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diff --git a/16146-0.txt b/16146-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..445f83e --- /dev/null +++ b/16146-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7348 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Petty Troubles of Married Life, Complete, 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 Petty Troubles of Married Life, Complete + +Author: Honore de Balzac + +Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley + +Release Date: Release Date: June 29, 2005 [EBook #16146] +Posting Date: March 7, 2010 +Last Updated: November 23, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIED LIFE *** + + + + +Produced by Dagny + + + + + +PETTY TROUBLES OF MARRIED LIFE + + +By Honore De Balzac + + + + + +PART FIRST + + + + +PREFACE + + IN WHICH EVERY ONE WILL FIND HIS OWN IMPRESSIONS OF MARRIAGE. + + A friend, in speaking to you of a young woman, says: “Good family, + well bred, pretty, and three hundred thousand in her own right.” + You have expressed a desire to meet this charming creature. + + Usually, chance interviews are premeditated. And you speak with + this object, who has now become very timid. + + YOU.--“A delightful evening!” + + SHE.--“Oh! yes, sir.” + + You are allowed to become the suitor of this young person. + + THE MOTHER-IN-LAW (to the intended groom).--“You can’t imagine how + susceptible the dear girl is of attachment.” + + Meanwhile there is a delicate pecuniary question to be discussed + by the two families. + + YOUR FATHER (to the mother-in-law).--“My property is valued at + five hundred thousand francs, my dear madame!” + + YOUR FUTURE MOTHER-IN-LAW.--“And our house, my dear sir, is on a + corner lot.” + + A contract follows, drawn up by two hideous notaries, a small one, + and a big one. + + Then the two families judge it necessary to convoy you to the + civil magistrate’s and to the church, before conducting the bride + to her chamber. + + Then what?... Why, then come a crowd of petty unforeseen + troubles, like the following: + + + + +PETTY TROUBLES OF MARRIED LIFE + + + + +THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL. + +Is it a petty or a profound trouble? I knew not; it is profound for your +sons-in-law or daughters-in-law, but exceedingly petty for you. + +“Petty! You must be joking; why, a child costs terribly dear!” exclaims +a ten-times-too-happy husband, at the baptism of his eleventh, called +the little last newcomer,--a phrase with which women beguile their +families. + +“What trouble is this?” you ask me. Well! this is, like many petty +troubles of married life, a blessing for some one. + +You have, four months since, married off your daughter, whom we will +call by the sweet name of CAROLINE, and whom we will make the type of +all wives. Caroline is, like all other young ladies, very charming, and +you have found for her a husband who is either a lawyer, a captain, an +engineer, a judge, or perhaps a young viscount. But he is more likely +to be what sensible families must seek,--the ideal of their desires--the +only son of a rich landed proprietor. (See the _Preface_.) + +This phoenix we will call ADOLPHE, whatever may be his position in the +world, his age, and the color of his hair. + +The lawyer, the captain, the engineer, the judge, in short, the +son-in-law, Adolphe, and his family, have seen in Miss Caroline: + +I.--Miss Caroline; + +II.--The only daughter of your wife and you. + +Here, as in the Chamber of Deputies, we are compelled to call for a +division of the house: + +1.--As to your wife. + +Your wife is to inherit the property of a maternal uncle, a gouty old +fellow whom she humors, nurses, caresses, and muffles up; to say nothing +of her father’s fortune. Caroline has always adored her uncle,--her +uncle who trotted her on his knee, her uncle who--her uncle whom--her +uncle, in short,--whose property is estimated at two hundred thousand. + +Further, your wife is well preserved, though her age has been +the subject of mature reflection on the part of your son-in-law’s +grandparents and other ancestors. After many skirmishes between the +mothers-in-law, they have at last confided to each other the little +secrets peculiar to women of ripe years. + +“How is it with you, my dear madame?” + +“I, thank heaven, have passed the period; and you?” + +“I really hope I have, too!” says your wife. + +“You can marry Caroline,” says Adolphe’s mother to your future +son-in-law; “Caroline will be the sole heiress of her mother, of her +uncle, and her grandfather.” + +2.--As to yourself. + +You are also the heir of your maternal grandfather, a good old man whose +possessions will surely fall to you, for he has grown imbecile, and is +therefore incapable of making a will. + +You are an amiable man, but you have been very dissipated in your youth. +Besides, you are fifty-nine years old, and your head is bald, resembling +a bare knee in the middle of a gray wig. + +III.--A dowry of three hundred thousand. + +IV.--Caroline’s only sister, a little dunce of twelve, a sickly child, +who bids fair to fill an early grave. + +V.--Your own fortune, father-in-law (in certain kinds of society they +say _papa father-in-law_) yielding an income of twenty thousand, and +which will soon be increased by an inheritance. + +VI.--Your wife’s fortune, which will be increased by two +inheritances--from her uncle and her grandfather. In all, thus: + + Three inheritances and interest, 750,000 + Your fortune, 250,000 + Your wife’s fortune, 250,000 + __________ + + Total, 1,250,000 + +which surely cannot take wing! + +Such is the autopsy of all those brilliant marriages that conduct their +processions of dancers and eaters, in white gloves, flowering at the +button-hole, with bouquets of orange flowers, furbelows, veils, coaches +and coach-drivers, from the magistrate’s to the church, from the church +to the banquet, from the banquet to the dance, from the dance to the +nuptial chamber, to the music of the orchestra and the accompaniment of +the immemorial pleasantries uttered by relics of dandies, for are there +not, here and there in society, relics of dandies, as there are relics +of English horses? To be sure, and such is the osteology of the most +amorous intent. + +The majority of the relatives have had a word to say about this +marriage. + +Those on the side of the bridegroom: + +“Adolphe has made a good thing of it.” + +Those on the side of the bride: + +“Caroline has made a splendid match. Adolphe is an only son, and will +have an income of sixty thousand, _some day or other_!” + +Some time afterwards, the happy judge, the happy engineer, the +happy captain, the happy lawyer, the happy only son of a rich landed +proprietor, in short Adolphe, comes to dine with you, accompanied by his +family. + +Your daughter Caroline is exceedingly proud of the somewhat rounded form +of her waist. All women display an innocent artfulness, the first time +they find themselves facing motherhood. Like a soldier who makes a +brilliant toilet for his first battle, they love to play the pale, the +suffering; they rise in a certain manner, and walk with the prettiest +affectation. While yet flowers, they bear a fruit; they enjoy their +maternity by anticipation. All those little ways are exceedingly +charming--the first time. + +Your wife, now the mother-in-law of Adolphe, subjects herself to the +pressure of tight corsets. When her daughter laughs, she weeps; when +Caroline wishes her happiness public, she tries to conceal hers. After +dinner, the discerning eye of the co-mother-in-law divines the work of +darkness. + +Your wife also is an expectant mother! The news spreads like lightning, +and your oldest college friend says to you laughingly: “Ah! so you are +trying to increase the population again!” + +You have some hope in a consultation that is to take place to-morrow. +You, kind-hearted man that you are, you turn red, you hope it is merely +the dropsy; but the doctors confirm the arrival of a _little last one_! + +In such circumstances some timorous husbands go to the country or make +a journey to Italy. In short, a strange confusion reigns in your +household; both you and your wife are in a false position. + +“Why, you old rogue, you, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” says a +friend to you on the Boulevard. + +“Well! do as much if you can,” is your angry retort. + +“It’s as bad as being robbed on the highway!” says your son-in-law’s +family. “Robbed on the highway” is a flattering expression for the +mother-in-law. + +The family hopes that the child which divides the expected fortune in +three parts, will be, like all old men’s children, scrofulous, feeble, +an abortion. Will it be likely to live? The family awaits the delivery +of your wife with an anxiety like that which agitated the house of +Orleans during the confinement of the Duchess de Berri: a second son +would secure the throne to the younger branch without the onerous +conditions of July; Henry V would easily seize the crown. From that +moment the house of Orleans was obliged to play double or quits: the +event gave them the game. + +The mother and the daughter are put to bed nine days apart. + +Caroline’s first child is a pale, cadaverous little girl that will not +live. + +Her mother’s last child is a splendid boy, weighing twelve pounds, with +two teeth and luxuriant hair. + +For sixteen years you have desired a son. This conjugal annoyance is the +only one that makes you beside yourself with joy. For your rejuvenated +wife has attained what must be called the _Indian Summer_ of women; +she nurses, she has a full breast of milk! Her complexion is fresh, her +color is pure pink and white. In her forty-second year, she affects +the young woman, buys little baby stockings, walks about followed by +a nurse, embroiders caps and tries on the cunningest headdresses. +Alexandrine has resolved to instruct her daughter by her example; she is +delightful and happy. And yet this is a trouble, a petty one for you, a +serious one for your son-in-law. This annoyance is of the two sexes, +it is common to you and your wife. In short, in this instance, your +paternity renders you all the more proud from the fact that it is +incontestable, my dear sir! + + + + +REVELATIONS. + +Generally speaking, a young woman does not exhibit her true character +till she has been married two or three years. She hides her faults, +without intending it, in the midst of her first joys, of her first +parties of pleasure. She goes into society to dance, she visits her +relatives to show you off, she journeys on with an escort of love’s +first wiles; she is gradually transformed from girlhood to womanhood. +Then she becomes mother and nurse, and in this situation, full of +charming pangs, that leaves neither a word nor a moment for observation, +such are its multiplied cares, it is impossible to judge of a woman. You +require, then, three or four years of intimate life before you discover +an exceedingly melancholy fact, one that gives you cause for constant +terror. + +Your wife, the young lady in whom the first pleasures of life and love +supplied the place of grace and wit, so arch, so animated, so vivacious, +whose least movements spoke with delicious eloquence, has cast off, +slowly, one by one, her natural artifices. At last you perceive the +truth! You try to disbelieve it, you think yourself deceived; but no: +Caroline lacks intellect, she is dull, she can neither joke nor reason, +sometimes she has little tact. You are frightened. You find yourself +forever obliged to lead this darling through the thorny paths, where you +must perforce leave your self-esteem in tatters. + +You have already been annoyed several times by replies that, in society, +were politely received: people have held their tongues instead of +smiling; but you were certain that after your departure the women looked +at each other and said: “Did you hear Madame Adolphe?” + +“Your little woman, she is--” + +“A regular cabbage-head.” + +“How could he, who is certainly a man of sense, choose--?” + +“He should educate, teach his wife, or make her hold her tongue.” + + + + +AXIOMS. + +Axiom.--In our system of civilization a man is entirely responsible for +his wife. + + +Axiom.--The husband does not mould the wife. + + +Caroline has one day obstinately maintained, at the house of Madame +de Fischtaminel, a very distinguished lady, that her little last one +resembled neither its father nor its mother, but looked like a certain +friend of the family. She perhaps enlightens Monsieur de Fischtaminel, +and overthrows the labors of three years, by tearing down the +scaffolding of Madame de Fischtaminel’s assertions, who, after this +visit, will treat you will coolness, suspecting, as she does, that you +have been making indiscreet remarks to your wife. + +On another occasion, Caroline, after having conversed with a writer +about his works, counsels the poet, who is already a prolific author, +to try to write something likely to live. Sometimes she complains of +the slow attendance at the tables of people who have but one servant +and have put themselves to great trouble to receive her. Sometimes she +speaks ill of widows who marry again, before Madame Deschars who +has married a third time, and on this occasion, an ex-notary, +Nicolas-Jean-Jerome-Nepomucene-Ange-Marie-Victor-Joseph Deschars, a +friend of your father’s. + +In short, you are no longer yourself when you are in society with your +wife. Like a man who is riding a skittish horse and glares straight +between the beast’s two ears, you are absorbed by the attention with +which you listen to your Caroline. + +In order to compensate herself for the silence to which young ladies +are condemned, Caroline talks; or rather babbles. She wants to make +a sensation, and she does make a sensation; nothing stops her. +She addresses the most eminent men, the most celebrated women. She +introduces herself, and puts you on the rack. Going into society is +going to the stake. + +She begins to think you are cross-grained, moody. The fact is, you are +watching her, that’s all! In short, you keep her within a small circle +of friends, for she has already embroiled you with people on whom your +interests depended. + +How many times have you recoiled from the necessity of a remonstrance, +in the morning, on awakening, when you had put her in a good humor for +listening! A woman rarely listens. How many times have you recoiled from +the burthen of your imperious obligations! + +The conclusion of your ministerial communication can be no other than: +“You have no sense.” You foresee the effect of your first lesson. +Caroline will say to herself: “Ah I have no sense! Haven’t I though?” + +No woman ever takes this in good part. Both of you must draw the sword +and throw away the scabbard. Six weeks after, Caroline may prove to +you that she has quite sense enough to _minotaurize_ you without your +perceiving it. + +Frightened at such a prospect, you make use of all the eloquent phrases +to gild this pill. In short, you find the means of flattering Caroline’s +various self-loves, for: + + +Axiom.--A married woman has several self-loves. + + +You say that you are her best friend, the only one well situated to +enlighten her; the more careful you are, the more watchful and puzzled +she is. At this moment she has plenty of sense. + +You ask your dear Caroline, whose waist you clasp, how she, who is so +brilliant when alone with you, who retorts so charmingly (you remind +her of sallies that she has never made, which you put in her mouth, and, +which she smilingly accepts), how she can say this, that, and the other, +in society. She is, doubtless, like many ladies, timid in company. + +“I know,” you say, “many very distinguished men who are just the same.” + +You cite the case of some who are admirable tea-party oracles, but who +cannot utter half a dozen sentences in the tribune. Caroline should +keep watch over herself; you vaunt silence as the surest method of being +witty. In society, a good listener is highly prized. + +You have broken the ice, though you have not even scratched its glossy +surface: you have placed your hand upon the croup of the most ferocious +and savage, the most wakeful and clear-sighted, the most restless, the +swiftest, the most jealous, the most ardent and violent, the simplest +and most elegant, the most unreasonable, the most watchful chimera of +the moral world--THE VANITY OF A WOMAN! + +Caroline clasps you in her arms with a saintly embrace, thanks you for +your advice, and loves you the more for it; she wishes to be beholden +to you for everything, even for her intellect; she may be a dunce, but, +what is better than saying fine things, she knows how to do them! But +she desires also to be your pride! It is not a question of taste in +dress, of elegance and beauty; she wishes to make you proud of her +intelligence. You are the luckiest of men in having successfully managed +to escape from this first dangerous pass in conjugal life. + +“We are going this evening to Madame Deschars’, where they never know +what to do to amuse themselves; they play all sorts of forfeit games on +account of a troop of young women and girls there; you shall see!” she +says. + +You are so happy at this turn of affairs, that you hum airs and +carelessly chew bits of straw and thread, while still in your shirt +and drawers. You are like a hare frisking on a flowering dew-perfumed +meadow. You leave off your morning gown till the last extremity, when +breakfast is on the table. During the day, if you meet a friend and he +happens to speak of women, you defend them; you consider women charming, +delicious, there is something divine about them. + +How often are our opinions dictated to us by the unknown events of our +life! + +You take your wife to Madame Deschars’. Madame Deschars is a mother and +is exceedingly devout. You never see any newspapers at her house: she +keeps watch over her daughters by three different husbands, and keeps +them all the more closely from the fact that she herself has, it is +said, some little things to reproach herself with during the career of +her two former lords. At her house, no one dares risk a jest. Everything +there is white and pink and perfumed with sanctity, as at the houses of +widows who are approaching the confines of their third youth. It seems +as if every day were Sunday there. + +You, a young husband, join the juvenile society of young women and +girls, misses and young people, in the chamber of Madame Deschars. The +serious people, politicians, whist-players, and tea-drinkers, are in the +parlor. + +In Madame Deschars’ room they are playing a game which consists in +hitting upon words with several meanings, to fit the answers that each +player is to make to the following questions: + +How do you like it? + +What do you do with it? + +Where do you put it? + +Your turn comes to guess the word, you go into the parlor, take part in +a discussion, and return at the call of a smiling young lady. They have +selected a word that may be applied to the most enigmatical replies. +Everybody knows that, in order to puzzle the strongest heads, the best +way is to choose a very ordinary word, and to invent phrases that will +send the parlor Oedipus a thousand leagues from each of his previous +thoughts. + +This game is a poor substitute for lansquenet or dice, but it is not +very expensive. + +The word MAL has been made the Sphinx of this particular occasion. +Every one has determined to put you off the scent. The word, among other +acceptations, has that of _mal_ [evil], a substantive that signifies, in +aesthetics, the opposite of good; of _mal_ [pain, disease, complaint], +a substantive that enters into a thousand pathological expressions; then +_malle_ [a mail-bag], and finally _malle_ [a trunk], that box of various +forms, covered with all kinds of skin, made of every sort of leather, +with handles, that journeys rapidly, for it serves to carry travelling +effects in, as a man of Delille’s school would say. + +For you, a man of some sharpness, the Sphinx displays his wiles; he +spreads his wings and folds them up again; he shows you his lion’s +paws, his woman’s neck, his horse’s loins, and his intellectual head; +he shakes his sacred fillets, he strikes an attitude and runs away, he +comes and goes, and sweeps the place with his terrible equine tail; +he shows his shining claws, and draws them in; he smiles, frisks, and +murmurs. He puts on the looks of a joyous child and those of a matron; +he is, above all, there to make fun of you. + +You ask the group collectively, “How do you like it?” + +“I like it for love’s sake,” says one. + +“I like it regular,” says another. + +“I like it with a long mane.” + +“I like it with a spring lock.” + +“I like it unmasked.” + +“I like it on horseback.” + +“I like it as coming from God,” says Madame Deschars. + +“How do you like it?” you say to your wife. + +“I like it legitimate.” + +This response of your wife is not understood, and sends you a journey +into the constellated fields of the infinite, where the mind, dazzled by +the multitude of creations, finds it impossible to make a choice. + +“Where do you put it?” + +“In a carriage.” + +“In a garret.” + +“In a steamboat.” + +“In the closet.” + +“On a cart.” + +“In prison.” + +“In the ears.” + +“In a shop.” + +Your wife says to you last of all: “In bed.” + +You were on the point of guessing it, but you know no word that fits +this answer, Madame Deschars not being likely to have allowed anything +improper. + +“What do you do with it?” + +“I make it my sole happiness,” says your wife, after the answers of all +the rest, who have sent you spinning through a whole world of linguistic +suppositions. + +This response strikes everybody, and you especially; so you persist in +seeking the meaning of it. You think of the bottle of hot water that +your wife has put to her feet when it is cold,--of the warming pan, +above all! Now of her night-cap,--of her handkerchief,--of her curling +paper,--of the hem of her chemise,--of her embroidery,--of her flannel +jacket,--of your bandanna,--of the pillow. + +In short, as the greatest pleasure of the respondents is to see their +Oedipus mystified, as each word guessed by you throws them into fits +of laughter, superior men, perceiving no word that will fit all the +explanations, will sooner give it up than make three unsuccessful +attempts. According to the law of this innocent game you are condemned +to return to the parlor after leaving a forfeit; but you are so +exceedingly puzzled by your wife’s answers, that you ask what the word +was. + +“Mal,” exclaims a young miss. + +You comprehend everything but your wife’s replies: she has not played +the game. Neither Madame Deschars, nor any one of the young women +understand. She has cheated. You revolt, there is an insurrection +among the girls and young women. They seek and are puzzled. You want an +explanation, and every one participates in your desire. + +“In what sense did you understand the word, my dear?” you say to +Caroline. + +“Why, _male_!” [male.] + +Madame Deschars bites her lips and manifests the greatest displeasure; +the young women blush and drop their eyes; the little girls open theirs, +nudge each other and prick up their ears. Your feet are glued to the +carpet, and you have so much salt in your throat that you believe in a +repetition of the event which delivered Lot from his wife. + +You see an infernal life before you; society is out of the question. + +To remain at home with this triumphant stupidity is equivalent to +condemnation to the state’s prison. + + +Axiom.