she assassinates
Adolphe with a "Just as you like!" uttered in tones whose sweetness is
something fearful. No elegiac poet could compete with Caroline, who
utters elegy upon elegy: elegy in action, elegy in speech: her smile
is elegiac, her silence is elegiac, her gestures are elegiac. Here are
a few examples, wherein every household will find some of its
impressions recorded:
AFTER BREAKFAST. "Caroline, we go to-night to the Deschars' grand ball
you know."
"Yes, love."
AFTER DINNER. "What, not dressed yet, Caroline?" exclaims Adolphe, who
has just made his appearance, magnificently equipped.
He finds Caroline arrayed in a gown fit for an elderly lady of strong
conversational powers, a black moire with an old-fashioned fan-waist.
Flowers, too badly imitated to deserve the name of artificial, give a
gloomy aspect to a head of hair which the chambermaid has carelessly
arranged. Caroline's gloves have already seen wear and tear.
"I am ready, my dear."
"What, in that dress?"
"I have no other. A new dress would have cost three hundred francs."
"Why did you not tell me?"
"I, ask you for anything, after what has happened!"
"I'll go alone," says Adolphe, unwilling to be humiliated in his wife.
"I dare say you are very glad to," returns Caroline, in a captious
tone, "it's plain enough from the way you are got up."
Eleven persons are in the parlor, all invited to dinner by Adolphe.
Caroline is there, looking as if her husband had invited her too. She
is waiting for dinner to be served.
"Sir," says the parlor servant in a whisper to his master, "the cook
doesn't know what on earth to do!"
"What's the matter?"
"You said nothing to her, sir: and she has only two side-dishes, the
beef, a chicken, a salad and vegetables."
"Caroline, didn't you give the necessary orders?"
"How did I know that you had company, and besides I can't take it upon
myself to give orders here! You delivered me from all care on that
point, and I thank heaven for it every day of my life."
Madame de Fischtaminel has called to pay Madame Caroline a visit. She
finds her coughing feebly and nearly bent double over her embroidery.
"Ah, so you are working those slippers for your dear Adolphe?"
Adolphe is standing before the fire-place as complacently as may be.
"No, madame, it's for a tradesman who pays me for them: like the
convicts, my labor enables me to treat myself to some little
comforts."
Adolphe reddens; he can't very well beat his wife, and Madame de
Fischtaminel looks at him as much as to say, "What does this mean?"
"You cough a good deal, my darling," says Madame de Fischtaminel.
"Oh!" returns Caroline, "what is life to me?"
Caroline is seated, conversing with a lady of your acquaintance, whose
good opinion you are exceedingly anxious to retain. From the depths of
the embrasure where you are talking with some friends, you gather,
from the mere motion of her lips, these words: "My husband would have
it so!" uttered with the air of a young Roman matron going to the
circus to be devoured. You are profoundly wounded in your several
vanities, and wish to attend to this conversation while listening to
your guests: you thus make replies which bring you back such inquiries
as: "Why, what are you thinking of?" For you have lost the thread of
the discourse, and you fidget nervously with your feet, thinking to
yourself, "What is she telling her about me?"
Adolphe is dining with the Deschars: twelve persons are at table, and
Caroline is seated next to a nice young man named Ferdinand, Adolphe's
cousin. Between the first and second course, conjugal happiness is the
subject of conversation.
"There is nothing easier than for a woman to be happy," says Caroline
in reply to a woman who complains of her husband.
"Tell us your secret, madame," says M. de Fischtaminel agreeably.
"A woman has nothing to do but to meddle with nothing to consider
herself as the first servant in the house or as a slave that the
master takes care of, to have no will of her own, and never to make an
observation: thus all goes well."
This, delivered in a bitter tone and with tears in her voice, alarms
Adolphe, who looks fixedly at his wife.
"You forget, madame, the happiness of telling about one's happiness,"
he returns, darting at her a glance worthy of the tyrant in a
melodrama.
Quite satisfied with having shown herself assassinated or on the point
of being so, Caroline turns her head aside, furtively wipes away a
tear, and says:
"Happiness cannot be described!"
This incident, as they say at the Chamber, leads to nothing, but
Ferdinand looks upon his cousin as an angel about to be offered up.
Some one alludes to the frightful prevalence of inflammation of the
stomach, or to the nameless diseases of which young women die.
"Ah, too happy they!" exclaims Caroline, as if she were foretelling
the manner of her death.
Adolphe's mother-in-law comes to see her daughter. Caroline says, "My
husband's parlor:" "Your master's chamber." Everything in the house
belongs to "My husband."
