Project Gutenberg's The Physiology of Marriage, Part II., by Honore de Balzac
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Physiology of Marriage, Part II.
Author: Honore de Balzac
Release Date: July 4, 2005 [EBook #5899]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE ***
Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE
SECOND PART
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
MEANS OF DEFENCE, INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR.
"To be or not to be,
That is the question."
--Shakspeare, _Hamlet_.
MEDITATION X.
A TREATISE ON MARITAL POLICY.
When a man reaches the position in which the first part of this book
sets him, we suppose that the idea of his wife being possessed by
another makes his heart beat, and rekindles his passion, either by an
appeal to his _amour propre_, his egotism, or his self-interest, for
unless he is still on his wife's side, he must be one of the lowest of
men and deserves his fate.
In this trying moment it is very difficult for a husband to avoid
making mistakes; for, with regard to most men, the art of ruling a
wife is even less known than that of judiciously choosing one.
However, marital policy consists chiefly in the practical application
of three principles which should be the soul of your conduct. The
first is never to believe what a woman says; the second, always to
look for the spirit without dwelling too much upon the letter of her
actions; and the third, not to forget that a woman is never so
garrulous as when she holds her tongue, and is never working with more
energy than when she keeps quiet.
From the moment that your suspicions are aroused, you ought to be like
a man mounted on a tricky horse, who always watches the ears of the
beast, in fear of being thrown from the saddle.
But art consists not so much in the knowledge of principles, as in the
manner of applying them; to reveal them to ignorant people is to put a
razor in the hand of a monkey. Moreover, the first and most vital of
your duties consists in perpetual dissimulation, an accomplishment in
which most husbands are sadly lacking. In detecting the symptoms of
minotaurism a little too plainly marked in the conduct of their wives,
most men at once indulge in the most insulting suspicions. Their minds
contract a tinge of bitterness which manifests itself in their
conversation, and in their manners; and the alarm which fills their
heart, like the gas flame in a glass globe, lights up their
countenances so plainly, that it accounts for their conduct.
Now a woman, who has twelve hours more than you have each day to
reflect and to study you, reads the suspicion written upon your face
at the very moment that it arises. She will never forget this
gratuitous insult. Nothing can ever remedy that. All is now said and
done, and the very next day, if she has opportunity, she will join the
ranks of inconsistent women.
You ought then to begin under these circumstances to affect towards
your wife the same boundless confidence that you have hitherto had in
her. If you begin to lull her anxieties by honeyed words, you are
lost, she will not believe you; for she has her policy as you have
yours. Now there is as much need for tact as for kindliness in your
behavior, in order to inculcate in her, without her knowing it, a
feeling of security, which will lead her to lay back her ears, and
prevent you from using rein or spur at the wrong moment.
But how can we compare a horse, the frankest of all animals, to a
being, the flashes of whose thought, and the movements of whose
impulses render her at moments more prudent than the Servite
Fra-Paolo, the most terrible adviser that the Ten at Venice ever had;
more deceitful than a king; more adroit than Louis XI; more profound
than Machiavelli; as sophistical as Hobbes; as acute as Voltaire; as
pliant as the fiancee of Mamolin; and distrustful of no one in the
whole wide world but you?
Moreover, to this dissimulation, by means of which the springs that
move your conduct ought to be made as invisible as those that move the
world, must be added absolute self-control. That diplomatic
imperturbability, so boasted of by Talleyrand, must be the least of
your qualities; his exquisite politeness and the grace of his manners
must distinguish your conversation. The professor here expressly
forbids you to use your whip, if you would obtain complete control
over your gentle Andalusian steed.
LXI.
If a man strike his mistress it is a self-inflicted wound; but if he
strike his wife it is suicide!
How can we think of a government without police, an action without
force, a power without weapons?--Now this is exactly the problem which
we shall try to solve in our future meditations. But first we must
submit two preliminary observations. They will furnish us with two
other theories concerning the application of all the mechanical means
which we propose you should employ. An instance from life will refresh
these arid and dry dissertations: the hearing of such a story will be
like laying down a book, to work in the field.
In the year 1822, on a fine morning in the month of February, I was
traversing the boulevards of Paris, from the quiet circles of the
Marais to the fashionable quarters of the Chaussee-d'Antin, and I
observed for the first time, not without a certain philosophic joy,
the diversity of physiognomy and the varieties of costume which, from
the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule even to the Madeleine, made each portion of
the boulevard a world of itself, and this whole zone of Paris, a grand
panorama of manners. Having at that time no idea of what the world
was, and little thinking that one day I should have the audacity to
set myself up as a legislator on marriage, I was going to take lunch
at the house of a college friend, who was perhaps too early in life
afflicted with a wife and two children. My former professor of
mathematics lived at a short distance from the house of my college
friend, and I promised myself the pleasure of a visit to this worthy
mathematician before indulging my appetite for the dainties of
friendship. I accordingly made my way to the heart of a study, where
everything was covered with a dust which bore witness to the lofty
abstraction of the scholar. But a surprise was in store for me there.
I perceived a pretty woman seated on the arm of an easy chair, as if
mounted on an English horse; her face took on the look of conventional
surprise worn by mistresses of the house towards those they do not
know, but she did not disguise the expression of annoyance which, at
my appearance, clouded her countenance with the thought that I was
aware how ill-timed was my presence. My master, doubtless absorbed in
an equation, had not yet raised his head; I therefore waved my right
hand towards the young lady, like a fish moving his fin, and on tiptoe
I retired with a mysterious smile which might be translated "I will
not be the one to prevent him committing an act of infidelity to
Urania." She nodded her head with one of those sudden gestures whose
graceful vivacity is not to be translated into words.
"My good friend, don't go away," cried the geometrician. "This is my
wife!"
I bowed for the second time!--Oh, Coulon! Why wert thou not present to
applaud the only one of thy pupils who understood from that moment the
expression, "anacreontic," as applied to a bow?--The effect must have
been very overwhelming; for Madame the Professoress, as the Germans
say, rose hurriedly as if to go, making me a slight bow which seemed
to say: "Adorable!----" Her husband stopped her, saying:
"Don't go, my child, this is one of my pupils."
The young woman bent her head towards the scholar as a bird perched on
a bough stretches its neck to pick up a seed.
"It is not possible," said the husband, heaving a sigh, "and I am
going to prove it to you by A plus B."
"Let us drop that, sir, I beg you," she answered, pointing with a wink
to me.
If it had been a problem in algebra, my master would have understood
this look, but it was Chinese to him, and so he went on.
"Look here, child, I constitute you judge in the matter; our income is
ten thousand francs."
At these words I retired to the door, as if I were seized with a wild
desire to examine the framed drawings which had attracted my
attention. My discretion was rewarded by an eloquent glance. Alas! she
did not know that in Fortunio I could have played the part of
Sharp-Ears, who heard the truffles growing.
"In accordance with the principles of general economy," said my
master, "no one ought to spend in rent and servant's wages more than
two-tenths of his income; now our apartment and our attendance cost
altogether a hundred louis. I give you twelve hundred francs to dress
with" [in saying this he emphasized every syllable]. "Your food," he
went on, takes up four thousand francs, our children demand at lest
twenty-five louis; I take for myself only eight hundred francs;
washing, fuel and light mount up to about a thousand francs; so that
there does not remain, as you see, more than six hundred francs for
unforeseen expenses. In order to buy the cross of diamonds, we must
draw a thousand crowns from our capital, and if once we take that
course, my little darling, there is no reason why we should not leave
Paris which you love so much, and at once take up our residence in the
country, in order to retrench. Children and household expenses will
increase fast enough! Come, try to be reasonable!"
"I suppose I must," she said, "but you will be the only husband in
Paris who has not given a New Year's gift to his wife."
And she stole away like a school-boy who goes to finish an imposed
duty. My master made a gesture of relief. When he saw the door close
he rubbed his hands, he talked of the war in Spain; and I went my way
to the Rue de Provence, little knowing that I had received the first
installment of a great lesson in marriage, any more than I dreamt of
the conquest of Constantinople by General Diebitsch. I arrived at my
host's house at the very moment they were sitting down to luncheon,
after having waited for me the half hour demanded by usage. It was, I
believe, as she opened a _pate de foie gras_ that my pretty hostess
said to her husband, with a determined air:
"Alexander, if you were really nice you would give me that pair of
ear-rings that we saw at Fossin's."
"You shall have them," cheerfully replied my friend, drawing from his
pocketbook three notes of a thousand francs, the sight of which made
his wife's eyes sparkle. "I can no more resist the pleasure of
offering them to you," he added, "than you can that of accepting them.
This is the anniversary of the day I first saw you, and the diamonds
will perhaps make you remember it!----"
"You bad man!" said she, with a winning smile.
She poked two fingers into her bodice, and pulling out a bouquet of
violets she threw them with childlike contempt into the face of my
friend. Alexander gave her the price of the jewels, crying out:
"I had seen the flowers!"
I shall never forget the lively gesture and the eager joy with which,
like a cat which lays its spotted paw upon a mouse, the little woman
seized the three bank notes; she rolled them up blushing with
pleasure, and put them in the place of the violets which before had
perfumed her bosom. I could not help thinking about my old
mathematical master. I did not then see any difference between him and
his pupil, than that which exists between a frugal man and a prodigal,
little thinking that he of the two who seemed to calculate the better,
actually calculated the worse. The luncheon went off merrily. Very
soon, seated in a little drawing-room newly decorated, before a
cheerful fire which gave warmth and made our hearts expand as in spring
time, I felt compelled to make this loving couple a guest's
compliments on the furnishing of their little bower.
"It is a pity that all this costs so dear," said my friend, "but it is
right that the nest be worthy of the bird; but why the devil do you
compliment me upon curtains which are not paid for?--You make me
remember, just at the time I am digesting lunch, that I still owe two
thousand francs to a Turk of an upholsterer."
At these words the mistress of the house made a mental inventory of
the pretty room with her eyes, and the radiancy of her face changed to
thoughtfulness. Alexander took me by the hand and led me to the recess
of a bay window.
"Do you happen," he said in a low voice, "to have a thousand crowns to
lend me? I have only twelve thousand francs income, and this year--"
"Alexander," cried the dear creature, interrupting her husband, while,
rushing up, she offered him the three banknotes, "I see now that it is
a piece of folly--"
"What do you mean?" answered he, "keep your money."
"But, my love, I am ruining you! I ought to know that you love me so
much, that I ought not to tell you all that I wish for."
"Keep it, my darling, it is your lawful property--nonsense, I shall
gamble this winter and get all that back again!"
"Gamble!" cried she, with an expression of horror. "Alexander, take
back these notes! Come, sir, I wish you to do so."
"No, no," replied my friend, repulsing the white and delicious little
hand. "Are you not going on Thursday to a ball of Madame de B-----?"
"I will think about what you asked of me," said I to my comrade.
I went away bowing to his wife, but I saw plainly after that scene
that my anacreontic salutation did not produce much effect upon her.
"He must be mad," thought I as I went away, "to talk of a thousand
crowns to a law student."
Five days later I found myself at the house of Madame de B-----, whose
balls were becoming fashionable. In the midst of the quadrilles I saw
the wife of my friend and that of the mathematician. Madame Alexander
wore a charming dress; some flowers and white muslin were all that
composed it. She wore a little cross _a la Jeannette_, hanging by a
black velvet ribbon which set off the whiteness of her scented skin;
long pears of gold decorated her ears. On the neck of Madame the
Professoress sparkled a superb cross of diamonds.
"How funny that is," said I to a personage who had not yet studied the
world's ledger, nor deciphered the heart of a single woman.
That personage was myself. If I had then the desire to dance with
those fair women, it was simply because I knew a secret which
emboldened my timidity.
"So after all, madame, you have your cross?" I said to her first.
"Well, I fairly won it!" she replied, with a smile hard to describe.
"How is this! no ear-rings?" I remarked to the wife of my friend.
"Ah!" she replied, "I have enjoyed possession of them during a whole
luncheon time, but you see that I have ended by converting Alexander."
"He allowed himself to be easily convinced?"
She answered with a look of triumph.
Eight years afterwards, this scene suddenly rose to my memory, though
I had long since forgotten it, and in the light of the candles I
distinctly discerned the moral of it. Yes, a woman has a horror of
being convinced of anything; when you try to persuade her she
immediately submits to being led astray and continues to play the role
which nature gave her. In her view, to allow herself to be won over is
to grant a favor, but exact arguments irritate and confound her; in
order to guide her you must employ the power which she herself so
frequently employs and which lies in an appeal to sensibility. It is
therefore in his wife, and not in himself, that a husband can find the
instruments of his despotism; as diamond cuts diamond so must the
woman be made to tyrannize over herself. To know how to offer the
ear-rings in such a way that they will be returned, is a secret whose
application embraces the slightest details of life. And now let us
pass to the second observation.
"He who can manage property of one toman, can manage one of an hundred
thousand," says an Indian proverb; and I, for my part, will enlarge
upon this Asiatic adage and declare, that he who can govern one woman
can govern a nation, and indeed there is very much similarity between
these two governments. Must not the policy of husbands be very nearly
the same as the policy of kings? Do not we see kings trying to amuse
the people in order to deprive them of their liberty; throwing food at
their heads for one day, in order to make them forget the misery of a
whole year; preaching to them not to steal and at the same time
stripping them of everything; and saying to them: "It seems to me that
if I were the people I should be virtuous"? It is from England that we
obtain the precedent which husbands should adopt in their houses.
Those who have eyes ought to see that when the government is running
smoothly the Whigs are rarely in power. A long Tory ministry has
always succeeded an ephemeral Liberal cabinet. The orators of a
national party resemble the rats which wear their teeth away in
gnawing the rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as they smell
the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman is
the Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in which we have
left her she might naturally aspire to the conquest of more than one
privilege. Shut your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to waste her
strength in mounting half the steps of your throne; and when she is on
the point of touching your sceptre, fling her back to the ground,
quite gently and with infinite grace, saying to her: "Bravo!" and
leaving her to expect success in the hereafter. The craftiness of this
manoeuvre will prove a fine support to you in the employment of any
means which it may please you to choose from your arsenal, for the
object of subduing your wife.
Such are the general principles which a husband should put into
practice, if he wishes to escape mistakes in ruling his little
kingdom. Nevertheless, in spite of what was decided by the minority at
the council of Macon (Montesquieu, who had perhaps foreseen the coming
of constitutional government has remarked, I forget in what part of
his writings, that good sense in public assemblies is always found on
the side of the minority), we discern in a woman a soul and a body,
and we commence by investigating the means to gain control of her
moral nature. The exercise of thought, whatever people may say, is
more noble than the exercise of bodily organs, and we give precedence
to science over cookery and to intellectual training over hygiene.
MEDITATION XI.
INSTRUCTION IN THE HOME.
Whether wives should or should not be put under instruction--such is
the question before us. Of all those which we have discussed this is
the only one which has two extremes and admits of no compromise.
Knowledge and ignorance, such are the two irreconcilable terms of this
problem. Between these two abysses we seem to see Louis XVIII
reckoning up the felicities of the eighteenth century, and the
unhappiness of the nineteenth. Seated in the centre of the seesaw,
which he knew so well how to balance by his own weight, he
contemplates at one end of it the fanatic ignorance of a lay brother,
the apathy of a serf, the shining armor on the horses of a banneret;
he thinks he hears the cry, "France and Montjoie-Saint-Denis!" But he
turns round, he smiles as he sees the haughty look of a manufacturer,
who is captain in the national guard; the elegant carriage of a stock
broker; the simple costume of a peer of France turned journalist and
sending his son to the Polytechnique; then he notices the costly
stuffs, the newspapers, the steam engines; and he drinks his coffee
from a cup of Sevres, at the bottom of which still glitters the "N"
surmounted by a crown.
"Away with civilization! Away with thought!"--That is your cry. You
ought to hold in horror the education of women for the reason so well
realized in Spain, that it is easier to govern a nation of idiots than
a nation of scholars. A nation degraded is happy: if she has not the
sentiment of liberty, neither has she the storms and disturbances
which it begets; she lives as polyps live; she can be cut up into two
or three pieces and each piece is still a nation, complete and living,
and ready to be governed by the first blind man who arms himself with
the pastoral staff.
What is it that produces this wonderful characteristic of humanity?
Ignorance; ignorance is the sole support of despotism, which lives on
darkness and silence. Now happiness in the domestic establishment as
in a political state is a negative happiness. The affection of a
people for a king, in an absolute monarchy, is perhaps less contrary
to nature than the fidelity of a wife towards her husband, when love
between them no longer exists. Now we know that, in your house, love
at this moment has one foot on the window-sill. It is necessary for
you, therefore, to put into practice that salutary rigor by which M.
de Metternich prolongs his _statu quo_; but we would advise you to do
so with more tact and with still more tenderness; for your wife is
more crafty than all the Germans put together, and as voluptuous as
the Italians.
You should, therefore, try to put off as long as possible the fatal
moment when your wife asks you for a book. This will be easy. You will
first of all pronounce in a tone of disdain the phrase "Blue
stocking;" and, on her request being repeated, you will tell her what
ridicule attaches, among the neighbors, to pedantic women.
You will then repeat to her, very frequently, that the most lovable
and the wittiest women in the world are found at Paris, where women
never read;
That women are like people of quality who, according to Mascarillo,
know everything without having learned anything; that a woman while
she is dancing, or while she is playing cards, without even having the
appearance of listening, ought to know how to pick up from the
conversation of talented men the ready-made phrases out of which fools
manufacture their wit at Paris;
That in this country decisive judgments on men and affairs are passed
round from hand to hand; and that the little cutting phrase with which
a woman criticises an author, demolishes a work, or heaps contempt on
a picture, has more power in the world than a court decision;
That women are beautiful mirrors, which naturally reflect the most
brilliant ideas;
That natural wit is everything, and the best education is gained
rather from what we learn in the world than by what we read in books;
That, above all, reading ends in making the eyes dull, etc.
To think of leaving a woman at liberty to read the books which her
character of mind may prompt her to choose! This is to drop a spark in
a powder magazine; it is worse than that, it is to teach your wife to
separate herself from you; to live in an imaginary world, in a
Paradise. For what do women read? Works of passion, the _Confessions_
of Rousseau, romances, and all those compositions which work most
powerfully on their sensibility. They like neither argument nor the
ripe fruits of knowledge. Now have you ever considered the results
which follow these poetical readings?
Romances, and indeed all works of imagination, paint sentiments and
events with colors of a very different brilliancy from those presented
by nature. The fascination of such works springs less from the desire
which each author feels to show his skill in putting forth choice and
delicate ideas than from the mysterious working of the human
intellect. It is characteristic of man to purify and refine everything
that he lays up in the treasury of his thoughts. What human faces,
what monuments of the dead are not made more beautiful than actual
nature in the artistic representation? The soul of the reader assists
in this conspiracy against the truth, either by means of the profound
silence which it enjoys in reading or by the fire of mental conception
with which it is agitated or by the clearness with which imagery is
reflected in the mirror of the understanding. Who has not seen on
reading the _Confessions_ of Jean-Jacques, that Madame de Warens is
described as much prettier than she ever was in actual life? It might
almost be said that our souls dwell with delight upon the figures
which they had met in a former existence, under fairer skies; that
they accept the creations of another soul only as wings on which they
may soar into space; features the most delicate they bring to
perfection by making them their own; and the most poetic expression
which appears in the imagery of an author brings forth still more
ethereal imagery in the mind of a reader. To read is to join with the
writer in a creative act. The mystery of the transubstantiation of
ideas, originates perhaps in the instinctive consciousness that we
have of a vocation loftier than our present destiny. Or, is it based
on the lost tradition of a former life? What must that life have been,
if this slight residuum of memory offers us such volumes of delight?
Moreover, in reading plays and romances, woman, a creature much more
susceptible than we are to excitement, experiences the most violent
transport. She creates for herself an ideal existence beside which all
reality grows pale; she at once attempts to realize this voluptuous
life, to take to herself the magic which she sees in it. And, without
knowing it, she passes from spirit to letter and from soul to sense.
And would you be simple enough to believe that the manners, the
sentiments of a man like you, who usually dress and undress before
your wife, can counterbalance the influence of these books and
outshine the glory of their fictitious lovers, in whose garments the
fair reader sees neither hole nor stain?--Poor fool! too late, alas!
for her happiness and for yours, your wife will find out that the
_heroes_ of poetry are as rare in real life as the _Apollos_ of
sculpture!
Very many husbands will find themselves embarrassed in trying to
prevent their wives from reading, yet there are certain people who
allege that reading has this advantage, that men know what their wives
are about when they have a book in hand. In the first place you will
see, in the next Meditation, what a tendency the sedentary life has to
make a woman quarrelsome; but have you never met those beings without
poetry, who succeed in petrifying their unhappy companions by reducing
life to its most mechanical elements? Study great men in their
conversation and learn by heart the admirable arguments by which they
condemn poetry and the pleasures of imagination.
But if, after all your efforts, your wife persists in wishing to read,
put at her disposal at once all possible books from the A B C of her
little boy to _Rene_, a book more dangerous to you when in her hands
than _Therese Philosophe_. You might create in her an utter disgust
for reading by giving her tedious books; and plunge her into utter
idiocy with _Marie Alacoque_, _The Brosse de Penitence_, or with the
chansons which were so fashionable in the time of Louis XV; but later
on you will find, in the present volume, the means of so thoroughly
employing your wife's time, that any kind of reading will be quite out
of the question.
And first of all, consider the immense resources which the education
of women has prepared for you in your efforts to turn your wife from
her fleeting taste for science. Just see with what admirable stupidity
girls lend themselves to reap the benefit of the education which is
imposed upon them in France; we give them in charge to nursery maids,
to companions, to governesses who teach them twenty tricks of coquetry
and false modesty, for every single noble and true idea which they
impart to them. Girls are brought up as slaves, and are accustomed to
the idea that they are sent into the world to imitate their
grandmothers, to breed canary birds, to make herbals, to water little
Bengal rose-bushes, to fill in worsted work, or to put on collars.
Moreover, if a little girl in her tenth year has more refinement than
a boy of twenty, she is timid and awkward. She is frightened at a
spider, chatters nonsense, thinks of dress, talks about the fashions
and has not the courage to be either a watchful mother or a chaste
wife.
Notice what progress she had made; she has been shown how to paint
roses, and to embroider ties in such a way as to earn eight sous a
day. She has learned the history of France in _Ragois_ and chronology
in the _Tables du Citoyen Chantreau_, and her young imagination has
been set free in the realm of geography; all without any aim,
excepting that of keeping away all that might be dangerous to her
heart; but at the same time her mother and her teachers repeat with
unwearied voice the lesson, that the whole science of a woman lies in
knowing how to arrange the fig leaf which our Mother Eve wore. "She
does not hear for fifteen years," says Diderot, "anything else but 'my
daughter, your fig leaf is on badly; my daughter, your fig leaf is on
well; my daughter, would it not look better so?'"
Keep your wife then within this fine and noble circle of knowledge. If
by chance your wife wishes to have a library, buy for her Florian,
Malte-Brun, _The Cabinet des Fees_, _The Arabian Nights_, Redoute's
_Roses_, _The Customs of China_, _The Pigeons_, by Madame Knip, the
great work on Egypt, etc. Carry out, in short, the clever suggestion
of that princess who, when she was told of a riot occasioned by the
dearness of bread, said, "Why don't they eat cake?"