--Moral tortures exceed physical sufferings by all the difference +which exists between the soul and the body. + + + + +THE ATTENTIONS OF A WIFE. + +Among the keenest pleasures of bachelor life, every man reckons the +independence of his getting up. The fancies of the morning compensate +for the glooms of evening. A bachelor turns over and over in his bed: he +is free to gape loud enough to justify apprehensions of murder, and +to scream at a pitch authorizing the suspicion of joys untold. He can +forget his oaths of the day before, let the fire burn upon the hearth +and the candle sink to its socket,--in short, go to sleep again in spite +of pressing work. He can curse the expectant boots which stand holding +their black mouths open at him and pricking up their ears. He can +pretend not to see the steel hooks which glitter in a sunbeam which has +stolen through the curtains, can disregard the sonorous summons of the +obstinate clock, can bury himself in a soft place, saying: “Yes, I +was in a hurry, yesterday, but am so no longer to-day. Yesterday was +a dotard. To-day is a sage: between them stands the night which brings +wisdom, the night which gives light. I ought to go, I ought to do it, +I promised I would--I am weak, I know. But how can I resist the downy +creases of my bed? My feet feel flaccid, I think I must be sick, I am +too happy just here. I long to see the ethereal horizon of my dreams +again, those women without claws, those winged beings and their obliging +ways. In short, I have found the grain of salt to put upon the tail of +that bird that was always flying away: the coquette’s feet are caught in +the line. I have her now--” + +Your servant, meantime, reads your newspaper, half-opens your letters, +and leaves you to yourself. And you go to sleep again, lulled by the +rumbling of the morning wagons. Those terrible, vexatious, quivering +teams, laden with meat, those trucks with big tin teats bursting with +milk, though they make a clatter most infernal and even crush the paving +stones, seem to you to glide over cotton, and vaguely remind you of +the orchestra of Napoleon Musard. Though your house trembles in all its +timbers and shakes upon its keel, you think yourself a sailor cradled by +a zephyr. + +You alone have the right to bring these joys to an end by throwing away +your night-cap as you twist up your napkin after dinner, and by sitting +up in bed. Then you take yourself to task with such reproaches as these: +“Ah, mercy on me, I must get up!” “Early to bed and early to rise, makes +a man healthy--!” “Get up, lazy bones!” + +All this time you remain perfectly tranquil. You look round your +chamber, you collect your wits together. Finally, you emerge from the +bed, spontaneously! Courageously! of your own accord! You go to the +fireplace, you consult the most obliging of timepieces, you utter +hopeful sentences thus couched: “Whatshisname is a lazy creature, I +guess I shall find him in. I’ll run. I’ll catch him if he’s gone. +He’s sure to wait for me. There is a quarter of an hour’s grace in all +appointments, even between debtor and creditor.” + +You put on your boots with fury, you dress yourself as if you were +afraid of being caught half-dressed, you have the delight of being in +a hurry, you call your buttons into action, you finally go out like a +conqueror, whistling, brandishing your cane, pricking up your ears and +breaking into a canter. + +After all, you say to yourself, you are responsible to no one, you are +your own master! + +But you, poor married man, you were stupid enough to say to your wife, +“To-morrow, my dear” (sometimes she knows it two days beforehand), “I +have got to get up early.” Unfortunate Adolphe, you have especially +proved the importance of this appointment: “It’s to--and to--and above +all to--in short to--” + +Two hours before dawn, Caroline wakes you up gently and says to you +softly: “Adolphy dear, Adolphy love!” + +“What’s the matter? Fire?” + +“No, go to sleep again, I’ve made a mistake; but the hour hand was on +it, any way! It’s only four, you can sleep two hours more.” + +Is not telling a man, “You’ve only got two hours to sleep,” the same +thing, on a small scale, as saying to a criminal, “It’s five in the +morning, the ceremony will be performed at half-past seven”? Such sleep +is troubled by an idea dressed in grey and furnished with wings, which +comes and flaps, like a bat, upon the windows of your brain. + +A woman in a case like this is as exact as a devil coming to claim a +soul he has purchased. When the clock strikes five, your wife’s voice, +too well known, alas! resounds in your ear; she accompanies the stroke, +and says with an atrocious calmness, “Adolphe, it’s five o’clock, get +up, dear.” + +“Ye-e-e-s, ah-h-h-h!” + +“Adolphe, you’ll be late for your business, you said so yourself.” + +“Ah-h-h-h, ye-e-e-e-s.” You turn over in despair. + +“Come, come, love. I got everything ready last night; now you must, my +dear; do you want to miss him? There, up, I say; it’s broad daylight.” + +Caroline throws off the blankets and gets up: she wants to show you that +_she_ can rise without making a fuss. She opens the blinds, she lets in +the sun, the morning air, the noise of the street, and then comes back. + +“Why, Adolphe, you _must_ get up! Who ever would have supposed you had +no energy! But it’s just like you men! I am only a poor, weak woman, but +when I say a thing, I do it.” + +You get up grumbling, execrating the sacrament of marriage. There is not +the slightest merit in your heroism; it wasn’t you, but your wife, +that got up. Caroline gets you everything you want with provoking +promptitude; she foresees everything, she gives you a muffler in winter, +a blue-striped cambric shirt in summer, she treats you like a child; you +are still asleep, she dresses you and has all the trouble. She finally +thrusts you out of doors. Without her nothing would go straight! She +calls you back to give you a paper, a pocketbook, you had forgotten. You +don’t think of anything, she thinks of everything! + +You return five hours afterwards to breakfast, between eleven and noon. +The chambermaid is at the door, or on the stairs, or on the landing, +talking with somebody’s valet: she runs in on hearing or seeing you. +Your servant is laying the cloth in a most leisurely style, stopping to +look out of the window or to lounge, and coming and going like a person +who knows he has plenty of time. You ask for your wife, supposing that +she is up and dressed. + +“Madame is still in bed,” says the maid. + +You find your wife languid, lazy, tired and asleep. She had been awake +all night to wake you in the morning, so she went to bed again, and is +quite hungry now. + +You are the cause of all these disarrangements. If breakfast is not +ready, she says it’s because you went out. If she is not dressed, and +if everything is in disorder, it’s all your fault. For everything which +goes awry she has this answer: “Well, you would get up so early!” “He +would get up so early!” is the universal reason. She makes you go to bed +early, because you got up early. She can do nothing all day, because you +would get up so unusually early. + +Eighteen months afterwards, she still maintains, “Without me, you +would never get up!” To her friends she says, “My husband get up! If it +weren’t for me, he never _would_ get up!” + +To this a man whose hair is beginning to whiten, replies, “A graceful +compliment to you, madame!” This slightly indelicate comment puts an end +to her boasts. + +This petty trouble, repeated several times, teaches you to live alone +in the bosom of your family, not to tell all you know, and to have no +confidant but yourself: and it often seems to you a question whether the +inconveniences of the married state do not exceed its advantages. + + + + +SMALL VEXATIONS. + +You have made a transition from the frolicsome allegretto of the +bachelor to the heavy andante of the father of a family. + +Instead of that fine English steed prancing and snorting between the +polished shafts of a tilbury as light as your own heart, and moving his +glistening croup under the quadruple network of the reins and ribbons +that you so skillfully manage with what grace and elegance the Champs +Elysees can bear witness--you drive a good solid Norman horse with a +steady, family gait. + +You have learned what paternal patience is, and you let no opportunity +slip of proving it. Your countenance, therefore, is serious. + +By your side is a domestic, evidently for two purposes like the +carriage. The vehicle is four-wheeled and hung upon English springs: it +is corpulent and resembles a Rouen scow: it has glass windows, and an +infinity of economical arrangements. It is a barouche in fine weather, +and a brougham when it rains. It is apparently light, but, when six +persons are in it, it is heavy and tires out your only horse. + +On the back seat, spread out like flowers, is your young wife in full +bloom, with her mother, a big marshmallow with a great many leaves. +These two flowers of the female species twitteringly talk of you, though +the noise of the wheels and your attention to the horse, joined to your +fatherly caution, prevent you from hearing what they say. + +On the front seat, there is a nice tidy nurse holding a little girl in +her lap: by her side is a boy in a red plaited shirt, who is continually +leaning out of the carriage and climbing upon the cushions, and who has +a thousand times drawn down upon himself those declarations of every +mother, which he knows to be threats and nothing else: “Be a good boy, +Adolphe, or else--” “I declare I’ll never bring you again, so there!” + +His mamma is secretly tired to death of this noisy little boy: he has +provoked her twenty times, and twenty times the face of the little girl +asleep has calmed her. + +“I am his mother,” she says to herself. And so she finally manages to +keep her little Adolphe quiet. + +You have put your triumphant idea of taking your family to ride into +execution. You left your home in the morning, all the opposite neighbors +having come to their windows, envying you the privilege which your +means give you of going to the country and coming back again without +undergoing the miseries of a public conveyance. So you have dragged your +unfortunate Norman horse through Paris to Vincennes, from Vincennes to +Saint Maur, from Saint Maur to Charenton, from Charenton opposite +some island or other which struck your wife and mother-in-law as being +prettier than all the landscapes through which you had driven them. + +“Let’s go to Maison’s!” somebody exclaims. + +So you go to Maison’s, near Alfort. You come home by the left bank of +the Seine, in the midst of a cloud of very black Olympian dust. The +horse drags your family wearily along. But alas! your pride has fled, +and you look without emotion upon his sunken flanks, and upon two bones +which stick out on each side of his belly. His coat is roughened by the +sweat which has repeatedly come out and dried upon him, and which, no +less than the dust, has made him gummy, sticky and shaggy. The horse +looks like a wrathy porcupine: you are afraid he will be foundered, and +you caress him with the whip-lash in a melancholy way that he perfectly +understands, for he moves his head about like an omnibus horse, tired of +his deplorable existence. + +You think a good deal of this horse; your consider him an excellent one +and he cost you twelve hundred francs. When a man has the honor of being +the father of a family, he thinks as much of twelve hundred francs as +you think of this horse. You see at once the frightful amount of your +extra expenses, in case Coco should have to lie by. For two days you +will have to take hackney coaches to go to your business. You wife will +pout if she can’t go out: but she will go out, and take a carriage. The +horse will cause the purchase of numerous extras, which you will find +in your coachman’s bill,--your only coachman, a model coachman, whom you +watch as you do a model anybody. + +To these thoughts you give expression in the gentle movement of the whip +as it falls upon the animal’s ribs, up to his knees in the black dust +which lines the road in front of La Verrerie. + +At this moment, little Adolphe, who doesn’t know what to do in this +rolling box, has sadly twisted himself up into a corner, and his +grandmother anxiously asks him, “What is the matter?” + +“I’m hungry,” says the child. + +“He’s hungry,” says the mother to her daughter. + +“And why shouldn’t he be hungry? It is half-past five, we are not at the +barrier, and we started at two!” + +“Your husband might have treated us to dinner in the country.” + +“He’d rather make his horse go a couple of leagues further, and get back +to the house.” + +“The cook might have had the day to herself. But Adolphe is right, after +all: it’s cheaper to dine at home,” adds the mother-in-law. + +“Adolphe,” exclaims your wife, stimulated by the word “cheaper,” “we +go so slow that I shall be seasick, and you keep driving right in this +nasty dust. What are you thinking of? My gown and hat will be ruined!” + +“Would you rather ruin the horse?” you ask, with the air of a man who +can’t be answered. + +“Oh, no matter for your horse; just think of your son who is dying +of hunger: he hasn’t tasted a thing for seven hours. Whip up your old +horse! One would really think you cared more for your nag than for your +child!” + +You dare not give your horse a single crack with the whip, for he might +still have vigor enough left to break into a gallop and run away. + +“No, Adolphe tries to vex me, he’s going slower,” says the young wife to +her mother. “My dear, go as slow as you like. But I know you’ll say I am +extravagant when you see me buying another hat.” + +Upon this you utter a series of remarks which are lost in the racket +made by the wheels. + +“What’s the use of replying with reasons that haven’t got an ounce of +common-sense?” cries Caroline. + +You talk, turning your face to the carriage and then turning back to the +horse, to avoid an accident. + +“That’s right, run against somebody and tip us over, do, you’ll be rid +of us. Adolphe, your son is dying of hunger. See how pale he is!” + +“But Caroline,” puts in the mother-in-law, “he’s doing the best he can.” + +Nothing annoys you so much as to have your mother-in-law take your +part. She is a hypocrite and is delighted to see you quarreling with +her daughter. Gently and with infinite precaution she throws oil on the +fire. + +When you arrive at the barrier, your wife is mute. She says not a word, +she sits with her arms crossed, and will not look at you. You have +neither soul, heart, nor sentiment. No one but you could have invented +such a party of pleasure. If you are unfortunate enough to remind +Caroline that it was she who insisted on the excursion, that morning, +for her children’s sake, and in behalf of her milk--she nurses the +baby--you will be overwhelmed by an avalanche of frigid and stinging +reproaches. + +You bear it all so as “not to turn the milk of a nursing mother, for +whose sake you must overlook some little things,” so your atrocious +mother-in-law whispers in your ear. + +All the furies of Orestes are rankling in your heart. + +In reply to the sacramental words pronounced by the officer of the +customs, “Have you anything to declare?” your wife says, “I declare a +great deal of ill-humor and dust.” + +She laughs, the officer laughs, and you feel a desire to tip your family +into the Seine. + +Unluckily for you, you suddenly remember the joyous and perverse young +woman who wore a pink bonnet and who made merry in your tilbury six +years before, as you passed this spot on your way to the chop-house on +the river’s bank. What a reminiscence! Was Madame Schontz anxious about +babies, about her bonnet, the lace of which was torn to pieces in the +bushes? No, she had no care for anything whatever, not even for her +dignity, for she shocked the rustic police of Vincennes by the somewhat +daring freedom of her style of dancing. + +You return home, you have frantically hurried your Norman horse, +and have neither prevented an indisposition of the animal, nor an +indisposition of your wife. + +That evening, Caroline has very little milk. If the baby cries and +if your head is split in consequence, it is all your fault, as you +preferred the health of your horse to that of your son who was dying +of hunger, and of your daughter whose supper has disappeared in a +discussion in which your wife was right, _as she always is_. + +“Well, well,” she says, “men are not mothers!” + +As you leave the chamber, you hear your mother-in-law consoling her +daughter by these terrible words: “Come, be calm, Caroline: that’s the +way with them all: they are a selfish lot: your father was just like +that!” + + + + +THE ULTIMATUM. + +It is eight o’clock; you make your appearance in the bedroom of your +wife. There is a brilliant light. The chambermaid and the cook hover +lightly about. The furniture is covered with dresses and flowers tried +on and laid aside. + +The hair-dresser is there, an artist par excellence, a sovereign +authority, at once nobody and everything. You hear the other domestics +going and coming: orders are given and recalled, errands are well or ill +performed. The disorder is at its height. This chamber is a studio from +whence to issue a parlor Venus. + +Your wife desires to be the fairest at the ball which you are to attend. +Is it still for your sake, or only for herself, or is it for somebody +else? Serious questions these. + +The idea does not even occur to you. + +You are squeezed, hampered, harnessed in your ball accoutrement: +you count your steps as you walk, you look around, you observe, you +contemplate talking business on neutral ground with a stock-broker, a +notary or a banker, to whom you would not like to give an advantage over +you by calling at their house. + +A singular fact which all have probably observed, but the causes of +which can hardly be determined, is the peculiar repugnance which men +dressed and ready to go to a party have for discussions or to answer +questions. At the moment of starting, there are few husbands who are not +taciturn and profoundly absorbed in reflections which vary with their +characters. Those who reply give curt and peremptory answers. + +But women, at this time, are exceedingly aggravating. They consult you, +they ask your advice upon the best way of concealing the stem of a rose, +of giving a graceful fall to a bunch of briar, or a happy turn to a +scarf. As a neat English expression has it, “they fish for compliments,” + and sometimes for better than compliments. + +A boy just out of school would discern the motive concealed behind the +willows of these pretexts: but your wife is so well known to you, +and you have so often playfully joked upon her moral and physical +perfections, that you are harsh enough to give your opinion briefly and +conscientiously: you thus force Caroline to put that decisive question, +so cruel to women, even those who have been married twenty years: + +“So I don’t suit you then?” + +Drawn upon the true ground by this inquiry, you bestow upon her such +little compliments as you can spare and which are, as it were, the small +change, the sous, the liards of your purse. + +“The best gown you ever wore!” “I never saw you so well dressed.” “Blue, +pink, yellow, cherry [take your pick], becomes you charmingly.” “Your +head-dress is quite original.” “As you go in, every one will admire +you.” “You will not only be the prettiest, but the best dressed.” + “They’ll all be mad not to have your taste.” “Beauty is a natural gift: +taste is like intelligence, a thing that we may be proud of.” + +“Do you think so? Are you in earnest, Adolphe?” + +Your wife is coquetting with you. She chooses this moment to force from +you your pretended opinion of one and another of her friends, and to +insinuate the price of the articles of her dress you so much admire. +Nothing is too dear to please you. She sends the cook out of the room. + +“Let’s go,” you say. + +She sends the chambermaid out after having dismissed the hair-dresser, +and begins to turn round and round before her glass, showing off to you +her most glorious beauties. + +“Let’s go,” you say. + +“You are in a hurry,” she returns. + +And she goes on exhibiting herself with all her little airs, setting +herself off like a fine peach magnificently exhibited in a fruiterer’s +window. But since you have dined rather heartily, you kiss her upon the +forehead merely, not feeling able to countersign your opinions. Caroline +becomes serious. + +The carriage waits. All the household looks at Caroline as she goes +out: she is the masterpiece to which all have contributed, and everybody +admires the common work. + +Your wife departs highly satisfied with herself, but a good deal +displeased with you. She proceeds loftily to the ball, just as a +picture, caressed by the painter and minutely retouched in the studio, +is sent to the annual exhibition in the vast bazaar of the Louvre. Your +wife, alas! sees fifty women handsomer than herself: they have invented +dresses of the most extravagant price, and more or less original: and +that which happens at the Louvre to the masterpiece, happens to the +object of feminine labor: your wife’s dress seems pale by the side of +another very much like it, but the livelier color of which crushes it. +Caroline is nobody, and is hardly noticed. When there are sixty handsome +women in a room, the sentiment of beauty is lost, beauty is no longer +appreciated. Your wife becomes a very ordinary affair. The petty +stratagem of her smile, made perfect by practice, has no meaning in the +midst of countenances of noble expression, of self-possessed women +of lofty presence. She is completely put down, and no one asks her to +dance. She tries to force an expression of pretended satisfaction, +but, as she is not satisfied, she hears people say, “Madame Adolphe +is looking very ill to-night.” Women hypocritically ask her if she is +indisposed and “Why don’t you dance?” They have a whole catalogue of +malicious remarks veneered with sympathy and electroplated with charity, +enough to damn a saint, to make a monkey serious, and to give the devil +the shudders. + +You, who are innocently playing cards or walking backwards and forwards, +and so have not seen one of the thousand pin-pricks with which your +wife’s self-love has been tattooed, you come and ask her in a whisper, +“What is the matter?” + +“Order _my_ carriage!” + +This _my_ is the consummation of marriage. For two years she has said +“_my husband’s_ carriage,” “_the_ carriage,” “_our_ carriage,” and now +she says “_my_ carriage.” + +You are in the midst of a game, you say, somebody wants his revenge, or +you must get your money back. + +Here, Adolphe, we allow that you have sufficient strength of mind to say +yes, to disappear, and _not_ to order the carriage. + +You have a friend, you send him to dance with your wife, for you have +commenced a system of concessions which will ruin you. You already dimly +perceive the advantage of a friend. + +Finally, you order the carriage. You wife gets in with concentrated +rage, she hurls herself into a corner, covers her face with her hood, +crosses her arms under her pelisse, and says not a word. + +O husbands! Learn this fact; you may, at this fatal moment, repair and +redeem everything: and never does the impetuosity of lovers who have +been caressing each other the whole evening with flaming gaze fail to do +it! Yes, you can bring her home in triumph, she has now nobody but you, +you have one more chance, that of taking your wife by storm! But no, +idiot, stupid and indifferent that you are, you ask her, “What is the +matter?” + + +Axiom.--A husband should always know what is the matter with his wife, +for she always knows what is not. + + +“I’m cold,” she says. + +“The ball was splendid.” + +“Pooh! nobody of distinction! People have the mania, nowadays, to invite +all Paris into a hole. There were women even on the stairs: their gowns +were horribly smashed, and mine is ruined.” + +“We had a good time.” + +“Ah, you men, you play and that’s the whole of it. Once married, you +care about as much for your wives as a lion does for the fine arts.” + +“How changed you are; you were so gay, so happy, so charming when we +arrived.” + +“Oh, you never understand us women. I begged you to go home, and you +left me there, as if a woman ever did anything without a reason. You are +not without intelligence, but now and then you are so queer I don’t know +what you are thinking about.” + +Once upon this footing, the quarrel becomes more bitter. When you give +your wife your hand to lift her from the carriage, you grasp a woman of +wood: she gives you a “thank you” which puts you in the same rank as her +servant. You understood your wife no better before than you do after +the ball: you find it difficult to follow her, for instead of going up +stairs, she flies up. The rupture is complete. + +The chambermaid is involved in your disgrace: she is received with blunt +No’s and Yes’s, as dry as Brussells rusks, which she swallows with a +slanting glance at you. “Monsieur’s always doing these things,” she +mutters. + +You alone might have changed Madame’s temper. She goes to bed; she +has her revenge to take: you did not comprehend her. Now she does not +comprehend you. She deposits herself on her side of the bed in the most +hostile and offensive posture: she is wrapped up in her chemise, in +her sack, in her night-cap, like a bale of clocks packed for the +East Indies. She says neither good-night, nor good-day, nor dear, nor +Adolphe: you don’t exist, you are a bag of wheat. + +Your Caroline, so enticing five hours before in this very chamber where +she frisked about like an eel, is now a junk of lead. Were you the +Tropical Zone in person, astride of the Equator, you could not melt the +ice of this little personified Switzerland that pretends to be asleep, +and who could freeze you from head to foot, if she liked. Ask her one +hundred times what is the matter with her, Switzerland replies by an +ultimatum, like the Diet or the Conference of London. + +Nothing is the matter with her: she is tired: she is going to sleep. + +The more you insist, the more she erects bastions of ignorance, the more +she isolates herself by chevaux-de-frise. If you get impatient, Caroline +begins to dream! You grumble, you are lost. + + +Axiom.--Inasmuch as women are always willing and able to explain their +strong points, they leave us to guess at their weak ones. + + +Caroline will perhaps also condescend to assure you that she does not +feel well. But she laughs in her night-cap when you have fallen asleep, +and hurls imprecations upon your slumbering body. + + + + +WOMEN’S LOGIC. + +You imagine you have married a creature endowed with reason: you are +woefully mistaken, my friend. + + +Axiom.