"Why, what's the matter, children?" asks the mother-in-law; "you seem
to be at swords' points."
"Oh, dear me," says Adolphe, "nothing but that Caroline has had the
management of the house and didn't manage it right, that's all."
"She got into debt, I suppose?"
"Yes, dearest mamma."
"Look here, Adolphe," says the mother-in-law, after having waited to
be left alone with her son, "would you prefer to have my daughter
magnificently dressed, to have everything go on smoothly, _without its
costing you anything_?"
Imagine, if you can, the expression of Adolphe's physiognomy, as he
hears _this declaration of woman's rights_!
Caroline abandons her shabby dress and appears in a splendid one. She
is at the Deschars': every one compliments her upon her taste, upon
the richness of her materials, upon her lace, her jewels.
"Ah! you have a charming husband!" says Madame Deschars. Adolphe
tosses his head proudly, and looks at Caroline.
"My husband, madame! I cost that gentleman nothing, thank heaven! All
I have was given me by my mother."
Adolphe turns suddenly about and goes to talk with Madame de
Fischtaminel.
After a year of absolute monarchy, Caroline says very mildly one
morning:
"How much have you spent this year, dear?"
"I don't know."
"Examine your accounts."
Adolphe discovers that he has spent a third more than during
Caroline's worst year.
"And I've cost you nothing for my dress," she adds.
Caroline is playing Schubert's melodies. Adolphe takes great pleasure
in hearing these compositions well-executed: he gets up and
compliments Caroline. She bursts into tears.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing, I'm nervous."
"I didn't know you were subject to that."
"O Adolphe, you won't see anything! Look, my rings come off my
fingers: you don't love me any more--I'm a burden to you--"
She weeps, she won't listen, she weeps afresh at every word Adolphe
utters.
"Suppose you take the management of the house back again?"
"Ah!" she exclaims, rising sharply to her feet, like a spring figure
in a box, "now that you've had enough of your experience! Thank you!
Do you suppose it's money that I want? Singular method, yours, of
pouring balm upon a wounded heart. No, go away."
"Very well, just as you like, Caroline."
This "just as you like" is the first expression of indifference
towards a wife: and Caroline sees before her an abyss towards which
she had been walking of her own free will.
THE FRENCH CAMPAIGN.
The disasters of 1814 afflict every species of existence. After
brilliant days of conquest, after the period during which obstacles
change to triumphs, and the slightest check becomes a piece of good
fortune, there comes a time when the happiest ideas turn out blunders,
when courage leads to destruction, and when your very fortifications
are a stumbling-block. Conjugal love, which, according to authors, is
a peculiar phase of love, has, more than anything else, its French
Campaign, its fatal 1814. The devil especially loves to dangle his
tail in the affairs of poor desolate women, and to this Caroline has
come.
Caroline is trying to think of some means of bringing her husband
back. She spends many solitary hours at home, and during this time her
imagination works. She goes and comes, she gets up, and often stands
pensively at the window, looking at the street and seeing nothing, her
face glued to the panes, and feeling as if in a desert, in the midst
of her friends, in the bosom of her luxuriously furnished apartments.
Now, in Paris, unless a person occupy a house of his own, enclosed
between a court and a garden, all life is double. At every story, a
family sees another family in the opposite house. Everybody plunges
his gaze at will into his neighbor's domains. There is a necessity for
mutual observation, a common right of search from which none can
escape. At a given time, in the morning, you get up early, the servant
opposite is dusting the parlor, she has left the windows open and has
put the rugs on the railing; you divine a multitude of things, and
vice-versa. Thus, in a given time, you are acquainted with the habits
of the pretty, the old, the young, the coquettish, the virtuous woman
opposite, or the caprices of the coxcomb, the inventions of the old
bachelor, the color of the furniture, and the cat of the two pair
front. Everything furnishes a hint, and becomes matter for divination.
At the fourth story, a grisette, taken by surprise, finds herself--too
late, like the chaste Susanne,--the prey of the delighted lorgnette of
an aged clerk, who earns eighteen hundred francs a year, and who
becomes criminal gratis. On the other hand, a handsome young
gentleman, who, for the present, works without wages, and is only
nineteen years old, appears before the sight of a pious old lady, in
the simple apparel of a man engaged in shaving. The watch thus kept up
is never relaxed, while prudence, on the contrary, has its moments of
forgetfulness. Curtains are not always let down in time. A woman, just
before dark, approaches the window to thread her needle, and the
married man opposite may then admire a head that Raphael might have
painted, and one that he considers worthy of himself--a National Guard
truly imposing when under arms. Oh, sacred private life, where art
thou! Paris is a city ever ready to exhibit itself half naked, a city
essentially libertine and devoid of modesty. For a person's life to be
decorous in it, the said person should have a hundred thousand a year.