Perhaps, one evening, your wife will reproach you for being sullen and
not speaking to her; perhaps she will say that you are ridiculous,
when you have just made a pun; but this is one of the slight
annoyances incident to our system; and, moreover, what does it matter
to you that the education of women in France is the most pleasant of
absurdities, and that your marital obscurantism has brought a doll to
your arms? As you have not sufficient courage to undertake a fairer
task, would it not be better to lead your wife along the beaten track
of married life in safety, than to run the risk of making her scale
the steep precipices of love? She is likely to be a mother: you must
not exactly expect to have Gracchi for sons, but to be really _pater
quem nuptiae demonstrant_; now, in order to aid you in reaching this
consummation, we must make this book an arsenal from which each one,
in accordance with his wife's character and his own, may choose
weapons fit to employ against the terrible genius of evil, which is
always ready to rise up in the soul of a wife; and since it may fairly
be considered that the ignorant are the most cruel opponents of
feminine education, this Meditation will serve as a breviary for the
majority of husbands.
If a woman has received a man's education, she possesses in very truth
the most brilliant and most fertile sources of happiness both to
herself and to her husband; but this kind of woman is as rare as
happiness itself; and if you do not possess her for your wife, your
best course is to confine the one you do possess, for the sake of your
common felicity, to the region of ideas she was born in, for you must
not forget that one moment of pride in her might destroy you, by
setting on the throne a slave who would immediately be tempted to
abuse her power.
After all, by following the system prescribed in this Meditation, a
man of superiority will be relieved from the necessity of putting his
thoughts into small change, when he wishes to be understood by his
wife, if indeed this man of superiority has been guilty of the folly
of marrying one of those poor creatures who cannot understand him,
instead of choosing for his wife a young girl whose mind and heart he
has tested and studied for a considerable time.
Our aim in this last matrimonial observation has not been to advise
all men of superiority to seek for women of superiority and we do not
wish each one to expound our principles after the manner of Madame de
Stael, who attempted in the most indelicate manner to effect a union
between herself and Napoleon. These two beings would have been very
unhappy in their domestic life; and Josephine was a wife accomplished
in a very different sense from this virago of the nineteenth century.
And, indeed, when we praise those undiscoverable girls so happily
educated by chance, so well endowed by nature, whose delicate souls
endure so well the rude contact of the great soul of him we call _a
man_, we mean to speak of those rare and noble creatures of whom
Goethe has given us a model in his Claire of _Egmont_; we are thinking
of those women who seek no other glory than that of playing their part
well; who adapt themselves with amazing pliancy to the will and
pleasure of those whom nature has given them for masters; soaring at
one time into the boundless sphere of their thought and in turn
stooping to the simple task of amusing them as if they were children;
understanding well the inconsistencies of masculine and violent souls,
understanding also their slightest word, their most puzzling looks;
happy in silence, happy also in the midst of loquacity; and well aware
that the pleasures, the ideas and the moral instincts of a Lord Byron
cannot be those of a bonnet-maker. But we must stop; this fair picture
has led us too far from our subject; we are treating of marriage and
not of love.
MEDITATION XII.
THE HYGIENE OF MARRIAGE.
The aim of this Meditation is to call to your attention a new method
of defence, by which you may reduce the will of your new wife to a
condition of utter and abject submission. This is brought about by the
reaction upon her moral nature of physical changes, and the wise
lowering of her physical condition by a diet skillfully controlled.
This great and philosophical question of conjugal medicine will
doubtless be regarded favorably by all who are gouty, are impotent, or
suffer from catarrh; and by that legion of old men whose dullness we
have quickened by our article on the predestined. But it principally
concerns those husbands who have courage enough to enter into those
paths of machiavelism, such as would not have been unworthy of that
great king of France who endeavored to secure the happiness of the
nation at the expense of certain noble heads. Here, the subject is the
same. The amputation or the weakening of certain members is always to
the advantage of the whole body.
Do you think seriously that a celibate who has been subject to a diet
consisting of the herb hanea, of cucumbers, of purslane and the
applications of leeches to his ears, as recommended by Sterne, would
be able to carry by storm the honor of your wife? Suppose that a
diplomat had been clever enough to affix a permanent linen plaster to
the head of Napoleon, or to purge him every morning: Do you think that
Napoleon, Napoleon the Great, would ever have conquered Italy? Was
Napoleon, during his campaign in Russia, a prey to the most horrible
pangs of dysuria, or was he not? That is one of the questions which
has weighed upon the minds of the whole world. Is it not certain that
cooling applications, douches, baths, etc., produce great changes in
more or less acute affections of the brain? In the middle of the heat
of July when each one of your pores slowly filters out and returns to
the devouring atmosphere the glasses of iced lemonade which you have
drunk at a single draught, have you ever felt the flame of courage,
the vigor of thought, the complete energy which rendered existence
light and sweet to you some months before?
No, no; the iron most closely cemented into the hardest stone will
raise and throw apart the most durable monument, by reason of the
secret influence exercised by the slow and invisible variations of
heat and cold, which vex the atmosphere. In the first place, let us be
sure that if atmospheric mediums have an influence over man, there is
still a stronger reason for believing that man, in turn, influences
the imagination of his kind, by the more or less vigor with which he
projects his will and thus produces a veritable atmosphere around him.
It is in this fact that the power of the actor's talent lies, as well
as that of poetry and of fanaticism; for the former is the eloquence
of words, as the latter is the eloquence of actions; and in this lies
the foundation of a science, so far in its infancy.
This will, so potent in one man against another, this nervous and
fluid force, eminently mobile and transmittable, is itself subject to
the changing condition of our organization, and there are many
circumstances which make this frail organism of ours to vary. At this
point, our metaphysical observation shall stop and we will enter into
an analysis of the circumstances which develop the will of man and
impart to it a grater degree of strength or weakness.
Do not believe, however, that it is our aim to induce you to put
cataplasms on the honor of your wife, to lock her up in a sweating
house, or to seal her up like a letter; no. We will not even attempt
to teach you the magnetic theory which would give you the power to
make your will triumph in the soul of your wife; there is not a single
husband who would accept the happiness of an eternal love at the price
of this perpetual strain laid upon his animal forces. But we shall
attempt to expound a powerful system of hygiene, which will enable you
to put out the flame when your chimney takes fire. The elegant women
of Paris and the provinces (and these elegant women form a very
distinguished class among the honest women) have plenty of means of
attaining the object which we propose, without rummaging in the
arsenal of medicine for the four cold specifics, the water-lily and
the thousand inventions worthy only of witches. We will leave to
Aelian his herb hanea and to Sterne the purslane and cucumber which
indicate too plainly his antiphlogistic purpose.
You should let your wife recline all day long on soft armchairs, in
which she sinks into a veritable bath of eiderdown or feathers; you
should encourage in every way that does no violence to your
conscience, the inclination which women have to breathe no other air
but the scented atmosphere of a chamber seldom opened, where daylight
can scarcely enter through the soft, transparent curtains.
You will obtain marvelous results from this system, after having
previously experienced the shock of her excitement; but if you are
strong enough to support this momentary transport of your wife you
will soon see her artificial energy die away. In general, women love
to live fast, but, after their tempest of passion, return to that
condition of tranquillity which insures the happiness of a husband.
Jean-Jacques, through the instrumentality of his enchanting Julie,
must have proved to your wife that it was infinitely becoming to
refrain from affronting her delicate stomach and her refined palate by
making chyle out of coarse lumps of beef, and enormous collops of
mutton. Is there anything purer in the world than those interesting
vegetables, always fresh and scentless, those tinted fruits, that
coffee, that fragrant chocolate, those oranges, the golden apples of
Atalanta, the dates of Arabia and the biscuits of Brussels, a
wholesome and elegant food which produces satisfactory results, at the
same time that it imparts to a woman an air of mysterious originality?
By the regimen which she chooses she becomes quite celebrated in her
immediate circle, just as she would be by a singular toilet, a
benevolent action or a _bon mot_. Pythagoras must needs have cast his
spell over her, and become as much petted by her as a poodle or an
ape.
Never commit the imprudence of certain men who, for the sake of
putting on the appearance of wit, controvert the feminine dictum,
_that the figure is preserved by meagre diet_. Women on such a diet
never grow fat, that is clear and positive; do you stick to that.
Praise the skill with which some women, renowned for their beauty,
have been able to preserve it by bathing themselves in milk, several
times a day, or in water compounded of substances likely to render the
skin softer and to lower the nervous tension.
Advise her above all things to refrain from washing herself in cold
water; because water warm or tepid is the proper thing for all kinds
of ablutions.
Let Broussais be your idol. At the least indisposition of your wife,
and on the slightest pretext, order the application of leeches; do not
even shrink from applying from time to time a few dozen on yourself,
in order to establish the system of that celebrated doctor in your
household. You will constantly be called upon from your position as
husband to discover that your wife is too ruddy; try even sometimes to
bring the blood to her head, in order to have the right to introduce
into the house at certain intervals a squad of leeches.
Your wife ought to drink water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wine
agreeable to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; every
other kind of wine would be bad for her. Never allow her to drink
water alone; if you do, you are lost.
"Impetuous fluid! As soon as you press against the floodgates of the
brain, how quickly do they yield to your power! Then Curiosity comes
swimming by, making signs to her companions to follow; they plunge
into the current. Imagination sits dreaming on the bank. She follows
the torrent with her eyes and transforms the fragments of straw and
reed into masts and bowsprit. And scarcely has the transformation
taken place, before Desire, holding in one hand her skirt drawn up
even to her knees, appears, sees the vessel and takes possession of
it. O ye drinkers of water, it is by means of that magic spring that
you have so often turned and turned again the world at your will,
throwing beneath your feet the weak, trampling on his neck, and
sometimes changing even the form and aspect of nature!"
If by this system of inaction, in combination with our system of diet,
you fail to obtain satisfactory results, throw yourself with might and
main into another system, which we will explain to you.
Man has a certain degree of energy given to him. Such and such a man
or woman stands to another as ten is to thirty, as one to five; and
there is a certain degree of energy which no one of us ever exceeds.
The quantity of energy, or willpower, which each of us possesses
diffuses itself like sound; it is sometimes weak, sometimes strong; it
modifies itself according to the octaves to which it mounts. This
force is unique, and although it may be dissipated in desire, in
passion, in toils of intellect or in bodily exertion, it turns towards
the object to which man directs it. A boxer expends it in blows of the
fist, the baker in kneading his bread, the poet in the enthusiasm
which consumes and demands an enormous quantity of it; it passes to
the feet of the dancer; in fact, every one diffuses it at will, and
may I see the Minotaur tranquilly seated this very evening upon my
bed, if you do not know as well as I do how he expends it. Almost all
men spend in necessary toils, or in the anguish of direful passions,
this fine sum of energy and of will, with which nature has endowed
them; but our honest women are all the prey to the caprices and the
struggles of this power which knows not what to do with itself. If, in
the case of your wife, this energy has not been subdued by the
prescribed dietary regimen, subject her to some form of activity which
will constantly increase in violence. Find some means by which her sum
of force which inconveniences you may be carried off, by some
occupation which shall entirely absorb her strength. Without setting
your wife to work the crank of a machine, there are a thousand ways of
tiring her out under the load of constant work.
In leaving it to you to find means for carrying out our design--and
these means vary with circumstances--we would point out that dancing
is one of the very best abysses in which love may bury itself. This
point having been very well treated by a contemporary, we will give
him here an opportunity of speaking his mind:
"The poor victim who is the admiration of an enchanted audience
pays dear for her success. What result can possibly follow on
exertions so ill-proportioned to the resources of the delicate
sex? The muscles of the body, disproportionately wearied, are
forced to their full power of exertion. The nervous forces,
intended to feed the fire of passions, and the labor of the brain,
are diverted from their course. The failure of desire, the wish
for rest, the exclusive craving for substantial food, all point to
a nature impoverished, more anxious to recruit than to enjoy.
Moreover, a denizen of the side scenes said to me one day,
'Whoever has lived with dancers has lived with sheep; for in their
exhaustion they can think of nothing but strong food.' Believe me,
then, the love which a ballet girl inspires is very delusive; in
her we find, under an appearance of an artificial springtime, a
soil which is cold as well as greedy, and senses which are utterly
dulled. The Calabrian doctors prescribed the dance as a remedy for
the hysteric affections which are common among the women of their
country; and the Arabs use a somewhat similar recipe for the
highbred mares, whose too lively temperament hinders their
fecundity. 'Dull as a dancer' is a familiar proverb at the
theatre. In fact, the best brains of Europe are convinced that
dancing brings with it a result eminently cooling.
"In support of this it may be necessary to add other observations.
The life of shepherds gives birth to irregular loves. The morals
of weavers were horribly decried in Greece. The Italians have
given birth to a proverb concerning the lubricity of lame women.
The Spanish, in whose veins are found many mixtures of African
incontinence, have expressed their sentiments in a maxim which is
familiar with them: _Muger y gallina pierna quebrantada_ [it is
good that a woman and a hen have one broken leg]. The profound
sagacity of the Orientals in the art of pleasure is altogether
expressed by this ordinance of the caliph Hakim, founder of the
Druses, who forbade, under pain of death, the making in his
kingdom of any shoes for women. It seems that over the whole
globe the tempests of the heart wait only to break out after the
limbs are at rest!"
What an admirable manoeuvre it would be to make a wife dance, and to
feed her on vegetables!
Do not believe that these observations, which are as true as they are
wittily stated, contradict in any way the system which we have
previously prescribed; by the latter, as by the former, we succeed in
producing in a woman that needed listlessness, which is the pledge of
repose and tranquility. By the latter you leave a door open, that the
enemy may flee; by the former, you slay him.
Now at this point it seems to us that we hear timorous people and
those of narrow views rising up against our idea of hygiene in the
name of morality and sentiment.
"Is not woman endowed with a soul? Has she not feelings as we have?
What right has any one, without regard to her pain, her ideas, or her
requirements, to hammer her out, as a cheap metal, out of which a
workman fashions a candlestick or an extinguisher? Is it because the
poor creatures are already so feeble and miserable that a brute claims
the power to torture them, merely at the dictate of his own fancies,
which may be more or less just? And, if by this weakening or heating
system of yours, which draws out, softens, hardens the fibres, you
cause frightful and cruel sickness, if you bring to the tomb a woman
who is dear to you; if, if,--"
This is our answer:
Have you never noticed into how many different shapes harlequin and
columbine change their little white hats? They turn and twist them so
well that they become, one after another, a spinning-top, a boat, a
wine-glass, a half-moon, a cap, a basket, a fish, a whip, a dagger, a
baby, and a man's head.
This is an exact image of the despotism with which you ought to shape
and reshape your wife.
The wife is a piece of property, acquired by contract; she is part of
your furniture, for possession is nine-tenths of the law; in fact, the
woman is not, to speak correctly, anything but an adjunct to the man;
therefore abridge, cut, file this article as you choose; she is in
every sense yours. Take no notice at all of her murmurs, of her cries,
of her sufferings; nature has ordained her for your use, that she may
bear everything--children, griefs, blows and pains from man.
Don't accuse yourself of harshness. In the codes of all the nations
which are called civilized, man has written the laws which govern the
destiny of women in these cruel terms: _Vae victis!_ Woe to the
conquered!
Finally, think upon this last observation, the most weighty, perhaps,
of all that we have made up to this time: if you, her husband, do not
break under the scourge of your will this weak and charming reed,
there will be a celibate, capricious and despotic, ready to bring her
under a yoke more cruel still; and she will have to endure two
tyrannies instead of one. Under all considerations, therefore,
humanity demands that you should follow the system of our hygiene.
MEDITATION XIII.
OF PERSONAL MEASURES.
Perhaps the preceding Meditations will prove more likely to develop
general principles of conduct, than to repel force by force. They
furnish, however, the pharmacopoeia of medicine and not the practice
of medicine. Now consider the personal means which nature has put into
your hands for self-defence; for Providence has forgotten no one; if
to the sepia (that fish of the Adriatic) has been given the black dye
by which he produces a cloud in which he disappears from his enemy,
you should believe that a husband has not been left without a weapon;
and now the time has come for you to draw yours.
You ought to have stipulated before you married that your wife should
nurse her own children; in this case, as long as she is occupied in
bearing children or in nursing them you will avoid the danger from one
or two quarters. The wife who is engaged in bringing into the world
and nursing a baby has not really the time to bother with a lover, not
to speak of the fact that before and after her confinement she cannot
show herself in the world. In short, how can the most bold of the
distinguished women who are the subject of this work show herself
under these circumstances in public? O Lord Byron, thou didst not wish
to see women even eat!
Six months after her confinement, and when the child is on the eve of
being weaned, a woman just begins to feel that she can enjoy her
restoration and her liberty.
If your wife has not nursed her first child, you have too much sense
not to notice this circumstance, and not to make her desire to nurse
her next one. You will read to her the _Emile_ of Jean-Jacques; you
will fill her imagination with a sense of motherly duties; you will
excite her moral feelings, etc.: in a word, you are either a fool or a
man of sense; and in the first case, even after reading this book, you
will always be minotaurized; while in the second, you will understand
how to take a hint.
This first expedient is in reality your own personal business. It will
give you a great advantage in carrying out all the other methods.
Since Alcibiades cut the ears and the tail of his dog, in order to do
a service to Pericles, who had on his hands a sort of Spanish war, as
well as an Ouvrard contract affair, such as was then attracting the
notice of the Athenians, there is not a single minister who has not
endeavored to cut the ears of some dog or other.
So in medicine, when inflammation takes place at some vital point of
the system, counter-irritation is brought about at some other point,
by means of blisters, scarifications and cupping.
Another method consists in blistering your wife, or giving her, with a
mental needle, a prod whose violence is such as to make a diversion in
your favor.
A man of considerable mental resources had made his honeymoon last for
about four years; the moon began to wane, and he saw appearing the
fatal hollow in its circle. His wife was exactly in that state of mind
which we attributed at the close of our first part to every honest
woman; she had taken a fancy to a worthless fellow who was both
insignificant in appearance and ugly; the only thing in his favor was,
he was not her own husband. At this juncture, her husband meditated
the cutting of some dog's tail, in order to renew, if possible, his
lease of happiness. His wife had conducted herself with such tact,
that it would have been very embarrassing to forbid her lover the
house, for she had discovered some slight tie of relationship between
them. The danger became, day by day, more imminent. The scent of the
Minotaur was all around. One evening the husband felt himself plunged
into a mood of deep vexation so acute as to be apparent to his wife.
His wife had begun to show him more kindness than she had ever
exhibited, even during the honeymoon; and hence question after
question racked his mind. On her part a dead silence reigned. The
anxious questionings of his mind were redoubled; his suspicions burst
forth, and he was seized with forebodings of future calamity! Now, on
this occasion, he deftly applied a Japanese blister, which burned as
fiercely as an _auto-da-fe_ of the year 1600. At first his wife
employed a thousand stratagems to discover whether the annoyance of
her husband was caused by the presence of her lover; it was her first
intrigue and she displayed a thousand artifices in it. Her imagination
was aroused; it was no longer taken up with her lover; had she not
better, first of all, probe her husband's secret?
One evening the husband, moved by the desire to confide in his loving
helpmeet all his troubles, informed her that their whole fortune was
lost. They would have to give up their carriage, their box at the
theatre, balls, parties, even Paris itself; perhaps, by living on
their estate in the country a year or two, they might retrieve all!
Appealing to the imagination of his wife, he told her how he pitied
her for her attachment to a man who was indeed deeply in love with
her, but was now without fortune; he tore his hair, and his wife was
compelled in honor to be deeply moved; then in this first excitement
of their conjugal disturbance he took her off to his estate. Then
followed scarifications, mustard plaster upon mustard plaster, and the
tails of fresh dogs were cut: he caused a Gothic wing to be built to
the chateau; madame altered the park ten time over in order to have
fountains and lakes and variations in the grounds; finally, the
husband in the midst of her labors did not forget his own, which
consisted in providing her with interesting reading, and launching
upon her delicate attentions, etc. Notice, he never informed his wife
of the trick he had played on her; and if his fortune was recuperated,
it was directly after the building of the wing, and the expenditure of
enormous sums in making water-courses; but he assured her that the
lake provided a water-power by which mills might be run, etc.
Now, there was a conjugal blister well conceived, for this husband
neither neglected to rear his family nor to invite to his house
neighbors who were tiresome, stupid or old; and if he spent the winter
in Paris, he flung his wife into the vortex of balls and races, so
that she had not a minute to give to lovers, who are usually the fruit
of a vacant life.
Journeys to Italy, Switzerland or Greece, sudden complaints which
require a visit to the waters, and the most distant waters, are pretty
good blisters. In fact, a man of sense should know how to manufacture
a thousand of them.
Let us continue our examination of such personal methods.
And here we would have you observe that we are reasoning upon a
hypothesis, without which this book will be unintelligible to you;
namely, we suppose that your honeymoon has lasted for a respectable
time and that the lady that you married was not a widow, but a maid;
on the opposite supposition, it is at least in accordance with French
manners to think that your wife married you merely for the purpose of
becoming inconsistent.
From the moment when the struggle between virtue and inconsistency
begins in your home, the whole question rests upon the constant and
involuntary comparison which your wife is instituting between you and
her lover.
And here you may find still another mode of defence, entirely
personal, seldom employed by husbands, but the men of superiority will
not fear to attempt it. It is to belittle the lover without letting
your wife suspect your intention. You ought to be able to bring it
about so that she will say to herself some evening while she is
putting her hair in curl-papers, "My husband is superior to him."
In order to succeed, and you ought to be able to succeed, since you
have the immense advantage over the lover in knowing the character of
your wife, and how she is most easily wounded, you should, with all
the tact of a diplomat, lead this lover to do silly things and cause
him to annoy her, without his being aware of it.
In the first place, this lover, as usual, will seek your friendship,
or you will have friends in common; then, either through the
instrumentality of these friends or by insinuations adroitly but
treacherously made, you will lead him astray on essential points; and,
with a little cleverness, you will succeed in finding your wife ready
to deny herself to her lover when he calls, without either she or he
being able to tell the reason. Thus you will have created in the bosom
of your home a comedy in five acts, in which you play, to your profit,
the brilliant role of Figaro or Almaviva; and for some months you will
amuse yourself so much the more, because your _amour-propre_, your
vanity, your all, were at stake.
I had the good fortune in my youth to win the confidence of an old
_emigre_ who gave me those rudiments of education which are generally
obtained by young people from women. This friend, whose memory will
always be dear to me, taught me by his example to put into practice
those diplomatic stratagems which require tact as well as grace.
The Comte de Noce had returned from Coblenz at a time when it was
dangerous for the nobility to be found in France. No one had such
courage and such kindness, such craft and such recklessness as this
aristocrat. Although he was sixty years old he had married a woman of
twenty-five, being compelled to this act of folly by soft-heartedness;
for he thus delivered this poor child from the despotism of a
capricious mother. "Would you like to be my widow?" this amiable old
gentleman had said to Mademoiselle de Pontivy, but his heart was too
affectionate not to become more attached to his wife than a sensible
man ought to be. As in his youth he had been under the influence of
several among the cleverest women in the court of Louis XV, he thought
he would have no difficulty in keeping his wife from any entanglement.
What man excepting him have I ever seen, who could put into successful
practice the teachings which I am endeavoring to give to husbands!
What charm could he impart to life by his delightful manners and
fascinating conversation!--His wife never knew until after his death
what she then learned from me, namely, that he had the gout. He had
wisely retired to a home in the hollow of a valley, close to a forest.