--Sensitive beings are not sensible beings. + + +Sentiment is not argument, reason is not pleasure, and pleasure is +certainly not a reason. + +“Oh! sir!” she says. + +Reply “Ah! yes! Ah!” You must bring forth this “ah!” from the very +depths of your thoracic cavern, as you rush in a rage from the house, or +return, confounded, to your study. + +Why? Now? Who has conquered, killed, overthrown you! Your wife’s logic, +which is not the logic of Aristotle, nor that of Ramus, nor that of +Kant, nor that of Condillac, nor that of Robespierre, nor that of +Napoleon: but which partakes of the character of all these logics, and +which we must call the universal logic of women, the logic of English +women as it is that of Italian women, of the women of Normandy and +Brittany (ah, these last are unsurpassed!), of the women of Paris, +in short, that of the women in the moon, if there are women in that +nocturnal land, with which the women of the earth have an evident +understanding, angels that they are! + +The discussion began after breakfast. Discussions can never take place +in a household save at this hour. A man could hardly have a discussion +with his wife in bed, even if he wanted to: she has too many advantages +over him, and can too easily reduce him to silence. On leaving the +nuptial chamber with a pretty woman in it, a man is apt to be hungry, if +he is young. Breakfast is usually a cheerful meal, and cheerfulness is +not given to argument. In short, you do not open the business till you +have had your tea or your coffee. + +You have taken it into your head, for instance, to send your son to +school. All fathers are hypocrites and are never willing to confess that +their own flesh and blood is very troublesome when it walks about on two +legs, lays its dare-devil hands on everything, and is everywhere at +once like a frisky pollywog. Your son barks, mews, and sings; he breaks, +smashes and soils the furniture, and furniture is dear; he makes toys of +everything, he scatters your papers, and he cuts paper dolls out of the +morning’s newspaper before you have read it. + +His mother says to him, referring to anything of yours: “Take it!” but +in reference to anything of hers she says: “Take care!” + +She cunningly lets him have your things that she may be left in peace. +Her bad faith as a good mother seeks shelter behind her child, your son +is her accomplice. Both are leagued against you like Robert Macaire and +Bertrand against the subscribers to their joint stock company. The boy +is an axe with which foraging excursions are performed in your domains. +He goes either boldly or slyly to maraud in your wardrobe: he reappears +caparisoned in the drawers you laid aside that morning, and brings to +the light of day many articles condemned to solitary confinement. He +brings the elegant Madame Fischtaminel, a friend whose good graces you +cultivate, your girdle for checking corpulency, bits of cosmetic for +dyeing your moustache, old waistcoats discolored at the arm-holes, +stockings slightly soiled at the heels and somewhat yellow at the toes. +It is quite impossible to remark that these stains are caused by the +leather! + +Your wife looks at your friend and laughs; you dare not be angry, so you +laugh too, but what a laugh! The unfortunate all know that laugh. + +Your son, moreover, gives you a cold sweat, if your razors happen to be +out of their place. If you are angry, the little rebel laughs and shows +his two rows of pearls: if you scold him, he cries. His mother rushes +in! And what a mother she is! A mother who will detest you if you don’t +give him the razor! With women there is no middle ground; a man is +either a monster or a model. + +At certain times you perfectly understand Herod and his famous decrees +relative to the Massacre of the Innocents, which have only been +surpassed by those of the good Charles X! + +Your wife has returned to her sofa, you walk up and down, and stop, and +you boldly introduce the subject by this interjectional remark: + +“Caroline, we must send Charles to boarding school.” + +“Charles cannot go to boarding school,” she returns in a mild tone. + +“Charles is six years old, the age at which a boy’s education begins.” + +“In the first place,” she replies, “it begins at seven. The royal +princes are handed over to their governor by their governess when +they are seven. That’s the law and the prophets. I don’t see why you +shouldn’t apply to the children of private people the rule laid down for +the children of princes. Is your son more forward than theirs? The king +of Rome--” + +“The king of Rome is not a case in point.” + +“What! Is not the king of Rome the son of the Emperor? [Here she changes +the subject.] Well, I declare, you accuse the Empress, do you? Why, +Doctor Dubois himself was present, besides--” + +“I said nothing of the kind.” + +“How you do interrupt, Adolphe.” + +“I say that the king of Rome [here you begin to raise your voice], the +king of Rome, who was hardly four years old when he left France, is no +example for us.” + +“That doesn’t prevent the fact of the Duke de Bordeaux’s having been +placed in the hands of the Duke de Riviere, his tutor, at seven years.” + [Logic.] + +“The case of the young Duke of Bordeaux is different.” + +“Then you confess that a boy can’t be sent to school before he is seven +years old?” she says with emphasis. [More logic.] + +“No, my dear, I don’t confess that at all. There is a great deal of +difference between private and public education.” + +“That’s precisely why I don’t want to send Charles to school yet. He +ought to be much stronger than he is, to go there.” + +“Charles is very strong for his age.” + +“Charles? That’s the way with men! Why, Charles has a very weak +constitution; he takes after you. [Here she changes from _tu_ to +_vous_.] But if you are determined to get rid of your son, why put him +out to board, of course. I have noticed for some time that the dear +child annoys you.” + +“Annoys me? The idea! But we are answerable for our children, are we +not? It is time Charles’ education was began: he is getting very bad +habits here, he obeys no one, he thinks himself perfectly free to do as +he likes, he hits everybody and nobody dares to hit him back. He ought +to be placed in the midst of his equals, or he will grow up with the +most detestable temper.” + +“Thank you: so I am bringing Charles up badly!” + +“I did not say that: but you will always have excellent reasons for +keeping him at home.” + +Here the _vous_ becomes reciprocal and the discussion takes a bitter +turn on both sides. Your wife is very willing to wound you by saying +_vous_, but she feels cross when it becomes mutual. + +“The long and the short of it is that you want to get my child away, +you find that he is between us, you are jealous of your son, you want +to tyrannize over me at your ease, and you sacrifice your boy! Oh, I am +smart enough to see through you!” + +“You make me out like Abraham with his knife! One would think there were +no such things as schools! So the schools are empty; nobody sends their +children to school!” + +“You are trying to make me appear ridiculous,” she retorts. “I know that +there are schools well enough, but people don’t send boys of six there, +and Charles shall not start now.” + +“Don’t get angry, my dear.” + +“As if I ever get angry! I am a woman and know how to suffer in +silence.” + +“Come, let us reason together.” + +“You have talked nonsense enough.” + +“It is time that Charles should learn to read and write; later in life, +he will find difficulties sufficient to disgust him.” + +Here, you talk for ten minutes without interruption, and you close +with an appealing “Well?” armed with an intonation which suggests an +interrogation point of the most crooked kind. + +“Well!” she replies, “it is not yet time for Charles to go to school.” + +You have gained nothing at all. + +“But, my dear, Monsieur Deschars certainly sent his little Julius to +school at six years. Go and examine the schools and you will find lots +of little boys of six there.” + +You talk for ten minutes more without the slightest interruption, and +then you ejaculate another “Well?” + +“Little Julius Deschars came home with chilblains,” she says. + +“But Charles has chilblains here.” + +“Never,” she replies, proudly. + +In a quarter of an hour, the main question is blocked by a side +discussion on this point: “Has Charles had chilblains or not?” + +You bandy contradictory allegations; you no longer believe each other; +you must appeal to a third party. + + +Axiom.--Every household has its Court of Appeals which takes no notice +of the merits, but judges matters of form only. + + +The nurse is sent for. She comes, and decides in favor of your wife. It +is fully decided that Charles has never had chilblains. + +Caroline glances triumphantly at you and utters these monstrous words: +“There, you see Charles can’t possibly go to school!” + +You go out breathless with rage. There is no earthly means of convincing +your wife that there is not the slightest reason for your son’s not +going to school in the fact that he has never had chilblains. + +That evening, after dinner, you hear this atrocious creature finishing +a long conversation with a woman with these words: “He wanted to send +Charles to school, but I made him see that he would have to wait.” + +Some husbands, at a conjuncture like this, burst out before everybody; +their wives take their revenge six weeks later, but the husbands gain +this by it, that Charles is sent to school the very day he gets into +any mischief. Other husbands break the crockery, and keep their rage to +themselves. The knowing ones say nothing and bide their time. + +A woman’s logic is exhibited in this way upon the slightest occasion, +about a promenade or the proper place to put a sofa. This logic is +extremely simple, inasmuch as it consists in never expressing but one +idea, that which contains the expression of their will. Like everything +pertaining to female nature, this system may be resolved into two +algebraic terms--Yes: no. There are also certain little movements of the +head which mean so much that they may take the place of either. + + + + +THE JESUITISM OF WOMEN. + +The most jesuitical Jesuit of Jesuits is yet a thousand times less +jesuitical than the least jesuitical woman,--so you may judge what +Jesuits women are! They are so jesuitical that the cunningest Jesuit +himself could never guess to what extent of jesuitism a woman may go, +for there are a thousand ways of being jesuitical, and a woman is such +an adroit Jesuit, that she has the knack of being a Jesuit without +having a jesuitical look. You can rarely, though you can sometimes, +prove to a Jesuit that he is one: but try once to demonstrate to a woman +that she acts or talks like a Jesuit. She would be cut to pieces rather +than confess herself one. + +She, a Jesuit! The very soul of honor and loyalty! She a Jesuit! What +do you mean by “Jesuit?” She does not know what a Jesuit is: what is +a Jesuit? She has never seen or heard of a Jesuit! It’s you who are +a Jesuit! And she proves with jesuitical demonstration that you are a +subtle Jesuit. + +Here is one of the thousand examples of a woman’s jesuitism, and this +example constitutes the most terrible of the petty troubles of married +life; it is perhaps the most serious. + +Induced by a desire the thousandth time expressed by Caroline, who +complained that she had to go on foot or that she could not buy a new +hat, a new parasol, a new dress, or any other article of dress, often +enough: + +That she could not dress her baby as a sailor, as a lancer, as an +artilleryman of the National Guard, as a Highlander with naked legs and +a cap and feather, in a jacket, in a roundabout, in a velvet sack, +in boots, in trousers: that she could not buy him toys enough, nor +mechanical moving mice and Noah’s Arks enough: + +That she could not return Madame Deschars or Madame de Fischtaminel +their civilities, a ball, a party, a dinner: nor take a private box at +the theatre, thus avoiding the necessity of sitting cheek by jowl with +men who are either too polite or not enough so, and of calling a cab at +the close of the performance; apropos of which she thus discourses: + +“You think it cheaper, but you are mistaken: men are all the same! I +soil my shoes, I spoil my hat, my shawl gets wet and my silk stockings +get muddy. You economize twenty francs by not having a carriage,--no +not twenty, sixteen, for your pay four for the cab--and you lose fifty +francs’ worth of dress, besides being wounded in your pride on seeing +a faded bonnet on my head: you don’t see why it’s faded, but it’s those +horrid cabs. I say nothing of the annoyance of being tumbled and jostled +by a crowd of men, for it seems you don’t care for that!” + +That she could not buy a piano instead of hiring one, nor keep up with +the fashions; (there are some women, she says, who have all the new +styles, but just think what they give in return! She would rather throw +herself out of the window than imitate them! She loves you too much. +Here she sheds tears. She does not understand such women). That she +could not ride in the Champs Elysees, stretched out in her own carriage, +like Madame de Fischtaminel. (There’s a woman who understands life: and +who has a well-taught, well-disciplined and very contented husband: his +wife would go through fire and water for him!) + +Finally, beaten in a thousand conjugal scenes, beaten by the most +logical arguments (the late logicians Tripier and Merlin were nothing to +her, as the preceding chapter has sufficiently shown you), beaten by the +most tender caresses, by tears, by your own words turned against you, +for under circumstances like these, a woman lies in wait in her house +like a jaguar in the jungle; she does not appear to listen to you, or to +heed you; but if a single word, a wish, a gesture, escapes you, she arms +herself with it, she whets it to an edge, she brings it to bear upon you +a hundred times over; beaten by such graceful tricks as “If you will do +so and so, I will do this and that;” for women, in these cases, become +greater bargainers than the Jews and Greeks (those, I mean, who sell +perfumes and little girls), than the Arabs (those, I mean, who sell +little boys and horses), greater higglers than the Swiss and the +Genevese, than bankers, and, what is worse than all, than the Genoese! + +Finally, beaten in a manner which may be called beaten, you determine +to risk a certain portion of your capital in a business undertaking. One +evening, at twilight, seated side by side, or some morning on awakening, +while Caroline, half asleep, a pink bud in her white linen, her face +smiling in her lace, is beside you, you say to her, “You want this, you +say, or you want that: you told me this or you told me that:” in short, +you hastily enumerate the numberless fancies by which she has over and +over again broken your heart, for there is nothing more dreadful than to +be unable to satisfy the desires of a beloved wife, and you close with +these words: + +“Well, my dear, an opportunity offers of quintupling a hundred thousand +francs, and I have decided to make the venture.” + +She is wide awake now, she sits up in bed, and gives you a kiss, ah! +this time, a real good one! + +“You are a dear boy!” is her first word. + +We will not mention her last, for it is an enormous and unpronounceable +onomatope. + +“Now,” she says, “tell me all about it.” + +You try to explain the nature of the affair. But in the first place, +women do not understand business, and in the next they do not wish to +seem to understand it. Your dear, delighted Caroline says you were wrong +to take her desires, her groans, her sighs for new dresses, in earnest. +She is afraid of your venture, she is frightened at the directors, the +shares, and above all at the running expenses, and doesn’t exactly see +where the dividend comes in. + + +Axiom.--Women are always afraid of things that have to be divided. + + +In short, Caroline suspects a trap: but she is delighted to know that +she can have her carriage, her box, the numerous styles of dress for +her baby, and the rest. While dissuading you from engaging in the +speculation, she is visibly glad to see you investing your money in it. + + +FIRST PERIOD.--“Oh, I am the happiest woman on the face of the earth! +Adolphe has just gone into the most splendid venture. I am going to have +a carriage, oh! ever so much handsomer than Madame de Fischtaminel’s; +hers is out of fashion. Mine will have curtains with fringes. My horses +will be mouse-colored, hers are bay,--they are as common as coppers.” + +“What is this venture, madame?” + +“Oh, it’s splendid--the stock is going up; he explained it to me before +he went into it, for Adolphe never does anything without consulting me.” + +“You are very fortunate.” + +“Marriage would be intolerable without entire confidence, and Adolphe +tells me everything.” + +Thus, Adolphe, you are the best husband in Paris, you are adorable, you +are a man of genius, you are all heart, an angel. You are petted to an +uncomfortable degree. You bless the marriage tie. Caroline extols men, +calling them “kings of creation,” women were made for them, man is +naturally generous, and matrimony is a delightful institution. + +For three, sometimes six, months, Caroline executes the most brilliant +concertos and solos upon this delicious theme: “I shall be rich! I shall +have a thousand a month for my dress: I am going to keep my carriage!” + +If your son is alluded to, it is merely to ask about the school to which +he shall be sent. + + +SECOND PERIOD.--“Well, dear, how is your business getting on?--What +has become of it?--How about that speculation which was to give me a +carriage, and other things?--It is high time that affair should come to +something.--It is a good while cooking.--When _will_ it begin to pay? Is +the stock going up?--There’s nobody like you for hitting upon ventures +that never amount to anything.” + +One day she says to you, “Is there really an affair?” + +If you mention it eight or ten months after, she returns: + +“Ah! Then there really _is_ an affair!” + +This woman, whom you thought dull, begins to show signs of extraordinary +wit, when her object is to make fun of you. During this period, Caroline +maintains a compromising silence when people speak of you, or else she +speaks disparagingly of men in general: “Men are not what they seem: +to find them out you must try them.” “Marriage has its good and its bad +points.” “Men never can finish anything.” + + +THIRD PERIOD.--_Catastrophe_.--This magnificent affair which was to +yield five hundred per cent, in which the most cautious, the best +informed persons took part--peers, deputies, bankers--all of them +Knights of the Legion of Honor--this venture has been obliged to +liquidate! The most sanguine expect to get ten per cent of their capital +back. You are discouraged. + +Caroline has often said to you, “Adolphe, what is the matter? Adolphe, +there is something wrong.” + +Finally, you acquaint Caroline with the fatal result: she begins by +consoling you. + +“One hundred thousand francs lost! We shall have to practice the +strictest economy,” you imprudently add. + +The jesuitism of woman bursts out at this word “economy.” It sets fire +to the magazine. + +“Ah! that’s what comes of speculating! How is it that _you, ordinarily +so prudent_, could go and risk a hundred thousand francs! _You know I +was against it from the beginning!_ BUT YOU WOULD NOT LISTEN TO ME!” + +Upon this, the discussion grows bitter. + +You are good for nothing--you have no business capacity; women alone +take clear views of things. You have risked your children’s bread, +though she tried to dissuade you from it.--You cannot say it was for +her. Thank God, she has nothing to reproach herself with. A hundred +times a month she alludes to your disaster: “If my husband had not +thrown away his money in such and such a scheme, I could have had this +and that.” “The next time you want to go into an affair, perhaps you’ll +consult me!” Adolphe is accused and convicted of having foolishly lost +one hundred thousand francs, without an object in view, like a dolt, and +without having consulted his wife. Caroline advises her friends not to +marry. She complains of the incapacity of men who squander the fortunes +of their wives. Caroline is vindictive, she makes herself generally +disagreeable. Pity Adolphe! Lament, ye husbands! O bachelors, rejoice +and be exceeding glad! + + + + +MEMORIES AND REGRETS. + +After several years of wedded life, your love has become so placid, +that Caroline sometimes tries, in the evening, to wake you up by various +little coquettish phrases. There is about you a certain calmness and +tranquillity which always exasperates a lawful wife. Women see in it a +sort of insolence: they look upon the indifference of happiness as +the fatuity of confidence, for of course they never imagine their +inestimable equalities can be regarded with disdain: their virtue is +therefore enraged at being so cordially trusted in. + +In this situation, which is what every couple must come to, and which +both husband and wife must expect, no husband dares confess that the +constant repetition of the same dish has become wearisome; but his +appetite certainly requires the condiments of dress, the ideas excited +by absence, the stimulus of an imaginary rivalry. + +In short, at this period, you walk very comfortably with your wife on +your arm, without pressing hers against your heart with the solicitous +and watchful cohesion of a miser grasping his treasure. You gaze +carelessly round upon the curiosities in the street, leading your wife +in a loose and distracted way, as if you were towing a Norman scow. Come +now, be frank! If, on passing your wife, an admirer were gently to press +her, accidentally or purposely, would you have the slightest desire to +discover his motives? Besides, you say, no woman would seek to +bring about a quarrel for such a trifle. Confess this, too, that the +expression “such a trifle” is exceedingly flattering to both of you. + +You are in this position, but you have as yet proceeded no farther. +Still, you have a horrible thought which you bury in the depths of your +heart and conscience: Caroline has not come up to your expectations. +Caroline has imperfections, which, during the high tides of the +honey-moon, were concealed under the water, but which the ebb of the +gall-moon has laid bare. You have several times run against these +breakers, your hopes have been often shipwrecked upon them, more than +once your desires--those of a young marrying man--(where, alas, is that +time!) have seen their richly laden gondolas go to pieces there: the +flower of the cargo went to the bottom, the ballast of the marriage +remained. In short, to make use of a colloquial expression, as you talk +over your marriage with yourself you say, as you look at Caroline, “_She +is not what I took her to be!_” + +Some evening, at a ball, in society, at a friend’s house, no matter +where, you meet a sublime young woman, beautiful, intellectual and kind: +with a soul, oh! a soul of celestial purity, and of miraculous beauty! +Yes, there is that unchangeable oval cut of face, those features which +time will never impair, that graceful and thoughtful brow. The unknown +is rich, well-educated, of noble birth: she will always be what she +should be, she knows when to shine, when to remain in the background: +she appears in all her glory and power, the being you have dreamed +of, your wife that should have been, she whom you feel you could love +forever. She would always have flattered your little vanities, she would +understand and admirably serve your interests. She is tender and +gay, too, this young lady who reawakens all your better feelings, who +rekindles your slumbering desires. + +You look at Caroline with gloomy despair, and here are the phantom-like +thoughts which tap, with wings of a bat, the beak of a vulture, the body +of a death’s-head moth, upon the walls of the palace in which, enkindled +by desire, glows your brain like a lamp of gold: + + +FIRST STANZA. Ah, dear me, why did I get married? Fatal idea! I allowed +myself to be caught by a small amount of cash. And is it really over? +Cannot I have another wife? Ah, the Turks manage things better! It is +plain enough that the author of the Koran lived in the desert! + +SECOND STANZA. My wife is sick, she sometimes coughs in the morning. If +it is the design of Providence to remove her from the world, let it +be speedily done for her sake and for mine. The angel has lived long +enough. + +THIRD STANZA. I am a monster! Caroline is the mother of my children! + + +You go home, that night, in a carriage with your wife: you think her +perfectly horrible: she speaks to you, but you answer in monosyllables. +She says, “What is the matter?” and you answer, “Nothing.” She coughs, +you advise her to see the doctor in the morning. Medicine has its +hazards. + + +FOURTH STANZA. I have been told that a physician, poorly paid by the +heirs of his deceased patient, imprudently exclaimed, “What! they cut +down my bill, when they owe me forty thousand a year.” _I_ would not +haggle over fees! + + +“Caroline,” you say to her aloud, “you must take care of yourself; cross +your shawl, be prudent, my darling angel.” + +Your wife is delighted with you since you seem to take such an interest +in her. While she is preparing to retire, you lie stretched out upon the +sofa. You contemplate the divine apparition which opens to you the ivory +portals of your castles in the air. Delicious ecstasy! ‘Tis the sublime +young woman that you see before you! She is as white as the sail of +the treasure-laden galleon as it enters the harbor of Cadiz. Your wife, +happy in your admiration, now understands your former taciturnity. You +still see, with closed eyes, the sublime young woman; she is the burden +of your thoughts, and you say aloud: + + +FIFTH AND LAST STANZA. Divine! Adorable! Can there be another woman +like her? Rose of Night! Column of ivory! Celestial maiden! Morning and +Evening Star! + + +Everyone says his prayers; you have said four. + +The next morning, your wife is delightful, she coughs no more, she +has no need of a doctor; if she dies, it will be of good health; you +launched four maledictions upon her, in the name of your sublime young +woman, and four times she blessed you for it. Caroline does not know +that in the depths of your heart there wriggles a little red fish like +a crocodile, concealed beneath conjugal love like the other would be hid +in a basin. + +A few days before, your wife had spoken of you in rather equivocal terms +to Madame de Fischtaminel: your fair friend comes to visit her, and +Caroline compromises you by a long and humid gaze; she praises you and +says she never was happier. + +You rush out in a rage, you are beside yourself, and are glad to meet a +friend, that you may work off your bile. + +“Don’t you ever marry, George; it’s better to see your heirs carrying +away your furniture while the death-rattle is in your throat, better +to go through an agony of two hours without a drop to cool your tongue, +better to be assassinated by inquiries about your will by a nurse +like the one in Henry Monnier’s terrible picture of a ‘Bachelor’s Last +Moments!’ Never marry under any pretext!” + +Fortunately you see the sublime young woman no more. You are saved from +the tortures to which a criminal passion was leading you. You fall back +again into the purgatory of your married bliss; but you begin to be +attentive to Madame de Fischtaminel, with whom you were dreadfully in +love, without being able to get near her, while you were a bachelor. + + + + +OBSERVATIONS. + +When you have arrived at this point in the latitude or longitude of +the matrimonial ocean, there appears a slight chronic, intermittent +affection, not unlike the toothache. Here, I see, you stop me to ask, +“How are we to find the longitude in this sea? When can a husband +be sure he has attained this nautical point? And can the danger be +avoided?” + +You may arrive at this point, look you, as easily after ten months as +ten years of wedlock; it depends upon the speed of the vessel, its +style of rigging, upon the trade winds, the force of the currents, and +especially upon the composition of the crew. You have this advantage +over the mariner, that he has but one method of calculating his +position, while husbands have at least a thousand of reckoning theirs. + + +EXAMPLE: Caroline, your late darling, your late treasure, who is now +merely your humdrum wife, leans much too heavily upon your arm while +walking on the boulevard, or else says it is much more elegant not to +take your arm at all; + +Or else she notices men, older or younger as the case may be, dressed +with more or less taste, whereas she formerly saw no one whatever, +though the sidewalk was black with hats and traveled by more boots than +slippers; + +Or, when you come home, she says, “It’s no one but my husband:” instead +of saying “Ah! ‘tis Adolphe!” as she used to say with a gesture, a look, +an accent which caused her admirers to think, “Well, here’s a happy +woman at last!” This last exclamation of a woman is suitable for two +eras,--first, while she is sincere; second, while she is hypocritical, +with her “Ah! ‘tis Adolphe!” When she exclaims, “It’s only my husband,” + she no longer deigns to play a part. + +Or, if you come home somewhat late--at eleven, or at midnight--you find +her--snoring! Odious symptom! + +Or else she puts on her stockings in your presence. Among English +couples, this never happens but once in a lady’s married life; the next +day she leaves for the Continent with some captain or other, and no +longer thinks of putting on her stockings at all. + +Or else--but let us stop here. + +This is intended for the use of mariners and husbands who are +weatherwise. + + + + +THE MATRIMONIAL GADFLY. + +Very well! In this degree of longitude, not far from a tropical sign +upon the name of which good taste forbids us to make a jest at once +coarse and unworthy of this thoughtful work, a horrible little annoyance +appears, ingeniously called the Matrimonial Gadfly, the most provoking +of all gnats, mosquitoes, blood-suckers, fleas and scorpions, for no +net was ever yet invented that could keep it off. The gadfly does not +immediately sting you; it begins by buzzing in your ears, and _you do +not at first know what it is_. + +Thus, apropos of nothing, in the most natural way in the world, Caroline +says: “Madame Deschars had a lovely dress on, yesterday.” + +“She is a woman of taste,” returns Adolphe, though he is far from +thinking so. + +“Her husband gave it to her,” resumes Caroline, with a shrug of her +shoulders. + +“Ah!” + +“Yes, a four hundred franc dress! It’s the very finest quality of +velvet.” + +“Four hundred francs!” cries Adolphe, striking the attitude of the +apostle Thomas. + +“But then there are two extra breadths and enough for a high waist!” + +“Monsieur Deschars does things on a grand scale,” replies Adolphe, +taking refuge in a jest. + +“All men don’t pay such attentions to their wives,” says Caroline, +curtly. + +“What attentions?” + +“Why, Adolphe, thinking of extra breadths and of a waist to make the +dress good again, when it is no longer fit to be worn low in the neck.” + +Adolphe says to himself, “Caroline wants a dress.” + +Poor man! + +Some time afterward, Monsieur Deschars furnishes his wife’s chamber +anew. Then he has his wife’s diamonds set in the prevailing fashion. +Monsieur Deschars never goes out without his wife, and never allows his +wife to go out without offering her his arm. + +If you bring Caroline anything, no matter what, it is never equal to +what Monsieur Deschars has done. If you allow yourself the slightest +gesture or expression a little livelier than usual, if you speak a +little bit loud, you hear the hissing and viper-like remark: + +“You wouldn’t see Monsieur Deschars behaving like this! Why don’t you +take Monsieur Deschars for a model?” + +In short, this idiotic Monsieur Deschars is forever looming up in your +household on every conceivable occasion. + +The expression--“Do you suppose Monsieur Deschars ever allows +himself”--is a sword of Damocles, or what is worse, a Damocles pin: +and your self-love is the cushion into which your wife is constantly +sticking it, pulling it out, and sticking it in again, under a variety +of unforeseen pretexts, at the same time employing the most winning +terms of endearment, and with the most agreeable little ways. + +Adolphe, stung till he finds himself tattooed, finally does what is +done by police authorities, by officers of government, by military +tacticians. He casts his eye on Madame de Fischtaminel, who is still +young, elegant and a little bit coquettish, and places her (this +had been the rascal’s intention for some time) like a blister upon +Caroline’s extremely ticklish skin. + +O you, who often exclaim, “I don’t know what is the matter with my +wife!” you will kiss this page of transcendent philosophy, for you will +find in it _the key to every woman’s character_! But as to knowing women +as well as I know them, it will not be knowing them much; they don’t +know themselves! In fact, as you well know, God was Himself mistaken in +the only one that He attempted to manage and to whose manufacture He had +given personal attention. + +Caroline is very willing to sting Adolphe at all hours, but this +privilege of letting a wasp off now and then upon one’s consort (the +legal term), is exclusively reserved to the wife. Adolphe is a monster +if he starts off a single fly at Caroline. On her part, it is a +delicious joke, a new jest to enliven their married life, and one +dictated by the purest intentions; while on Adolphe’s part, it is a +piece of cruelty worthy a Carib, a disregard of his wife’s heart, and a +deliberate plan to give her pain. But that is nothing. + +“So you are really in love with Madame de Fischtaminel?” Caroline asks. +“What is there so seductive in the mind or the manners of the spider?” + +“Why, Caroline--” + +“Oh, don’t undertake to deny your eccentric taste,” she returns, +checking a negation on Adolphe’s lips. “I have long seen that you prefer +that Maypole [Madame de Fischtaminel is thin] to me. Very well! go on; +you will soon see the difference.” + +Do you understand? You cannot suspect Caroline of the slightest +inclination for Monsieur Deschars, a low, fat, red-faced man, formerly +a notary, while you are in love with Madame de Fischtaminel! Then +Caroline, the Caroline whose simplicity caused you such agony, Caroline +who has become familiar with society, Caroline becomes acute and witty: +you have two gadflies instead of one. + +The next day she asks you, with a charming air of interest, “How are you +coming on with Madame de Fischtaminel?” + +When you go out, she says: “Go and drink something calming, my dear.” + For, in their anger with a rival, all women, duchesses even, will use +invectives, and even venture into the domain of Billingsgate; they make +an offensive weapon of anything and everything. + +To try to convince Caroline that she is mistaken and that you are +indifferent to Madame de Fischtaminel, would cost you dear. This is a +blunder that no sensible man commits; he would lose his power and spike +his own guns. + +Oh! Adolphe, you have arrived unfortunately at that season so +ingeniously called the _Indian Summer of Marriage_. + +You must now--pleasing task!--win your wife, your Caroline, over again, +seize her by the waist again, and become the best of husbands by trying +to guess at things to please her, so as to act according to her +whims instead of according to your will. This is the whole question +henceforth. + + + + +HARD LABOR. + +Let us admit this, which, in our opinion, is a truism made as good as +new: + + +Axiom.--Most men have some of the wit required by a difficult position, +when they have not the whole of it. + + +As for those husbands who are not up to their situation, it is +impossible to consider their case here: without any struggle whatever +they simply enter the numerous class of the _Resigned_. + +Adolphe says to himself: “Women are children: offer them a lump of +sugar, and you will easily get them to dance all the dances that greedy +children dance; but you must always have a sugar plum in hand, hold it +up pretty high, and--take care that their fancy for sweetmeats does not +leave them. Parisian women--and Caroline is one--are very vain, and as +for their voracity--don’t speak of it. Now you cannot govern men and +make friends of them, unless you work upon them through their vices, and +flatter their passions: my wife is mine!” + +Some days afterward, during which Adolphe has been unusually attentive +to his wife, he discourses to her as follows: + +“Caroline, dear, suppose we have a bit of fun: you’ll put on your new +gown--the one like Madame Deschars!--and we’ll go to see a farce at the +Varieties.” + +This kind of proposition always puts a wife in the best possible humor. +So away you go! Adolphe has ordered a dainty little dinner for two, at +Borrel’s _Rocher de Cancale_. + +“As we are going to the Varieties, suppose we dine at the tavern,” + exclaims Adolphe, on the boulevard, with the air of a man suddenly +struck by a generous idea. + +Caroline, delighted with this appearance of good fortune, enters a +little parlor where she finds the cloth laid and that neat little +service set, which Borrel places at the disposal of those who are rich +enough to pay for the quarters intended for the great ones of the earth, +who make themselves small for an hour. + +Women eat little at a formal dinner: their concealed harness hampers +them, they are laced tightly, and they are in the presence of women +whose eyes and whose tongues are equally to be dreaded. They prefer +fancy eating to good eating, then: they will suck a lobster’s claw, +swallow a quail or two, punish a woodcock’s wing, beginning with a bit +of fresh fish, flavored by one of those sauces which are the glory of +French cooking. France is everywhere sovereign in matters of taste: +in painting, fashions, and the like. Gravy is the triumph of taste, +in cookery. So that grisettes, shopkeepers’ wives and duchesses are +delighted with a tasty little dinner washed down with the choicest +wines, of which, however, they drink but little, the whole concluded by +fruit such as can only be had at Paris; and especially delighted when +they go to the theatre to digest the little dinner, and listen, in a +comfortable box, to the nonsense uttered upon the stage, and to +that whispered in their ears to explain it. But then the bill of the +restaurant is one hundred francs, the box costs thirty, the carriage, +dress, gloves, bouquet, as much more. This gallantry amounts to the sum +of one hundred and sixty francs, which is hard upon four thousand francs +a month, if you go often to the Comic, the Italian, or the Grand, +Opera. Four thousand francs a month is the interest of a capital of +two millions. But then the honor of being a husband is fully worth the +price! + +Caroline tells her friends things which she thinks exceedingly +flattering, but which cause a sagacious husband to make a wry face. + +“Adolphe has been delightful for some time past. I don’t know what I +have done to deserve so much attention, but he overpowers me. He gives +value to everything by those delicate ways which have such an effect +upon us women. After taking me Monday to the _Rocher de Cancale_ to +dine, he declared that Very was as good a cook as Borrel, and he gave +me the little party of pleasure that I told you of all over again, +presenting me at dessert with a ticket for the opera. They sang ‘William +Tell,’ which, you know, is my craze.” + +“You are lucky indeed,” returns Madame Deschars with evident jealousy. + +“Still, a wife who discharges all her duties, deserves such luck, it +seems to me.” + +When this terrible sentiment falls from the lips of a married woman, it +is clear that she _does her duty_, after the manner of school-boys, for +the reward she expects. At school, a prize is the object: in marriage, a +shawl or a piece of jewelry. No more love, then! + +“As for me,”--Madame Deschars is piqued--“I am reasonable. Deschars +committed such follies once, but I put a stop to it. You see, my dear, +we have two children, and I confess that one or two hundred francs are +quite a consideration for me, as the mother of a family.” + +“Dear me, madame,” says Madame de Fischtaminel, “it’s better that our +husbands should have cosy little times with us than with--” + +“Deschars!--” suddenly puts in Madame Deschars, as she gets up and says +good-bye. + +The individual known as Deschars (a man nullified by his wife) does not +hear the end of the sentence, by which he might have learned that a man +may spend his money with other women. + +Caroline, flattered in every one of her vanities, abandons herself to +the pleasures of pride and high living, two delicious capital sins. +Adolphe is gaining ground again, but alas! (this reflection is worth a +whole sermon in Lent) sin, like all pleasure, contains a spur. Vice is +like an Autocrat, and let a single harsh fold in a rose-leaf irritate +it, it forgets a thousand charming bygone flatteries. With Vice a man’s +course must always be crescendo!--and forever. + + +Axiom.--Vice, Courtiers, Misfortune and Love, care only for the PRESENT. + + +At the end of a period of time difficult to determine, Caroline looks +in the glass, at dessert, and notices two or three pimples blooming upon +her cheeks, and upon the sides, lately so pure, of her nose. She is +out of humor at the theatre, and you do not know why, you, so proudly +striking an attitude in your cravat, you, displaying your figure to the +best advantage, as a complacent man should. + +A few days after, the dressmaker arrives. She tries on a gown, she +exerts all her strength, but cannot make the hooks and eyes meet. +The waiting maid is called. After a two horse-power pull, a regular +thirteenth labor of Hercules, a hiatus of two inches manifests itself. +The inexorable dressmaker cannot conceal from Caroline the fact that her +form is altered. Caroline, the aerial Caroline, threatens to become +like Madame Deschars. In vulgar language, she is getting stout. The maid +leaves her in a state of consternation. + +“What! am I to have, like that fat Madame Deschars, cascades of flesh +a la Rubens! That Adolphe is an awful scoundrel. Oh, I see, he wants to +make me an old mother Gigogne, and destroy my powers of fascination!” + +Thenceforward Caroline is willing to go to the opera, she accepts two +seats in a box, but she considers it very distingue to eat sparingly, +and declines the dainty dinners of her husband. + +“My dear,” she says, “a well-bred woman should not go often to these +places; you may go once for a joke; but as for making a habitual thing +of it--fie, for shame!” + +Borrel and Very, those masters of the art, lose a thousand francs a day +by not having a private entrance for carriages. If a coach could glide +under an archway, and go out by another door, after leaving its fair +occupants on the threshold of an elegant staircase, how many of them +would bring the landlord fine, rich, solid old fellows for customers! + + +Axiom.--Vanity is the death of good living. + + +Caroline very soon gets tired of the theatre, and the devil alone can +tell the cause of her disgust. Pray excuse Adolphe! A husband is not the +devil. + +Fully one-third of the women of Paris are bored by the theatre. Many of +them are tired to death of music, and go to the opera for the singers +merely, or rather to notice the difference between them in point of +execution. What supports the theatre is this: the women are a spectacle +before and after the play. Vanity alone will pay the exorbitant price +of forty francs for three hours of questionable pleasure, in a bad +atmosphere and at great expense, without counting the colds caught in +going out. But to exhibit themselves, to see and be seen, to be the +observed of five hundred observers! What a glorious mouthful! as +Rabelais would say. + +To obtain this precious harvest, garnered by self-love, a woman must +be looked at. Now a woman with her husband is very little looked at. +Caroline is chagrined to see the audience entirely taken up with women +who are _not_ with their husbands, with eccentric women, in short. Now, +as the very slight return she gets from her efforts, her dresses, and +her attitudes, does not compensate, in her eyes, for her fatigue, her +display and her weariness, it is very soon the same with the theatre +as it was with the good cheer; high living made her fat, the theatre is +making her yellow. + +Here Adolphe--or any other man in Adolphe’s place--resembles a certain +Languedocian peasant who suffered agonies from an agacin, or, in French, +corn,--but the term in Lanquedoc is so much prettier, don’t you think +so? This peasant drove his foot at each step two inches into the +sharpest stones along the roadside, saying to the agacin, “Devil take +you! Make me suffer again, will you?” + +“Upon my word,” says Adolphe, profoundly disappointed, the day when he +receives from his wife a refusal, “I should like very much to know what +would please you!” + +Caroline looks loftily down upon her husband, and says, after a pause +worthy of an actress, “I am neither a Strasburg goose nor a giraffe!” + +“‘Tis true, I might lay out four thousand francs a month to better +effect,” returns Adolphe. + +“What do you mean?” + +“With the quarter of that sum, presented to estimable burglars, youthful +jail-birds and honorable criminals, I might become somebody, a Man in +the Blue Cloak on a small scale; and then a young woman is proud of her +husband,” Adolphe replies. + +This answer is the grave of love, and Caroline takes it in very bad +part. An explanation follows. This must be classed among the thousand +pleasantries of the following chapter, the title of which ought to make +lovers smile as well as husbands. If there are yellow rays of light, why +should there not be whole days of this extremely matrimonial color? + + + + +FORCED SMILES. + +On your arrival in this latitude, you enjoy numerous little scenes, +which, in the grand opera of marriage, represent the intermezzos, and of +which the following is a type: + +You are one evening alone after dinner, and you have been so often alone +already that you feel a desire to say sharp little things to each other, +like this, for instance: + +“Take care, Caroline,” says Adolphe, who has not forgotten his many vain +efforts to please her. “I think your nose has the impertinence to redden +at home quite well as at the restaurant.” + +“This is not one of your amiable days!” + + +General Rule.--No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly +advice to any woman, not even to his own wife. + + +“Perhaps it’s because you are laced too tight. Women make themselves +sick that way.” + +The moment a man utters these words to a woman, no matter whom, that +woman,--who knows that stays will bend,--seizes her corset by the lower +end, and bends it out, saying, with Caroline: + +“Look, you can get your hand in! I never lace tight.” + +“Then it must be your stomach.” + +“What has the stomach got to do with the nose?” + +“The stomach is a centre which communicates with all the organs.” + +“So the nose is an organ, is it?” + +“Yes.” + +“Your organ is doing you a poor service at this moment.” She raises her +eyes and shrugs her shoulders. “Come, Adolphe, what have I done?” + +“Nothing. I’m only joking, and I am unfortunate enough not to please +you,” returns Adolphe, smiling. + +“My misfortune is being your wife! Oh, why am I not somebody else’s!” + +“That’s what _I_ say!” + +“If I were, and if I had the innocence to say to you, like a coquette +who wishes to know how far she has got with a man, ‘the redness of my +nose really gives me anxiety,’ you would look at me in the glass with +all the affectations of an ape, and would reply, ‘O madame, you do +yourself an injustice; in the first place, nobody sees it: besides, it +harmonizes with your complexion; then again we are all so after dinner!’ +and from this you would go on to flatter me. Do I ever tell you that you +are growing fat, that you are getting the color of a stone-cutter, and +that I prefer thin and pale men?” + +They say in London, “Don’t touch the axe!” In France we ought to say, +“Don’t touch a woman’s nose.” + +“And all this about a little extra natural vermilion!” exclaims Adolphe. +“Complain about it to Providence, whose office it is to put a little +more color in one place than another, not to me, who loves you, who +desires you to be perfect, and who merely says to you, take care!” + +“You love me too much, then, for you’ve been trying, for some time past, +to find disagreeable things to say to me. You want to run me down under +the pretext of making me perfect--people said I _was_ perfect, five +years ago.” + +“I think you are better than perfect, you are stunning!” + +“With too much vermilion?” + +Adolphe, who sees the atmosphere of the north pole upon his wife’s face, +sits down upon a chair by her side. Caroline, unable decently to go +away, gives her gown a sort of flip on one side, as if to produce a +separation. This motion is performed by some women with a provoking +impertinence: but it has two significations; it is, as whist players +would say, either a signal _for trumps_ or a _renounce_. At this time, +Caroline renounces. + +“What is the matter?” says Adolphe. + +“Will you have a glass of sugar and water?” asks Caroline, busying +herself about your health, and assuming the part of a servant. + +“What for?” + +“You are not amiable while digesting, you must be in pain. Perhaps you +would like a drop of brandy in your sugar and water? The doctor spoke of +it as an excellent remedy.” + +“How anxious you are about my stomach!” + +“It’s a centre, it communicates with the other organs, it will act upon +your heart, and through that perhaps upon your tongue.” + +Adolphe gets up and walks about without saying a word, but he reflects +upon the acuteness which his wife is acquiring: he sees her daily +gaining in strength and in acrimony: she is getting to display an art +in vexation and a military capacity for disputation which reminds him of +Charles XII and the Russians. Caroline, during this time, is busy with +an alarming piece of mimicry: she looks as if she were going to faint. + +“Are you sick?” asks Adolphe, attacked in his generosity, the place +where women always have us. + +“It makes me sick at my stomach, after dinner, to see a man going back +and forth so, like the pendulum of a clock. But it’s just like you: you +are always in a fuss about something. You are a queer set: all men are +more or less cracked.” + +Adolphe sits down by the fire opposite to his wife, and remains there +pensive: marriage appears to him like an immense dreary plain, with its +crop of nettles and mullen stalks. + +“What, are you pouting?” asks Caroline, after a quarter of an hour’s +observation of her husband’s countenance. + +“No, I am meditating,” replied Adolphe. + +“Oh, what an infernal temper you’ve got!” she returns, with a shrug of +the shoulders. “Is it for what I said about your stomach, your shape and +your digestion? Don’t you see that I was only paying you back for your +vermilion? You’ll make me think that men are as vain as women. [Adolphe +remains frigid.] It is really quite kind in you to take our qualities. +[Profound silence.] I made a joke and you got angry [she looks at +Adolphe], for you are angry. I am not like you: I cannot bear the idea +of having given you pain! Nevertheless, it’s an idea that a man never +would have had, that of attributing your impertinence to something wrong +in your digestion. It’s not my Dolph, it’s his stomach that was bold +enough to speak. I did not know you were a ventriloquist, that’s all.” + +Caroline looks at Adolphe and smiles: Adolphe is as stiff as if he were +glued. + +“No, he won’t laugh! And, in your jargon, you call this having +character. Oh, how much better we are!” + +She goes and sits down in Adolphe’s lap, and Adolphe cannot help +smiling. This smile, extracted as if by a steam engine, Caroline has +been on the watch for, in order to make a weapon of it. + +“Come, old fellow, confess that you are wrong,” she says. “Why pout? +Dear me, I like you just as you are: in my eyes you are as slender as +when I married you, and slenderer perhaps.” + +“Caroline, when people get to deceive themselves in these little +matters, where one makes concessions and the other does not get angry, +do you know what it means?” + +“What does it mean?” asks Caroline, alarmed at Adolphe’s dramatic +attitude. + +“That they love each other less.” + +“Oh! you monster, I understand you: you were angry so as to make me +believe you loved me!” + +Alas! let us confess it, Adolphe tells the truth in the only way he +can--by a laugh. + +“Why give me pain?” she says. “If I am wrong in anything, isn’t it +better to tell me of it kindly, than brutally to say [here she raises +her voice], ‘Your nose is getting red!’ No, that is not right! To please +you, I will use an expression of the fair Fischtaminel, ‘It’s not the +act of a gentleman!’” + +Adolphe laughs and pays the expenses of the reconciliation; but instead +of discovering therein what will please Caroline and what will attach +her to him, he finds out what attaches him to her. + + + + +NOSOGRAPHY OF THE VILLA. + +Is it advantageous for a man not to know what will please his wife +after their marriage? Some women (this still occurs in the country) are +innocent enough to tell promptly what they want and what they like. But +in Paris, nearly every woman feels a kind of enjoyment in seeing a +man wistfully obedient to her heart, her desires, her caprices--three +expressions for the same thing!--and anxiously going round and round, +half crazy and desperate, like a dog that has lost his master. + +They call this _being loved_, poor things! And a good many of them say +to themselves, as did Caroline, “How will he manage?” + +Adolphe has come to this. In this situation of things, the worthy and +excellent Deschars, that model of the citizen husband, invites the +couple known as Adolphe and Caroline to help him and his wife inaugurate +a delightful country house. It is an opportunity that the Deschars have +seized upon, the folly of a man of letters, a charming villa upon which +he lavished one hundred thousand francs and which has been sold at +auction for eleven thousand. Caroline has a new dress to air, or a hat +with a weeping willow plume--things which a tilbury will set off to a +charm. Little Charles is left with his grandmother. The servants have +a holiday. The youthful pair start beneath the smile of a blue sky, +flecked with milk-while clouds merely to heighten the effect. They +breathe the pure air, through which trots the heavy Norman horse, +animated by the influence of spring. They soon reach Marnes, beyond +Ville d’Avray, where the Deschars are spreading themselves in a villa +copied from one at Florence, and surrounded by Swiss meadows, though +without all the objectionable features of the Alps. + +“Dear me! what a delightful thing a country house like this must be!” + exclaims Caroline, as she walks in the admirable wood that skirts Marnes +and Ville d’Avray. “It makes your eyes as happy as if they had a heart +in them.” + +Caroline, having no one to take but Adolphe, takes Adolphe, who becomes +her Adolphe again. And then you should see her run about like a fawn, +and act once more the sweet, pretty, innocent, adorable school-girl that +she was! Her braids come down! She takes off her bonnet, and holds it +by the strings! She is young, pink and white again. Her eyes smile, +her mouth is a pomegranate endowed with sensibility, with a sensibility +which seems quite fresh. + +“So a country house would please you very much, would it, darling?” says +Adolphe, clasping Caroline round the waist, and noticing that she leans +upon him as if to show the flexibility of her form. + +“What, will you be such a love as to buy me one? But remember, no +extravagance! Seize an opportunity like the Deschars.” + +“To please you and to find out what is likely to give you pleasure, such +is the constant study of your own Dolph.” + +They are alone, at liberty to call each other their little names of +endearment, and run over the whole list of their secret caresses. + +“Does he really want to please his little girly?” says Caroline, resting +her head on the shoulder of Adolphe, who kisses her forehead, saying to +himself, “Gad! I’ve got her now!” + + +Axiom.--When a husband and a wife have got each other, the devil only +knows which has got the other. + + +The young couple are captivating, whereupon the stout Madame Deschars +gives utterance to a remark somewhat equivocal for her, usually so +stern, prudish and devout. + +“Country air has one excellent property: it makes husbands very +amiable.” + +M. Deschars points out an opportunity for Adolphe to seize. A house is +to be sold at Ville d’Avray, for a song, of course. Now, the country +house is a weakness peculiar to the inhabitant of Paris. This weakness, +or disease, has its course and its cure. Adolphe is a husband, but not +a doctor. He buys the house and takes possession with Caroline, who has +become once more his Caroline, his Carola, his fawn, his treasure, his +girly girl. + +The following alarming symptoms now succeed each other with frightful +rapidity: a cup of milk, baptized, costs five sous; when it is +anhydrous, as the chemists say, ten sous. Meat costs more at Sevres than +at Paris, if you carefully examine the qualities. Fruit cannot be had +at any price. A fine pear costs more in the country than in the +(anhydrous!) garden that blooms in Chevet’s window. + +Before being able to raise fruit for oneself, from a Swiss meadow +measuring two square yards, surrounded by a few green trees which look +as if they were borrowed from the scenic illusions of a theatre, the +most rural authorities, being consulted on the point, declare that you +must spend a great deal of money, and--wait five years! Vegetables dash +out of the husbandman’s garden to reappear at the city market. Madame +Deschars, who possesses a gate-keeper that is at the same time a +gardener, confesses that the vegetables raised on her land, beneath her +glass frames, by dint of compost and top-soil, cost her twice as much +as those she used to buy at Paris, of a woman who had rent and taxes to +pay, and whose husband was an elector. Despite the efforts and pledges +of the gate-keeper-gardener, early peas and things at Paris are a month +in advance of those in the country. + +From eight in the evening to eleven our couple don’t know what to do, on +account of the insipidity of the neighbors, their small ideas, and the +questions of self-love which arise out of the merest trifles. + +Monsieur Deschars remarks, with that profound knowledge of figures which +distinguishes the ex-notary, that the cost of going to Paris and back, +added to the interest of the cost of his villa, to the taxes, wages +of the gate-keeper and his wife, are equal to a rent of three thousand +francs a year. He does not see how he, an ex-notary, allowed himself to +be so caught! For he has often drawn up leases of chateaux with parks +and out-houses, for three thousand a year. + +It is agreed by everybody in the parlor of Madame Deschars, that a +country house, so far from being a pleasure, is an unmitigated nuisance. + +“I don’t see how they sell a cabbage for one sou at market, which has +to be watered every day from its birth to the time you eat it,” says +Caroline. + +“The way to get along in the country,” replies a little retired grocer, +“is to stay there, to live there, to become country-folks, and then +everything changes.” + +On going home, Caroline says to her poor Adolphe, “What an idea that was +of yours, to buy a country house! The best way to do about the country +is to go there on visits to other people.” + +Adolphe remembers an English proverb, which says, “Don’t have a +newspaper or a country seat of your own: there are plenty of idiots who +will have them for you.” + +“Bah!” returns Adolph, who was enlightened once for all upon women’s +logic by the Matrimonial Gadfly, “you are right: but then you know the +baby is in splendid health, here.” + +Though Adolphe has become prudent, this reply awakens Caroline’s +susceptibilities. A mother is very willing to think exclusively of her +child, but she does not want him to be preferred to herself. She is +silent; the next day, she is tired to death of the country. Adolphe +being absent on business, she waits for him from five o’clock to seven, +and goes alone with little Charles to the coach office. She talks for +three-quarters of an hour of her anxieties. She was afraid to go from +the house to the office. Is it proper for a young woman to be left +alone, so? She cannot support such an existence. + +The country house now creates a very peculiar phase; one which deserves +a chapter to itself. + + + + +TROUBLE WITHIN TROUBLE. + +Axiom.--There are parentheses in worry. + + +EXAMPLE--A great deal of evil has been said of the stitch in the +side; but it is nothing to the stitch to which we now refer, which the +pleasures of the matrimonial second crop are everlastingly reviving, +like the hammer of a note in the piano. This constitutes an irritant, +which never flourishes except at the period when the young wife’s +timidity gives place to that fatal equality of rights which is at once +devastating France and the conjugal relation. Every season has its +peculiar vexation. + +Caroline, after a week spent in taking note of her husband’s absences, +perceives that he passes seven hours a day away from her. At last, +Adolphe, who comes home as gay as an actor who has been applauded, +observes a slight coating of hoar frost upon Caroline’s visage. After +making sure that the coldness of her manner has been observed, Caroline +puts on a counterfeit air of interest,--the well-known expression of +which possesses the gift of making a man inwardly swear,--and says: “You +must have had a good deal of business to-day, dear?” + +“Oh, lots!” + +“Did you take many cabs?” + +“I took seven francs’ worth.” + +“Did you find everybody in?” + +“Yes, those with whom I had appointments.” + +“When did you make appointments with them? The ink in your inkstand is +dried up; it’s like glue; I wanted to write, and spent a whole hour +in moistening it, and even then only produced a thick mud fit to mark +bundles with for the East Indies.” + +Here any and every husband looks suspiciously at his better half. + +“It is probable that I wrote them at Paris--” + +“What business was it, Adolphe?” + +“Why, I thought you knew. Shall I run over the list? First, there’s +Chaumontel’s affair--” + +“I thought Monsieur Chaumontel was in Switzerland--” + +“Yes, but he has representatives, a lawyer--” + +“Didn’t you do anything else but business?” asks Caroline, interrupting +Adolphe. + +Here she gives him a direct, piercing look, by which she plunges into +her husband’s eyes when he least expects it: a sword in a heart. + +“What could I have done? Made a little counterfeit money, run into debt, +or embroidered a sampler?” + +“Oh, dear, I don’t know. And I can’t even guess. I am too dull, you’ve +told me so a hundred times.” + +“There you go, and take an expression of endearment in bad part. How +like a woman that is!” + +“Have you concluded anything?” she asks, pretending to take an interest +in business. + +“No, nothing.” + +“How many persons have you seen?” + +“Eleven, without counting those who were walking in the streets.” + +“How you answer me!” + +“Yes, and how you question me! As if you’d been following the trade of +an examining judge for the last ten years!” + +“Come, tell me all you’ve done to-day, it will amuse me. You ought to +try to please me while you are here! I’m dull enough when you leave me +alone all day long.” + +“You want me to amuse you by telling you about business?” + +“Formerly, you told me everything--” + +This friendly little reproach disguises the certitude that Caroline +wishes to enjoy respecting the serious matters which Adolphe wishes to +conceal. Adolphe then undertakes to narrate how he has spent the day. +Caroline affects a sort of distraction sufficiently well played to +induce the belief that she is not listening. + +“But you said just now,” she exclaims, at the moment when Adolphe is +getting into a snarl, “that you had paid seven francs for cabs, and you +now talk of a hack! You took it by the hour, I suppose? Did you do your +business in a hack?” she asks, railingly. + +“Why should hacks be interdicted?” inquires Adolphe, resuming his +narrative. + +“Haven’t you been to Madame de Fischtaminel’s?” she asks in the middle +of an exceedingly involved explanation, insolently taking the words out +of your mouth. + +“Why should I have been there?” + +“It would have given me pleasure: I wanted to know whether her parlor is +done.” + +“It is.” + +“Ah! then you _have_ been there?” + +“No, her upholsterer told me.” + +“Do you know her upholsterer?” + +“Yes.” + +“Who is it?” + +“Braschon.” + +“So you met the upholsterer?” + +“Yes.” + +“You said you only went in carriages.” + +“Yes, my dear, but to get carriages, you have to go and--” + +“Pooh! I dare say Braschon was in the carriage, or the parlor was--one +or the other is equally probable.” + +“You won’t listen,” exclaims Adolphe, who thinks that a long story will +lull Caroline’s suspicions. + +“I’ve listened too much already. You’ve been lying for the last hour, +worse than a drummer.” + +“Well, I’ll say nothing more.” + +“I know enough. I know all I wanted to know. You say you’ve seen +lawyers, notaries, bankers: now you haven’t seen one of them! Suppose I +were to go to-morrow to see Madame de Fischtaminel, do you know what she +would say?” + +Here, Caroline watches Adolphe closely: but Adolphe affects a delusive +calmness, in the middle of which Caroline throws out her line to fish up +a clue. + +“Why, she would say that she had had the pleasure of seeing you! How +wretched we poor creatures are! We never know what you are doing: here +we are stuck, chained at home, while you are off at your business! Fine +business, truly! If I were in your place, I would invent business a +little bit better put together than yours! Ah, you set us a worthy +example! They say women are perverse. Who perverted them?” + +Here Adolphe tries, by looking fixedly at Caroline, to arrest the +torrent of words. Caroline, like a horse who has just been touched up +by the lash, starts off anew, and with the animation of one of Rossini’s +codas: + +“Yes, it’s a very neat idea, to put your wife out in the country so that +you may spend the day as you like at Paris. So this is the cause of your +passion for a country house! Snipe that I was, to be caught in the trap! +You are right, sir, a villa is very convenient: it serves two objects. +But the wife can get along with it as well as the husband. You may take +Paris and its hacks! I’ll take the woods and their shady groves! Yes, +Adolphe, I am really satisfied, so let’s say no more about it.” + +Adolphe listens to sarcasm for an hour by the clock. + +“Have you done, dear?” he asks, profiting by an instant in which she +tosses her head after a pointed interrogation. + +Then Caroline concludes thus: “I’ve had enough of the villa, and I’ll +never set foot in it again. But I know what will happen: you’ll keep it, +probably, and leave me in Paris. Well, at Paris, I can at least amuse +myself, while you go with Madame de Fischtaminel to the woods. What is a +_Villa Adolphini_ where you get nauseated if you go six times round the +lawn? where they’ve planted chair-legs and broom-sticks on the pretext +of producing shade? It’s like a furnace: the walls are six inches thick! +and my gentleman is absent seven hours a day! That’s what a country seat +means!” + +“Listen to me, Caroline.” + +“I wouldn’t so much mind, if you would only confess what you did to-day. +You don’t know me yet: come, tell me, I won’t scold you. I pardon you +beforehand for all that you’ve done.” + +Adolphe, who knows the consequences of a confession too well to make one +to his wife, replies--“Well, I’ll tell you.” + +“That’s a good fellow--I shall love you better.” + +“I was three hours--” + +“I was sure of it--at Madame de Fischtaminel’s!” + +“No, at our notary’s, as he had got me a purchaser; but we could not +come to terms: he wanted our villa furnished. When I left there, I went +to Braschon’s, to see how much we owed him--” + +“You made up this romance while I was talking to you! Look me in the +face! I’ll go to see Braschon to-morrow.” + +Adolphe cannot restrain a nervous shudder. + +“You can’t help laughing, you monster!” + +“I laugh at your obstinacy.” + +“I’ll go to-morrow to Madame de Fischtaminel’s.” + +“Oh, go wherever you like!” + +“What brutality!” says Caroline, rising and going away with her +handkerchief at her eyes. + +The country house, so ardently longed for by Caroline, has now become +a diabolical invention of Adolphe’s, a trap into which the fawn has +fallen. + +Since Adolphe’s discovery that it is impossible to reason with Caroline, +he lets her say whatever she pleases. + +Two months after, he sells the villa which cost him twenty-two thousand +francs for seven thousand! But he gains this by the adventure--he finds +out that the country is not the thing that Caroline wants. + +The question is becoming serious. Nature, with its woods, its forests, +its valleys, the Switzerland of the environs of Paris, the artificial +rivers, have amused Caroline for barely six months. Adolphe is tempted +to abdicate and take Caroline’s part himself. + + + + +A HOUSEHOLD REVOLUTION. + +One morning, Adolphe is seized by the triumphant idea of letting +Caroline find out for herself what she wants. He gives up to her the +control of the house, saying, “Do as you like.” He substitutes the +constitutional system for the autocratic system, a responsible ministry +for an absolute conjugal monarchy. This proof of confidence--the object +of much secret envy--is, to women, a field-marshal’s baton. Women are +then, so to speak, mistresses at home. + +After this, nothing, not even the memory of the honey-moon, can be +compared to Adolphe’s happiness for several days. A woman, under such +circumstances, is all sugar. She is too sweet: she would invent the art +of petting and cosseting and of coining tender little names, if this +matrimonial sugar-plummery had not existed ever since the Terrestrial +Paradise. At the end of the month, Adolphe’s condition is like that of +children towards the close of New Year’s week. So Caroline is beginning +to say, not in words, but in acts, in manner, in mimetic expressions: +“It’s difficult to tell _what_ to do to please a man!” + +Giving up the helm of the boat to one’s wife, is an exceedingly ordinary +idea, and would hardly deserve the qualification of “triumphant,” which +we have given it at the commencement of this chapter, if it were not +accompanied by that of taking it back again. Adolphe was seduced by a +wish, which invariably seizes persons who are the prey of misfortune, to +know how far an evil will go!--to try how much damage fire will do when +left to itself, the individual possessing, or thinking he possesses, +the power to arrest it. This curiosity pursues us from the cradle to the +grave. Then, after his plethora of conjugal felicity, Adolphe, who is +treating himself to a farce in his own house, goes through the following +phases: + + +FIRST EPOCH. Things go on altogether too well. Caroline buys little +account books to keep a list of her expenses in, she buys a nice little +piece of furniture to store her money in, she feeds Adolphe superbly, +she is happy in his approbation, she discovers that very many articles +are needed in the house. It is her ambition to be an incomparable +housekeeper. Adolphe, who arrogates to himself the right of censorship, +no longer finds the slightest suggestion to make. + +When he dresses himself, everything is ready to his hands. Not even in +Armide’s garden was more ingenious tenderness displayed than that of +Caroline. For her phoenix husband, she renews the wax upon his razor +strap, she substitutes new suspenders for old ones. None of his +button-holes are ever widowed. His linen is as well cared for as that of +the confessor of the devotee, all whose sins are venial. His stockings +are free from holes. At table, his tastes, his caprices even, are +studied, consulted: he is getting fat! There is ink in his inkstand, +and the sponge is always moist. He never has occasion to say, like +Louis XIV, “I came near having to wait!” In short, he hears himself +continually called _a love of a man_. He is obliged to reproach Caroline +for neglecting herself: she does not pay sufficient attention to her own +needs. Of this gentle reproach Caroline takes note. + + +SECOND EPOCH. The scene changes, at table. Everything is exceedingly +dear. Vegetables are beyond one’s means. Wood sells as if it came from +Campeche. Fruit? Oh! as to fruit, princes, bankers and great lords alone +can eat it. Dessert is a cause of ruin. Adolphe often hears Caroline say +to Madame Deschars: “How do you manage?” Conferences are held in your +presence upon the proper way to keep cooks under the thumb. + +A cook who entered your service without effects, without clothes, and +without talent, has come to get her wages in a blue merino gown, set +off by an embroidered neckerchief, her ears embellished with a pair of +ear-rings enriched with small pearls, her feet clothed in comfortable +shoes which give you a glimpse of neat cotton stockings. She has two +trunks full of property, and keeps an account at the savings bank. + +Upon this Caroline complains of the bad morals of the lower classes: +she complains of the education and the knowledge of figures which +distinguish domestics. From time to time she utters little axioms like +the following: There are some mistakes you _must_ make!--It’s only +those who do nothing who do everything well.--She has the anxieties +that belong to power.--Ah! men are fortunate in not having a house to +keep.--Women bear the burden of the innumerable details. + + +THIRD EPOCH. Caroline, absorbed in the idea that you should eat merely +to live, treats Adolphe to the delights of a cenobitic table. + +Adolphe’s stockings are either full of holes or else rough with the +lichen of hasty mendings, for the day is not long enough for all that +his wife has to do. He wears suspenders blackened by use. His linen is +old and gapes like a door-keeper, or like the door itself. At a time +when Adolphe is in haste to conclude a matter of business, it takes him +an hour to dress: he has to pick out his garments one by one, opening +many an article before finding one fit to wear. But Caroline is +charmingly dressed. She has pretty bonnets, velvet boots, mantillas. She +has made up her mind, she conducts her administration in virtue of +this principle: Charity well understood begins at home. When Adolphe +complains of the contrast between his poverty-stricken wardrobe and +Caroline’s splendor, she says, “Why, you reproached me with buying +nothing for myself!” + +The husband and the wife here begin to bandy jests more or less +acrimonious. One evening Caroline makes herself very agreeable, in order +to insinuate an avowal of a rather large deficit, just as the ministry +begins to eulogize the tax-payers, and boast of the wealth of the +country, when it is preparing to bring forth a bill for an additional +appropriation. There is this further similitude that both are done in +the chamber, whether in administration or in housekeeping. From this +springs the profound truth that the constitutional system is infinitely +dearer than the monarchical system. For a nation as for a household, it +is the government of the happy balance, of mediocrity, of chicanery. + +Adolphe, enlightened by his past annoyances, waits for an opportunity to +explode, and Caroline slumbers in a delusive security. + +What starts the quarrel? Do we ever know what electric current +precipitates the avalanche or decides a revolution? It may result +from anything or nothing. But finally, Adolphe, after a period to be +determined in each case by the circumstances of the couple, utters this +fatal phrase, in the midst of a discussion: “Ah! when I was a bachelor!” + +Her husband’s bachelor life is to a woman what the phrase, “My dear +deceased,” is to a widow’s second husband. These two stings produce +wounds which are never completely healed. + +Then Adolphe goes on like General Bonaparte haranguing the Five Hundred: +“We are on a volcano!