Virtues are dearer than vices in Paris.
Caroline, whose gaze sometimes steals between the protecting muslins
which hide her domestic life from the five stories opposite, at last
discovers a young couple plunged in the delights of the honey-moon,
and newly established in the first story directly in view of her
window. She spends her time in the most exciting observations. The
blinds are closed early, and opened late. One day, Caroline, who has
arisen at eight o'clock notices, by accident, of course, the maid
preparing a bath or a morning dress, a delicious deshabille. Caroline
sighs. She lies in ambush like a hunter at the cover; she surprises
the young woman, her face actually illuminated with happiness.
Finally, by dint of watching the charming couple, she sees the
gentleman and lady open the window, and lean gently one against the
other, as, supported by the railing, they breathe the evening air.
Caroline gives herself a nervous headache, by endeavoring to interpret
the phantasmagorias, some of them having an explanation and others
not, made by the shadows of these two young people on the curtains,
one night when they have forgotten to close the shutters. The young
woman is often seated, melancholy and pensive, waiting for her absent
husband; she hears the tread of a horse, or the rumble of a cab at the
street corner; she starts from the sofa, and from her movements, it is
easy for Caroline to see that she exclaims: "'Tis he!"
"How they love each other!" says Caroline to herself.
By dint of nervous headache, Caroline conceives an exceedingly
ingenious plan: this plan consists in using the conjugal bliss of the
opposite neighbors as a tonic to stimulate Adolphe. The idea is not
without depravity, but then Caroline's intention sanctifies the means!
"Adolphe," she says, "we have a neighbor opposite, the loveliest
woman, a brunette--"
"Oh, yes," returns Adolphe, "I know her. She is a friend of Madame de
Fischtaminel's: Madame Foullepointe, the wife of a broker, a charming
man and a good fellow, very fond of his wife: he's crazy about her.
His office and rooms are here, in the court, while those on the street
are madame's. I know of no happier household. Foullepointe talks about
his happiness everywhere, even at the Exchange; he's really quite
tiresome."
"Well, then, be good enough to present Monsieur and Madame
Foullepointe to me. I should be delighted to learn how she manages to
make her husband love her so much: have they been married long?"
"Five years, just like us."
"O Adolphe, dear, I am dying to know her: make us intimately
acquainted. Am I as pretty as she?"
"Well, if I were to meet you at an opera ball, and if you weren't my
wife, I declare, I shouldn't know which--"
"You are real sweet to-day. Don't forget to invite them to dinner
Saturday."
"I'll do it to-night. Foullepointe and I often meet on 'Change."
"Now," says Caroline, "this young woman will doubtless tell me what
her method of action is."
Caroline resumes her post of observation. At about three she looks
through the flowers which form as it were a bower at the window, and
exclaims, "Two perfect doves!"
For the Saturday in question, Caroline invites Monsieur and Madame
Deschars, the worthy Monsieur Fischtaminel, in short, the most
virtuous couples of her society. She has brought out all her
resources: she has ordered the most sumptuous dinner, she has taken
the silver out of the chest: she means to do all honor to the model of
wives.
"My dear, you will see to-night," she says to Madame Deschars, at the
moment when all the women are looking at each other in silence, "the
most admirable young couple in the world, our opposite neighbors: a
young man of fair complexion, so graceful and with _such_ manners! His
head is like Lord Byron's, and he's a real Don Juan, only faithful:
he's discovered the secret of making love eternal: I shall perhaps
obtain a second crop of it from her example. Adolphe, when he sees
them, will blush at his conduct, and--"
The servant announces: "Monsieur and Madame Foullepointe."
Madame Foullepointe, a pretty brunette, a genuine Parisian, slight and
erect in form, the brilliant light of her eye quenched by her long
lashes, charmingly dressed, sits down upon the sofa. Caroline bows to
a fat gentleman with thin gray hair, who follows this Paris
Andalusian, and who exhibits a face and paunch fit for Silenus, a
butter-colored pate, a deceitful, libertine smile upon his big, heavy
lips,--in short, a philosopher! Caroline looks upon this individual
with astonishment.
"Monsieur Foullepointe, my dear," says Adolphe, presenting the worthy
quinquagenarian.