God only knows what rambles he used to take with his wife!--His good
star decreed that Mademoiselle de Pontivy should possess an excellent
heart and should manifest in a high degree that exquisite refinement,
that sensitive modesty which renders beautiful the plainest girl in
the world. All of a sudden, one of his nephews, a good-looking
military man, who had escaped from the disasters of Moscow, returned
to his uncle's house, as much for the sake of learning how far he had
to fear his cousins, as heirs, as in the hope of laying siege to his
aunt. His black hair, his moustache, the easy small-talk of the staff
officer, a certain freedom which was elegant as well as trifling, his
bright eyes, contrasted favorably with the faded graces of his uncle.
I arrived at the precise moment when the young countess was teaching
her newly found relation to play backgammon. The proverb says that
"women never learn this game excepting from their lovers, and vice
versa." Now, during a certain game, M. de Noce had surprised his wife
and the viscount in the act of exchanging one of those looks which are
full of mingled innocence, fear, and desire. In the evening he
proposed to us a hunting-party, and we agreed. I never saw him so gay
and so eager as he appeared on the following morning, in spite of the
twinges of gout which heralded an approaching attack. The devil
himself could not have been better able to keep up a conversation on
trifling subjects than he was. He had formerly been a musketeer in the
Grays and had known Sophie Arnoud. This explains all. The conversation
after a time became so exceedingly free among us three, that I hope
God may forgive me for it!
"I would never have believed that my uncle was such a dashing blade?"
said the nephew.
We made a halt, and while we were sitting on the edge of a green
forest clearing, the count led us on to discourse about women just as
Brantome and Aloysia might have done.
"You fellows are very happy under the present government!--the women
of the time are well mannered" (in order to appreciate the exclamation
of the old gentleman, the reader should have heard the atrocious
stories which the captain had been relating). "And this," he went on,
"is one of the advantages resulting from the Revolution. The present
system gives very much more charm and mystery to passion. In former
times women were easy; ah! indeed, you would not believe what skill it
required, what daring, to wake up those worn-out hearts; we were
always on the _qui vive_. But yet in those days a man became
celebrated for a broad joke, well put, or for a lucky piece of
insolence. That is what women love, and it will always be the best
method of succeeding with them!"
These last words were uttered in a tone of profound contempt; he
stopped, and began to play with the hammer of his gun as if to
disguise his deep feeling.
"But nonsense," he went on, "my day is over! A man ought to have the
body as well as the imagination young. Why did I marry? What is most
treacherous in girls educated by mothers who lived in that brilliant
era of gallantry, is that they put on an air of frankness, of reserve;
they look as if butter would not melt in their mouths, and those who
know them well feel that they would swallow anything!"
He rose, lifted his gun with a gesture of rage, and dashing it to the
ground thrust it far up the butt in the moist sod.
"It would seem as if my dear aunt were fond of a little fun," said the
officer to me in a low voice.
"Or of denouements that do not come off!" I added.
The nephew tightened his cravat, adjusted his collar and gave a jump
like a Calabrian goat. We returned to the chateau at about two in the
afternoon. The count kept me with him until dinner-time, under the
pretext of looking for some medals, of which he had spoken during our
return home. The dinner was dull. The countess treated her nephew with
stiff and cold politeness. When we entered the drawing-room the count
said to his wife:
"Are you going to play backgammon?--We will leave you."
The young countess made no reply. She gazed at the fire, as if she had
not heard. Her husband took some steps towards the door, inviting me
by the wave of his hand to follow him. At the sound of his footsteps,
his wife quickly turned her head.
"Why do you leave us?" said she, "you will have all tomorrow to show
your friend the reverse of the medals."
The count remained. Without paying any attention to the awkwardness
which had succeeded the former military aplomb of his nephew, the
count exercised during the whole evening his full powers as a charming
conversationalist. I had never before seen him so brilliant or so
gracious. We spoke a great deal about women. The witticisms of our
host were marked by the most exquisite refinement. He made me forget
that his hair was white, for he showed the brilliancy which belonged
to a youthful heart, a gaiety which effaces the wrinkles from the
cheek and melts the snow of wintry age.
The next day the nephew went away. Even after the death of M. de Noce,
I tried to profit by the intimacy of those familiar conversations in
which women are sometimes caught off their guard to sound her, but I
could never learn what impertinence the viscount had exhibited towards
his aunt. His insolence must have been excessive, for since that time
Madame de Noce has refused to see her nephew, and up to the present
moment never hears him named without a slight movement of her
eyebrows. I did not at once guess the end at which the Comte de Noce
aimed, in inviting us to go shooting; but I discovered later that he
had played a pretty bold game.
Nevertheless, if you happen at last, like M. de Noce, to carry off a
decisive victory, do not forget to put into practice at once the
system of blisters; and do not for a moment imagine that such _tours
de force_ are to be repeated with safety. If that is the way you use
your talents, you will end by losing caste in your wife's estimation;
for she will demand of you, reasonably enough, double what you would
give her, and the time will come when you declare bankruptcy. The
human soul in its desires follows a sort of arithmetical progression,
the end and origin of which are equally unknown. Just as the
opium-eater must constantly increase his doses in order to obtain the
same result, so our mind, imperious as it is weak, desires that
feeling, ideas and objects should go on ever increasing in size and in
intensity. Hence the necessity of cleverly distributing the interest
in a dramatic work, and of graduating doses in medicine. Thus you see,
if you always resort to the employment of means like these, that you
must accommodate such daring measures to many circumstances, and
success will always depend upon the motives to which you appeal.
And finally, have you influence, powerful friends, an important post?
The last means I shall suggest cuts to the root of the evil. Would you
have the power to send your wife's lover off by securing his
promotion, or his change of residence by an exchange, if he is a
military man? You cut off by this means all communication between
them; later on we will show you how to do it; for _sublata causa
tollitur effectus_,--Latin words which may be freely translated "there
is no effect without a cause."
Nevertheless, you feel that your wife may easily choose another lover;
but in addition to these preliminary expedients, you will always have
a blister ready, in order to gain time, and calculate how you may
bring the affair to an end by fresh devices.
Study how to combine the system of blisters with the mimic wiles of
Carlin, the immortal Carlin of the _Comedie-Italienne_ who always held
and amused an audience for whole hours, by uttering the same words,
varied only by the art of pantomime and pronounced with a thousand
inflections of different tone,--"The queen said to the king!" Imitate
Carlin, discover some method of always keeping your wife in check, so
as not to be checkmated yourself. Take a degree among constitutional
ministers, a degree in the art of making promises. Habituate yourself
to show at seasonable times the punchinello which makes children run
after you without knowing the distance they run. We are all children,
and women are all inclined through their curiosity to spend their time
in pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp. The flame is brilliant and quickly
vanishes, but is not the imagination at hand to act as your ally?
Finally, study the happy art of being near her and yet not being near
her; of seizing the opportunity which will yield you pre-eminence in
her mind without ever crushing her with a sense of your superiority,
or even of her own happiness. If the ignorance in which you have kept
her does not altogether destroy her intellect, you must remain in such
relations with her that each of you will still desire the company of
the other.
MEDITATION XIV.
OF APARTMENTS.
The preceding methods and systems are in a way purely moral; they
share the nobility of the soul, there is nothing repulsive in them;
but now we must proceed to consider precautions _a la Bartholo_. Do
not give way to timidity. There is a marital courage, as there is a
civil and military courage, as there is the courage of the National
Guard.
What is the first course of a young girl after having purchased a
parrot? Is it not to fasten it up in a pretty cage, from which it
cannot get out without permission?
You may learn your duty from this child.
Everything that pertains to the arrangement of your house and of your
apartments should be planned so as not to give your wife any
advantage, in case she has decided to deliver you to the Minotaur;
half of all actual mischances are brought about by the deplorable
facilities which the apartments furnish.
Before everything else determine to have for your porter a _single
man_ entirely devoted to your person. This is a treasure easily to be
found. What husband is there throughout the world who has not either a
foster-father or some old servant, upon whose knees he has been
dandled! There ought to exist by means of your management, a hatred
like that of Artreus and Thyestes between your wife and this Nestor
--guardian of your gate. This gate is the Alpha and Omega of an
intrigue. May not all intrigues in love be confined in these words
--entering and leaving?
Your house will be of no use to you if it does not stand between a
court and a garden, and so constructed as to be detached from all
other buildings. You must abolish all recesses in your apartments. A
cupboard, if it contain but six pots of preserves, should be walled
in. You are preparing yourself for war, and the first thought of a
general is to cut his enemy off from supplies. Moreover, all the walls
must be smooth, in order to present to the eye lines which may be
taken in at a glance, and permit the immediate recognition of the
least strange object. If you consult the remains of antique monuments
you will see that the beauty of Greek and Roman apartments sprang
principally from the purity of their lines, the clear sweep of their
walls and scantiness of furniture. The Greeks would have smiled in
pity, if they had seen the gaps which our closets make in our
drawing-rooms.
This magnificent system of defence should above all be put in active
operation in the apartment of your wife; never let her curtain her bed
in such a way that one can walk round it amid a maze of hangings; be
inexorable in the matter of connecting passages, and let her chamber
be at the bottom of your reception-rooms, so as to show at a glance
those who come and go.
_The Marriage of Figaro_ will no doubt have taught you to put your
wife's chamber at a great height from the ground. All celibates are
Cherubins.
Your means, doubtless, will permit your wife to have a dressing-room,
a bath-room, and a room for her chambermaid. Think then on Susanne,
and never commit the fault of arranging this little room below that of
madame's, but place it always above, and do not shrink from
disfiguring your mansion by hideous divisions in the windows.
If, by ill luck, you see that this dangerous apartment communicates
with that of your wife by a back staircase, earnestly consult your
architect; let his genius exhaust itself in rendering this dangerous
staircase as innocent as the primitive garret ladder; we conjure you
let not this staircase have appended to it any treacherous
lurking-place; its stiff and angular steps must not be arranged with
that tempting curve which Faublas and Justine found so useful when
they waited for the exit of the Marquis de B-----. Architects nowadays
make such staircases as are absolutely preferable to ottomans. Restore
rather the virtuous garret steps of our ancestors.
Concerning the chimneys in the apartment of madame, you must take care
to place in the flue, five feet from the ground, an iron grill, even
though it be necessary to put up a fresh one every time the chimney is
swept. If your wife laughs at this precaution, suggest to her the
number of murders that have been committed by means of chimneys.
Almost all women are afraid of robbers. The bed is one of those
important pieces of furniture whose structure will demand long
consideration. Everything concerning it is of vital importance. The
following is the result of long experience in the construction of
beds. Give to this piece of furniture a form so original that it may
be looked upon without disgust, in the midst of changes of fashion
which succeed so rapidly in rendering antiquated the creations of
former decorators, for it is essential that your wife be unable to
change, at pleasure, this theatre of married happiness. The base
should be plain and massive and admit of no treacherous interval
between it and the floor; and bear in mind always that the Donna Julia
of Byron hid Don Juan under her pillow. But it would be ridiculous to
treat lightly so delicate a subject.
LXII.
The bed is the whole of marriage.
Moreover, we must not delay to direct your attention to this wonderful
creation of human genius, an invention which claims our recognition
much more than ships, firearms, matches, wheeled carriages, steam
engines of all kinds, more than even barrels and bottles. In the first
place, a little thought will convince us that this is all true of the
bed; but when we begin to think that it is our second father, that the
most tranquil and most agitated half of our existence is spent under
its protecting canopy, words fail in eulogizing it. (See Meditation
XVII, entitled "Theory of the Bed.")
When the war, of which we shall speak in our third part, breaks out
between you and madame, you will always have plenty of ingenious
excuses for rummaging in the drawers and escritoires; for if your wife
is trying to hide from you some statue of her adoration, it is your
interest to know where she has hidden it. A gyneceum, constructed on
the method described, will enable you to calculate at a glance,
whether there is present in it two pounds of silk more than usual.
Should a single closet be constructed there, you are a lost man! Above
all, accustom your wife, during the honeymoon, to bestow especial
pains in the neatness of her apartment; let nothing put off that. If
you do not habituate her to be minutely particular in this respect, if
the same objects are not always found in the same places, she will
allow things to become so untidy, that you will not be able to see
that there are two pounds of silk more or less in her room.
The curtains of your apartments ought to be of a stuff which is quite
transparent, and you ought to contract the habit in the evenings of
walking outside so that madame may see you come right up to the window
just out of absent-mindedness. In a word, with regard to windows, let
the sills be so narrow that even a sack of flour cannot be set up on
them.
If the apartment of your wife can be arranged on these principles, you
will be in perfect safety, even if there are niches enough there to
contain all the saints of Paradise. You will be able, every evening,
with the assistance of your porter, to strike the balance between the
entrances and exits of visitors; and, in order to obtain accurate
results, there is nothing to prevent your teaching him to keep a book
of visitors, in double entry.
If you have a garden, cultivate a taste for dogs, and always keep at
large one of these incorruptible guardians under your windows; you
will thus gain the respect of the Minotaur, especially if you accustom
your four-footed friend to take nothing substantial excepting from the
hand of your porter, so that hard-hearted celibates may not succeed in
poisoning him.
But all these precautions must be taken as a natural thing so that
they may not arouse suspicions. If husbands are so imprudent as to
neglect precautions from the moment they are married, they ought at
once to sell their house and buy another one, or, under the pretext of
repairs, alter their present house in the way prescribed.
You will without scruple banish from your apartment all sofas,
ottomans, lounges, sedan chairs and the like. In the first place, this
is the kind of furniture that adorns the homes of grocers, where they
are universally found, as they are in those of barbers; but they are
essentially the furniture of perdition; I can never see them without
alarm. It has always seemed to me that there the devil himself is
lurking with his horns and cloven foot.
After all, nothing is so dangerous as a chair, and it is extremely
unfortunate that women cannot be shut up within the four walls of a
bare room! What husband is there, who on sitting down on a rickety
chair is not always forced to believe that this chair has received
some of the lessons taught by the _Sofa_ of Crebillion junior? But
happily we have arranged your apartment on such a system of prevention
that nothing so fatal can happen, or, at any rate, not without your
contributory negligence.
One fault which you must contract, and which you must never correct,
will consist in a sort of heedless curiosity, which will make you
examine unceasingly all the boxes, and turn upside down the contents
of all dressing-cases and work-baskets. You must proceed to this
domiciliary visit in a humorous mood, and gracefully, so that each
time you will obtain pardon by exciting the amusement of your wife.
You must always manifest a most profound astonishment on noticing any
piece of furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointed
apartment. You must immediately make her explain to you the advantages
of the change; and then you must ransack your mind to discover whether
there be not some underhand motive in the transaction.
This is by no means all. You have too much sense to forget that your
pretty parrot will remain in her cage only so long as that cage is
beautiful. The least accessory of her apartment ought, therefore, to
breathe elegance and taste. The general appearance should always
present a simple, at the same time a charming picture. You must
constantly renew the hangings and muslin curtains. The freshness of
the decorations is too essential to permit of economy on this point.
It is the fresh chickweed each morning carefully put into the cage of
their birds, that makes their pets believe it is the verdure of the
meadows. An apartment of this character is then the _ultima ratio_ of
husbands; a wife has nothing to say when everything is lavished on
her.
Husbands who are condemned to live in rented apartments find
themselves in the most terrible situation possible. What happy or what
fatal influence cannot the porter exercise upon their lot?
Is not their home flanked on either side by other houses? It is true
that by placing the apartment of their wives on one side of the house
the danger is lessened by one-half; but are they not obliged to learn
by heart and to ponder the age, the condition, the fortune, the
character, the habits of the tenants of the next house and even to
know their friends and relations?
A husband will never take lodgings on the ground floor.
Every man, however, can apply in his apartments the precautionary
methods which we have suggested to the owner of a house, and thus the
tenant will have this advantage over the owner, that the apartment,
which is less spacious than the house, is more easily guarded.
MEDITATION XV.
OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE.
"But no, madame, no--"
"Yes, for there is such inconvenience in the arrangement."
"Do you think, madame, that we wish, as at the frontier, to watch the
visits of persons who cross the threshold of your apartments, or
furtively leave them, in order to see whether they bring to you
articles of contraband? That would not be proper; and there is nothing
odious in our proceeding, any more than there is anything of a fiscal
character; do not be alarmed."
The Custom House of the marriage state is, of all the expedients
prescribed in this second part, that which perhaps demands the most
tact and the most skill as well as the most knowledge acquired _a
priori_, that is to say before marriage. In order to carry it out, a
husband ought to have made a profound study of Lavater's book, and to
be imbued with all his principles; to have accustomed his eye to judge
and to apprehend with the most astonishing promptitude, the slightest
physical expressions by which a man reveals his thoughts.
Lavater's _Physiognomy_ originated a veritable science, which has won
a place in human investigation. If at first some doubts, some jokes
greeted the appearance of this book, since then the celebrated Doctor
Gall is come with his noble theory of the skull and has completed the
system of the Swiss savant, and given stability to his fine and
luminous observations. People of talent, diplomats, women, all those
who are numbered among the choice and fervent disciples of these two
celebrated men, have often had occasion to recognize many other
evident signs, by which the course of human thought is indicated. The
habits of the body, the handwriting, the sound of the voice, have
often betrayed the woman who is in love, the diplomat who is
attempting to deceive, the clever administrator, or the sovereign who
is compelled to distinguish at a glance love, treason or merit
hitherto unknown. The man whose soul operates with energy is like a
poor glowworm, which without knowing it irradiates light from every
pore. He moves in a brilliant sphere where each effort makes a burning
light and outlines his actions with long streamers of fire.
These, then, are all the elements of knowledge which you should
possess, for the conjugal custom house insists simply in being able by
a rapid but searching examination to know the moral and physical
condition of all who enter or leave your house--all, that is, who have
seen or intend to see your wife. A husband is, like a spider, set at
the centre of an invisible net, and receives a shock from the least
fool of a fly who touches it, and from a distance, hears, judges and
sees what is either his prey or his enemy.
Thus you must obtain means to examine the celibate who rings at your
door under two circumstances which are quite distinct, namely, when he
is about to enter and when he is inside.
At the moment of entering how many things does he utter without even
opening his mouth!
It may be by a slight wave of his hand, or by his plunging his fingers
many times into his hair, he sticks up or smoothes down his
characteristic bang.
Or he hums a French or an Italian air, merry or sad, in a voice which
may be either tenor, contralto, soprano or baritone.
Perhaps he takes care to see that the ends of his necktie are properly
adjusted.
Or he smoothes down the ruffles or front of his shirt or
evening-dress.
Or he tries to find out by a questioning and furtive glance whether
his wig, blonde or brown, curled or plain, is in its natural position.
Perhaps he looks at his nails to see whether they are clean and duly
cut.
Perhaps with a hand which is either white or untidy, well-gloved or
otherwise, he twirls his moustache, or his whiskers, or picks his
teeth with a little tortoise-shell toothpick.
Or by slow and repeated movements he tries to place his chin exactly
over the centre of his necktie.
Or perhaps he crosses one foot over the other, putting his hands in
his pockets.
Or perhaps he gives a twist to his shoe, and looks at it as if he
thought, "Now, there's a foot that is not badly formed."
Or according as he has come on foot or in a carriage, he rubs off or
he does not rub off the slight patches of mud which soil his shoes.
Or perhaps he remains as motionless as a Dutchman smoking his pipe.
Or perhaps he fixes his eyes on the door and looks like a soul escaped
from Purgatory and waiting for Saint Peter with the keys.
Perhaps he hesitates to pull the bell; perhaps he seizes it
negligently, precipitately, familiarly, or like a man who is quite
sure of himself.
Perhaps he pulls it timidly, producing a faint tinkle which is lost in
the silence of the apartments, as the first bell of matins in
winter-time, in a convent of Minims; or perhaps after having rung with
energy, he rings again impatient that the footman has not heard him.
Perhaps he exhales a delicate scent, as he chews a pastille.
Perhaps with a solemn air he takes a pinch of snuff, brushing off with
care the grains that might mar the whiteness of his linen.
Perhaps he looks around like a man estimating the value of the
staircase lamp, the balustrade, the carpet, as if he were a furniture
dealer or a contractor.
Perhaps this celibate seems a young or an old man, is cold or hot,
arrives slowly, with an expression of sadness or merriment, etc.
You see that here, at the very foot of your staircase, you are met by
an astonishing mass of things to observe.
The light pencil-strokes, with which we have tried to outline this
figure, will suggest to you what is in reality a moral kaleidoscope
with millions of variations. And yet we have not even attempted to
bring any woman on to the threshold which reveals so much; for in that
case our remarks, already considerable in number, would have been
countless and light as the grains of sand on the seashore.
For as a matter of fact, when he stands before the shut door, a man
believes that he is quite alone; and he would have no hesitation in
beginning a silent monologue, a dreamy soliloquy, in which he revealed
his desires, his intentions, his personal qualities, his faults, his
virtues, etc.; for undoubtedly a man on a stoop is exactly like a
young girl of fifteen at confession, the evening before her first
communion.
Do you want any proof of this? Notice the sudden change of face and
manner in this celibate from the very moment he steps within the
house. No machinist in the Opera, no change in the temperature in the
clouds or in the sun can more suddenly transform the appearance of a
theatre, the effect of the atmosphere, or the scenery of the heavens.
On reaching the first plank of your antechamber, instead of betraying
with so much innocence the myriad thoughts which were suggested to you
on the steps, the celibate has not a single glance to which you could
attach any significance. The mask of social convention wraps with its
thick veil his whole bearing; but a clever husband must already have
divined at a single look the object of his visit, and he reads the
soul of the new arrival as if it were a printed book.
The manner in which he approaches your wife, in which he addresses
her, looks at her, greets her and retires--there are volumes of
observations, more or less trifling, to be made on these subjects.
The tone of his voice, his bearing, his awkwardness, it may be his
smile, even his gloom, his avoidance of your eye,--all are
significant, all ought to be studied, but without apparent attention.
You ought to conceal the most disagreeable discovery you may make by
an easy manner and remarks such as are ready at hand to a man of
society. As we are unable to detail the minutiae of this subject we
leave them entirely to the sagacity of the reader, who must by this
time have perceived the drift of our investigation, as well as the
extent of this science which begins at the analysis of glances and
ends in the direction of such movements as contempt may inspire in a
great toe hidden under the satin of a lady's slipper or the leather of
a man's boot.
But the exit!--for we must allow for occasions where you have omitted
your rigid scrutiny at the threshold of the doorway, and in that case
the exit becomes of vital importance, and all the more so because this
fresh study of the celibate ought to be made on the same lines, but
from an opposite point of view, from that which we have already
outlined.
In the exit the situation assumes a special gravity; for then is the
moment in which the enemy has crossed all the intrenchments within
which he was subject to our examination and has escaped into the
street! At this point a man of understanding when he sees a visitor
passing under the _porte-cochere_ should be able to divine the import
of the whole visit. The indications are indeed fewer in number, but
how distinct is their character! The denouement has arrived and the
man instantly betrays the importance of it by the frankest expression
of happiness, pain or joy.
These revelations are therefore easy to apprehend; they appear in the
glance cast either at the building or at the windows of the apartment;
in a slow or loitering gait, in the rubbing of hands, on the part of a
fool, in the bounding gait of a coxcomb, or the involuntary arrest of
his footsteps, which marks the man who is deeply moved; in a word, you
see upon the stoop certain questions as clearly proposed to you as if
a provincial academy had offered a hundred crowns for an essay; but in
the exit you behold the solution of these questions clearly and
precisely given to you. Our task would be far above the power of human
intelligence if it consisted in enumerating the different ways by
which men betray their feelings, the discernment of such things is
purely a matter of tact and sentiment.