--The house no longer has a head, the time to come +to an understanding has arrived.--You talk of happiness, Caroline, but +you have compromised, imperiled it by your exactions, you have violated +the civil code: you have mixed yourself up in the discussions of +business, and you have invaded the conjugal authority.--We must reform +our internal affairs.” + +Caroline does not shout, like the Five Hundred, “Down with the +dictator!” For people never shout a man down, when they feel that they +can put him down. + +“When I was a bachelor I had none but new stockings! I had a clean +napkin every day on my plate. The restaurateur only fleeced me of a +determinate sum. I have given up to you my beloved liberty! What have +you done with it?” + +“Am I then so very wrong, Adolphe, to have sought to spare you numerous +cares?” says Caroline, taking an attitude before her husband. “Take +the key of the money-box back,--but do you know what will happen? I am +ashamed, but you will compel me to go on to the stage to get the merest +necessaries of life. Is this what you want? Degrade your wife, or bring +in conflict two contrary, hostile interests--” + +Such, for three quarters of the French people is an exact definition of +marriage. + +“Be perfectly easy, dear,” resumes Caroline, seating herself in her +chair like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, “I will never ask you for +anything. I am not a beggar! I know what I’ll do--you don’t know me +yet.” + +“Well, what will you do?” asks Adolphe; “it seems impossible to joke or +have an explanation with you women. What will you do?” + +“It doesn’t concern you at all.” + +“Excuse me, madame, quite the contrary. Dignity, honor--” + +“Oh, have no fear of that, sir. For your sake more than for my own, I +will keep it a dead secret.” + +“Come, Caroline, my own Carola, what do you mean to do?” + +Caroline darts a viper-like glance at Adolphe, who recoils and proceeds +to walk up and down the room. + +“There now, tell me, what will you do?” he repeats after much too +prolonged a silence. + +“I shall go to work, sir!” + +At this sublime declaration, Adolphe executes a movement in retreat, +detecting a bitter exasperation, and feeling the sharpness of a north +wind which had never before blown in the matrimonial chamber. + + + + +THE ART OF BEING A VICTIM. + +On and after the Revolution, our vanquished Caroline adopts an infernal +system, the effect of which is to make you regret your victory every +hour. She becomes the opposition! Should Adolphe have one more such +triumph, he would appear before the Court of Assizes, accused of having +smothered his wife between two mattresses, like Shakespeare’s Othello. +Caroline puts on the air of a martyr; her submission is positively +killing. On every occasion she assassinates Adolphe with a “Just as you +like!” uttered in tones whose sweetness is something fearful. No elegiac +poet could compete with Caroline, who utters elegy upon elegy: elegy in +action, elegy in speech: her smile is elegiac, her silence is elegiac, +her gestures are elegiac. Here are a few examples, wherein every +household will find some of its impressions recorded: + + +AFTER BREAKFAST. “Caroline, we go to-night to the Deschars’ grand ball +you know.” + +“Yes, love.” + +AFTER DINNER. “What, not dressed yet, Caroline?” exclaims Adolphe, who +has just made his appearance, magnificently equipped. + +He finds Caroline arrayed in a gown fit for an elderly lady of strong +conversational powers, a black moire with an old-fashioned fan-waist. +Flowers, too badly imitated to deserve the name of artificial, give a +gloomy aspect to a head of hair which the chambermaid has carelessly +arranged. Caroline’s gloves have already seen wear and tear. + +“I am ready, my dear.” + +“What, in that dress?” + +“I have no other. A new dress would have cost three hundred francs.” + +“Why did you not tell me?” + +“I, ask you for anything, after what has happened!” + +“I’ll go alone,” says Adolphe, unwilling to be humiliated in his wife. + +“I dare say you are very glad to,” returns Caroline, in a captious tone, +“it’s plain enough from the way you are got up.” + + +Eleven persons are in the parlor, all invited to dinner by Adolphe. +Caroline is there, looking as if her husband had invited her too. She is +waiting for dinner to be served. + +“Sir,” says the parlor servant in a whisper to his master, “the cook +doesn’t know what on earth to do!” + +“What’s the matter?” + +“You said nothing to her, sir: and she has only two side-dishes, the +beef, a chicken, a salad and vegetables.” + +“Caroline, didn’t you give the necessary orders?” + +“How did I know that you had company, and besides I can’t take it upon +myself to give orders here! You delivered me from all care on that +point, and I thank heaven for it every day of my life.” + + +Madame de Fischtaminel has called to pay Madame Caroline a visit. She +finds her coughing feebly and nearly bent double over her embroidery. + +“Ah, so you are working those slippers for your dear Adolphe?” + +Adolphe is standing before the fire-place as complacently as may be. + +“No, madame, it’s for a tradesman who pays me for them: like the +convicts, my labor enables me to treat myself to some little comforts.” + +Adolphe reddens; he can’t very well beat his wife, and Madame de +Fischtaminel looks at him as much as to say, “What does this mean?” + +“You cough a good deal, my darling,” says Madame de Fischtaminel. + +“Oh!” returns Caroline, “what is life to me?” + + +Caroline is seated, conversing with a lady of your acquaintance, whose +good opinion you are exceedingly anxious to retain. From the depths of +the embrasure where you are talking with some friends, you gather, from +the mere motion of her lips, these words: “My husband would have it so!” + uttered with the air of a young Roman matron going to the circus to be +devoured. You are profoundly wounded in your several vanities, and wish +to attend to this conversation while listening to your guests: you thus +make replies which bring you back such inquiries as: “Why, what are you +thinking of?” For you have lost the thread of the discourse, and you +fidget nervously with your feet, thinking to yourself, “What is she +telling her about me?” + + +Adolphe is dining with the Deschars: twelve persons are at table, and +Caroline is seated next to a nice young man named Ferdinand, Adolphe’s +cousin. Between the first and second course, conjugal happiness is the +subject of conversation. + +“There is nothing easier than for a woman to be happy,” says Caroline in +reply to a woman who complains of her husband. + +“Tell us your secret, madame,” says M. de Fischtaminel agreeably. + +“A woman has nothing to do but to meddle with nothing to consider +herself as the first servant in the house or as a slave that the +master takes care of, to have no will of her own, and never to make an +observation: thus all goes well.” + +This, delivered in a bitter tone and with tears in her voice, alarms +Adolphe, who looks fixedly at his wife. + +“You forget, madame, the happiness of telling about one’s happiness,” he +returns, darting at her a glance worthy of the tyrant in a melodrama. + +Quite satisfied with having shown herself assassinated or on the point +of being so, Caroline turns her head aside, furtively wipes away a tear, +and says: + +“Happiness cannot be described!” + +This incident, as they say at the Chamber, leads to nothing, but +Ferdinand looks upon his cousin as an angel about to be offered up. + + +Some one alludes to the frightful prevalence of inflammation of the +stomach, or to the nameless diseases of which young women die. + +“Ah, too happy they!” exclaims Caroline, as if she were foretelling the +manner of her death. + + +Adolphe’s mother-in-law comes to see her daughter. Caroline says, “My +husband’s parlor:” “Your master’s chamber.” Everything in the house +belongs to “My husband.” + +“Why, what’s the matter, children?” asks the mother-in-law; “you seem to +be at swords’ points.” + +“Oh, dear me,” says Adolphe, “nothing but that Caroline has had the +management of the house and didn’t manage it right, that’s all.” + +“She got into debt, I suppose?” + +“Yes, dearest mamma.” + +“Look here, Adolphe,” says the mother-in-law, after having waited to +be left alone with her son, “would you prefer to have my daughter +magnificently dressed, to have everything go on smoothly, _without its +costing you anything_?” + +Imagine, if you can, the expression of Adolphe’s physiognomy, as he +hears _this declaration of woman’s rights_! + + +Caroline abandons her shabby dress and appears in a splendid one. She +is at the Deschars’: every one compliments her upon her taste, upon the +richness of her materials, upon her lace, her jewels. + +“Ah! you have a charming husband!” says Madame Deschars. Adolphe tosses +his head proudly, and looks at Caroline. + +“My husband, madame! I cost that gentleman nothing, thank heaven! All I +have was given me by my mother.” + +Adolphe turns suddenly about and goes to talk with Madame de +Fischtaminel. + + +After a year of absolute monarchy, Caroline says very mildly one +morning: + +“How much have you spent this year, dear?” + +“I don’t know.” + +“Examine your accounts.” + +Adolphe discovers that he has spent a third more than during Caroline’s +worst year. + +“And I’ve cost you nothing for my dress,” she adds. + + +Caroline is playing Schubert’s melodies. Adolphe takes great pleasure +in hearing these compositions well-executed: he gets up and compliments +Caroline. She bursts into tears. + +“What’s the matter?” + +“Nothing, I’m nervous.” + +“I didn’t know you were subject to that.” + +“O Adolphe, you won’t see anything! Look, my rings come off my fingers: +you don’t love me any more--I’m a burden to you--” + +She weeps, she won’t listen, she weeps afresh at every word Adolphe +utters. + +“Suppose you take the management of the house back again?” + +“Ah!” she exclaims, rising sharply to her feet, like a spring figure in +a box, “now that you’ve had enough of your experience! Thank you! Do you +suppose it’s money that I want? Singular method, yours, of pouring balm +upon a wounded heart. No, go away.” + +“Very well, just as you like, Caroline.” + +This “just as you like” is the first expression of indifference towards +a wife: and Caroline sees before her an abyss towards which she had been +walking of her own free will. + + + + +THE FRENCH CAMPAIGN. + +The disasters of 1814 afflict every species of existence. After +brilliant days of conquest, after the period during which obstacles +change to triumphs, and the slightest check becomes a piece of good +fortune, there comes a time when the happiest ideas turn out blunders, +when courage leads to destruction, and when your very fortifications +are a stumbling-block. Conjugal love, which, according to authors, is +a peculiar phase of love, has, more than anything else, its French +Campaign, its fatal 1814. The devil especially loves to dangle his tail +in the affairs of poor desolate women, and to this Caroline has come. + +Caroline is trying to think of some means of bringing her husband +back. She spends many solitary hours at home, and during this time her +imagination works. She goes and comes, she gets up, and often stands +pensively at the window, looking at the street and seeing nothing, her +face glued to the panes, and feeling as if in a desert, in the midst of +her friends, in the bosom of her luxuriously furnished apartments. + +Now, in Paris, unless a person occupy a house of his own, enclosed +between a court and a garden, all life is double. At every story, a +family sees another family in the opposite house. Everybody plunges +his gaze at will into his neighbor’s domains. There is a necessity for +mutual observation, a common right of search from which none can escape. +At a given time, in the morning, you get up early, the servant opposite +is dusting the parlor, she has left the windows open and has put the +rugs on the railing; you divine a multitude of things, and vice-versa. +Thus, in a given time, you are acquainted with the habits of the pretty, +the old, the young, the coquettish, the virtuous woman opposite, or the +caprices of the coxcomb, the inventions of the old bachelor, the +color of the furniture, and the cat of the two pair front. Everything +furnishes a hint, and becomes matter for divination. At the fourth +story, a grisette, taken by surprise, finds herself--too late, like the +chaste Susanne,--the prey of the delighted lorgnette of an aged clerk, +who earns eighteen hundred francs a year, and who becomes criminal +gratis. On the other hand, a handsome young gentleman, who, for the +present, works without wages, and is only nineteen years old, appears +before the sight of a pious old lady, in the simple apparel of a man +engaged in shaving. The watch thus kept up is never relaxed, while +prudence, on the contrary, has its moments of forgetfulness. Curtains +are not always let down in time. A woman, just before dark, approaches +the window to thread her needle, and the married man opposite may then +admire a head that Raphael might have painted, and one that he considers +worthy of himself--a National Guard truly imposing when under arms. +Oh, sacred private life, where art thou! Paris is a city ever ready to +exhibit itself half naked, a city essentially libertine and devoid +of modesty. For a person’s life to be decorous in it, the said person +should have a hundred thousand a year. Virtues are dearer than vices in +Paris. + +Caroline, whose gaze sometimes steals between the protecting muslins +which hide her domestic life from the five stories opposite, at last +discovers a young couple plunged in the delights of the honey-moon, and +newly established in the first story directly in view of her window. She +spends her time in the most exciting observations. The blinds are closed +early, and opened late. One day, Caroline, who has arisen at eight +o’clock notices, by accident, of course, the maid preparing a bath or +a morning dress, a delicious deshabille. Caroline sighs. She lies in +ambush like a hunter at the cover; she surprises the young woman, her +face actually illuminated with happiness. Finally, by dint of watching +the charming couple, she sees the gentleman and lady open the window, +and lean gently one against the other, as, supported by the railing, +they breathe the evening air. Caroline gives herself a nervous headache, +by endeavoring to interpret the phantasmagorias, some of them having +an explanation and others not, made by the shadows of these two young +people on the curtains, one night when they have forgotten to close +the shutters. The young woman is often seated, melancholy and pensive, +waiting for her absent husband; she hears the tread of a horse, or the +rumble of a cab at the street corner; she starts from the sofa, and from +her movements, it is easy for Caroline to see that she exclaims: “‘Tis +he!” + +“How they love each other!” says Caroline to herself. + +By dint of nervous headache, Caroline conceives an exceedingly ingenious +plan: this plan consists in using the conjugal bliss of the opposite +neighbors as a tonic to stimulate Adolphe. The idea is not without +depravity, but then Caroline’s intention sanctifies the means! + +“Adolphe,” she says, “we have a neighbor opposite, the loveliest woman, +a brunette--” + +“Oh, yes,” returns Adolphe, “I know her. She is a friend of Madame de +Fischtaminel’s: Madame Foullepointe, the wife of a broker, a charming +man and a good fellow, very fond of his wife: he’s crazy about her. His +office and rooms are here, in the court, while those on the street are +madame’s. I know of no happier household. Foullepointe talks about his +happiness everywhere, even at the Exchange; he’s really quite tiresome.” + +“Well, then, be good enough to present Monsieur and Madame Foullepointe +to me. I should be delighted to learn how she manages to make her +husband love her so much: have they been married long?” + +“Five years, just like us.” + +“O Adolphe, dear, I am dying to know her: make us intimately acquainted. +Am I as pretty as she?” + +“Well, if I were to meet you at an opera ball, and if you weren’t my +wife, I declare, I shouldn’t know which--” + +“You are real sweet to-day. Don’t forget to invite them to dinner +Saturday.” + +“I’ll do it to-night. Foullepointe and I often meet on ‘Change.” + +“Now,” says Caroline, “this young woman will doubtless tell me what her +method of action is.” + +Caroline resumes her post of observation. At about three she looks +through the flowers which form as it were a bower at the window, and +exclaims, “Two perfect doves!” + +For the Saturday in question, Caroline invites Monsieur and Madame +Deschars, the worthy Monsieur Fischtaminel, in short, the most virtuous +couples of her society. She has brought out all her resources: she has +ordered the most sumptuous dinner, she has taken the silver out of the +chest: she means to do all honor to the model of wives. + +“My dear, you will see to-night,” she says to Madame Deschars, at the +moment when all the women are looking at each other in silence, “the +most admirable young couple in the world, our opposite neighbors: a +young man of fair complexion, so graceful and with _such_ manners! His +head is like Lord Byron’s, and he’s a real Don Juan, only faithful: he’s +discovered the secret of making love eternal: I shall perhaps obtain +a second crop of it from her example. Adolphe, when he sees them, will +blush at his conduct, and--” + +The servant announces: “Monsieur and Madame Foullepointe.” + +Madame Foullepointe, a pretty brunette, a genuine Parisian, slight +and erect in form, the brilliant light of her eye quenched by her long +lashes, charmingly dressed, sits down upon the sofa. Caroline bows to +a fat gentleman with thin gray hair, who follows this Paris Andalusian, +and who exhibits a face and paunch fit for Silenus, a butter-colored +pate, a deceitful, libertine smile upon his big, heavy lips,--in short, +a philosopher! Caroline looks upon this individual with astonishment. + +“Monsieur Foullepointe, my dear,” says Adolphe, presenting the worthy +quinquagenarian. + +“I am delighted, madame,” says Caroline, good-naturedly, “that you have +brought your father-in-law [profound sensation], but we shall soon see +your husband, I trust--” + +“Madame--!” + +Everybody listens and looks. Adolphe becomes the object of every one’s +attention; he is literally dumb with amazement: if he could, he would +whisk Caroline off through a trap, as at the theatre. + +“This is Monsieur Foullepointe, my husband,” says Madame Foullepointe. + +Caroline turns scarlet as she sees her ridiculous blunder, and Adolphe +scathes her with a look of thirty-six candlepower. + +“You said he was young and fair,” whispers Madame Deschars. Madame +Foullepointe,--knowing lady that she is,--boldly stares at the ceiling. + +A month after, Madame Foullepointe and Caroline become intimate. +Adolphe, who is taken up with Madame de Fischtaminel, pays no attention +to this dangerous friendship, a friendship which will bear its fruits, +for--pray learn this-- + + +Axiom.--Women have corrupted more women than men have ever loved. + + + + +A SOLO ON THE HEARSE. + +After a period, the length of which depends on the strength of +Caroline’s principles, she appears to be languishing; and when Adolphe, +anxious for decorum’s sake, as he sees her stretched out upon the sofa +like a snake in the sun, asks her, “What is the matter, love? What do +you want?” + +“I wish I was dead!” she replies. + +“Quite a merry and agreeable wish!” + +“It isn’t death that frightens me, it’s suffering.” + +“I suppose that means that I don’t make you happy! That’s the way with +women!” + +Adolphe strides about the room, talking incoherently: but he is brought +to a dead halt by seeing Caroline dry her tears, which are really +flowing artistically, in an embroidered handkerchief. + +“Do you feel sick?” + +“I don’t feel well. [Silence.] I only hope that I shall live long +enough to see my daughter married, for I know the meaning, now, of the +expression so little understood by the young--_the choice of a husband_! +Go to your amusements, Adolphe: a woman who thinks of the future, a +woman who suffers, is not at all diverting: come, go and have a good +time.” + +“Where do you feel bad?” + +“I don’t feel bad, dear: I never was better. I don’t feel anything. No, +really, I am better. There, leave me to myself.” + +This time, being the first, Adolphe goes away almost sad. + +A week passes, during which Caroline orders all the servants to conceal +from her husband her deplorable situation: she languishes, she rings +when she feels she is going off, she uses a great deal of ether. The +domestics finally acquaint their master with madame’s conjugal heroism, +and Adolphe remains at home one evening after dinner, and sees his wife +passionately kissing her little Marie. + +“Poor child! I regret the future only for your sake! What is life, I +should like to know?” + +“Come, my dear,” says Adolphe, “don’t take on so.” + +“I’m not taking on. Death doesn’t frighten me--I saw a funeral this +morning, and I thought how happy the body was! How comes it that I think +of nothing but death? Is it a disease? I have an idea that I shall die +by my own hand.” + +The more Adolphe tries to divert Caroline, the more closely she wraps +herself up in the crape of her hopeless melancholy. This second time, +Adolphe stays at home and is wearied to death. At the third attack of +forced tears, he goes out without the slightest compunction. He finally +gets accustomed to these everlasting murmurs, to these dying postures, +these crocodile tears. So he says: + +“If you are sick, Caroline, you’d better have a doctor.” + +“Just as you like! It will end quicker, so. But bring a famous one, if +you bring any.” + +At the end of a month, Adolphe, worn out by hearing the funereal air +that Caroline plays him on every possible key, brings home a famous +doctor. At Paris, doctors are all men of discernment, and are admirably +versed in conjugal nosography. + +“Well, madame,” says the great physician, “how happens it that so pretty +a woman allows herself to be sick?” + +“Ah! sir, like the nose of old father Aubry, I aspire to the tomb--” + +Caroline, out of consideration for Adolphe, makes a feeble effort to +smile. + +“Tut, tut! But your eyes are clear: they don’t seem to need our infernal +drugs.” + +“Look again, doctor, I am eaten up with fever, a slow, imperceptible +fever--” + +And she fastens her most roguish glance upon the illustrious doctor, who +says to himself, “What eyes!” + +“Now, let me see your tongue.” + +Caroline puts out her taper tongue between two rows of teeth as white as +those of a dog. + +“It is a little bit furred at the root: but you have breakfasted--” + observes the great physician, turning toward Adolphe. + +“Oh, a mere nothing,” returns Caroline; “two cups of tea--” + +Adolphe and the illustrious leech look at each other, for the doctor +wonders whether it is the husband or the wife that is trifling with him. + +“What do you feel?” gravely inquires the physician. + +“I don’t sleep.” + +“Good!” + +“I have no appetite.” + +“Well!” + +“I have a pain, here.” + +The doctor examines the part indicated. + +“Very good, we’ll look at that by and by.” + +“Now and then a shudder passes over me--” + +“Very good!” + +“I have melancholy fits, I am always thinking of death, I feel +promptings of suicide--” + +“Dear me! Really!” + +“I have rushes of heat to the face: look, there’s a constant trembling +in my eyelid.” + +“Capital! We call that a trismus.” + +The doctor goes into an explanation, which lasts a quarter of an hour, +of the trismus, employing the most scientific terms. From this it +appears that the trismus is the trismus: but he observes with the +greatest modesty that if science knows that the trismus is the trismus, +it is entirely ignorant of the cause of this nervous affection, which +comes and goes, appears and disappears--“and,” he adds, “we have decided +that it is altogether nervous.” + +“Is it very dangerous?” asks