"I am delighted, madame," says Caroline, good-naturedly, "that you
have brought your father-in-law [profound sensation], but we shall
soon see your husband, I trust--"
"Madame--!"
Everybody listens and looks. Adolphe becomes the object of every one's
attention; he is literally dumb with amazement: if he could, he would
whisk Caroline off through a trap, as at the theatre.
"This is Monsieur Foullepointe, my husband," says Madame Foullepointe.
Caroline turns scarlet as she sees her ridiculous blunder, and Adolphe
scathes her with a look of thirty-six candlepower.
"You said he was young and fair," whispers Madame Deschars. Madame
Foullepointe,--knowing lady that she is,--boldly stares at the
ceiling.
A month after, Madame Foullepointe and Caroline become intimate.
Adolphe, who is taken up with Madame de Fischtaminel, pays no
attention to this dangerous friendship, a friendship which will bear
its fruits, for--pray learn this--
Axiom.--Women have corrupted more women than men have ever loved.
A SOLO ON THE HEARSE.
After a period, the length of which depends on the strength of
Caroline's principles, she appears to be languishing; and when
Adolphe, anxious for decorum's sake, as he sees her stretched out upon
the sofa like a snake in the sun, asks her, "What is the matter, love?
What do you want?"
"I wish I was dead!" she replies.
"Quite a merry and agreeable wish!"
"It isn't death that frightens me, it's suffering."
"I suppose that means that I don't make you happy! That's the way with
women!"
Adolphe strides about the room, talking incoherently: but he is
brought to a dead halt by seeing Caroline dry her tears, which are
really flowing artistically, in an embroidered handkerchief.
"Do you feel sick?"
"I don't feel well. [Silence.] I only hope that I shall live long
enough to see my daughter married, for I know the meaning, now, of the
expression so little understood by the young--_the choice of a
husband_! Go to your amusements, Adolphe: a woman who thinks of the
future, a woman who suffers, is not at all diverting: come, go and
have a good time."
"Where do you feel bad?"
"I don't feel bad, dear: I never was better. I don't feel anything.
No, really, I am better. There, leave me to myself."
This time, being the first, Adolphe goes away almost sad.
A week passes, during which Caroline orders all the servants to
conceal from her husband her deplorable situation: she languishes, she
rings when she feels she is going off, she uses a great deal of ether.
The domestics finally acquaint their master with madame's conjugal
heroism, and Adolphe remains at home one evening after dinner, and
sees his wife passionately kissing her little Marie.
"Poor child! I regret the future only for your sake! What is life, I
should like to know?"
"Come, my dear," says Adolphe, "don't take on so."
"I'm not taking on. Death doesn't frighten me--I saw a funeral this
morning, and I thought how happy the body was! How comes it that I
think of nothing but death? Is it a disease? I have an idea that I
shall die by my own hand."
The more Adolphe tries to divert Caroline, the more closely she wraps
herself up in the crape of her hopeless melancholy. This second time,
Adolphe stays at home and is wearied to death. At the third attack of
forced tears, he goes out without the slightest compunction. He
finally gets accustomed to these everlasting murmurs, to these dying
postures, these crocodile tears. So he says:
"If you are sick, Caroline, you'd better have a doctor."
"Just as you like! It will end quicker, so. But bring a famous one, if
you bring any."
At the end of a month, Adolphe, worn out by hearing the funereal air
that Caroline plays him on every possible key, brings home a famous
doctor. At Paris, doctors are all men of discernment, and are
admirably versed in conjugal nosography.
"Well, madame," says the great physician, "how happens it that so
pretty a woman allows herself to be sick?"
"Ah! sir, like the nose of old father Aubry, I aspire to the tomb--"
Caroline, out of consideration for Adolphe, makes a feeble effort to
smile.
"Tut, tut! But your eyes are clear: they don't seem to need our
infernal drugs."
"Look again, doctor, I am eaten up with fever, a slow, imperceptible
fever--"
And she fastens her most roguish glance upon the illustrious doctor,
who says to himself, "What eyes!"
"Now, let me see your tongue."
Caroline puts out her taper tongue between two rows of teeth as white
as those of a dog.
"It is a little bit furred at the root: but you have breakfasted--"
observes the great physician, turning toward Adolphe.
"Oh, a mere nothing," returns Caroline; "two cups of tea--"
Adolphe and the illustrious leech look at each other, for the doctor
wonders whether it is the husband or the wife that is trifling with
him.
"What do you feel?" gravely inquires the physician.
"I don't sleep."