If strangers are the subject of these principles of observation, you
have a still stronger reason for submitting your wife to the formal
safeguards which we have outlined.
A married man should make a profound study of his wife's countenance.
Such a study is easy, it is even involuntary and continuous. For him
the pretty face of his wife must needs contain no mysteries, he knows
how her feelings are depicted there and with what expression she shuns
the fire of his glance.
The slightest movement of the lips, the faintest contraction of the
nostrils, scarcely perceptible changes in the expression of the eye,
an altered voice, and those indescribable shades of feeling which pass
over her features, or the light which sometimes bursts forth from
them, are intelligible language to you.
The whole woman nature stands before you; all look at her, but none
can interpret her thoughts. But for you, the eye is more or less
dimmed, wide-opened or closed; the lid twitches, the eyebrow moves; a
wrinkle, which vanishes as quickly as a ripple on the ocean, furrows
her brow for one moment; the lip tightens, it is slightly curved or it
is wreathed with animation--for you the woman has spoken.
If in those puzzling moments in which a woman tries dissimulation in
presence of her husband, you have the spirit of a sphinx in seeing
through her, you will plainly observe that your custom-house
restrictions are mere child's play to her.
When she comes home or goes out, when in a word she believes she is
alone, your wife will exhibit all the imprudence of a jackdaw and will
tell her secret aloud to herself; moreover, by her sudden change of
expression the moment she notices you (and despite the rapidity of
this change, you will not fail to have observed the expression she
wore behind your back) you may read her soul as if you were reading a
book of Plain Song. Moreover, your wife will often find herself just
on the point of indulging in soliloquies, and on such occasions her
husband may recognize the secret feelings of his wife.
Is there a man as heedless of love's mysteries as not to have admired,
over and over again, the light, mincing, even bewitching gait of a
woman who flies on her way to keep an assignation? She glides through
the crowd, like a snake through the grass. The costumes and stuffs of
the latest fashion spread out their dazzling attractions in the shop
windows without claiming her attention; on, on she goes like the
faithful animal who follows the invisible tracks of his master; she is
deaf to all compliments, blind to all glances, insensible even to the
light touch of the crowd, which is inevitable amid the circulation of
Parisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her
gait, her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a
thousand indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents
to the idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to
read, is the face of this woman when she returns from the secret place
of rendezvous in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness is
impressed even on the unmistakable disarray of her hair, the mass of
whose wavy tresses has not received from the broken comb of the
celibate that radiant lustre, that elegant and well-proportioned
adjustment which only the practiced hand of her maid can give. And
what charming ease appears in her gait! How is it possible to describe
the emotion which adds such rich tints to her complexion!--which robs
her eyes of all their assurance and gives to them an expression of
mingled melancholy and delight, of shame which is yet blended with
pride!
These observations, stolen from our Meditation, _Of the Last
Symptoms_, and which are really suggested by the situation of a woman
who tries to conceal everything, may enable you to divine by analogy
the rich crop of observation which is left for you to harvest when
your wife arrives home, or when, without having committed the great
crime she innocently lets out the secrets of her thoughts. For our own
part we never see a landing without wishing to set up there a
mariner's card and a weather-cock.
As the means to be employed for constructing a sort of domestic
observatory depend altogether on places and circumstances, we must
leave to the address of a jealous husband the execution of the methods
suggested in this Meditation.
MEDITATION XVI.
THE CHARTER OF MARRIAGE.
I acknowledge that I really know of but one house in Paris which is
managed in accordance with the system unfolded in the two preceding
Meditations. But I ought to add, also, that I have built up my system
on the example of that house. The admirable fortress I allude to
belonged to a young councillor of state, who was mad with love and
jealousy.
As soon as he learned that there existed a man who was exclusively
occupied in bringing to perfection the institution of marriage in
France, he had the generosity to open the doors of his mansion to me
and to show me his gyneceum. I admired the profound genius which so
cleverly disguised the precautions of almost oriental jealousy under
the elegance of furniture, beauty of carpets and brightness of painted
decorations. I agreed with him that it was impossible for his wife to
render his home a scene of treachery.
"Sir," said I, to this Othello of the council of state who did not
seem to me peculiarly strong in the _haute politique_ of marriage, "I
have no doubt that the viscountess is delighted to live in this little
Paradise; she ought indeed to take prodigious pleasure in it,
especially if you are here often. But the time will come when she will
have had enough of it; for, my dear sir, we grow tired of everything,
even of the sublime. What will you do then, when madame, failing to
find in all your inventions their primitive charm, shall open her
mouth in a yawn, and perhaps make a request with a view to the
exercise of two rights, both of which are indispensable to her
happiness: individual liberty, that is, the privilege of going and
coming according to the caprice of her will; and the liberty of the
press, that is, the privilege of writing and receiving letters without
fear of your censure?"
Scarcely had I said these words when the Vicomte de V----- grasped my
arm tightly and cried:
"Yes, such is the ingratitude of woman! If there is any thing more
ungrateful than a king, it is a nation; but, sir, woman is more
ungrateful than either of them. A married woman treats us as the
citizens of a constitutional monarchy treat their king; every measure
has been taken to give these citizens a life of prosperity in a
prosperous country; the government has taken all the pains in the
world with its gendarmes, its churches, its ministry and all the
paraphernalia of its military forces, to prevent the people from dying
of hunger, to light the cities by gas at the expense of the citizens,
to give warmth to every one by means of the sun which shines at the
forty-fifth degree of latitude, and to forbid every one, excepting the
tax-gatherers, to ask for money; it has labored hard to give to all
the main roads a more or less substantial pavement--but none of these
advantages of our fair Utopia is appreciated! The citizens want
something else. They are not ashamed to demand the right of traveling
over the roads at their own will, and of being informed where that
money given to the tax-gatherers goes. And, finally, the monarch will
soon be obliged, if we pay any attention to the chatter of certain
scribblers, to give to every individual a share in the throne or to
adopt certain revolutionary ideas, which are mere Punch and Judy shows
for the public, manipulated by a band of self-styled patriots,
riff-raff, always ready to sell their conscience for a million francs,
for an honest woman, or for a ducal coronet."
"But, monsieur," I said, interrupting him, "while I perfectly agree
with you on this last point, the question remains, how will you escape
giving an answer to the just demands of your wife?"
"Sir" he replied, "I shall do--I shall answer as the government
answers, that is, those governments which are not so stupid as the
opposition would make out to their constituents. I shall begin by
solemnly interdicting any arrangement, by virtue of which my wife will
be declared entirely free. I fully recognize her right to go wherever
it seems good to her, to write to whom she chooses, and to receive
letters, the contents of which I do not know. My wife shall have all
the rights that belong to an English Parliament; I shall let her talk
as much as she likes, discuss and propose strong and energetic
measures, but without the power to put them into execution, and then
after that--well, we shall see!"
"By St. Joseph!" said I to myself, "Here is a man who understands the
science of marriage as well as I myself do. And then, you will see,
sir," I answered aloud, in order to obtain from him the fullest
revelation of his experience; "you will see, some fine morning, that
you are as big a fool as the next man."
"Sir," he gravely replied, "allow me to finish what I was saying. Here
is what the great politicians call a theory, but in practice they can
make that theory vanish in smoke; and ministers possess in a greater
degree than even the lawyers of Normandy, the art of making fact yield
to fancy. M. de Metternich and M. de Pilat, men of the highest
authority, have been for a long time asking each other whether Europe
is in its right senses, whether it is dreaming, whether it knows
whither it is going, whether it has ever exercised its reason, a thing
impossible on the part of the masses, of nations and of women. M. de
Metternich and M. de Pilat are terrified to see this age carried away
by a passion for constitutions, as the preceding age was by the
passion for philosophy, as that of Luther was for a reform of abuses
in the Roman religion; for it truly seems as if different generations
of men were like those conspirators whose actions are directed to the
same end, as soon as the watchword has been given them. But their
alarm is a mistake, and it is on this point alone that I condemn them,
for they are right in their wish to enjoy power without permitting the
middle class to come on a fixed day from the depth of each of their
six kingdoms, to torment them. How could men of such remarkable talent
fail to divine that the constitutional comedy has in it a moral of
profound meaning, and to see that it is the very best policy to give
the age a bone to exercise its teeth upon! I think exactly as they do
on the subject of sovereignty. A power is a moral being as much
interested as a man is in self-preservation. This sentiment of
self-preservation is under the control of an essential principle which
may be expressed in three words--_to lose nothing_. But in order to
lose nothing, a power must grow or remain indefinite, for a power which
remains stationary is nullified. If it retrogrades, it is under the
control of something else, and loses its independent existence. I am
quite as well aware, as are those gentlemen, in what a false position
an unlimited power puts itself by making concessions; it allows to
another power whose essence is to expand a place within its own sphere
of activity. One of them will necessarily nullify the other, for every
existing thing aims at the greatest possible development of its own
forces. A power, therefore, never makes concessions which it does not
afterwards seek to retract. This struggle between two powers is the
basis on which stands the balance of government, whose elasticity so
mistakenly alarmed the patriarch of Austrian diplomacy, for comparing
comedy with comedy the least perilous and the most advantageous
administration is found in the seesaw system of the English and of the
French politics. These two countries have said to the people, 'You are
free;' and the people have been satisfied; they enter the government
like the zeros which give value to the unit. But if the people wish to
take an active part in the government, immediately they are treated,
like Sancho Panza, on that occasion when the squire, having become
sovereign over an island on terra firma, made an attempt at dinner to
eat the viands set before him.
"Now we ought to parody this admirable scene in the management of our
homes. Thus, my wife has a perfect right to go out, provided she tell
me where she is going, how she is going, what is the business she is
engaged in when she is out and at what hour she will return. Instead
of demanding this information with the brutality of the police, who
will doubtless some day become perfect, I take pains to speak to her
in the most gracious terms. On my lips, in my eyes, in my whole
countenance, an expression plays, which indicates both curiosity and
indifference, seriousness and pleasantry, harshness and tenderness.
These little conjugal scenes are so full of vivacity, of tact and
address that it is a pleasure to take part in them. The very day on
which I took from the head of my wife the wreath of orange blossoms
which she wore, I understood that we were playing at a royal
coronation--the first scene in a comic pantomime!--I have my
gendarmes!--I have my guard royal!--I have my attorney general--that I
do!" he continued enthusiastically. "Do you think that I would allow
madame to go anywhere on foot unaccompanied by a lackey in livery? Is
not that the best style? Not to count the pleasure she takes in saying
to everybody, 'I have my people here.' It has always been a
conservative principle of mine that my times of exercise should
coincide with those of my wife, and for two years I have proved to her
that I take an ever fresh pleasure in giving her my arm. If the
weather is not suitable for walking, I try to teach her how to drive
with success a frisky horse; but I swear to you that I undertake this
in such a manner that she does not learn very quickly!--If either by
chance, or prompted by a deliberate wish, she takes measures to escape
without a passport, that is to say, alone in the carriage, have I not
a driver, a footman, a groom? My wife, therefore, go where she will,
takes with her a complete _Santa Hermandad_, and I am perfectly easy
in mind--But, my dear sir, there is abundance of means by which to
annul the charter of marriage by our manner of fulfilling it! I have
remarked that the manners of high society induce a habit of idleness
which absorbs half of the life of a woman without permitting her to
feel that she is alive. For my part, I have formed the project of
dexterously leading my wife along, up to her fortieth year, without
letting her think of adultery, just as poor Musson used to amuse
himself in leading some simple fellow from the Rue Saint-Denis to
Pierrefitte without letting him think that he had left the shadows of
St. Lew's tower."
"How is it," I said, interrupting him, "that you have hit upon those
admirable methods of deception which I was intending to describe in a
Meditation entitled _The Act of Putting Death into Life!_ Alas! I
thought I was the first man to discover that science. The epigrammatic
title was suggested to me by an account which a young doctor gave me
of an excellent composition of Crabbe, as yet unpublished. In this
work, the English poet has introduced a fantastic being called _Life
in Death_. This personage crosses the oceans of the world in pursuit
of a living skeleton called _Death in Life_--I recollect at the time
very few people, among the guests of a certain elegant translator of
English poetry, understood the mystic meaning of a fable as true as it
was fanciful. Myself alone, perhaps, as I sat buried in silence,
thought of the whole generations which as they were hurried along by
life, passed on their way without living. Before my eyes rose faces of
women by the million, by the myriad, all dead, all disappointed and
shedding tears of despair, as they looked back upon the lost moments
of their ignorant youth. In the distance I saw a playful Meditation
rise to birth, I heard the satanic laughter which ran through it, and
now you doubtless are about to kill it.--But come, tell me in
confidence what means you have discovered by which to assist a woman
to squander the swift moments during which her beauty is at its full
flower and her desires at their full strength.--Perhaps you have some
stratagems, some clever devices, to describe to me--"
The viscount began to laugh at this literary disappointment of mine,
and he said to me, with a self-satisfied air:
"My wife, like all the young people of our happy century, has been
accustomed, for three or four consecutive years, to press her fingers
on the keys of a piano, a long-suffering instrument. She has hammered
out Beethoven, warbled the airs of Rossini and run through the
exercises of Crammer. I had already taken pains to convince her of the
excellence of music; to attain this end, I have applauded her, I have
listened without yawning to the most tiresome sonatas in the world,
and I have at last consented to give her a box at the Bouffons. I have
thus gained three quiet evenings out of the seven which God has
created in the week. I am the mainstay of the music shops. At Paris
there are drawing-rooms which exactly resemble the musical snuff-boxes
of Germany. They are a sort of continuous orchestra to which I
regularly go in search of that surfeit of harmony which my wife calls
a concert. But most part of the time my wife keeps herself buried in
her music-books--"
"But, my dear sir, do you not recognize the danger that lies in
cultivating in a woman a taste for singing, and allowing her to yield
to all the excitements of a sedentary life? It is only less dangerous
to make her feed on mutton and drink cold water."
"My wife never eats anything but the white meat of poultry, and I
always take care that a ball shall come after a concert and a
reception after an Opera! I have also succeeded in making her lie down
between one and two in the day. Ah! my dear sir, the benefits of this
nap are incalculable! In the first place each necessary pleasure is
accorded as a favor, and I am considered to be constantly carrying out
my wife's wishes. And then I lead her to imagine, without saying a
single word, that she is being constantly amused every day from six
o'clock in the evening, the time of our dinner and of her toilet,
until eleven o'clock in the morning, the time when we get up."
"Ah! sir, how grateful you ought to be for a life which is so
completely filled up!"
"I have scarcely more than three dangerous hours a day to pass; but
she has, of course, sonatas to practice and airs to go over, and there
are always rides in the Bois de Boulogne, carriages to try, visits to
pay, etc. But this is not all. The fairest ornament of a woman is the
most exquisite cleanliness. A woman cannot be too particular in this
respect, and no pains she takes can be laughed at. Now her toilet has
also suggested to me a method of thus consuming the best hours of the
day in bathing."
"How lucky I am in finding a listener like you!" I cried; "truly, sir,
you could waste for her four hours a day, if only you were willing to
teach her an art quite unknown to the most fastidious of our modern
fine ladies. Why don't you enumerate to the viscountess the
astonishing precautions manifest in the Oriental luxury of the Roman
dames? Give her the names of the slaves merely employed for the bath
in Poppea's palace: the _unctores_, the _fricatores_, the
_alipilarili_, the _dropacistae_, the _paratiltriae_, the
_picatrices_, the _tracatrices_, the swan whiteners, and all the rest.
--Talk to her about this multitude of slaves whose names are given by
Mirabeau in his _Erotika Biblion_. If she tries to secure the services
of all these people you will have the fine times of quietness, not to
speak of the personal satisfaction which will redound to you yourself
from the introduction into your house of the system invented by these
illustrious Romans, whose hair, artistically arranged, was deluged
with perfumes, whose smallest vein seemed to have acquired fresh blood
from the myrrh, the lint, the perfume, the douches, the flowers of the
bath, all of which were enjoyed to the strains of voluptuous music."
"Ah! sir," continued the husband, who was warming to his subject, "can
I not find also admirable pretexts in my solicitude for her heath? Her
health, so dear and precious to me, forces me to forbid her going out
in bad weather, and thus I gain a quarter of the year. And I have also
introduced the charming custom of kissing when either of us goes out,
this parting kiss being accompanied with the words, 'My sweet angel, I
am going out.' Finally, I have taken measures for the future to make
my wife as truly a prisoner in the house as the conscript in his
sentry box! For I have inspired her with an incredible enthusiasm for
the sacred duties of maternity."
"You do it by opposing her?" I asked.
"You have guessed it," he answered, laughing. "I have maintained to
her that it is impossible for a woman of the world to discharge her
duties towards society, to manage her household, to devote herself to
fashion, as well as to the wishes of her husband, whom she loves, and,
at the same time, to rear children. She then avers that, after the
example of Cato, who wished to see how the nurse changed the swaddling
bands of the infant Pompey, she would never leave to others the least
of the services required in shaping the susceptible minds and tender
bodies of these little creatures whose education begins in the cradle.
You understand, sir, that my conjugal diplomacy would not be of much
service to me unless, after having put my wife in solitary
confinement, I did not also employ a certain harmless machiavelism,
which consists in begging her to do whatever she likes, and asking her
advice in every circumstance and on every contingency. As this
delusive liberty has entirely deceived a creature so high-minded as
she is, I have taken pains to stop at no sacrifice which would
convince Madame de V----- that she is the freest woman in Paris; and,
in order to attain this end, I take care not to commit those gross
political blunders into which our ministers so often fall."
"I can see you," said I, "when you wish to cheat your wife out of some
right granted her by the charter, I can see you putting on a mild and
deliberate air, hiding your dagger under a bouquet of roses, and as
you plunge it cautiously into her heart, saying to her with a friendly
voice, 'My darling, does it hurt?' and she, like those on whose toes
you tread in a crowd, will probably reply, 'Not in the least.'"
He could not restrain a laugh and said:
"Won't my wife be astonished at the Last Judgment?"
"I scarcely know," I replied, "whether you or she will be most
astonished."
The jealous man frowned, but his face resumed its calmness as I added:
"I am truly grateful, sir, to the chance which has given me the
pleasure of your acquaintance. Without the assistance of your remarks
I should have been less successful than you have been in developing
certain ideas which we possess in common. I beg of you that you will
give me leave to publish this conversation. Statements which you and I
find pregnant with high political conceptions, others perhaps will
think characterized by more or less cutting irony, and I shall pass
for a clever fellow in the eyes of both parties."
While I thus tried to express my thanks to the viscount (the first
husband after my heart that I had met with), he took me once more
through his apartments, where everything seemed to be beyond
criticism.
I was about to take leave of him, when opening the door of a little
boudoir he showed me a room with an air which seemed to say, "Is there
any way by which the least irregularity should occur without my seeing
it?"
I replied to this silent interrogation by an inclination of the head,
such as guests make to their Amphytrion when they taste some
exceptionally choice dish.
"My whole system," he said to me in a whisper, "was suggested to me by
three words which my father heard Napoleon pronounce at a crowded
council of state, when divorce was the subject of conversation.
'Adultery,' he exclaimed, 'is merely a matter of opportunity!' See,
then, I have changed these accessories of crime, so that they become
spies," added the councillor, pointing out to me a divan covered with
tea-colored cashmere, the cushions of which were slightly pressed.
"Notice that impression,--I learn from it that my wife has had a
headache, and has been reclining there."
We stepped toward the divan, and saw the word FOOL lightly traced upon
the fatal cushion, by four
Things that I know not, plucked by lover's hand
From Cypris' orchard, where the fairy band
Are dancing, once by nobles thought to be
Worthy an order of new chivalry,
A brotherhood, wherein, with script of gold,
More mortal men than gods should be enrolled.
"Nobody in my house has black hair!" said the husband, growing pale.
I hurried away, for I was seized with an irresistible fit of laughter,
which I could not easily overcome.
"That man has met his judgment day!" I said to myself; "all the
barriers by which he has surrounded her have only been instrumental in
adding to the intensity of her pleasures!"
This idea saddened me. The adventure destroyed from summit to
foundation three of my most important Meditations, and the catholic
infallibility of my book was assailed in its most essential point. I
would gladly have paid to establish the fidelity of the Viscountess
V----- a sum as great as very many people would have offered to secure
her surrender. But alas! my money will now be kept by me.
Three days afterwards I met the councillor in the foyer of the
Italiens. As soon as he saw me he rushed up. Impelled by a sort of
modesty I tried to avoid him, but grasping my arm: "Ah! I have just
passed three cruel days," he whispered in my ear. "Fortunately my wife
is as innocent as perhaps a new-born babe--"
"You have already told me that the viscountess was extremely
ingenious," I said, with unfeeling gaiety.
"Oh!" he said, "I gladly take a joke this evening; for this morning I
had irrefragable proofs of my wife's fidelity. I had risen very early
to finish a piece of work for which I had been rushed, and in looking
absently in my garden, I suddenly saw the _valet de chambre_ of a
general, whose house is next to mine, climbing over the wall. My
wife's maid, poking her head from the vestibule, was stroking my dog
and covering the retreat of the gallant. I took my opera glass and
examined the intruder--his hair was jet black!--Ah! never have I seen
a Christian face that gave me more delight! And you may well believe
that during the day all my perplexities vanished. So, my dear sir," he
continued, "if you marry, let your dog loose and put broken bottles
over the top of your walls."
"And did the viscountess perceive your distress during these three
days?
"Do you take me for a child?" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I
have never been so merry in all my life as I have been since we met."
"You are a great man unrecognized," I cried, "and you are not--"
He did not permit me to conclude; for he had disappeared on seeing one
of his friends who approached as if to greet the viscountess.
Now what can we add that would not be a tedious paraphrase of the
lessons suggested by this conversation? All is included in it, either
as seed or fruit. Nevertheless, you see, O husband! that your
happiness hangs on a hair.
MEDITATION XVII.
THE THEORY OF THE BED.
It was about seven o'clock in the evening. They were seated upon the
academic armchairs, which made a semi-circle round a huge hearth, on
which a coal fire was burning fitfully--symbol of the burning subject
of their important deliberations. It was easy to guess, on seeing the
grave but earnest faces of all the members of this assembly, that they
were called upon to pronounce sentence upon the life, the fortunes and
the happiness of people like themselves. They had no commission
excepting that of their conscience, and they gathered there as the
assessors of an ancient and mysterious tribunal; but they represented
interests much more important than those of kings or of peoples; they
spoke in the name of the passions and on behalf of the happiness of
the numberless generations which should succeed them.
The grandson of the celebrated Boulle was seated before a round table
on which were placed the criminal exhibits which had been collected
with remarkable intelligence. I, the insignificant secretary of the
meeting, occupied a place at this desk, where it was my office to take
down a report of the meeting.
"Gentlemen," said an old man, "the first question upon which we have
to deliberate is found clearly stated in the following passage of a
letter. The letter was written to the Princess of Wales, Caroline of
Anspach, by the widow of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV,
mother of the Regent: 'The Queen of Spain has a method of making her
husband say exactly what she wishes. The king is a religious man; he
believes that he will be damned if he touched any woman but his wife,
and still this excellent prince is of a very amorous temperament. Thus
the queen obtains her every wish. She has placed castors on her
husband's bed. If he refuses her anything, she pushes the bed away. If
he grants her request, the beds stand side by side, and she admits him
into hers. And so the king is highly delighted, since he likes -----'
I will not go any further, gentlemen, for the virtuous frankness of
the German princess might in this assembly be charged with
immorality."
Should wise husbands adopt these beds on castors? This is the problem
which we have to solve.
The unanimity of the vote left no doubt about the opinion of the
assembly. I was ordered to inscribe in the records, that if two
married people slept on two separate beds in the same room the beds
ought not to be set on castors.
"With this proviso," put in one of the members, "that the present
decision should have no bearing on any subsequent ruling upon the best
arrangement of the beds of married people."
The president passed to me a choicely bound volume, in which was
contained the original edition, published in 1788, of the letters of
Charlotte Elizabeth de Baviere, widow of the Duke of Orleans, the only
brother of Louis XIV, and, while I was transcribing the passage
already quoted, he said:
"But, gentlemen, you must all have received at your houses the
notification in which the second question is stated."
"I rise to make an observation," exclaimed the youngest of the jealous
husbands there assembled.
The president took his seat with a gesture of assent.
"Gentlemen," said the young husband, "are we quite prepared to
deliberate upon so grave a question as that which is presented by the
universally bad arrangement of the beds? Is there not here a much
wider question than that of mere cabinet-making to decide? For my own
part I see in it a question which concerns that of universal human
intellect. The mysteries of conception, gentlemen, are still enveloped
in a darkness which modern science has but partially dissipated. We do
not know how far external circumstances influence the microscopic
beings whose discovery is due to the unwearied patience of Hill,
Baker, Joblot, Eichorn, Gleichen, Spallanzani, and especially of
Muller, and last of all of M. Bory de Saint Vincent. The imperfections
of the bed opens up a musical question of the highest importance, and
for my part I declare I shall write to Italy to obtain clear
information as to the manner in which beds are generally arranged. We
do not know whether there are in the Italian bed numerous curtain
rods, screws and castors, or whether the construction of beds is in
this country more faulty than everywhere else, or whether the dryness
of timber in Italy, due to the influence of the sun, does not _ab ovo_
produce the harmony, the sense of which is to so large an extent
innate in Italians. For these reasons I move that we adjourn."
"What!" cried a gentleman from the West, impatiently rising to his
feet, "are we here to dilate upon the advancement of music? What we
have to consider first of all is manners, and the moral question is
paramount in this discussion."
"Nevertheless," remarked one of the most influential members of the
council, "the suggestion of the former speaker is not in my opinion to
be passed by. In the last century, gentlemen, Sterne, one of the
writers most philosophically delightful and most delightfully
philosophic, complained of the carelessness with which human beings
were procreated; 'Shame!' he cried 'that he who copies the divine
physiognomy of man receives crowns and applause, but he who achieves
the masterpiece, the prototype of mimic art, feels that like virtue he
must be his own reward.'
"Ought we not to feel more interest in the improvement of the human
race than in that of horses? Gentlemen, I passed through a little town
of Orleanais where the whole population consisted of hunchbacks, of
glum and gloomy people, veritable children of sorrow, and the remark
of the former speaker caused me to recollect that all the beds were in
a very bad condition and the bedchambers presented nothing to the eyes
of the married couple but what was hideous and revolting. Ah!
gentlemen, how is it possible that our minds should be in an ideal
state, when instead of the music of angels flying here and there in
the bosom of that heaven to which we have attained, our ears are
assailed by the most detestable, the most angry, the most piercing of
human cries and lamentations? We are perhaps indebted for the fine
geniuses who have honored humanity to beds which are solidly
constructed; and the turbulent population which caused the French
Revolution were conceived perhaps upon a multitude of tottering
couches, with twisted and unstable legs; while the Orientals, who are
such a beautiful race, have a unique method of making their beds. I
vote for the adjournment."
And the gentleman sat down.
A man belonging to the sect of Methodists arose. "Why should we change
the subject of debate? We are not dealing here with the improvement of
the race nor with the perfecting of the work. We must not lose sight
of the interests of the jealous husband and the principles on which
moral soundness is based. Don't you know that the noise of which you
complain seems more terrible to the wife uncertain of her crime, than
the trumpet of the Last Judgment? Can you forget that a suit for
infidelity could never be won by a husband excepting through this
conjugal noise? I will undertake, gentlemen, to refer to the divorces
of Lord Abergavenny, of Viscount Bolingbroke, of the late Queen
Caroline, of Eliza Draper, of Madame Harris, in fact, of all those who
are mentioned in the twenty volumes published by--." (The secretary
did not distinctly hear the name of the English publisher.)
The motion to adjourn was carried. The youngest member proposed to
make up a purse for the author producing the best dissertation
addressed to the society upon a subject which Sterne considered of
such importance; but at the end of the seance eighteen shillings was
the total sum found in the hat of the president.
The above debate of the society, which had recently been formed in
London for the improvement of manners and of marriage and which Lord
Byron scoffed at, was transmitted to us by the kindness of W. Hawkins,
Esq., cousin-german of the famous Captain Clutterbuck. The extract may
serve to solve any difficulties which may occur in the theory of bed
construction.
But the author of the book considers that the English society has
given too much importance to this preliminary question. There exists
in fact quite as many reasons for being a _Rossinist_ as for being a
_Solidist_ in the matter of beds, and the author acknowledges that it
is either beneath or above him to solve this difficulty. He thinks
with Laurence Sterne that it is a disgrace to European civilization
that there exist so few physiological observations on callipedy, and
he refuses to state the results of his Meditations on this subject,
because it would be difficult to formulate them in terms of prudery,
and they would be but little understood, and misinterpreted. Such
reserve produces an hiatus in this part of the book; but the author
has the pleasant satisfaction of leaving a fourth work to be
accomplished by the next century, to which he bequeaths the legacy of
all that he has not accomplished, a negative munificence which may
well be followed by all those who may be troubled by an overplus of
ideas.
The theory of the bed presents questions much more important than
those put forth by our neighbors with regard to castors and the
murmurs of criminal conversation.
We know only three ways in which a bed (in the general sense of this
term) may be arranged among civilized nations, and particularly among
the privileged classes to whom this book is addressed. These three
ways are as follows:
1. TWIN BEDS.
2. SEPARATE ROOMS.
3. ONE BED FOR BOTH.
Before applying ourselves to the examination of these three methods of
living together, which must necessarily have different influences upon
the happiness of husbands and wives, we must take a rapid survey of
the practical object served by the bed and the part it plays in the
political economy of human existence.
The most incontrovertible principle which can be laid down in this
matter is, _that the bed was made to sleep upon_.
It would be easy to prove that the practice of sleeping together was
established between married people but recently, in comparison with
the antiquity of marriage.
By what reasonings has man arrived at that point in which he brought
in vogue a practice so fatal to happiness, to health, even to
_amour-propre_? Here we have a subject which it would be curious to
investigate.
If you knew one of your rivals who had discovered a method of placing
you in a position of extreme absurdity before the eyes of those who
were dearest to you--for instance, while you had your mouth crooked
like that of a theatrical mask, or while your eloquent lips, like the
copper faucet of a scanty fountain, dripped pure water--you would
probably stab him. This rival is sleep. Is there a man in the world
who knows how he appears to others, and what he does when he is
asleep?
In sleep we are living corpses, we are the prey of an unknown power
which seizes us in spite of ourselves, and shows itself in the oddest
shapes; some have a sleep which is intellectual, while the sleep of
others is mere stupor.
There are some people who slumber with their mouths open in the
silliest fashion.
There are others who snore loud enough to make the timbers shake.
Most people look like the impish devils that Michael Angelo
sculptured, putting out their tongues in silent mockery of the
passers-by.
The only person I know of in the world who sleeps with a noble air is
Agamemnon, whom Guerin has represented lying on his bed at the moment
when Clytemnestra, urged by Egisthus, advances to slay him. Moreover,
I have always had an ambition to hold myself on my pillow as the king
of kings Agamemnon holds himself, from the day that I was seized with
dread of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those of
Providence. In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse
snorting in her sleep "like a whale," to use a slang expression, I
have added a petition to the special litany which I address to
Saint-Honore, my patron saint, to the effect that he would save me
from indulging in this sort of eloquence.
When a man wakes up in the morning, his drowsy face grotesquely
surmounted by the folds of a silk handkerchief which falls over his
left temple like a police cap, he is certainly a laughable object, and
it is difficult to recognize in him the glorious spouse, celebrated in
the strophes of Rousseau; but, nevertheless, there is a certain gleam
of life to illume the stupidity of a countenance half dead--and if you
artists wish to make fine sketches, you should travel on the
stage-coach and, when the postilion wakes up the postmaster, just
examine the physiognomies of the departmental clerks! But, were you a
hundred times as pleasant to look upon as are these bureaucratic
physiognomies, at least, while you have your mouth shut, your eyes are
open, and you have some expression in your countenance. Do you know
how you looked an hour before you awoke, or during the first hour of
your sleep, when you were neither a man nor an animal, but merely a
thing, subject to the dominion of those dreams which issue from the
gate of horn? But this is a secret between your wife and God.
Is it for the purpose of insinuating the imbecility of slumber that
the Romans decorated the heads of their beds with the head of an ass?
We leave to the gentlemen who form the academy of inscriptions the
elucidation of this point.
Assuredly, the first man who took it into his head, at the inspiration
of the devil, not to leave his wife, even while she was asleep, should
know how to sleep in the very best style; but do not forget to reckon
among the sciences necessary to a man on setting up an establishment,
the art of sleeping with elegance. Moreover, we will place here as a
corollary to Axiom XXV of our Marriage Catechism the two following
aphorisms:
A husband should sleep as lightly as a watch-dog, so as never to
be caught with his eyes shut.
A man should accustom himself from childhood to go to bed
bareheaded.
Certain poets discern in modesty, in the alleged mysteries of love,
some reason why the married couple should share the same bed; but the
fact must be recognized that if primitive men sought the shade of
caverns, the mossy couch of deep ravines, the flinty roof of grottoes
to protect his pleasure, it was because the delight of love left him
without defence against his enemies. No, it is not more natural to lay
two heads upon the same pillow, than it is reasonable to tie a strip
of muslin round the neck. Civilization is come. It has shut up a
million of men within an area of four square leagues; it has stalled
them in streets, houses, apartments, rooms, and chambers eight feet
square; after a time it will make them shut up one upon another like
the tubes of a telescope.
From this cause and from many others, such as thrift, fear, and
ill-concealed jealousy, has sprung the custom of the sleeping together
of the married couple; and this custom has given rise to punctuality
and simultaneity in rising and retiring.
And here you find the most capricious thing in the world, the feeling
most pre-eminently fickle, the thing which is worthless without its
own spontaneous inspiration, which takes all its charm from the
suddenness of its desires, which owes its attractions to the
genuineness of its outbursts--this thing we call love, subjugated to a
monastic rule, to that law of geometry which belongs to the Board of
Longitude!
If I were a father I should hate the child, who, punctual as the
clock, had every morning and evening an explosion of tenderness and
wished me good-day and good-evening, because he was ordered to do so.
It is in this way that all that is generous and spontaneous in human
sentiment becomes strangled at its birth. You may judge from this what
love means when it is bound to a fixed hour!
Only the Author of everything can make the sun rise and set, morn and
eve, with a pomp invariably brilliant and always new, and no one here
below, if we may be permitted to use the hyperbole of Jean-Baptiste
Rousseau, can play the role of the sun.
From these preliminary observations, we conclude that it is not
natural for two to lie under the canopy in the same bed;
That a man is almost always ridiculous when he is asleep;
And that this constant living together threatens the husband with
inevitable dangers.
We are going to try, therefore, to find out a method which will bring
our customs in harmony with the laws of nature, and to combine custom
and nature in a way that will enable a husband to find in the mahogany
of his bed a useful ally, and an aid in defending himself.
1. TWIN BEDS.
If the most brilliant, the best-looking, the cleverest of husbands
wishes to find himself minotaurized just as the first year of his
married life ends, he will infallibly attain that end if he is unwise
enough to place two beds side by side, under the voluptuous dome of
the same alcove.
The argument in support of this may be briefly stated. The following
are its main lines:
The first husband who invented the twin beds was doubtless an
obstetrician, who feared that in the involuntary struggles of some
dream he might kick the child borne by his wife.
But no, he was rather some predestined one who distrusted his power of
checking a snore.
Perhaps it was some young man who, fearing the excess of his own
tenderness, found himself always lying at the edge of the bed and in
danger of tumbling off, or so near to a charming wife that he
disturbed her slumber.
But may it not have been some Maintenon who received the suggestion
from her confessor, or, more probably, some ambitious woman who wished
to rule her husband? Or, more undoubtedly, some pretty little
Pompadour overcome by that Parisian infirmity so pleasantly described
by M. de Maurepas in that quatrain which cost him his protracted
disgrace and certainly contributed to the disasters of Louis XVI's
reign:
"Iris, we love those features sweet,
Your graces all are fresh and free;
And flowerets spring beneath your feet,
Where naught, alas! but flowers are seen."
But why should it not have been a philosopher who dreaded the
disenchantment which a woman would experience at the sight of a man
asleep? And such a one would always roll himself up in a coverlet and
keep his head bare.
Unknown author of this Jesuitical method, whoever thou art, in the
devil's name, we hail thee as a brother! Thou hast been the cause of
many disasters. Thy work has the character of all half measures; it is
satisfactory in no respect, and shares the bad points of the two other
methods without yielding the advantages of either. How can the man of
the nineteenth century, how can this creature so supremely
intelligent, who has displayed a power well-nigh supernatural, who has
employed the resources of his genius in concealing the machinery of
his life, in deifying his necessary cravings in order that he might
not despise them, going so far as to wrest from Chinese leaves, from
Egyptian beans, from seeds of Mexico, their perfume, their treasure,
their soul; going so far as to chisel the diamond, chase the silver,
melt the gold ore, paint the clay and woo every art that may serve to
decorate and to dignify the bowl from which he feeds!--how can this
king, after having hidden under folds of muslin covered with diamonds,
studded with rubies, and buried under linen, under folds of cotton,
under the rich hues of silk, under the fairy patterns of lace, the
partner of his wretchedness, how can he induce her to make shipwreck
in the midst of all this luxury on the decks of two beds. What
advantage is it that we have made the whole universe subserve our
existence, our delusions, the poesy of our life? What good is it to
have instituted law, morals and religion, if the invention of an
upholsterer [for probably it was an upholsterer who invented the twin
beds] robs our love of all its illusions, strips it bare of the
majestic company of its delights and gives it in their stead nothing
but what is ugliest and most odious? For this is the whole history of
the two bed system.
LXIII.
That it shall appear either sublime or grotesque are the alternatives
to which we have reduced a desire.
If it be shared, our love is sublime; but should you sleep in twin
beds, your love will always be grotesque. The absurdities which this
half separation occasions may be comprised in either one of two
situations, which will give us occasion to reveal the causes of very
many marital misfortunes.
Midnight is approaching as a young woman is putting on her curl papers
and yawning as she did so. I do not know whether her melancholy
proceeded from a headache, seated in the right or left lobe of her
brain, or whether she was passing through one of those seasons of
weariness during which all things appear black to us; but to see her
negligently putting up her hair for the night, to see her languidly
raising her leg to take off her garter, it seemed to me that she would
prefer to be drowned rather than to be denied the relief of plunging
her draggled life into the slumber that might restore it. At this
instant, I know not to what degree from the North Pole she stands,
whether at Spitzberg or in Greenland. Cold and indifferent she goes to
bed thinking, as Mistress Walter Shandy might have thought, that the
morrow would be a day of sickness, that her husband is coming home
very late, that the beaten eggs which she has just eaten were not
sufficiently sweetened, that she owes more than five hundred francs to
her dressmaker; in fine, thinking about everything which you may
suppose would occupy the mind of a tired woman. In the meanwhile
arrives her great lout of a husband, who, after some business meeting,
has drunk punch, with a consequent elation. He takes off his boots,
leaves his stockings on a lounge, his bootjack lies before the
fireplace; and wrapping his head up in a red silk handkerchief,
without giving himself the trouble to tuck in the corners, he fires
off at his wife certain interjectory phrases, those little marital
endearments, which form almost the whole conversation at those
twilight hours, where drowsy reason is no longer shining in this
mechanism of ours. "What, in bed already! It was devilish cold this
evening! Why don't you speak, my pet? You've already rolled yourself
up in bed, then! Ah! you are in the dumps and pretend to be asleep!"
These exclamations are mingled with yawns; and after numberless little
incidents which according to the usage of each home vary this preface
of the night, our friend flings himself into his own bed with a heavy
thud.
Alas! before a woman who is cold, how mad a man must appear when
desire renders him alternately angry and tender, insolent and abject,
biting as an epigram and soothing as a madrigal; when he enacts with
more or less sprightliness the scene where, in _Venice Preserved_, the
genius of Orway has represented the senator Antonio, repeating a
hundred times over at the feet of Aquilina: "Aquilina, Quilina, Lina,
Aqui, Nacki!" without winning from her aught save the stroke of her
whip, inasmuch as he has undertaken to fawn upon her like a dog. In
the eyes of every woman, even of a lawful wife, the more a man shows
eager passion under these circumstances, the more silly he appears. He
is odious when he commands, he is minotaurized if he abuses his power.
On this point I would remind you of certain aphorisms in the marriage
catechism from which you will see that you are violating its most
sacred precepts. Whether a woman yields, or does not yield, this
institution of twin beds gives to marriage such an element of
roughness and nakedness that the most chaste wife and the most
intelligent husband are led to immodesty.
This scene, which is enacted in a thousand ways and which may
originate in a thousand different incidents, has a sequel in that
other situation which, while it is less pleasant, is far more
terrible.
One evening when I was talking about these serious matters with the
late Comte de Noce, of whom I have already had occasion to speak, a
tall white-haired old man, his intimate friend, whose name I will not
give, because he is still alive, looked at us with a somewhat
melancholy air. We guessed that he was about to relate some tale of
scandal, and we accordingly watched him, somewhat as the stenographer
of the _Moniteur_ might watch, as he mounted the tribune, a minister
whose speech had already been written out for the reporter. The
story-teller on this occasion was an old marquis, whose fortune,
together with his wife and children, had perished in the disasters of
the Revolution. The marchioness had been one of the most inconsistent
women of the past generation; the marquis accordingly was not wanting
in observations on feminine human nature. Having reached an age in
which he saw nothing before him but the gulf of the grave, he spoke
about himself as if the subject of his talk were Mark Antony or
Cleopatra.
"My young friend"--he did me the honor to address me, for it was I who
made the last remark in this discussion--"your reflections make me
think of a certain evening, in the course of which one of my friends
conducted himself in such a manner as to lose forever the respect of
his wife. Now, in those days a woman could take vengeance with
marvelous facility--for it was always a word and a blow. The married
couple I speak of were particular in sleeping on separate beds, with
their head under the arch of the same alcove. They came home one night
from a brilliant ball given by the Comte de Mercy, ambassador of the
emperor. The husband had lost a considerable sum at play, so he was
completely absorbed in thought. He had to pay a debt, the next day, of
six thousand crowns!--and you will recollect, Noce, that a hundred
crowns couldn't be made up from scraping together the resources of ten
such musketeers. The young woman, as generally happens under such
circumstances, was in a gale of high spirits. 'Give to the marquis,'
she said to a _valet de chambre_, 'all that he requires for his
toilet.' In those days people dressed for the night. These
extraordinary words did not rouse the husband from his mood of
abstraction, and then madame, assisted by her maid, began to indulge
in a thousand coquetries. 'Was my appearance to your taste this
evening?' 'You are always to my taste,' answered the marquis,
continuing to stride up and down the room. 'You are very gloomy! Come
and talk to me, you frowning lover,' said she, placing herself before
him in the most seductive negligee. But you can have no idea of the
enchantments of the marchioness unless you had known her. Ah! you have
seen her, Noce!" he said with a mocking smile. "Finally, in spite of
all her allurements and beauty, the marchioness was lost sight of amid
thoughts of the six thousand crowns which this fool of a husband could
not get out of his head, and she went to bed all alone. But women
always have one resource left; so that the moment that the good
husband made as though he would get into his bed, the marchioness
cried, 'Oh, how cold I am!' 'So am I,' he replied. 'How is it that the
servants have not warmed our beds?'--And then I rang."
The Comte de Noce could not help laughing, and the old marquis, quite
put out of countenance, stopped short.
Not to divine the desire of a wife, to snore while she lies awake, to
be in Siberia when she is in the tropics, these are the slighter
disadvantages of twin beds. What risks will not a passionate woman run
when she becomes aware that her husband is a heavy sleeper?
I am indebted to Beyle for an Italian anecdote, to which his dry and
sarcastic manner lent an infinite charm, as he told me this tale of
feminine hardihood.
Ludovico had his palace at one end of the town of Milan; at the other
was that of the Countess of Pernetti. At midnight, on a certain
occasion, Ludovico resolved, at the peril of his life, to make a rash
expedition for the sake of gazing for one second on the face he
adored, and accordingly appeared as if by magic in the palace of his
well-beloved. He reached the nuptial chamber. Elisa Pernetti, whose
heart most probably shared the desire of her lover, heard the sound of
his footsteps and divined his intention. She saw through the walls of
her chamber a countenance glowing with love. She rose from her
marriage bed, light as a shadow she glided to the threshold of her
door, with a look she embraced him, she seized his hand, she made a
sign to him, she drew him in.
"But he will kill you!" said he.
"Perhaps so."
But all this amounts to nothing. Let us grant that most husbands sleep
lightly. Let us grant that they sleep without snoring, and that they
always discern the degree of latitude at which their wives are to be
found. Moreover, all the reasons which we have given why twin beds
should be condemned, let us consider but dust in the balance. But,
after all, a final consideration would make us also proscribe the use
of beds ranged within the limits of the same alcove.
To a man placed in the position of a husband, there are circumstances
which have led us to consider the nuptial couch as an actual means of
defence. For it is only in bed that a man can tell whether his wife's
love is increasing or decreasing. It is the conjugal barometer. Now to
sleep in twin beds is to wish for ignorance. You will understand, when
we come to treat of _civil war_ (See Part Third) of what extreme
usefulness a bed is and how many secrets a wife reveals in bed,
without knowing it.
Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good
nature of such an institution as that of twin beds.
It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the
world. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it!
But in proportion as this method is pernicious in the case of young
married people, it is salutary and advantageous for those who have
reached the twentieth year of married life. Husband and wife can then
most conveniently indulge their duets of snoring. It will, moreover,
be more convenient for their various maladies, whether rheumatism,
obstinate gout, or even the taking of a pinch of snuff; and the cough
or the snore will not in any respect prove a greater hindrance than it
is found to be in any other arrangement.
We have not thought it necessary to mention the exceptional cases
which authorize a husband to resort to twin beds. However, the opinion
of Bonaparte was that when once there had taken place an interchange
of life and breath (such are his words), nothing, not even sickness,
should separate married people. This point is so delicate that it is
not possible here to treat it methodically.
Certain narrow minds will object that there are certain patriarchal
families whose legislation of love is inflexible in the matter of two
beds and an alcove, and that, by this arrangement, they have been
happy from generation to generation. But, the only answer that the
author vouchsafes to this is that he knows a great many respectable
people who pass their lives in watching games of billiards.
2. SEPARATE ROOMS.
There cannot be found in Europe a hundred husbands of each nation
sufficiently versed in the science of marriage, or if you like, of
life, to be able to dwell in an apartment separate from that of their
wives.
The power of putting this system into practice shows the highest
degree of intellectual and masculine force.