"Good!"
"I have no appetite."
"Well!"
"I have a pain, here."
The doctor examines the part indicated.
"Very good, we'll look at that by and by."
"Now and then a shudder passes over me--"
"Very good!"
"I have melancholy fits, I am always thinking of death, I feel
promptings of suicide--"
"Dear me! Really!"
"I have rushes of heat to the face: look, there's a constant trembling
in my eyelid."
"Capital! We call that a trismus."
The doctor goes into an explanation, which lasts a quarter of an hour,
of the trismus, employing the most scientific terms. From this it
appears that the trismus is the trismus: but he observes with the
greatest modesty that if science knows that the trismus is the
trismus, it is entirely ignorant of the cause of this nervous
affection, which comes and goes, appears and disappears--"and," he
adds, "we have decided that it is altogether nervous."
"Is it very dangerous?" asks Caroline, anxiously.
"Not at all. How do you lie at night?"
"Doubled up in a heap."
"Good. On which side?"
"The left."
"Very well. How many mattresses are there on your bed?"
"Three."
"Good. Is there a spring bed?"
"Yes."
"What is the spring bed stuffed with?"
"Horse hair."
"Capital. Let me see you walk. No, no, naturally, and as if we weren't
looking at you."
Caroline walks like Fanny Elssler, communicating the most Andalusian
little motions to her tournure.
"Do you feel a sensation of heaviness in your knees?"
"Well, no--" she returns to her place. "Ah, no that I think of it, it
seems to me that I do."
"Good. Have you been in the house a good deal lately?"
"Oh, yes, sir, a great deal too much--and alone."
"Good. I thought so. What do you wear on your head at night?"
"An embroidered night-cap, and sometimes a handkerchief over it."
"Don't you feel a heat there, a slight perspiration?"
"How can I, when I'm asleep?"
"Don't you find your night-cap moist on your forehead, when you wake
up?"
"Sometimes."
"Capital. Give me your hand."
The doctor takes out his watch.
"Did I tell you that I have a vertigo?" asks Caroline.
"Hush!" says the doctor, counting the pulse. "In the evening?"
"No, in the morning."
"Ah, bless me, a vertigo in the morning," says the doctor, looking at
Adolphe.
"The Duke of G. has not gone to London," says the great physician,
while examining Caroline's skin, "and there's a good deal to be said
about it in the Faubourg St. Germain."
"Have you patients there?" asks Caroline.
"Nearly all my patients are there. Dear me, yes; I've got seven to see
this morning; some of them are in danger."
"What do you think of me, sir?" says Caroline.
"Madame, you need attention, a great deal of attention, you must take
quieting liquors, plenty of syrup of gum, a mild diet, white meat, and
a good deal of exercise."
"There go twenty francs," says Adolphe to himself with a smile.
The great physician takes Adolphe by the arm, and draws him out with
him, as he takes his leave: Caroline follows them on tiptoe.
"My dear sir," says the great physician, "I have just prescribed very
insufficiently for your wife. I did not wish to frighten her: this
affair concerns you more nearly than you imagine. Don't neglect her;
she has a powerful temperament, and enjoys violent health; all this
reacts upon her. Nature has its laws, which, when disregarded, compel
obedience. She may get into a morbid state, which would cause you
bitterly to repent having neglected her. If you love her, why, love
her: but if you don't love her, and nevertheless desire to preserve
the mother of your children, the resolution to come to is a matter of
hygiene, but it can only proceed from you!"
"How well he understand me!" says Caroline to herself. She opens the
door and says: "Doctor, you did not write down the doses!"
The great physician smiles, bows and slips the twenty franc piece into
his pocket; he then leaves Adolphe to his wife, who takes him and
says:
"What is the fact about my condition? Must I prepare for death?"
"Bah! He says you're too healthy!" cries Adolphe, impatiently.
Caroline retires to her sofa to weep.
"What is it, now?"
"So I am to live a long time--I am in the way--you don't love me any
more--I won't consult that doctor again--I don't know why Madame
Foullepointe advised me to see him, he told me nothing but trash--I
know better than he what I need!"
"What do you need?"
"Can you ask, ungrateful man?" and Caroline leans her head on
Adolphe's shoulder.
Adolphe, very much alarmed, says to himself: "The doctor's right, she
may get to be morbidly exacting, and then what will become of me? Here
I am compelled to choose between Caroline's physical extravagance, or
some young cousin or other."
Meanwhile Caroline sits down and sings one of Schubert's melodies with
all the agitation of a hypochondriac.
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