The married couple who dwell in separate apartments have become either
divorced, or have attained to the discovery of happiness. They either
abominate or adore each other. We will not undertake to detail here
the admirable precepts which may be deduced from this theory whose end
is to make constancy and fidelity easy and delightful. It may be
sufficient to declare that by this system alone two married people can
realize the dream of many noble souls. This will be understood by all
the faithful.
As for the profane, their curious questionings will be sufficiently
answered by the remark that the object of this institution is to give
happiness to one woman. Which among them will be willing to deprive
general society of any share in the talents with which they think
themselves endowed, to the advantage of one woman? Nevertheless, the
rendering of his mistress happy gives any one the fairest title to
glory which can be earned in this valley of Jehosaphat, since,
according to Genesis, Eve was not satisfied even with a terrestrial
Paradise. She desired to taste the forbidden fruit, the eternal emblem
of adultery.
But there is an insurmountable reason why we should refrain from
developing this brilliant theory. It would cause a digression from the
main theme of our work. In the situation which we have supposed to be
that of a married establishment, a man who is sufficiently unwise to
sleep apart from his wife deserves no pity for the disaster which he
himself invites.
Let us then resume our subject. Every man is not strong enough to
undertake to occupy an apartment separate from that of his wife;
although any man might derive as much good as evil from the
difficulties which exist in using but one bed.
We now proceed to solve the difficulties which superficial minds may
detect in this method, for which our predilection is manifest.
But this paragraph, which is in some sort a silent one, inasmuch as we
leave it to the commentaries which will be made in more than one home,
may serve as a pedestal for the imposing figure of Lycurgus, that
ancient legislator, to whom the Greeks are indebted for their
profoundest thoughts on the subject of marriage. May his system be
understood by future generations! And if modern manners are too much
given to softness to adopt his system in its entirety, they may at
least be imbued with the robust spirit of this admirable code.
3. ONE BED FOR BOTH.
On a night in December, Frederick the Great looked up at the sky,
whose stars were twinkling with that clear and living light which
presages heavy frost, and he exclaimed, "This weather will result in a
great many soldiers to Prussia."
The king expressed here, by a single phrase, the principal
disadvantage which results from the constant living together of
married people. Although it may be permitted to Napoleon and to
Frederick to estimate the value of a woman more or less according to
the number of her children, yet a husband of talent ought, according
to the maxims of the thirteenth Meditation, to consider
child-begetting merely as a means of defence, and it is for him to
know to what extent it may take place.
The observation leads into mysteries from which the physiological Muse
recoils. She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chambers
while they are occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and there
are occasions on which she retires. For, since it is at this passage
in my book that the Muse is inclined to put her white hands before her
eyes so as to see nothing, like the young girl looking through the
interstices of her tapering fingers, she will take advantage of this
attack of modesty, to administer a reprimand to our manners. In
England the nuptial chamber is a sacred place. The married couple
alone have the privilege of entering it, and more than one lady, we
are told, makes her bed herself. Of all the crazes which reign beyond
the sea, why should the only one which we despise be precisely that,
whose grace and mystery ought undoubtedly to meet the approval of all
tender souls on this continent? Refined women condemn the immodesty
with which strangers are introduced into the sanctuary of marriage. As
for us, who have energetically anathematized women who walk abroad at
the time when they expect soon to be confined, our opinion cannot be
doubted. If we wish the celibate to respect marriage, married people
ought to have some regard for the inflammability of bachelors.
To sleep every night with one's wife may seem, we confess, an act of
the most insolent folly.
Many husbands are inclined to ask how a man, who desires to bring
marriage to perfection, dare prescribe to a husband a rule of conduct
which would be fatal in a lover.
Nevertheless, such is the decision of a doctor of arts and sciences
conjugal.
In the first place, without making a resolution never to sleep by
himself, this is the only course left to a husband, since we have
demonstrated the dangers of the preceding systems. We must now try to
prove that this last method yields more advantage and less
disadvantage than the two preceding methods, that is, so far as
relates to the critical position in which a conjugal establishment
stands.
Our observations on the twin beds ought to have taught husbands that
they should always be strung into the same degree of fervor as that
which prevails in the harmonious organization of their wives. Now it
seems to us that this perfect equality in feelings would naturally be
created under the white Aegis, which spreads over both of them its
protecting sheet; this at the outset is an immense advantage, and
really nothing is easier to verify at any moment than the degree of
love and expansion which a woman reaches when the same pillow receives
the heads of both spouses.
Man [we speak now of the species] walks about with a memorandum always
totalized, which shows distinctly and without error the amount of
passion which he carries within him. This mysterious gynometer is
traced in the hollow of the hand, for the hand is really that one of
our members which bears the impress most plainly of our characters.
Chirology is a fifth work which I bequeath to my successors, for I am
contented here to make known but the elements of this interesting
science.
The hand is the essential organ of touch. Touch is the sense which
very nearly takes the place of all the others, and which alone is
indispensable. Since the hand alone can carry out all that a man
desires, it is to an extent action itself. The sum total of our
vitality passes through it; and men of powerful intellects are usually
remarkable for their shapely hands, perfection in that respect being a
distinguishing trait of their high calling.
Jesus Christ performed all His miracles by the imposition of hands.
The hand is the channel through which life passes. It reveals to the
physician all the mysteries of our organism. It exhales more than any
other part of our bodies the nervous fluid, or that unknown substance,
which for want of another term we style _will_. The eye can discover
the mood of our soul but the hand betrays at the same time the secrets
of the body and those of the soul. We can acquire the faculty of
imposing silence on our eyes, on our lips, on our brows, and on our
forehead; but the hand never dissembles and nothing in our features
can be compared to the richness of its expression. The heat and cold
which it feels in such delicate degrees often escape the notice of
other senses in thoughtless people; but a man knows how to distinguish
them, however little time he may have bestowed in studying the anatomy
of sentiments and the affairs of human life. Thus the hand has a
thousand ways of becoming dry, moist, hot, cold, soft, rough,
unctuous. The hand palpitates, becomes supple, grows hard and again is
softened. In fine it presents a phenomenon which is inexplicable so
that one is tempted to call it the incarnation of thought. It causes
the despair of the sculptor and the painter when they wish to express
the changing labyrinth of its mysterious lineaments. To stretch out
your hand to a man is to save him, it serves as a ratification of the
sentiments we express. The sorcerers of every age have tried to read
our future destines in those lines which have nothing fanciful in
them, but absolutely correspond with the principles of each one's life
and character. When she charges a man with want of tact, which is
merely touch, a woman condemns him without hope. We use the
expressions, the "Hand of Justice," the "Hand of God;" and a _coup de
main_ means a bold undertaking.
To understand and recognize the hidden feelings by the atmospheric
variations of the hand, which a woman almost always yields without
distrust, is a study less unfruitful and surer than that of
physiognomy.
In this way you will be able, if you acquire this science, to wield
vast power, and to find a clue which will guide you through the
labyrinth of the most impenetrable heart. This will render your living
together free from very many mistakes, and, at the same time, rich in
the acquisition of many a treasure.
Buffon and certain physiologists affirm that our members are more
completely exhausted by desire than by the most keen enjoyments. And
really, does not desire constitute of itself a sort of intuitive
possession? Does it not stand in the same relation to visible action,
as those incidents in our mental life, in which we take part in a
dream, stand to the incidents of our actual life? This energetic
apprehension of things, does it not call into being an internal
emotion more powerful than that of the external action? If our
gestures are only the accomplishment of things already enacted by our
thought, you may easily calculate how desire frequently entertained
must necessarily consume the vital fluids. But the passions which are
no more than the aggregation of desires, do they not furrow with the
wrinkle of their lightning the faces of the ambitious, of gamblers,
for instance, and do they not wear out their bodies with marvelous
swiftness?
These observations, therefore, necessarily contain the germs of a
mysterious system equally favored by Plato and by Epicurus; we will
leave it for you to meditate upon, enveloped as it is in the veil
which enshrouds Egyptian statues.
But the greatest mistake that a man commits is to believe that love
can belong only to those fugitive moments which, according to the
magnificent expression of Bossuet, are like to the nails scattered
over a wall: to the eye they appear numerous; but when they are
collected they make but a handful.
Love consists almost always in conversation. There are few things
inexhaustible in a lover: goodness, gracefulness and delicacy. To feel
everything, to divine everything, to anticipate everything; to
reproach without bringing affliction upon a tender heart; to make a
present without pride; to double the value of a certain action by the
way in which it is done; to flatter rather by actions than by words;
to make oneself understood rather than to produce a vivid impression;
to touch without striking; to make a look and the sound of the voice
produce the effect of a caress; never to produce embarrassment; to
amuse without offending good taste; always to touch the heart; to
speak to the soul--this is all that women ask. They will abandon all
the delights of all the nights of Messalina, if only they may live
with a being who will yield them those caresses of the soul, for which
they are so eager, and which cost nothing to men if only they have a
little consideration.
This outline comprises a great portion of such secrets as belong to
the nuptial couch. There are perhaps some witty people who may take
this long definition of politeness for a description of love, while in
any case it is no more than a recommendation to treat your wife as you
would treat the minister on whose good-will depends your promotion to
the post you covet.
I hear numberless voices crying out that this book is a special
advocate for women and neglects the cause of men;
That the majority of women are unworthy of these delicate attentions
and would abuse them;
That there are women given to licentiousness who would not lend
themselves to very much of what they would call mystification;
That women are nothing but vanity and think of nothing but dress;
That they have notions which are truly unreasonable;
That they are very often annoyed by an attention;
That they are fools, they understand nothing, are worth nothing, etc.
In answer to all these clamors we will write here the following
phrases, which, placed between two spaces, will perhaps have the air
of a thought, to quote an expression of Beaumarchais.
LXIV.
A wife is to her husband just what her husband has made her.
The reasons why the single bed must triumph over the other two methods
of organizing the nuptial couch are as follows: In the single couch we
have a faithful interpreter to translate with profound truthfulness
the sentiments of a woman, to render her a spy over herself, to keep
her at the height of her amorous temperature, never to leave her, to
have the power of hearing her breathe in slumber, and thus to avoid
all the nonsense which is the ruin of so many marriages.
As it is impossible to receive benefits without paying for them, you
are bound to learn how to sleep gracefully, to preserve your dignity
under the silk handkerchief that wraps your head, to be polite, to see
that your slumber is light, not to cough too much, and to imitate
those modern authors who write more prefaces than books.
MEDITATION XVIII.
OF MARITAL REVOLUTIONS.
The time always comes in which nations and women even the most stupid
perceive that their innocence is being abused. The cleverest policy
may for a long time proceed in a course of deceit; but it would be
very happy for men if they could carry on their deceit to an infinite
period; a vast amount of bloodshed would then be avoided, both in
nations and in families.
Nevertheless, we hope that the means of defence put forth in the
preceding Meditations will be sufficient to deliver a certain number
of husbands from the clutches of the Minotaur! You must agree with the
doctor that many a love blindly entered upon perishes under the
treatment of hygiene or dies away, thanks to marital policy. Yes [what
a consoling mistake!] many a lover will be driven away by personal
efforts, many a husband will learn how to conceal under an
impenetrable veil the machinery of his machiavelism, and many a man
will have better success than the old philosopher who cried: _Nolo
coronari!_
But we are here compelled to acknowledge a mournful truth. Despotism
has its moments of secure tranquillity. Her reign seems like the hour
which precedes the tempest, and whose silence enables the traveler,
stretched upon the faded grass, to hear at a mile's distance, the song
of the cicada. Some fine morning an honest woman, who will be imitated
by a great portion of our own women, discerns with an eagle eye the
clever manoeuvres which have rendered her the victim of an infernal
policy. She is at first quite furious at having for so long a time
preserved her virtue. At what age, in what day, does this terrible
revolution occur? This question of chronology depends entirely upon
the genius of each husband; for it is not the vocation of all to put
in practice with the same talent the precepts of our conjugal gospel.
"A man must have very little love," the mystified wife will exclaim,
"to enter upon such calculations as these! What! From the first day I
have been to him perpetually an object of suspicion! It is monstrous,
even a woman would be incapable of such artful and cruel treachery!"
This is the question. Each husband will be able to understand the
variations of this complaint which will be made in accordance with the
character of the young Fury, of whom he has made a companion.
A woman by no means loses her head under these circumstances; she
holds her tongue and dissembles. Her vengeance will be concealed. Only
you will have some symptoms of hesitation to contend with on the
arrival of the crisis, which we presume you to have reached on the
expiration of the honeymoon; but you will also have to contend against
a resolution. She has determined to revenge herself. From that day, so
far as regards you, her mask, like her heart, has turned to bronze.
Formerly you were an object of indifference to her; you are becoming
by degrees absolutely insupportable. The Civil War commences only at
the moment in which, like the drop of water which makes the full glass
overflow, some incident, whose more or less importance we find
difficulty in determining, has rendered you odious. The lapse of time
which intervenes between this last hour, the limit of your good
understanding, and the day when your wife becomes cognizant of your
artifices, is nevertheless quite sufficient to permit you to institute
a series of defensive operations, which we will now explain.
Up to this time you have protected your honor solely by the exertion
of a power entirely occult. Hereafter the wheels of your conjugal
machinery must be set going in sight of every one. In this case, if
you would prevent a crime you must strike a blow. You have begun by
negotiating, you must end by mounting your horse, sabre in hand, like
a Parisian gendarme. You must make your horse prance, you must
brandish your sabre, you must shout strenuously, and you must endeavor
to calm the revolt without wounding anybody.
Just as the author has found a means of passing from occult methods to
methods that are patent, so it is necessary for the husband to justify
the sudden change in his tactics; for in marriage, as in literature,
art consists entirely in the gracefulness of the transitions. This is
of the highest importance for you. What a frightful position you will
occupy if your wife has reason to complain of your conduct at the
moment, which is, perhaps, the most critical of your whole married
life!
You must therefore find some means or other to justify the secret
tyranny of your initial policy; some means which still prepare the
mind of your wife for the severe measures which you are about to take;
some means which so far from forfeiting her esteem will conciliate
her; some means which will gain her pardon, which will restore some
little of that charm of yours, by which you won her love before your
marriage.
"But what policy is it that demands this course of action? Is there
such a policy?"
Certainly there is.
But what address, what tact, what histrionic art must a husband
possess in order to display the mimic wealth of that treasure which we
are about to reveal to him! In order to counterfeit the passion whose
fire is to make you a new man in the presence of your wife, you will
require all the cunning of Talma.
This passion is JEALOUSY.
"My husband is jealous. He has been so from the beginning of our
marriage. He has concealed this feeling from me by his usual refined
delicacy. Does he love me still? I am going to do as I like with him!"
Such are the discoveries which a woman is bound to make, one after
another, in accordance with the charming scenes of the comedy which
you are enacting for your amusement; and a man of the world must be an
actual fool, if he fails in making a woman believe that which flatters
her.
With what perfection of hypocrisy must you arrange, step by step, your
hypocritical behavior so as to rouse the curiosity of your wife, to
engage her in a new study, and to lead her astray among the labyrinths
of your thought!
Ye sublime actors! Do ye divine the diplomatic reticence, the gestures
of artifice, the veiled words, the looks of doubtful meaning which
some evening may induce your wife to attempt the capture of your
secret thoughts?
Ah! to laugh in your sleeve while you are exhibiting the fierceness of
a tiger; neither to lie nor to tell the truth; to comprehend the
capricious mood of a woman, and yet to make her believe that she
controls you, while you intend to bind her with a collar of iron! O
comedy that has no audience, which yet is played by one heart before
another heart and where both of you applaud because both of you think
that you have obtained success!
She it is who will tell you that you are jealous, who will point out
to you that she knows you better than you know yourself, who will
prove to you the uselessness of your artifices and who perhaps will
defy you. She triumphs in the excited consciousness of the superiority
which she thinks she possesses over you; you of course are ennobled in
her eyes; for she finds your conduct quite natural. The only thing she
feels is that your want of confidence was useless; if she wished to
betray, who could hinder her?
Then, some evening, you will burst into a passion, and, as some trifle
affords you a pretext, you will make a scene, in the course of which
your anger will make you divulge the secret of your distress. And here
comes in the promulgation of our new code.
Have no fear that a woman is going to trouble herself about this. She
needs your jealousy, she rather likes your severity. This comes from
the fact that in the first place she finds there a justification for
her own conduct; and then she finds immense satisfaction in playing
before other people the part of a victim. What delightful expressions
of sympathy will she receive! Afterwards she will use this as a weapon
against you, in the expectation thereby of leading you into a pitfall.
She sees in your conduct the source of a thousand more pleasures in
her future treachery, and her imagination smiles at all the barricades
with which you surround her, for will she not have the delight of
surmounting them all?
Women understand better than we do the art of analyzing the two human
feelings, which alternately form their weapons of attack, or the
weapons of which they are victims. They have the instinct of love,
because it is their whole life, and of jealousy, because it is almost
the only means by which they can control us. Within them jealousy is a
genuine sentiment and springs from the instinct of self-preservation;
it is vital to their life or death. But with men this feeling is
absolutely absurd when it does not subserve some further end.
To entertain feelings of jealousy towards the woman you love, is to
start from a position founded on vicious reasoning. We are loved, or
we are not loved; if a man entertains jealousy under either of these
circumstances, it is a feeling absolutely unprofitable to him;
jealousy may be explained as fear, fear in love. But to doubt one's
wife is to doubt one's self.
To be jealous is to exhibit, at once, the height of egotism, the error
of _amour-propre_, the vexation of morbid vanity. Women rather
encourage this ridiculous feeling, because by means of it they can
obtain cashmere shawls, silver toilet sets, diamonds, which for them
mark the high thermometer mark of their power. Moreover, unless you
appear blinded by jealousy, your wife will not keep on her guard; for
there is no pitfall which she does not distrust, excepting that which
she makes for herself.
Thus the wife becomes the easy dupe of a husband who is clever enough
to give to the inevitable revolution, which comes sooner or later, the
advantageous results we have indicated.
You must import into your establishment that remarkable phenomenon
whose existence is demonstrated in the asymptotes of geometry. Your
wife will always try to minotaurize you without being successful. Like
those knots which are never so tight as when one tries to loosen them,
she will struggle to the advantage of your power over her, while she
believes that she is struggling for her independence.
The highest degree of good play on the part of a prince lies in
persuading his people that he goes to war for them, while all the time
he is causing them to be killed for his throne.
But many husbands will find a preliminary difficulty in executing this
plan of campaign. If your wife is a woman of profound dissimulation,
the question is, what signs will indicate to her the motives of your
long mystification?
It will be seen that our Meditation on the Custom House, as well as
that on the Bed, has already revealed certain means of discerning the
thought of a woman; but we make no pretence in this book of
exhaustively stating the resources of human wit, which are
immeasurable. Now here is a proof of this. On the day of the
Saturnalia the Romans discovered more features in the character of
their slaves, in ten minutes, than they would have found out during
the rest of the year! You ought therefore to ordain Saturnalia in your
establishment, and to imitate Gessler, who, when he saw William Tell
shoot the apple off his son's head, was forced to remark, "Here is a
man whom I must get rid of, for he could not miss his aim if he wished
to kill me."
You understand, then, that if your wife wishes to drink Roussillon
wine, to eat mutton chops, to go out at all hours and to read the
encyclopaedia, you are bound to take her very seriously. In the first
place, she will begin to distrust you against her own wish, on seeing
that your behaviour towards her is quite contrary to your previous
proceedings. She will suppose that you have some ulterior motive in
this change of policy, and therefore all the liberty that you give her
will make her so anxious that she cannot enjoy it. As regards the
misfortunes that this change may bring, the future will provide for
them. In a revolution the primary principle is to exercise a control
over the evil which cannot be prevented and to attract the lightning
by rods which shall lead it to the earth.
And now the last act of the comedy is in preparation.
The lover who, from the day when the feeblest of all first symptoms
shows itself in your wife until the moment when the marital revolution
takes place, has jumped upon the stage, either as a material creature
or as a being of the imagination--the LOVER, summoned by a sign from
her, now declares: "Here I am!"
MEDITATION XIX.
OF THE LOVER.
We offer the following maxims for your consideration:
We should despair of the human race if these maxims had been made
before 1830; but they set forth in so clear a manner the agreements
and difficulties which distinguish you, your wife and a lover; they so
brilliantly describe what your policy should be, and demonstrate to
you so accurately the strength of the enemy, that the teacher has put
his _amour-propre_ aside, and if by chance you find here a single new
thought, send it to the devil, who suggested this work.
LXV.
To speak of love is to make love.
LXVI.
In a lover the coarsest desire always shows itself as a burst of
honest admiration.
LXVII.
A lover has all the good points and all the bad points which are
lacking in a husband.
LXVIII.
A lover not only gives life to everything, he makes one forget life;
the husband does not give life to anything.
LXIX.
All the affected airs of sensibility which a woman puts on invariably
deceive a lover; and on occasions when a husband shrugs his shoulders,
a lover is in ecstasies.
LXX.
A lover betrays by his manner alone the degree of intimacy in which he
stands to a married woman.
LXXI.
A woman does not always know why she is in love. It is rarely that a
man falls in love without some selfish purpose. A husband should
discover this secret motive of egotism, for it will be to him the
lever of Archimedes.
LXXII.
A clever husband never betrays his supposition that his wife has a
lover.
LXXIII.
The lover submits to all the caprices of a woman; and as a man is
never vile while he lies in the arms of his mistress, he will take the
means to please her that a husband would recoil from.
LXXIV.
A lover teaches a wife all that her husband has concealed from her.
LXXV.
All the sensations which a woman yields to her lover, she gives in
exchange; they return to her always intensified; they are as rich in
what they give as in what they receive. This is the kind of commerce
in which almost all husbands end by being bankrupt.
LXXVI.
A lover speaks of nothing to a woman but that which exalts her; while
a husband, although he may be a loving one, can never refrain from
giving advice which always has the appearance of reprimand.
LXXVII.
A lover always starts from his mistress to himself; with a husband the
contrary is the case.
LXXVIII.
A lover always has a desire to appear amiable. There is in this
sentiment an element of exaggeration which leads to ridicule; study
how to take advantage of this.
LXXIX.
When a crime has been committed the magistrate who investigates the
case knows [excepting in the case of a released convict who commits
murder in jail] that there are not more than five persons to whom he
can attribute the act. He starts from this premise a series of
conjectures. The husband should reason like the judge; there are only
three people in society whom he can suspect when seeking the lover of
his wife.
LXXX.
A lover is never in the wrong.
LXXXI.
The lover of a married woman says to her: "Madame, you have need of
rest. You have to give an example of virtue to your children. You have
sworn to make your husband happy, and although he has some faults--he
has fewer than I have--he is worthy of your esteem. Nevertheless you
have sacrificed everything for me. Do not let a single murmur escape
you; for regret is an offence which I think worthy of a severer
penalty than the law decrees against infidelity. As a reward for these
sacrifices, I will bring you as much pleasure as pain." And the
incredible part about it is, that the lover triumphs. The form which
his speech takes carries it. He says but one phrase: "I love you." A
lover is a herald who proclaims either the merit, the beauty, or the
wit of a woman. What does a husband proclaim?
To sum up all, the love which a married woman inspires, or that which
she gives back, is the least creditable sentiment in the world; in her
it is boundless vanity; in her lover it is selfish egotism. The lover
of a married woman contracts so many obligations, that scarcely three
men in a century are met with who are capable of discharging them. He
ought to dedicate his whole life to his mistress, but he always ends
by deserting her; both parties are aware of this, and, from the
beginning of social life, the one has always been sublime in
self-sacrifice, the other an ingrate. The infatuation of love always
rouses the pity of the judges who pass sentence on it. But where do
you find such love genuine and constant? What power must a husband
possess to struggle successfully against a man who casts over a woman
a spell strong enough to make her submit to such misfortunes!
We think, then, as a general rule, a husband, if he knows how to use
the means of defence which we have outlined, can lead his wife up to
her twenty-seventh year, not without her having chosen a lover, but
without her having committed the great crime. Here and there we meet
with men endowed with deep marital genius, who can keep their wives,
body and soul to themselves alone up to their thirtieth or
thirty-fifth year; but these exceptions cause a sort of scandal and
alarm. The phenomenon scarcely ever is met with excepting in the
country, where life is transparent and people live in glass houses and
the husband wields immense power. The miraculous assistance which men
and things thus give to a husband always vanishes in the midst of a
city whose population reaches to two hundred and fifty thousand.
It would therefore almost appear to be demonstrated that thirty is the
age of virtue. At that critical period, a woman becomes so difficult
to guard, that in order successfully to enchain her within the
conjugal Paradise, resort must be had to those last means of defence
which remain to be described, and which we will reveal in the _Essay
on Police_, the _Art of Returning Home_, and _Catastrophes_.
MEDITATION XX.
ESSAY ON POLICE.
The police of marriage consist of all those means which are given you
by law, manners, force, and stratagem for preventing your wife in her
attempt to accomplish those three acts which in some sort make up the
life of love: writing, seeing and speaking.
The police combine in greater or less proportion the means of defence
put forth in the preceding Meditations. Instinct alone can teach in
what proportions and on what occasions these compounded elements are
to be employed. The whole system is elastic; a clever husband will
easily discern how it must be bent, stretched or retrenched. By the
aid of the police a man can guide his wife to her fortieth year pure
from any fault.
We will divide this treatise on Police into five captions:
1. OF MOUSE-TRAPS.
2. OF CORRESPONDENCE.
3. OF SPIES.
4. THE INDEX.
5. OF THE BUDGET.
1. OF MOUSE-TRAPS.
In spite of the grave crisis which the husband has reached, we do not
suppose that the lover has completely acquired the freedom of the city
in the marital establishment. Many husbands often suspect that their
wives have a lover, and yet they do not know upon which of the five or
six chosen ones of whom we have spoken their suspicions ought to fall.
This hesitation doubtless springs from some moral infirmity, to whose
assistance the professor must come.
Fouche had in Paris three or four houses resorted to by people of the
highest distinction; the mistresses of these dwellings were devoted to
him. This devotion cost a great deal of money to the state. The
minister used to call these gatherings, of which nobody at the time
had any suspicion, his _mouse-traps_. More than one arrest was made at
the end of the ball at which the most brilliant people of Paris had
been made accomplices of this oratorian.
The act of offering some fragments of roasted nuts, in order to see
your wife put her white hand in the trap, is certainly exceedingly
delicate, for a woman is certain to be on her guard; nevertheless, we
reckon upon at least three kinds of mouse-traps: _The Irresistible_,
_The Fallacious_, and that which is _Touch and Go_.
_The Irresistible._
Suppose two husbands, we will call them A and B, wish to discover who
are the lovers of their wives. We will put the husband A at the centre
of a table loaded with the finest pyramids of fruit, of crystals, of
candies and of liqueurs, and the husband B shall be at whatever point
of this brilliant circle you may please to suppose. The champagne has
gone round, every eye is sparkling and every tongue is wagging.
HUSBAND A. (peeling a chestnut)--Well, as for me, I admire literary
people, but from a distance. I find them intolerable; in conversation
they are despotic; I do not know what displeases me more, their faults
or their good qualities. In short (he swallows his chestnut), people
of genius are like tonics--you like, but you must use them
temperately.
WIFE B. (who has listened attentively)--But, M. A., you are very
exacting (with an arch smile); it seems to me that dull people have as
many faults as people of talent, with this difference perhaps, that
the former have nothing to atone for them!
HUSBAND A. (irritably)--You will agree at least, madame, that they are
not very amiable to you.
WIFE B. (with vivacity)--Who told you so?
HUSBAND A. (smiling)--Don't they overwhelm you all the time with their
superiority? Vanity so dominates their souls that between you and them
the effort is reciprocal--
THE MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE. (aside to Wife A)--You well deserved it, my
dear. (Wife A shrugs her shoulders.)
HUSBAND A. (still continuing)--Then the habit they have of combining
ideas which reveal to them the mechanism of feeling! For them love is
purely physical and every one knows that they do not shine.
WIFE B. (biting her lips, interrupting him)--It seems to me, sir, that
we are the sole judges in this matter. I can well understand why men
of the world do not like men of letters! But it is easier to criticise
than to imitate them.
HUSBAND A. (disdainfully)--Oh, madame, men of the world can assail the
authors of the present time without being accused of envy. There is
many a gentleman of the drawing-room, who if he undertook to write--
WIFE B. (with warmth)--Unfortunately for you, sir, certain friends of
yours in the Chamber have written romances; have you been able to read
them?--But really, in these days, in order to attain the least
originality, you must undertake historic research, you must--
HUSBAND B. (making no answer to the lady next him and speaking aside)
--Oh! Oh! Can it be that it is M. de L-----, author of the _Dreams of
a Young Girl_, whom my wife is in love with?--That is singular; I
thought that it was Doctor M-----. But stay! (Aloud.) Do you know, my
dear, that you are right in what you say? (All laugh.) Really, I
should prefer to have always artists and men of letters in my
drawing-room--(aside) when we begin to receive!--rather than to see
there other professional men. In any case artists speak of things about
which every one is enthusiastic, for who is there who does not believe
in good taste? But judges, lawyers, and, above all, doctors--Heavens!
I confess that to hear them constantly speaking about lawsuits and
diseases, those two human ills--
WIFE A. (sitting next to Husband B, speaking at the same time)--What
is that you are saying, my friend? You are quite mistaken. In these
days nobody wishes to wear a professional manner; doctors, since you
have mentioned doctors, try to avoid speaking of professional matters.
They talk politics, discuss the fashions and the theatres, they tell
anecdotes, they write books better than professional authors do; there
is a vast difference between the doctors of to-day and those of
Moliere--
HUSBAND A. (aside)--Whew! Is it possible my wife is in love with Dr.
M-----? That would be odd. (Aloud.) That is quite possible, my dear,
but I would not give a sick dog in charge of a physician who writes.
WIFE A. (interrupting her husband)--I know people who have five or six
offices, yet the government has the greatest confidence in them;
anyway, it is odd that you should speak in this way, you who were one
of Dr. M-----'s great cases--
HUSBAND A. (aside)--There can be no doubt of it!
_The Fallacious._
A HUSBAND. (as he reaches home)--My dear, we are invited by Madame de
Fischtaminel to a concert which she is giving next Tuesday. I reckoned
on going there, as I wanted to speak with a young cousin of the
minister who was among the singers; but he is gone to Frouville to see
his aunt. What do you propose doing?
HIS WIFE.--These concerts tire me to death!--You have to sit nailed to
your chair whole hours without saying a word.--Besides, you know quite
well that we dine with my mother on that day, and it is impossible to
miss paying her a visit.
HER HUSBAND. (carelessly)--Ah! that is true.
_(Three days afterwards.)_
THE HUSBAND. (as he goes to bed)--What do you think, my darling?
To-morrow I will leave you at your mother's, for the count has
returned from Frouville and will be at Madame de Fischtaminel's
concert.
HIS WIFE. (vivaciously)--But why should you go alone? You know how I
adore music!
_The Touch and Go Mouse-Trap._
THE WIFE.--Why did you go away so early this evening?
THE HUSBAND. (mysteriously)--Ah! It is a sad business, and all the
more so because I don't know how I can settle it.
THE WIFE.--What is it all about, Adolph? You are a wretch if you do
not tell me what you are going to do!
THE HUSBAND.--My dear, that ass of a Prosper Magnan is fighting a duel
with M. de Fontanges, on account of an Opera singer.--But what is the
matter with you?
THE WIFE.--Nothing.--It is very warm in this room and I don't know
what ails me, for the whole day I have been suffering from sudden
flushing of the face.
THE HUSBAND. (aside)--She is in love with M. de Fontanges. (Aloud.)
Celestine! (He shouts out still louder.) Celestine! Come quick, madame
is ill!
You will understand that a clever husband will discover a thousand
ways of setting these three kinds of traps.
2. OF CORRESPONDENCE.
To write a letter, and to have it posted; to get an answer, to read it
and burn it; there we have correspondence stated in the simplest
terms.
Yet consider what immense resources are given by civilization, by our
manners and by our love to the women who wish to conceal these
material actions from the scrutiny of a husband.
The inexorable box which keeps its mouth open to all comers receives
its epistolary provender from all hands.
There is also the fatal invention of the General Delivery. A lover
finds in the world a hundred charitable persons, male and female, who,
for a slight consideration, will slip the billets-doux into the
amorous and intelligent hand of his fair mistress.
A correspondence is a variable as Proteus. There are sympathetic inks.
A young celibate has told us in confidence that he has written a
letter on the fly-leaf of a new book, which, when the husband asked
for it of the bookseller, reached the hands of his mistress, who had
been prepared the evening before for this charming article.
A woman in love, who fears her husband's jealousy, will write and read
billets-doux during the time consecrated to those mysterious
occupations during which the most tyrannical husband must leave her
alone.
Moreover, all lovers have the art of arranging a special code of
signals, whose arbitrary import it is difficult to understand. At a
ball, a flower placed in some odd way in the hair; at the theatre, a
pocket handkerchief unfolded on the front of the box; rubbing the
nose, wearing a belt of a particular color, putting the hat on one
side, wearing one dress oftener than another, singing a certain song
in a concert or touching certain notes on the piano; fixing the eyes
on a point agreed; everything, in fact, from the hurdy-gurdy which
passes your windows and goes away if you open the shutter, to the
newspaper announcement of a horse for sale--all may be reckoned as
correspondence.
How many times, in short, will a wife craftily ask her husband to do
such and such commission for her, to go to such and such a shop or
house, having previously informed her lover that your presence at such
or such a place means yes or no?
On this point the professor acknowledges with shame that there is no
possible means of preventing correspondence between lovers. But a
little machiavelism on the part of the husband will be much more
likely to remedy the difficulty than any coercive measures.
An agreement, which should be kept sacred between married people, is
their solemn oath that they will respect each other's sealed letters.
Clever is the husband who makes this pledge on his wedding-day and is
able to keep it conscientiously.
In giving your wife unrestrained liberty to write and to receive
letters, you will be enabled to discern the moment she begins to
correspond with a lover.
But suppose your wife distrusts you and covers with impenetrable
clouds the means she takes to conceal from you her correspondence. Is
it not then time to display that intellectual power with which we
armed you in our Meditation entitled _Of the Custom House_? The man
who does not see when his wife writes to her lover, and when she
receives an answer, is a failure as a husband.
The proposed study which you ought to bestow upon the movements, the
actions, the gestures, the looks of your wife, will be perhaps
troublesome and wearying, but it will not last long; the only point is
to discover when your wife and her lover correspond and in what way.
We cannot believe that a husband, even of moderate intelligence, will
fail to see through this feminine manoeuvre, when once he suspects its
existence.
Meanwhile, you can judge from a single incident what means of police
and of restraint remain to you in the event of such a correspondence.
A young lawyer, whose ardent passion exemplified certain of the
principles dwelt upon in this important part of our work, had married
a young person whose love for him was but slight; yet this
circumstance he looked upon as an exceedingly happy one; but at the
end of his first year of marriage he perceived that his dear Anna [for
Anna was her name] had fallen in love with the head clerk of a
stock-broker.
Adolph was a young man of about twenty-five, handsome in face and as
fond of amusement as any other celibate. He was frugal, discreet,
possessed of an excellent heart, rode well, talked well, had fine
black hair always curled, and dressed with taste. In short, he would
have done honor and credit to a duchess. The advocate was ugly, short,
stumpy, square-shouldered, mean-looking, and, moreover, a husband.
Anna, tall and pretty, had almond eyes, white skin and refined
features. She was all love; and passion lighted up her glance with a
bewitching expression. While her family was poor, Maitre Lebrun had an
income of twelve thousand francs. That explains all.
One evening Lebrun got home looking extremely chop-fallen. He went
into his study to work; but he soon came back shivering to his wife,
for he had caught a fever and hurriedly went to bed. There he lay
groaning and lamenting for his clients and especially for a poor widow
whose fortune he was to save the very next day by effecting a
compromise. An appointment had been made with certain business men and
he was quite incapable of keeping it. After having slept for a quarter
of an hour, he begged his wife in a feeble voice to write to one of
his intimate friends, asking him to take his (Lebrun's) place next day
at the conference. He dictated a long letter and followed with his eye
the space taken up on the paper by his phrases. When he came to begin
the second page of the last sheet, the advocate set out to describe to
his confrere the joy which his client would feel on the signing of the
compromise, and the fatal page began with these words:
"My good friend, go for Heaven's sake to Madame Vernon's at once;
you are expected with impatience there; she lives at No. 7 Rue de
Sentier. Pardon my brevity; but I count on your admirable good
sense to guess what I am unable to explain.
"Tout a vous,"
"Give me the letter," said the lawyer, "that I may see whether it is
correct before signing it."
The unfortunate wife, who had been taken off her guard by this letter,
which bristled with the most barbarous terms of legal science, gave up
the letter. As soon as Lebrun got possession of the wily script he
began to complain, to twist himself about, as if in pain, and to
demand one little attention after another of his wife. Madame left the
room for two minutes during which the advocate leaped from his bed,
folded a piece of paper in the form of a letter and hid the missive
written by his wife. When Anna returned, the clever husband seized the
blank paper, made her address it to the friend of his, to whom the
letter which he had taken out was written, and the poor creature
handed the blank letter to his servant. Lebrun seemed to grow
gradually calmer; he slept or pretended to do so, and the next morning
he still affected to feel strange pains. Two days afterwards he tore
off the first leaf of the letter and put an "e" to the word _tout_ in
the phrase "tout a vous."[*] He folded mysteriously the paper which
contained the innocent forgery, sealed it, left his bedroom and called
the maid, saying to her:
[*] Thus giving a feminine ending to the signature, and lending the
impression that the note emanated from the wife personally--J.W.M.
"Madame begs that you will take this to the house of M. Adolph; now,
be quick about it."
He saw the chambermaid leave the house and soon afterwards he, on a
plea of business, went out, hurried to Rue de Sentier, to the address
indicated, and awaited the arrival of his rival at the house of a
friend who was in the secret of his stratagem. The lover, intoxicated
with happiness, rushed to the place and inquired for Madame de Vernon;
he was admitted and found himself face to face with Maitre Lebrun, who
showed a countenance pale but chill, and gazed at him with tranquil
but implacable glance.
"Sir," he said in a tone of emotion to the young clerk, whose heart
palpitated with terror, "you are in love with my wife, and you are
trying to please her; I scarcely know how to treat you in return for
this, because in your place and at your age I should have done exactly
the same. But Anna is in despair; you have disturbed her happiness,
and her heart is filled with the torments of hell. Moreover, she has
told me all, a quarrel soon followed by a reconciliation forced her to
write the letter which you have received, and she has sent me here in
her place. I will not tell you, sir, that by persisting in your plan
of seduction you will cause the misery of her you love, that you will
forfeit her my esteem, and eventually your own; that your crime will
be stamped on the future by causing perhaps sorrow to my children. I
will not even speak to you of the bitterness you will infuse into my
life;--unfortunately these are commonplaces! But I declare to you,
sir, that the first step you take in this direction will be the signal
for a crime; for I will not trust the risk of a duel in order to stab
you to the heart!"
And the eyes of the lawyer flashed ominously.
"Now, sir," he went on in a gentler voice, "you are young, you have a
generous heart. Make a sacrifice for the future happiness of her you
love; leave her and never see her again. And if you must needs be a
member of my family, I have a young aunt who is yet unsettled in life;
she is charming, clever and rich. Make her acquaintance, and leave a
virtuous woman undisturbed."
This mixture of raillery and intimidation, together with the
unwavering glance and deep voice of the husband, produced a remarkable
impression on the lover. He remained for a moment utterly confused,
like people overcome with passion and deprived of all presence of mind
by a sudden shock. If Anna has since then had any lovers [which is a
pure hypothesis] Adolph certainly is not one of them.
This occurrence may help you to understand that correspondence is a
double-edged weapon which is of as much advantage for the defence of
the husband as for the inconsistency of the wife. You should therefore
encourage correspondence for the same reason that the prefect of
police takes special care that the street lamps of Paris are kept
lighted.
3. OF SPIES.
To come so low as to beg servants to reveal secrets to you, and to
fall lower still by paying for a revelation, is not a crime; it is
perhaps not even a dastardly act, but it is certainly a piece of
folly; for nothing will ever guarantee to you the honesty of a servant
who betrays her mistress, and you can never feel certain whether she
is operating in your interest or in that of your wife. This point
therefore may be looked upon as beyond controversy.
Nature, that good and tender parent, has set round about the mother of
a family the most reliable and the most sagacious of spies, the most
truthful and at the same time the most discreet in the world. They are
silent and yet they speak, they see everything and appear to see
nothing.
One day I met a friend of mine on the boulevard. He invited me to
dinner, and we went to his house. Dinner had been already served, and
the mistress of the house was helping her two daughters to plates of
soup.
"I see here my first symptoms," I said to myself.
We sat down. The first word of the husband, who spoke without
thinking, and for the sake of talking, was the question:
"Has any one been here to-day?"
"Not a soul," replied his wife, without lifting her eyes.
I shall never forget the quickness with which the two daughters looked
up to their mother. The elder girl, aged eight, had something
especially peculiar in her glance. There was at the same time
revelation and mystery, curiosity and silence, astonishment and apathy
in that look. If there was anything that could be compared to the
speed with which the light of candor flashed from their eyes, it was
the prudent reserve with which both of them closed down, like
shutters, the folds of their white eyelids.
Ye sweet and charming creatures, who from the age of nine even to the
age of marriage too often are the torment of a mother even when she is
not a coquette, is it by the privilege of your years or the instinct
of your nature that your young ears catch the faint sound of a man's
voice through walls and doors, that your eyes are awake to everything,
and that your young spirit busies itself in divining all, even the
meaning of a word spoken in the air, even the meaning of your mother's
slightest gesture?
There is something of gratitude, something in fact instinctive, in the
predilection of fathers for their daughters and mothers for their
sons.
But the act of setting spies which are in some way inanimate is mere
dotage, and nothing is easier than to find a better plan than that of
the beadle, who took it into his head to put egg-shells in his bed,
and who obtained no other sympathy from his confederate than the
words, "You are not very successful in breaking them."
The Marshal de Saxe did not give much consolation to his Popeliniere
when they discovered in company that famous revolving chimney,
invented by the Duc de Richelieu.
"That is the finest piece of horn work that I have ever seen!" cried
the victor of Fontenoy.
Let us hope that your espionage will not give you so troublesome a
lesson. Such misfortunes are the fruits of the civil war and we do not
live in that age.
4. THE INDEX.
The Pope puts books only on the Index; you will mark with a stigma of
reprobation men and things.
It is forbidden to madame to go into a bath except in her own house.
It is forbidden to madame to receive into her house him whom you
suspect of being her lover, and all those who are the accomplices of
their love.
It is forbidden to madame to take a walk without you.
But the peculiarities which in each household originate from the
diversity of characters, the numberless incidents of passion, and the
habits of the married people give to this black book so many
variations, the lines in it are multiplied or erased with such
rapidity that a friend of the author has called this Index _The
History of Changes in the Marital Church_.
There are only two things which can be controlled or prescribed in
accordance with definite rules; the first is the country, the second
is the promenade.
A husband ought never to take his wife to the country nor permit her
to go there. Have a country home if you like, live there, entertain
there nobody excepting ladies or old men, but never leave your wife
alone there. But to take her, for even half a day, to the house of
another man is to show yourself as stupid as an ostrich.
To keep guard over a wife in the country is a task most difficult of
accomplishment. Do you think that you will be able to be in the
thickets, to climb the trees, to follow the tracks of a lover over the
grass trodden down at night, but straightened by the dew in the
morning and refreshed by the rays of the sun? Can you keep your eye on
every opening in the fence of the park? Oh! the country and the
Spring! These are the two right arms of the celibate.
When a woman reaches the crisis at which we suppose her to be, a
husband ought to remain in town till the declaration of war, or to
resolve on devoting himself to all the delights of a cruel espionage.
With regard to the promenade: Does madame wish to go to parties, to
the theatre, to the Bois de Boulogne, to purchase her dresses, to find
out what is the fashion? Madame shall go, shall see everything in the
respectable company of her lord and master.
If she take advantage of the moment when a business appointment, which
you cannot fail to keep, detains you, in order to obtain your tacit
permission to some meditated expedition; if in order to obtain that
permission she displays all the witcheries of those cajoleries in
which women excel and whose powerful influence you ought already to
have known, well, well, the professor implores you to allow her to win
you over, while at the same time you sell dear the boon she asks; and
above all convince this creature, whose soul is at once as changeable
as water and as firm as steel, that it is impossible for you from the
importance of your work to leave your study.
But as soon as your wife has set foot upon the street, if she goes on
foot, don't give her time to make fifty steps; follow and track her in
such a way that you will not be noticed.
It is possible that there exist certain Werthers whose refined and
delicate souls recoil from this inquisition. But this is not more
blamable than that of a landed proprietor who rises at night and looks
through the windows for the purpose of keeping watch over the peaches
on his _espaliers_. You will probably by this course of action obtain,
before the crime is committed, exact information with regard to the
apartments which so many lovers rent in the city under fictitious
names. If it happens [which God forbid!] that your wife enters a house
suspected by you, try to find out if the place has several exits.
Should your wife take a hack, what have you to fear? Is there not a
prefect of police, to whom all husbands ought to decree a crown of
solid gold, and has he not set up a little shed or bench where there
is a register, an incorruptible guardian of public morality? And does
he not know all the comings and goings of these Parisian gondolas?
One of the vital principles of our police will consist in always
following your wife to the furnishers of your house, if she is
accustomed to visit them. You will carefully find out whether there is
any intimacy between her and her draper, her dressmaker or her
milliner, etc. In this case you will apply the rules of the conjugal
Custom House, and draw your own conclusions.
If in your absence your wife, having gone out against your will, tells
you that she had been to such a place, to such a shop, go there
yourself the next day and try to find out whether she has spoken the
truth.
But passion will dictate to you, even better than the Meditation, the
various resources of conjugal tyranny, and we will here cut short
these tiresome instructions.
5. OF THE BUDGET.
In outlining the portrait of a sane and sound husband (See _Meditation
on the Predestined_), we urgently advise that he should conceal from
his wife the real amount of his income.
In relying upon this as the foundation stone of our financial system
we hope to do something towards discounting the opinion, so very
generally held, that a man ought not to give the handling of his
income to his wife. This principle is one of the many popular errors
and is one of the chief causes of misunderstanding in the domestic
establishment.
But let us, in the first place, deal with the question of heart,
before we proceed to that of money.
To draw up a little civil list for your wife and for the requirements
of the house and to pay her money as if it were a contribution, in
twelve equal portions month by month, has something in it that is a
little mean and close, and cannot be agreeable to any but sordid and
mistrustful souls. By acting in this way you prepare for yourself
innumerable annoyances.
I could wish that during the first year of your mellifluous union,
scenes more or less delightful, pleasantries uttered in good taste,
pretty purses and caresses might accompany and might decorate the
handing over of this monthly gift; but the time will come when the
self-will of your wife or some unforeseen expenditure will compel her
to ask a loan of the Chamber; I presume that you will always grant her
the bill of indemnity, as our unfaithful deputies never fail to do.
They pay, but they grumble; you must pay and at the same time
compliment her. I hope it will be so.
But in the crisis which we have reached, the provisions of the annual
budget can never prove sufficient. There must be an increase of
fichus, of bonnets, of frocks; there is an expense which cannot be
calculated beforehand demanded by the meetings, by the diplomatic
messengers, by the ways and means of love, even while the receipts
remain the same as usual. Then must commence in your establishment a
course of education the most odious, and the most dreadful which a
woman can undergo. I know but few noble and generous souls who value,
more than millions, purity of heart, frankness of soul, and who would
a thousand times more readily pardon a passion than a lie, whose
instinctive delicacy has divined the existence of this plague of the
soul, the lowest step in human degradation.
Under these circumstances there occur in the domestic establishment
the most delightful scenes of love. It is then that a woman becomes
utterly pliant and like to the most brilliant of all the strings of a
harp, when thrown before the fire; she rolls round you, she clasps
you, she holds you tight; she defers to all your caprices; never was
her conversation so full of tenderness; she lavishes her endearments
upon you, or rather she sells them to you; she at last becomes lower
than a chorus girl, for she prostitutes herself to her husband. In her
sweetest kisses there is money; in all her words there is money. In
playing this part her heart becomes like lead towards you. The most
polished, the most treacherous usurer never weighs so completely with
a single glance the future value in bullion of a son of a family who
may sign a note to him, than your wife appraises one of your desires
as she leaps from branch to branch like an escaping squirrel, in order
to increase the sum of money she may demand by increasing the appetite
which she rouses in you. You must not expect to get scot-free from
such seductions. Nature has given boundless gifts of coquetry to a
woman, the usages of society have increased them tenfold by its
fashions, its dresses, its embroideries and its tippets.
"If I ever marry," one of the most honorable generals of our ancient
army used to say, "I won't put a sou among the wedding presents--"
"What will you put there then, general?" asked a young girl.
"The key of my safe."
The young girl made a curtsey of approbation. She moved her little
head with a quiver like that of the magnetic needle; raised her chin
slightly as if she would have said:
"I would gladly marry the general in spite of his forty-five years."
But with regard to money, what interest can you expect your wife to
take in a machine in which she is looked upon as a mere bookkeeper?
Now look at the other system.
In surrendering to your wife, with an avowal of absolute confidence in
her, two-thirds of your fortune and letting her as mistress control
the conjugal administration, you win from her an esteem which nothing
can destroy, for confidence and high-mindedness find powerful echoes
in the heart of a woman. Madame will be loaded with a responsibility
which will often raise a barrier against extravagances, all the
stronger because it is she herself who has created it in her heart.
You yourself have made a portion of the work, and you may be sure that
from henceforth your wife will never perhaps dishonor herself.
Moreover, by seeking in this way a method of defence, consider what
admirable aids are offered to you by this plan of finances.
You will have in your house an exact estimate of the morality of your
wife, just as the quotations of the Bourse give you a just estimate of
the degree of confidence possessed by the government.
And doubtless, during the first years of your married life, your wife
will take pride in giving you every luxury and satisfaction which your
money can afford.
She will keep a good table, she will renew the furniture, and the
carriages; she will always keep in her drawer a sum of money sacred to
her well-beloved and ready for his needs. But of course, in the actual
circumstances of life, the drawer will be very often empty and
monsieur will spend a great deal too much. The economies ordered by
the Chamber never weigh heavily upon the clerks whose income is twelve
hundred francs; and you will be the clerk at twelve hundred francs in
your own house. You will laugh in your sleeve, because you will have
saved, capitalized, invested one-third of your income during a long
time, like Louis XV, who kept for himself a little separate treasury,
"against a rainy day," he used to say.
Thus, if your wife speaks of economy, her discourse will be equal to
the varying quotations of the money-market. You will be able to divine
the whole progress of the lover by these financial fluctuations, and
you will have avoided all difficulties. _E sempre bene._
If your wife fails to appreciate the excessive confidence, and
dissipates in one day a large proportion of your fortune, in the first
place it is not probable that this prodigality will amount to
one-third of the revenue which you have been saving for ten years;
moreover you will learn, from the Meditation on _Catastrophes_, that
in the very crisis produced by the follies of your wife, you will have
brilliant opportunities of slaying the Minotaur.
But the secret of the treasure which has been amassed by your
thoughtfulness need never be known till after your death; and if you
have found it necessary to draw upon it, in order to assist your wife,
you must always let it be thought that you have won at play, or made a
loan from a friend.
These are the true principles which should govern the conjugal budget.
The police of marriage has its martyrology. We will cite but one
instance which will make plain how necessary it is for husbands who
resort to severe measures to keep watch over themselves as well as
over their wives.
An old miser who lived at T-----, a pleasure resort if there ever was
one, had married a young and pretty woman, and he was so wrapped up in
her and so jealous that love triumphed over avarice; he actually gave
up trade in order to guard his wife more closely, but his only real
change was that his covetousness took another form. I acknowledge that
I owe the greater portion of the observations contained in this essay,
which still is doubtless incomplete, to the person who made a study of
this remarkable marital phenomenon, to portray which, one single
detail will be amply sufficient. When he used to go to the country,
this husband never went to bed without secretly raking over the
pathways of his park, and he had a special rake for the sand of his
terraces. He had made a close study of the footprints made by the
different members of his household; and early in the morning he used
to go and identify the tracks that had been made there.
"All this is old forest land," he used to say to the person I have
referred to, as he showed him over the park; "for nothing can be seen
through the brushwood."
His wife fell in love with one of the most charming young men of the
town. This passion had continued for nine years bright and fresh in
the hearts of the two lovers, whose sole avowal had been a look
exchanged in a crowded ball-room; and while they danced together their
trembling hands revealed through the scented gloves the depth of their
love. From that day they had both of them taken great delight on those
trifles which happy lovers never disdain. One day the young man led
his only confidant, with a mysterious air, into a chamber where he
kept under glass globes upon his table, with more care than he would
have bestowed upon the finest jewels in the world, the flowers that,
in the excitement of the dance, had fallen from the hair of his
mistress, and the finery which had been caught in the trees which she
had brushed through in the park. He also preserved there the narrow
footprint left upon the clay soil by the lady's step.
"I could hear," said this confidant to me afterwards, "the violent and
repressed palpitations of his heart sounding in the silence which we
preserved before the treasures of this museum of love. I raised my
eyes to the ceiling, as if to breathe to heaven the sentiment which I
dared not utter. 'Poor humanity!' I thought. 'Madame de ----- told me
that one evening at a ball you had been found nearly fainting in her
card-room?' I remarked to him.
"'I can well believe it,' said he casting down his flashing glance, 'I
had kissed her arm!--But,' he added as he pressed my hand and shot at
me a glance that pierced my heart, 'her husband at that time had the
gout which threatened to attack his stomach.'"
Some time afterwards, the old man recovered and seemed to take a new
lease of life; but in the midst of his convalescence he took to his
bed one morning and died suddenly. There were such evident symptoms of
poisoning in the condition of the dead man that the officers of
justice were appealed to, and the two lovers were arrested. Then was
enacted at the court of assizes the most heartrending scene that ever
stirred the emotions of the jury. At the preliminary examination, each
of the two lovers without hesitation confessed to the crime, and with
one thought each of them was solely bent on saving, the one her lover,
the other his mistress. There were two found guilty, where justice was
looking for but a single culprit. The trial was entirely taken up with
the flat contradictions which each of them, carried away by the fury
of devoted love, gave to the admissions of the other. There they were
united for the first time, but on the criminals' bench with a gendarme
seated between them. They were found guilty by the unanimous verdict
of a weeping jury. No one among those who had the barbarous courage to
witness their conveyance to the scaffold can mention them to-day
without a shudder. Religion had won for them a repentance for their
crime, but could not induce them to abjure their love. The scaffold
was their nuptial bed, and there they slept together in the long night
of death.
MEDITATION XXI.
THE ART OF RETURNING HOME.
Finding himself incapable of controlling the boiling transports of his
anxiety, many a husband makes the mistake of coming home and rushing
into the presence of his wife, with the object of triumphing over her
weakness, like those bulls of Spain, which, stung by the red
_banderillo_, disembowel with furious horns horses, matadors,
picadors, toreadors and their attendants.
But oh! to enter with a tender gentle mien, like Mascarillo, who
expects a beating and becomes merry as a lark when he finds his master
in a good humor! Well--that is the mark of a wise man!--
"Yes, my darling, I know that in my absence you could have behaved
badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy,
but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your
considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will earn my eternal
gratitude."
Such are the ideas which ought to be expressed by your face and
bearing, but perhaps all the while you say to yourself:
"Probably he has been here!"
Always to bring home a pleasant face, is a rule which admits of no
exception.
But the art of never leaving your house without returning when the
police have revealed to you a conspiracy--to know how to return at the
right time--this is the lesson which is hard to learn. In this matter
everything depends upon tact and penetration. The actual events of
life always transcend anything that is imaginable.
The manner of coming home is to be regulated in accordance with a
number of circumstances. For example:
Lord Catesby was a man of remarkable strength. It happened one day
that he was returning from a fox hunt, to which he had doubtless
promised to go, with some ulterior view, for he rode towards the fence
of his park at a point where, he said, he saw an extremely fine horse.
As he had a passion for horses, he drew near to examine this one close
at hand, There he caught sight of Lady Catesby, to whose rescue it was
certainly time to go, if he were in the slightest degree jealous for
his own honor. He rushed upon the gentleman he saw there, and seizing
him by the belt he hurled him over the fence on to the road side.
"Remember, sir," he said calmly, "it rests with me to decide whether
it well be necessary to address you hereafter and ask for satisfaction
on this spot."
"Very well, my lord; but would you have the goodness to throw over my
horse also?"
But the phlegmatic nobleman had already taken the arm of his wife as
he gravely said:
"I blame you very much, my dear creature, for not having told me that
I was to love you for two. Hereafter every other day I shall love you
for the gentleman yonder, and all other days for myself."
This adventure is regarded in England as one of the best returns home
that were ever known. It is true it consisted in uniting, with
singular felicity, eloquence of deed to that of word.
But the art of re-entering your home, principles of which are nothing
else but natural deductions from the system of politeness and
dissimulation which have been commended in preceding Meditations, is
after all merely to be studied in preparation for the conjugal
catastrophes which we will now consider.
MEDITATION XXII.
OF CATASTROPHES.
The word _Catastrophe_ is a term of literature which signifies the
final climax of a play.
To bring about a catastrophe in the drama which you are playing is a
method of defence which is as easy to undertake as it is certain to
succeed. In advising to employ it, we would not conceal from you its
perils.
The conjugal catastrophe may be compared to one of those high fevers
which either carry off a predisposed subject or completely restore his
health. Thus, when the catastrophe succeeds, it keeps a woman for
years in the prudent realms of virtue.
Moreover, this method is the last of all those which science has been
able to discover up to this present moment.
The massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Sicilian Vespers, the death of
Lucretia, the two embarkations of Napoleon at Frejus are examples of
political catastrophe. It will not be in your power to act on such a
large scale; nevertheless, within their own area, your dramatic
climaxes in conjugal life will not be less effective than these.
But since the art of creating a situation and of transforming it, by
the introduction of natural incidents, constitutes genius; since the
return to virtue of a woman, whose foot has already left some tracks
upon the sweet and gilded sand which mark the pathway of vice, is the
most difficult to bring about of all denouements, and since genius
neither knows it nor teaches it, the practitioner in conjugal laws
feels compelled to confess at the outset that he is incapable of
reducing to definite principles a science which is as changeable as
circumstances, as delusive as opportunity, and as indefinable as
instinct.
If we may use an expression which neither Diderot, d'Alembert nor
Voltaire, in spite of every effort, have been able to engraft on our
language, a conjugal catastrophe _se subodore_ is scented from afar;
so that our only course will be to sketch out imperfectly certain
conjugal situations of an analogous kind, thus imitating the
philosopher of ancient time who, seeking in vain to explain motion,
walked forward in his attempt to comprehend laws which were
incomprehensible.
A husband, in accordance with the principles comprised in our
Meditation on _Police_, will expressly forbid his wife to receive the
visits of a celibate whom he suspects of being her lover, and whom she
has promised never again to see. Some minor scenes of the domestic
interior we leave for matrimonial imaginations to conjure up; a
husband can delineate them much better than we can; he will betake
himself in thought back to those days when delightful longings invited
sincere confidences and when the workings of his policy put into
motion certain adroitly handled machinery.
Let us suppose, in order to make more interesting the natural scene to
which I refer, that you who read are a husband, whose carefully
organized police has made the discovery that your wife, profiting by
the hours devoted by you to a ministerial banquet, to which she
probably procured you an invitation, received at your house M. A----z.
Here we find all the conditions necessary to bring about the finest
possible of conjugal catastrophes.
You return home just in time to find your arrival has coincided with
that of M. A----z, for we would not advise you to have the interval
between acts too long. But in what mood should you enter? Certainly
not in accordance with the rules of the previous Meditation. In a rage
then? Still less should you do that. You should come in with
good-natured carelessness, like an absent-minded man who has forgotten
his purse, the statement which he has drawn up for the minister, his
pocket-handkerchief or his snuff-box.
In that case you will either catch two lovers together, or your wife,
forewarned by the maid, will have hidden the celibate.
Now let us consider these two unique situations.
But first of all we will observe that husbands ought always to be in a
position to strike terror in their homes and ought long before to make
preparations for the matrimonial second of September.
Thus a husband, from the moment that his wife has caused him to
perceive certain _first symptoms_, should never fail to give, time
after time, his personal opinion on the course of conduct to be
pursued by a husband in a great matrimonial crisis.
"As for me," you should say, "I should have no hesitation in killing
the man I caught at my wife's feet."
With regard to the discussion that you will thus give rise to, you
will be led on to aver that the law ought to have given to the
husband, as it did in ancient Rome, the right of life and death over
his children, so that he could slay those who were spurious.
These ferocious opinions, which really do not bind you to anything,
will impress your wife with salutary terror; you will enumerate them
lightly, even laughingly--and say to her, "Certainly, my dear, I would
kill you right gladly. Would you like to be murdered by me?"
A woman cannot help fearing that this pleasantry may some day become a
very serious matter, for in these crimes of impulse there is a certain
proof of love; and then women who know better than any one else how to
say true things laughingly at times suspect their husbands of this
feminine trick.
When a husband surprises his wife engaged in even innocent
conversation with her lover, his face still calm, should produce the
effect mythologically attributed to the celebrated Gorgon.
In order to produce a favorable catastrophe at this juncture, you must
act in accordance with the character of your wife, either play a
pathetic scene a la Diderot, or resort to irony like Cicero, or rush
to your pistols loaded with a blank charge, or even fire them off, if
you think that a serious row is indispensable.
A skillful husband may often gain a great advantage from a scene of
unexaggerated sentimentality. He enters, he sees the lover and
transfixes him with a glance. As soon as the celibate retires, he
falls at the feet of his wife, he declaims a long speech, in which
among other phrases there occurs this:
"Why, my dear Caroline, I have never been able to love you as I
should!"
He weeps, and she weeps, and this tearful catastrophe leaves nothing
to be desired.
We would explain, apropos of the second method by which the
catastrophe may be brought about, what should be the motives which
lead a husband to vary this scene, in accordance with the greater or
less degree of strength which his wife's character possesses.
Let us pursue this subject.
If by good luck it happens that your wife has put her lover in a place
of concealment, the catastrophe will be very much more successful.
Even if the apartment is not arranged according to the principles
prescribed in the Meditation, you will easily discern the place into
which the celibate has vanished, although he be not, like Lord Byron's
Don Juan, bundled up under the cushion of a divan. If by chance your
apartment is in disorder, you ought to have sufficient discernment to
know that there is only one place in which a man could bestow himself.
Finally, if by some devilish inspiration he has made himself so small
that he has squeezed into some unimaginable lurking-place (for we may
expect anything from a celibate), well, either your wife cannot help
casting a glance towards this mysterious spot, or she will pretend to
look in an exactly opposite direction, and then nothing is easier for
a husband than to set a mouse-trap for his wife.
The hiding-place being discovered, you must walk straight up to the
lover. You must meet him face to face!
And now you must endeavor to produce a fine effect. With your face
turned three-quarters towards him, you must raise your head with an
air of superiority. This attitude will enhance immensely the effect
which you aim at producing.
The most essential thing to do at this moment, is to overwhelm the
celibate by some crushing phrase which you have been manufacturing all
the time; when you have thus floored him, you will coldly show him the
door. You will be very polite, but as relentless as the executioner's
axe, and as impassive as the law. This freezing contempt will already
probably have produced a revolution in the mind of your wife. There
must be no shouts, no gesticulations, no excitement. "Men of high
social rank," says a young English author, "never behave like their
inferiors, who cannot lose a fork without sounding the alarm
throughout the whole neighborhood."
When the celibate has gone, you will find yourself alone with your
wife, and then is the time when you must subjugate her forever.
You should therefore stand before her, putting on an air whose
affected calmness betrays the profoundest emotion; then you must
choose from among the following topics, which we have rhetorically
amplified, and which are most congenial to your feelings: "Madame,"
you must say, "I will speak to you neither of your vows, nor of my
love; for you have too much sense and I have too much pride to make it
possible that I should overwhelm you with those execrations, which all
husbands have a right to utter under these circumstances; for the
least of the mistakes that I should make, if I did so, is that I would
be fully justified. I will not now, even if I could, indulge either in
wrath or resentment. It is not I who have been outraged; for I have
too much heart to be frightened by that public opinion which almost
always treats with ridicule and condemnation a husband whose wife has
misbehaved. When I examine my life, I see nothing there that makes
this treachery deserved by me, as it is deserved by many others. I
still love you. I have never been false, I will not say to my duty,
for I have found nothing onerous in adoring you, but not even to those
welcome obligations which sincere feeling imposes upon us both. You
have had all my confidence and you have also had the administration of
my fortune. I have refused you nothing. And now this is the first time
that I have turned to you a face, I will not say stern, but which is
yet reproachful. But let us drop this subject, for it is of no use for
me to defend myself at a moment when you have proved to me with such
energy that there is something lacking in me, and that I am not
intended by nature to accomplish the difficult task of rendering you
happy. But I would ask you, as a friend speaking to a friend, how
could you have the heart to imperil at the same time the lives of
three human creatures: that of the mother of my children, who will
always be sacred to me; that of the head of the family; and finally of
him--who loves--[she perhaps at these words will throw herself at your
feet; you must not permit her to do so; she is unworthy of kneeling
there]. For you no longer love me, Eliza. Well, my poor child [you
must not call her _my poor child_ excepting when the crime has not
been committed]--why deceive ourselves? Why do you not answer me? If
love is extinguished between a married couple, cannot friendship and
confidence still survive? Are we not two companions united in making
the same journey? Can it be said that during the journey the one must
never hold out his hand to the other to raise up a comrade or to
prevent a comrade's fall? But I have perhaps said too much and I am
wounding your pride--Eliza! Eliza!"
Now what the deuce would you expect a woman to answer? Why a
catastrophe naturally follows, without a single word.
In a hundred women there may be found at least a good half dozen of
feeble creatures who under this violent shock return to their husbands
never perhaps again to leave them, like scorched cats that dread the
fire. But this scene is a veritable alexipharmaca, the doses of which
should be measured out by prudent hands.
For certain women of delicate nerves, whose souls are soft and timid,
it would be sufficient to point out the lurking-place where the lover
lies, and say: "M. A----z is there!" [at this point shrug your
shoulders]. "How can you thus run the risk of causing the death of two
worthy people? I am going out; let him escape and do not let this
happen again."
But there are women whose hearts, too violently strained in these
terrible catastrophes, fail them and they die; others whose blood
undergoes a change, and they fall a prey to serious maladies; others
actually go out of their minds. These are examples of women who take
poison or die suddenly--and we do not suppose that you wish the death
of the sinner.
Nevertheless, the most beautiful and impressionable of all the queens
of France, the charming and unfortunate Mary Stuart, after having seen
Rizzio murdered almost in her arms, fell in love, nevertheless, with
the Earl of Bothwell; but she was a queen and queens are abnormal in
disposition.
We will suppose, then, that the woman whose portrait adorns our first
Meditation is a little Mary Stuart, and we will hasten to raise the
curtain for the fifth act in this grand drama entitled _Marriage_.
A conjugal catastrophe may burst out anywhere, and a thousand
incidents which we cannot describe may give it birth. Sometimes it is
a handkerchief, as in _Othello_; or a pair of slippers, as in _Don
Juan_; sometimes it is the mistake of your wife, who cries out--"Dear
Alphonse!" instead of "Dear Adolph!" Sometimes a husband, finding out
that his wife is in debt, will go and call on her chief creditor, and
will take her some morning to his house, as if by chance, in order to
bring about a catastrophe. "Monsieur Josse, you are a jeweler and you
sell your jewels with a readiness which is not equaled by the
readiness of your debtors to pay for them. The countess owes you
thirty thousand francs. If you wish to be paid to-morrow [tradesmen
should always be visited at the end of the month] come to her at noon;
her husband will be in the chamber. Do not attend to any sign which
she may make to impose silence upon you--speak out boldly. I will pay
all."
So that the catastrophe in the science of marriage is what figures are
in arithmetic.
All the principles of higher conjugal philosophy, on which are based
the means of defence outlined in this second part of our book, are
derived from the nature of human sentiments, and we have found them in
different places in the great book of the world. Just as persons of
intellect instinctively apply the laws of taste whose principles they
would find difficulty in formulating, so we have seen numberless
people of deep feeling employing with singular felicity the precepts
which we are about to unfold, yet none of them consciously acted on a
definite system. The sentiments which this situation inspired only
revealed to them incomplete fragments of a vast system; just as the
scientific men of the sixteenth century found that their imperfect
microscopes did not enable them to see all the living organisms, whose
existence had yet been proved to them by the logic of their patient
genius.
We hope that the observations already made in this book, and in those
which follow, will be of a nature to destroy the opinion which
frivolous men maintain, namely that marriage is a sinecure. According
to our view, a husband who gives way to ennui is a heretic, and more
than that, he is a man who lives quite out of sympathy with the
marriage state, of whose importance he has no conception. In this
connection, these Meditations perhaps will reveal to very many
ignorant men the mysteries of a world before which they stand with
open eyes, yet without seeing it.
We hope, moreover, that these principles when well applied will
produce many conversions, and that among the pages that separate this
second part from that entitled _Civil War_ many tears will be shed and
many vows of repentance breathed.
Yes, among the four hundred thousand honest women whom we have so
carefully sifted out from all the European nations, we indulge the
belief that there are a certain number, say three hundred thousand,
who will be sufficiently self-willed, charming, adorable, and
bellicose to raise the standard of _Civil War_.
To arms then, to arms!
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Physiology of Marriage, Part II.
by Honore de Balzac
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE ***
***** This file should be named 5899.txt or 5899.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
https://www.gutenberg.org/5/8/9/5899/
Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
https://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at https://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit https://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
https://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