Caroline, anxiously. + +“Not at all. How do you lie at night?” + +“Doubled up in a heap.” + +“Good. On which side?” + +“The left.” + +“Very well. How many mattresses are there on your bed?” + +“Three.” + +“Good. Is there a spring bed?” + +“Yes.” + +“What is the spring bed stuffed with?” + +“Horse hair.” + +“Capital. Let me see you walk. No, no, naturally, and as if we weren’t +looking at you.” + +Caroline walks like Fanny Elssler, communicating the most Andalusian +little motions to her tournure. + +“Do you feel a sensation of heaviness in your knees?” + +“Well, no--” she returns to her place. “Ah, no that I think of it, it +seems to me that I do.” + +“Good. Have you been in the house a good deal lately?” + +“Oh, yes, sir, a great deal too much--and alone.” + +“Good. I thought so. What do you wear on your head at night?” + +“An embroidered night-cap, and sometimes a handkerchief over it.” + +“Don’t you feel a heat there, a slight perspiration?” + +“How can I, when I’m asleep?” + +“Don’t you find your night-cap moist on your forehead, when you wake +up?” + +“Sometimes.” + +“Capital. Give me your hand.” + +The doctor takes out his watch. + +“Did I tell you that I have a vertigo?” asks Caroline. + +“Hush!” says the doctor, counting the pulse. “In the evening?” + +“No, in the morning.” + +“Ah, bless me, a vertigo in the morning,” says the doctor, looking at +Adolphe. + +“The Duke of G. has not gone to London,” says the great physician, while +examining Caroline’s skin, “and there’s a good deal to be said about it +in the Faubourg St. Germain.” + +“Have you patients there?” asks Caroline. + +“Nearly all my patients are there. Dear me, yes; I’ve got seven to see +this morning; some of them are in danger.” + +“What do you think of me, sir?” says Caroline. + +“Madame, you need attention, a great deal of attention, you must take +quieting liquors, plenty of syrup of gum, a mild diet, white meat, and a +good deal of exercise.” + +“There go twenty francs,” says Adolphe to himself with a smile. + +The great physician takes Adolphe by the arm, and draws him out with +him, as he takes his leave: Caroline follows them on tiptoe. + +“My dear sir,” says the great physician, “I have just prescribed very +insufficiently for your wife. I did not wish to frighten her: this +affair concerns you more nearly than you imagine. Don’t neglect her; she +has a powerful temperament, and enjoys violent health; all this +reacts upon her. Nature has its laws, which, when disregarded, compel +obedience. She may get into a morbid state, which would cause you +bitterly to repent having neglected her. If you love her, why, love +her: but if you don’t love her, and nevertheless desire to preserve +the mother of your children, the resolution to come to is a matter of +hygiene, but it can only proceed from you!” + +“How well he understand me!” says Caroline to herself. She opens the +door and says: “Doctor, you did not write down the doses!” + +The great physician smiles, bows and slips the twenty franc piece into +his pocket; he then leaves Adolphe to his wife, who takes him and says: + +“What is the fact about my condition? Must I prepare for death?” + +“Bah! He says you’re too healthy!” cries Adolphe, impatiently. + +Caroline retires to her sofa to weep. + +“What is it, now?” + +“So I am to live a long time--I am in the way--you don’t love me +any more--I won’t consult that doctor again--I don’t know why Madame +Foullepointe advised me to see him, he told me nothing but trash--I know +better than he what I need!” + +“What do you need?” + +“Can you ask, ungrateful man?” and Caroline leans her head on Adolphe’s +shoulder. + +Adolphe, very much alarmed, says to himself: “The doctor’s right, she +may get to be morbidly exacting, and then what will become of me? Here I +am compelled to choose between Caroline’s physical extravagance, or some +young cousin or other.” + +Meanwhile Caroline sits down and sings one of Schubert’s melodies with +all the agitation of a hypochondriac. + + + + + +PART SECOND + + + + +PREFACE + + If, reader, you have grasped the intent of this book,--and + infinite honor is done you by the supposition: the profoundest + author does not always comprehend, I may say never comprehends, + the different meanings of his book, nor its bearing, nor the good + nor the harm it may do--if, then, you have bestowed some attention + upon these little scenes of married life, you have perhaps noticed + their color-- + + “What color?” some grocer will doubtless ask; “books are bound in + yellow, blue, green, pearl-gray, white--” + + Alas! books possess another color, they are dyed by the author, + and certain writers borrow their dye. Some books let their color + come off on to others. More than this. Books are dark or fair, + light brown or red. They have a sex, too! I know of male books, + and female books, of books which, sad to say, have no sex, which + we hope is not the case with this one, supposing that you do this + collection of nosographic sketches the honor of calling it a book. + + Thus far, the troubles we have described have been exclusively + inflicted by the wife upon the husband. You have therefore seen + only the masculine side of the book. And if the author really has + the sense of hearing for which we give him credit, he has already + caught more than one indignant exclamation or remonstrance: + + “He tells us of nothing but vexations suffered by our husbands, as + if we didn’t have our petty troubles, too!” + + Oh, women! You have been heard, for if you do not always make + yourselves understood, you are always sure to make yourselves + heard. + + It would therefore be signally unjust to lay upon you alone the + reproaches that every being brought under the yoke (_conjugium_) + has the right to heap upon that necessary, sacred, useful, + eminently conservative institution,--one, however, that is often + somewhat of an encumbrance, and tight about the joints, though + sometimes it is also too loose there. + + I will go further! Such partiality would be a piece of idiocy. + + A man,--not a writer, for in a writer there are many men,--an + author, rather, should resemble Janus, see behind and before, + become a spy, examine an idea in all its phases, delve alternately + into the soul of Alceste and into that of Philaenete, know + everything though he does not tell it, never be tiresome, and-- + + We will not conclude this programme, for we should tell the whole, + and that would be frightful for those who reflect upon the present + condition of literature. + + Furthermore, an author who speaks for himself in the middle of his + book, resembles the old fellow in “The Speaking Picture,” when he + puts his face in the hole cut in the painting. The author does not + forget that in the Chamber, no one can take the floor _between two + votes_. Enough, therefore! + + Here follows the female portion of the book: for, to resemble + marriage perfectly, it ought to be more or less hermaphroditic. + + + + +HUSBANDS DURING THE SECOND MONTH. + +Two young married women, Caroline and Stephanie, who had been early +friends at M’lle Machefer’s boarding school, one of the most celebrated +educational institutions in the Faubourg St. Honore, met at a ball given +by Madame de Fischtaminel, and the following conversation took place in +a window-seat in the boudoir. + +It was so hot that a man had acted upon the idea of going to breathe +the fresh night air, some time before the two young women. He had placed +himself in the angle of the balcony, and, as there were many flowers +before the window, the two friends thought themselves alone. This man +was the author’s best friend. + +One of the two ladies, standing at the corner of the embrasure, kept +watch by looking at the boudoir and the parlors. The other had so placed +herself as not to be in the draft, which was nevertheless tempered by +the muslin and silk curtains. + +The boudoir was empty, the ball was just beginning, the gaming-tables +were open, offering their green cloths and their packs of cards still +compressed in the frail case placed upon them by the customs office. The +second quadrille was in progress. + +All who go to balls will remember that phase of large parties when the +guests are not yet all arrived, but when the rooms are already filled--a +moment which gives the mistress of the house a transitory pang of +terror. This moment is, other points of comparison apart, like that +which decides a victory or the loss of a battle. + +You will understand, therefore, how what was meant to be a secret now +obtains the honors of publicity. + +“Well, Caroline?” + +“Well, Stephanie?” + +“Well?” + +“Well?” + +A double sigh. + +“Have you forgotten our agreement?” + +“No.” + +“Why haven’t you been to see me, then?” + +“I am never left alone. Even here we shall hardly have time to talk.” + +“Ah! if Adolphe were to get into such habits as that!” exclaimed +Caroline. + +“You saw us, Armand and me, when he paid me what is called, I don’t know +why, his court.” + +“Yes, I admired him, I thought you very happy, you had found your ideal, +a fine, good-sized man, always well dressed, with yellow gloves, his +beard well shaven, patent leather boots, a clean shirt, exquisitely +neat, and so attentive--” + +“Yes, yes, go on.” + +“In short, quite an elegant man: his voice was femininely sweet, and +then such gentleness! And his promises of happiness and liberty! His +sentences were veneered with rosewood. He stocked his conversation with +shawls and laces. In his smallest expression you heard the rumbling of a +coach and four. Your wedding presents were magnificent. Armand seemed to +me like a husband of velvet, of a robe of birds’ feathers in which you +were to be wrapped.” + +“Caroline, my husband uses tobacco.” + +“So does mine; that is, he smokes.” + +“But mine, dear, uses it as they say Napoleon did: in short, he chews, +and I hold tobacco in horror. The monster found it out, and went without +out it for seven months.” + +“All men have their habits. They absolutely must use something.” + +“You have no idea of the tortures I endure. At night I am awakened with +a start by one of my own sneezes. As I go to sleep my motions bring the +grains of snuff scattered over the pillow under my nose, I inhale, and +explode like a mine. It seems that Armand, the wretch, is used to these +_surprises_, and doesn’t wake up. I find tobacco everywhere, and I +certainly didn’t marry the customs office.” + +“But, my dear child, what does this trifling inconvenience amount to, if +your husband is kind and possesses a good disposition?” + +“He is as cold as marble, as particular as an old bachelor, as +communicative as a sentinel; and he’s one of those men who say yes to +everything, but who never do anything but what they want to.” + +“Deny him, once.” + +“I’ve tried it.” + +“What came of it?” + +“He threatened to reduce my allowance, and to keep back a sum big enough +for him to get along without me.” + +“Poor Stephanie! He’s not a man, he’s a monster.” + +“A calm and methodical monster, who wears a scratch, and who, every +night--” + +“Well, every night--” + +“Wait a minute!--who takes a tumbler every night, and puts seven false +teeth in it.” + +“What a trap your marriage was! At any rate, Armand is rich.” + +“Who knows?” + +“Good heavens! Why, you seem to me on the point of becoming very +unhappy--or very happy.” + +“Well, dear, how is it with you?” + +“Oh, as for me, I have nothing as yet but a pin that pricks me: but it +is intolerable.” + +“Poor creature! You don’t know your own happiness: come, what is it?” + +Here the young woman whispered in the other’s ear, so that it was +impossible to catch a single word. The conversation recommenced, or +rather finished by a sort of inference. + +“So, your Adolphe is jealous?” + +“Jealous of whom? We never leave each other, and that, in itself, is an +annoyance. I can’t stand it. I don’t dare to gape. I am expected to be +forever enacting the woman in love. It’s fatiguing.” + +“Caroline?” + +“Well?” + +“What are you going to do?” + +“Resign myself. What are you? + +“Fight the customs office.” + +This little trouble tends to prove that in the matter of personal +deception, the two sexes can well cry quits. + + + + +DISAPPOINTED AMBITION. + + + +I. CHODOREILLE THE GREAT. + +A young man has forsaken his natal city in the depths of one of the +departments, rather clearly marked by M. Charles Dupin. He felt that +glory of some sort awaited him: suppose that of a painter, a novelist, a +journalist, a poet, a great statesman. + +Young Adolphe de Chodoreille--that we may be perfectly +understood--wished to be talked about, to become celebrated, to +be somebody. This, therefore, is addressed to the mass of aspiring +individuals brought to Paris by all sorts of vehicles, whether moral +or material, and who rush upon the city one fine morning with the +hydrophobic purpose of overturning everybody’s reputation, and of +building themselves a pedestal with the ruins they are to make,--until +disenchantment follows. As our intention is to specify this peculiarity +so characteristic of our epoch, let us take from among the various +personages the one whom the author has elsewhere called _A Distinguished +Provencal_. + +Adolphe has discovered that the most admirable trade is that which +consists in buying a bottle of ink, a bunch of quills, and a ream of +paper, at a stationer’s for twelve francs and a half, and in selling +the two thousand sheets in the ream over again, for something like fifty +thousand francs, after having, of course, written upon each leaf fifty +lines replete with style and imagination. + +This problem,--twelve francs and a half metamorphosed into fifty +thousand francs, at the rate of five sous a line--urges numerous +families who might advantageously employ their members in the retirement +of the provinces, to thrust them into the vortex of Paris. + +The young man who is the object of this exportation, invariably passes +in his natal town for a man of as much imagination as the most famous +author. He has always studied well, he writes very nice poetry, he is +considered a fellow of parts: he is besides often guilty of a charming +tale published in the local paper, which obtains the admiration of the +department. + +His poor parents will never know what their son has come to Paris to +learn at great cost, namely: That it is difficult to be a writer and to +understand the French language short of a dozen years of heculean labor: +That a man must have explored every sphere of social life, to become +a genuine novelist, inasmuch as the novel is the private history +of nations: That the great story-tellers, Aesop, Lucian, Boccaccio, +Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, La Fontaine, Lesage, Sterne, Voltaire, +Walter Scott, the unknown Arabians of the _Thousand and One Nights_, +were all men of genius as well as giants of erudition. + +Their Adolphe serves his literary apprenticeship in two or three +coffee-houses, becomes a member of the Society of Men of Letters, +attacks, with or without reason, men of talent who don’t read his +articles, assumes a milder tone on seeing the powerlessness of his +criticisms, offers novelettes to the papers which toss them from one to +the other as if they were shuttlecocks: and, after five or six years of +exercises more or less fatiguing, of dreadful privations which seriously +tax his parents, he attains a certain position. + +This position may be described as follows: Thanks to a sort of +reciprocal support extended to each other, and which an ingenious writer +has called “Mutual Admiration,” Adolphe often sees his name cited among +the names of celebrities, either in the prospectuses of the book-trade, +or in the lists of newspapers about to appear. Publishers print the +title of one of his works under the deceitful heading “IN PRESS,” which +might be called the typographical menagerie of bears.[*] Chodoreille is +sometimes mentioned among the promising young men of the literary world. + + [*] A bear (_ours_) is a play which has been refused by a + multitude of theatres, but which is finally represented at a + time when some manager or other feels the need of one. The + word has necessarily passed from the language of the stage + into the jargon of journalism, and is applied to novels + which wander the streets in search of a publisher. + +For eleven years Adolphe Chodoreille remains in the ranks of the +promising young men: he finally obtains a free entrance to the theatres, +thanks to some dirty work or certain articles of dramatic criticism: +he tries to pass for a good fellow; and as he loses his illusions +respecting glory and the world of Paris, he gets into debt and his years +begin to tell upon him. + +A paper which finds itself in a tight place asks him for one of his +bears revised by his friends. This has been retouched and revamped every +five years, so that it smells of the pomatum of each prevailing and then +forgotten fashion. To Adolphe it becomes what the famous cap, which +he was constantly staking, was to Corporal Trim, for during five years +“Anything for a Woman” (the title decided upon) “will be one of the most +entertaining productions of our epoch.” + +After eleven years, Chodoreille is regarded as having written some +respectable things, five or six tales published in the dismal magazines, +in ladies’ newspapers, or in works intended for children of tender age. + +As he is a bachelor, and possesses a coat and a pair of black cassimere +trousers, and when he pleases may thus assume the appearance of an +elegant diplomat, and as he is not without a certain intelligent air, he +is admitted to several more or less literary salons: he bows to the five +or six academicians who possess genius, influence or talent, he visits +two or three of our great poets, he allows himself, in coffee-rooms, +to call the two or three justly celebrated women of our epoch by their +Christian names; he is on the best of terms with the blue stockings of +the second grade,--who ought to be called _socks_,--and he shakes hands +and takes glasses of absinthe with the stars of the smaller newspapers. + +Such is the history of every species of ordinary men--men who have been +denied what they call good luck. This good luck is nothing less than +unyielding will, incessant labor, contempt for an easily won celebrity, +immense learning, and that patience which, according to Buffon, is the +whole of genius, but which certainly is the half of it. + +You do not yet see any indication of a petty trouble for Caroline. You +imagine that this history of five hundred young men engaged at this +moment in wearing smooth the paving stones of Paris, was written as a +sort of warning to the families of the eighty-six departments of +France: but read these two letters which lately passed between two girls +differently married, and you will see that it was as necessary as the +narrative by which every true melodrama was until lately expected to +open. You will divine the skillful manoeuvres of the Parisian peacock +spreading his tail in the recesses of his native village, and polishing +up, for matrimonial purposes, the rays of his glory, which, like those +of the sun, are only warm and brilliant at a distance. + + +From Madame Claire de la Roulandiere, nee Jugault, to Madame Adolphe de +Chodoreille, nee Heurtaut. + +“VIVIERS. + +“You have not yet written to me, and it’s real unkind in you. Don’t +you remember that the happier was to write first and to console her who +remained in the country? + +“Since your departure for Paris, I have married Monsieur de la +Roulandiere, the president of the tribunal. You know him, and you can +judge whether I am happy or not, with my heart _saturated_, as it is, +with our ideas. I was not ignorant what my lot would be: I live with +the ex-president, my husband’s uncle, and with my mother-in-law, who has +preserved nothing of the ancient parliamentary society of Aix but its +pride and its severity of manners. I am seldom alone, I never go out +unless accompanied by my mother-in-law or my husband. We receive the +heavy people of the city in the evening. They play whist at two sous a +point, and I listen to conversations of this nature: + +“‘Monsieur Vitremont is dead, and leaves two hundred and eighty thousand +francs,’ says the associate judge, a young man of forty-seven, who is as +entertaining as a northwest wind. + +“‘Are you quite sure of that?’ + +“The _that_ refers to the two hundred and eighty thousand francs. A +little judge then holds forth, he runs over the investments, the others +discuss their value, and it is definitely settled that if he has not +left two hundred and eighty thousand, he left something near it. + +“Then comes a universal concert of eulogy heaped upon the dead man’s +body, for having kept his bread under lock and key, for having shrewdly +invested his little savings accumulated sou by sou, in order, probably, +that the whole city and those who expect legacies may applaud and +exclaim in admiration, ‘He leaves two hundred and eighty thousand +francs!’ Now everybody has rich relations of whom they say ‘Will he +leave anything like it?’ and thus they discuss the quick as they have +discussed the dead. + +“They talk of nothing but the prospects of fortune, the prospects of a +vacancy in office, the prospects of the harvest. + +“When we were children, and used to look at those pretty little white +mice, in the cobbler’s window in the rue St. Maclou, that turned and +turned the circular cage in which they were imprisoned, how far I was +from thinking that they would one day be a faithful image of my life! + +“Think of it, my being in this condition!--I who fluttered my wings so +much more than you, I whose imagination was so vagabond! My sins have +been greater than yours, and I am the more severely punished. I have +bidden farewell to my dreams: I am _Madame la Presidente_ in all my +glory, and I resign myself to giving my arm for forty years to my +big awkward Roulandiere, to living meanly in every way, and to having +forever before me two heavy brows and two wall-eyes pierced in a yellow +face, which is destined never to know what it is to smile. + +“But you, Caroline dear, you who, between ourselves, were admitted among +the big girls while I still gamboled among the little ones, you whose +only sin was pride, you,--at the age of twenty-seven, and with a dowry +of two hundred thousand francs,--capture and captivate a truly great +man, one of the wittiest men in Paris, one of the two talented men that +our village has produced.--What luck! + +“You now circulate in the most brilliant society of Paris. Thanks to the +sublime privileges of genius. You may appear in all the salons of the +Faubourg St. Germain, and be cordially received. You have the exquisite +enjoyment of the company of the two or three celebrated women of our +age, where so many good things are said, where the happy speeches which +arrive out here like Congreve rockets, are first fired off. You go to +the Baron Schinner’s of whom Adolphe so often spoke to us, whom all the +great artists and foreigners of celebrity visit. In short, before long, +you will be one of the queens of Paris, if you wish. You can receive, +too, and have at your house the lions of literature, fashion and +finance, whether male or female, for Adolphe spoke in such terms about +his illustrious friendships and his intimacy with the favorites of the +hour, that I imagine you giving and receiving honors. + +“With your ten thousand francs a year, and the legacy from your Aunt +Carabas, added to the twenty thousand francs that your husband earns, +you must keep a carriage; and since you go to all the theatres without +paying, since journalists are the heroes of all the inaugurations so +ruinous for those who keep up with the movement of Paris, and since they +are constantly invited to dinner, you live as if you had an income of +sixty thousand francs a year! Happy Caroline! I don’t wonder you forget +me! + +“I can understand how it is that you have not a moment to yourself. Your +bliss is the cause of your silence, so I pardon you. Still, if, fatigued +with so many pleasures, you one day, upon the summit of your grandeur, +think of your poor Claire, write to me, tell me what a marriage with a +great man is, describe those great Parisian ladies, especially those +who write. Oh! I should _so_ much like to know what they are made of! +Finally don’t forget anything, unless you forget that you are loved, as +ever, by your poor + +“CLAIRE JUGAULT.” + + +From Madame Adolphe de Chodoreille to Madame la Presidente de la +Roulandiere, at Viviers. + +“PARIS. + +“Ah! my poor Claire, could you have known how many wretched little +griefs your innocent letter would awaken, you never would have written +it. Certainly no friend, and not even an enemy, on seeing a woman with a +thousand mosquito-bites and a plaster over them, would amuse herself by +tearing it off and counting the stings. + +“I will begin by telling you that for a woman of twenty-seven, with a +face still passable, but with a form a little too much like that of the +Emperor Nicholas for the humble part I play, I am happy! Let me tell you +why: Adolphe, rejoicing in the deceptions which have fallen upon me +like a hail-storm, smoothes over the wounds in my self-love by so much +affection, so many attentions, and such charming things, that, in good +truth, women--so far as they are simply women--would be glad to find +in the man they marry defects so advantageous. But all men of letters +(Adolphe, alas! is barely a man of letters), who are beings not a bit +less irritable, nervous, fickle and eccentric than women, are far from +possessing such solid qualities as those of Adolphe, and I hope they +have not all been as unfortunate as he. + +“Ah! Claire, we love each other well enough for me to tell you +the simple truth. I have saved my husband, dear, from profound but +skillfully concealed poverty. Far from receiving twenty thousand francs +a year, he has not earned that sum in the entire fifteen years that he +has been at Paris. We occupy a third story in the rue Joubert, and pay +twelve hundred francs for it; we have some eighty-five hundred francs +left, with which I endeavor to keep house honorably. + +“I have brought Adolphe luck; for since our marriage, he has obtained +the control of a feuilleton which is worth four hundred francs a month +to him, though it takes but a small portion of his time. He owes this +situation to an investment. We employed the seventy thousand francs left +me by my Aunt Carabas in giving security for a newspaper; on this we get +nine per cent, and we have stock besides. Since this transaction, which +was concluded some ten months ago, our income has doubled, and we now +possess a competence, I can complain of my marriage in a pecuniary +point of view no more than as regards my affections. My vanity alone +has suffered, and my ambition has been swamped. You will understand the +various petty troubles which have assailed me, by a single specimen. + +“Adolphe, you remember, appeared to us on intimate terms with the famous +Baroness Schinner, so renowned for her wit, her influence, her wealth +and her connection with celebrated men. I supposed that he was welcomed +at her house as a friend: my husband presented me, and I was coldly +received. I saw that her rooms were furnished with extravagant luxury; +and instead of Madame Schinner’s returning my call, I received a card, +twenty days afterward, and at an insolently improper hour. + +“On arriving at Paris, I went to walk upon the boulevard, proud of my +anonymous great man. He nudged me with his elbow, and said, pointing out +a fat little ill-dressed man, ‘There’s so and so!’ He mentioned one of +the seven or eight illustrious men in France. I got ready my look of +admiration, and I saw Adolphe rapturously doffing his hat to the truly +great man, who replied by the curt little nod that you vouchsafe a +person with whom you have doubtless exchanged hardly four words in ten +years. Adolphe had begged a look for my sake. ‘Doesn’t he know you?’ +I said to my husband. ‘Oh, yes, but he probably took me for somebody +else,’ replied he. + +“And so of poets, so of celebrated musicians, so of statesmen. But, as +a compensation, we stop and talk for ten minutes in front of some +arcade or other, with Messieurs Armand du Cantal, George Beaunoir, Felix +Verdoret, of whom you have never heard. Mesdames Constantine Ramachard, +Anais Crottat, and Lucienne Vouillon threaten me with their _blue_ +friendship. We dine editors totally unknown in our province. Finally I +have had the painful happiness of seeing Adolphe decline an invitation +to an evening party to which I was not bidden. + +“Oh! Claire dear, talent is still the rare flower of spontaneous growth, +that no greenhouse culture can produce. I do not deceive myself: Adolphe +is an ordinary man, known, estimated as such: he has no other chance, +as he himself says, than to take his place among the _utilities_ of +literature. He was not without wit at Viviers: but to be a man of wit at +Paris, you must possess every kind of wit in formidable doses. + +“I esteem Adolphe: for, after some few fibs, he frankly confessed his +position, and, without humiliating himself too deeply, he promised that +I should be happy. He hopes, like numerous other ordinary men, to +obtain some place, that of an assistant librarian, for instance, or +the pecuniary management of a newspaper. Who knows but we may get him +elected deputy for Viviers, in the course of time? + +“We live in obscurity; we have five or six friends of either sex whom we +like, and such is the brilliant style of life which your letter gilded +with all the social splendors. + +“From time to time I am caught in a squall, or am the butt of some +malicious tongue. Thus, yesterday, at the opera, I heard one of our most +ill-natured wits, Leon de Lora, say to one of our most famous critics, +‘It takes Chodoreille to discover the Caroline poplar on the banks of +the Rhone!’ They had heard my husband call me by my Christian name. At +Viviers I was considered handsome. I am tall, well made, and fat enough +to satisfy Adolphe! In this way I learn that the beauty of women from +the country is, at Paris, precisely like the wit of country gentleman. + +“In short, I am absolutely nobody, if that is what you wish to know: but +if you desire to learn how far my philosophy goes, understand that I am +really happy in having found an ordinary man in my pretended great one. + +“Farewell, dear Claire! It is still I, you see, who, in spite of my +delusions and the petty troubles of my life, am the most favorably +situated: for Adolphe is young, and a charming fellow. + +“CAROLINE HEURTAUT.” + + +Claire’s reply contained, among other passages, the following: “I hope +that the indescribable happiness which you enjoy, will continue, thanks +to your philosophy.” Claire, as any intimate female friend would have +done, consoled herself for her president by insinuations respecting +Adolphe’s prospects and future conduct. + + + +II. ANOTHER GLANCE AT CHODOREILLE. + +(Letter discovered one day in a casket, while she was making me wait a +long time and trying to get rid of a hanger-on who could not be made +to understand hidden meanings. I caught cold--but I got hold of this +letter.) + +This fatuous note was found on a paper which the notary’s clerks had +thought of no importance in the inventory of the estate of M. Ferdinand +de Bourgarel, who was mourned of late by politics, arts and amours, +and in whom is ended the great Provencal house of Borgarelli; for as is +generally known the name Bourgarel is a corruption of Borgarelli just as +the French Girardin is the Florentine Gherardini. + +An intelligent reader will find little difficulty in placing this letter +in its proper epoch in the lives of Adolphe and Caroline. + + +“My dear Friend: + +“I thought myself lucky indeed to marry an artist as superior in his +talent as in his personal attributes, equally great in soul and mind, +worldly-wise, and likely to rise by following the public road without +being obliged to wander along crooked, doubtful by-paths. However, you +knew Adolphe; you appreciated his worth. I am loved, he is a father, +I idolize our children. Adolphe is kindness itself to me; I admire and +love him. But, my dear, in this complete happiness lurks a thorn. The +roses upon which I recline have more than one fold. In the heart of a +woman, folds speedily turn to wounds. These wounds soon bleed, the evil +spreads, we suffer, the suffering awakens thoughts, the thoughts swell +and change the course of sentiment. + +“Ah, my dear, you shall know all about it, though it is a cruel thing +to say--but we live as much by vanity as by love. To live by love alone, +one must dwell somewhere else than in Paris. What difference would it +make to us whether we had only one white percale gown, if the man we +love did not see other women dressed differently, more elegantly than +we--women who inspire ideas by their ways, by a multitude of little +things which really go to make up great passions? Vanity, my dear, is +cousin-german to jealousy, to that beautiful and noble jealousy which +consists in not allowing one’s empire to be invaded, in reigning +undisturbed in a soul, and passing one’s life happily in a heart. + +“Ah, well, my woman’s vanity is on the rack. Though some troubles may +seem petty indeed, I have learned, unfortunately, that in the home there +are no petty troubles. For everything there is magnified by incessant +contact with sensations, with desires, with ideas. Such then is the +secret of that sadness which you have surprised in me and which I did +not care to explain. It is one of those things in which words go too +far, and where writing holds at least the thought within bounds by +establishing it. The effects of a moral perspective differ so radically +between what is said and what is written! All is so solemn, so serious +on paper! One cannot commit any more imprudences. Is it not this fact +which makes a treasure out of a letter where one gives one’s self over +to one’s thoughts? + +“You doubtless thought me wretched, but I am only wounded. You +discovered me sitting alone by the fire, and no Adolphe. I had just +finished putting the children to bed; they were asleep. Adolphe for the +tenth time had been invited out to a house where I do not go, where they +want Adolphe without his wife. There are drawing-rooms where he goes +without me, just at there are many pleasures in which he alone is the +guest. If he were M. de Navarreins and I a d’Espard, society would never +think of separating us; it would want us always together. His habits are +formed; he does not suspect the humiliation which weighs upon my heart. +Indeed, if he had the slightest inkling of this small sorrow which I am +ashamed to own, he would drop society, he would become more of a prig +than the people who come between us. But he would hamper his progress, +he would make enemies, he would raise up obstacles by imposing me upon +the salons where I would be subject to a thousand slights. That is why I +prefer my sufferings to what would happen were they discovered. + +“Adolphe will succeed! He carries my revenge in his beautiful head, does +this man of genius. One day the world shall pay for all these slights. +But when? Perhaps I shall be forty-five. My beautiful youth will have +passed in my chimney-corner, and with this thought: Adolphe smiles, +he is enjoying the society of fair women, he is playing the devoted to +them, while none of these attentions come my way. + +“It may be that these will finally take him from me! + +“No one undergoes slight without feeling it, and I feel that I am +slighted, though young, beautiful and virtuous. Now, can I keep from +thinking this way? Can I control my anger at the thought that Adolphe is +dining in the city without me? I take no part in his triumphs; I do not +hear the witty or profound remarks made to others! I could no longer be +content with bourgeois receptions whence he rescued me, upon finding me +_distinguee_, wealthy, young, beautiful and witty. There lies the evil, +and it is irremediable. + +“In a word, for some cause, it is only since I cannot go to a certain +salon that I want to go there. Nothing is more natural of the ways of +a human heart. The ancients were wise in having their _gyneceums_. The +collisions between the pride of the women, caused by these gatherings, +though it dates back only four centuries, has cost our own day much +disaffection and numerous bitter debates. + +“Be that as it may, my dear, Adolphe is always warmly welcomed when he +comes back home. Still, no nature is strong enough to await always with +the same ardor. What a morrow that will be, following the evening when +his welcome is less warm! + +“Now do you see the depth of the fold which I mentioned? A fold in the +heart is an abyss, like a crevasse in the Alps--a profundity whose depth +and extent we have never been able to calculate. Thus it is between two +beings, no matter how near they may be drawn to each other. One never +realizes the weight of suffering which oppresses his friend. This seems +such a little thing, yet one’s life is affected by it in all its length, +in all its breadth. I have thus argued with myself; but the more I have +argued, the more thoroughly have I realized the extent of this hidden +sorrow. And I can only let the current carry me whither it will. + +“Two voices struggle for supremacy when--by a rarely fortunate chance--I +am alone in my armchair waiting for Adolphe. One, I would wager, comes +from Eugene Delacroix’s _Faust_ which I have on my table. Mephistopheles +speaks, that terrible aide who guides the swords so dexterously. +He leaves the engraving, and places himself diabolically before me, +grinning through the hole which the great artist has placed under his +nose, and gazing at me with that eye whence fall rubies, diamonds, +carriages, jewels, laces, silks, and a thousand luxuries to feed the +burning desire within me. + +“‘Are you not fit for society?’ he asks. ‘You are the equal of the +fairest duchesses. Your voice is like a siren’s, your hands command +respect and love. Ah! that arm!--place bracelets upon it, and how +pleasingly it would rest upon the velvet of a robe! Your locks are +chains which would fetter all men. And you could lay all your triumphs +at Adolphe’s feet, show him your power and never use it. Then he would +fear, where now he lives in insolent certainty. Come! To action! Inhale +a few mouthfuls of disdain and you will exhale clouds of incense. Dare +to reign! Are you not next to nothing here in your chimney-corner? +Sooner or later the pretty spouse, the beloved wife will die, if you +continue like this, in a dressing-gown. Come, and you shall perpetuate +your sway through the arts of coquetry! Show yourself in salons, and +your pretty foot shall trample down the love of your rivals.’ + +“The other voice comes from my white marble mantel, which rustles like a +garment. I think I see a veritable goddess crowned with white roses, and +bearing a palm-branch in her hand. Two blue eyes smile down on me. This +simple image of virtue says to me: + +“‘Be content! Remain good always, and make this man happy. That is the +whole of your mission. The sweetness of angels triumphs over all pain. +Faith in themselves has enabled the martyrs to obtain solace even on the +brasiers of their tormentors. Suffer a moment; you shall be happy in the +end.’ + +“Sometimes Adolphe enters at that moment and I am content. But, my dear, +I have less patience than love. I almost wish to tear in pieces the +woman who can go everywhere, and whose society is sought out by men and +women alike. What profound thought lies in the line of Moliere: + + “‘The world, dear Agnes, is a curious thing!’ + +“You know nothing of this petty trouble, you fortunate Mathilde! You are +well born. You can do a great deal for me. Just think! I can write you +things that I dared not speak about. Your visits mean so much; come +often to see your poor + + “Caroline.” + + +“Well,” said I to the notary’s clerk, “do you know what was the nature +of this letter to the late Bourgarel?” + +“No.” + +“A note of exchange.” + +Neither clerk nor notary understood my meaning. Do you? + + + + +THE PANGS OF INNOCENCE. + +“Yes, dear, in the married state, many things will happen to you which +you are far from expecting: but then others will happen which you expect +still less. For instance--” + +The author (may we say the ingenious author?) _qui castigat ridendo +mores_, and who has undertaken the _Petty Troubles of Married Life_, +hardly needs to remark, that, for prudence’ sake, he here allows a +lady of high distinction to speak, and that he does not assume the +responsibility of her language, though he professes the most sincere +admiration for the charming person to whom he owes his acquaintance with +this petty trouble. + +“For instance--” she says. + +He nevertheless thinks proper to avow that this person is neither Madame +Foullepointe, nor Madame de Fischtaminel, nor Madame Deschars. + +Madame Deschars is too prudish, Madame Foullepointe too absolute in +her household, and she knows it; indeed, what doesn’t she know? She is +good-natured, she sees good society, she wishes to have the best: people +overlook the vivacity of her witticisms, as, under louis XIV, they +overlooked the remarks of Madame Cornuel. They overlook a good many +things in her; there are some women who are the spoiled children of +public opinion. + +As to Madame de Fischtaminel, who is, in fact, connected with the +affair, as you shall see, she, being unable to recriminate, abstains +from words and recriminates in acts. + +We give permission to all to think that the speaker is Caroline herself, +not the silly little Caroline of tender years. But Caroline when she has +become a woman of thirty. + +“For instance,” she remarks to a young woman whom she is edifying, “you +will have children, God willing.” + +“Madame,” I say, “don’t let us mix the deity up in this, unless it is an +allusion--” + +“You are impertinent,” she replies, “you shouldn’t interrupt a woman--” + +“When she is busy with children, I know: but, madame, you ought not to +trifle with the innocence of young ladies. Mademoiselle is going to +be married, and if she were led to count upon the intervention of the +Supreme Being in this affair, she would fall into serious errors. We +should not deceive the young. Mademoiselle is beyond the age when girls +are informed that their little brother was found under a cabbage.” + +“You evidently want to get me confused,” she replies, smiling and +showing the loveliest teeth in the world. “I am not strong enough to +argue with you, so I beg you to let me go on with Josephine. What was I +saying?” + +“That if I get married, I shall have children,” returns the young lady. + +“Very well. I will not represent things to you worse than they are, but +it is extremely probable that each child will cost you a tooth. With +every baby I have lost a tooth.” + +“Happily,” I remark at this, “this trouble was with you less than petty, +it was positively nothing.”--They were side teeth.--“But take notice, +miss, that this vexation has no absolute, unvarying character as such. +The annoyance depends upon the condition of the tooth. If the baby +causes the loss of a decayed tooth, you are fortunate to have a baby +the more and a bad tooth the less. Don’t let us confound blessings with +bothers. Ah! if you were to lose one of your magnificent front teeth, +that would be another thing! And yet there is many a woman that would +give the best tooth in her head for a fine, healthy boy!” + +“Well,” resumes Caroline, with animation, “at the risk of destroying +your illusions, poor child, I’ll just show you a petty trouble that +counts! Ah, it’s atrocious! And I won’t leave the subject of dress which +this gentleman considers the only subject we women are equal to.” + +I protest by a gesture. + +“I had been married about two years,” continues Caroline, “and I loved +my husband. I have got over it since and acted differently for his +happiness and mine. I can boast of having one of the happiest homes in +Paris. In short, my dear, I loved the monster, and, even when out in +society, saw no one but him. My husband had already said to me several +times, ‘My dear, young women never dress well; your mother liked to have +you look like a stick,--she had her reasons for it. If you care for +my advice, take Madame de Fischtaminel for a model: she is a lady of +taste.’ I, unsuspecting creature that I was, saw no perfidy in the +recommendation. + +“One evening as we returned from a party, he said, ‘Did you notice how +Madame de Fischtaminel was dressed!’ ‘Yes, very neatly.’ And I said to +myself, ‘He’s always talking about Madame de Fischtaminel; I must really +dress just like her.’ I had noticed the stuff and the make of the dress, +and the style of the trimmings. I was as happy as could be, as I +went trotting about town, doing everything I could to obtain the same +articles. I sent for the very same dressmaker. + +“‘You work for Madame de Fischtaminel,’ I said. + +“‘Yes, madame.’ + +“‘Well, I will employ you as my dressmaker, but on one condition: you +see I have procured the stuff of which her gown is made, and I want you +to make me one exactly like it.’ + +“I confess that I did not at first pay any attention to a rather shrewd +smile of the dressmaker, though I saw it and afterwards accounted for +it. ‘So like it,’ I added, ‘that you can’t tell them apart.’ + +“Oh,” says Caroline, interrupting herself and looking at me, “you +men teach us to live like spiders in the depths of their webs, to see +everything without seeming to look at it, to investigate the meaning and +spirit of words, movements, looks. You say, ‘How cunning women are!’ But +you should say, ‘How deceitful men are!’ + +“I can’t tell you how much care, how many days, how many manoeuvres, it +cost me to become Madame de Fischtaminel’s duplicate! But these are our +battles, child,” she adds, returning to Josephine. “I could not find a +certain little embroidered neckerchief, a very marvel! I finally learned +that it was made to order. I unearthed the embroideress, and ordered a +kerchief like Madame de Fischtaminel’s. The price was a mere trifle, +one hundred and fifty francs! It had been ordered by a gentleman who +had made a present of it to Madame de Fischtaminel. All my savings were +absorbed by it. Now we women of Paris are all of us very much restricted +in the article of dress. There is not a man worth a hundred thousand +francs a year, that loses ten thousand a winter at whist, who does not +consider his wife extravagant, and is not alarmed at her bills for what +he calls ‘rags’! ‘Let my savings go,’ I said. And they went. I had the +modest pride of a woman in love: I would not speak a word to Adolphe +of my dress; I wanted it to be a surprise, goose that I was! Oh, how +brutally you men take away our blessed ignorance!” + +This remark is meant for me, for me who had taken nothing from the +lady, neither tooth, nor anything whatever of the things with a name and +without a name that may be taken from a woman. + +“I must tell you that my husband took me to Madame de Fischtaminel’s, +where I dined quite often. I heard her say to him, ‘Why, your wife +looks very well!’ She had a patronizing way with me that I put up with: +Adolphe wished that I could have her wit and preponderance in society. +In short, this phoenix of women was my model. I studied and copied her, +I took immense pains not to be myself--oh!--it was a poem that no one +but us women can understand! Finally, the day of my triumph dawned. My +heart beat for joy, as if I were a child, as if I were what we all are +at twenty-two. My husband was going to call for me for a walk in the +Tuileries: he came in, I looked at him radiant with joy, but he took +no notice. Well, I can confess it now, it was one of those frightful +disasters--but I will say nothing about it--this gentleman here would +make fun of me.” + +I protest by another movement. + +“It was,” she goes on, for a woman never stops till she has told the +whole of a thing, “as if I had seen an edifice built by a fairy crumble +into ruins. Adolphe manifested not the slightest surprise. We got into +the carriage. Adolphe noticed my sadness, and asked me what the matter +was: I replied as we always do when our hearts are wrung by these petty +vexations, ‘Oh, nothing!’ Then he took his eye-glass, and stared at the +promenaders on the Champs Elysees, for we were to go the rounds of the +Champs Elysees, before taking our walk at the Tuileries. Finally, a fit +of impatience seized me. I felt a slight attack of fever, and when I +got home, I composed myself to smile. ‘You haven’t said a word about +my dress!’ I muttered. ‘Ah, yes, your gown is somewhat like Madame de +Fischtaminel’s.’ He turned on his heel and went away. + +“The next day I pouted a little, as you may readily imagine. Just as we +were finishing breakfast by the fire in my room--I shall never forget +it--the embroideress called to get her money for the neckerchief. I +paid her. She bowed to my husband as if she knew him. I ran after her +on pretext of getting her to receipt the bill, and said: ‘You didn’t +ask _him_ so much for Madame de Fischtaminel’s kerchief!’ ‘I assure you, +madame, it’s the same price, the gentleman did not beat me down a mite.’ +I returned to my room where I found my husband looking as foolish as--” + +She hesitates and then resumes: “As a miller just made a bishop. +‘I understand, love, now, that I shall never be anything more than +_somewhat like_ Madame de Fischtaminel.’ ‘You refer to her neckerchief, +I suppose: well, I _did_ give it to her,--it was for her birthday. You +see, we were formerly--’ ‘Ah, you were formerly more intimate than you +are now!’ Without replying to this, he added, ‘_But it’s altogether +moral._’ + +“He took his hat and went out, leaving me with this fine declaration +of the Rights of Man. He did not return and came home late at night. I +remained in my chamber and wept like a Magdalen, in the chimney-corner. +You may laugh at me, if you will,” she adds, looking at me, “but I shed +tears over my youthful illusions, and I wept, too, for spite, at having +been taken for a dupe. I remembered the dressmaker’s smile! Ah, that +smile reminded me of the smiles of a number of women, who laughed at +seeing me so innocent and unsuspecting at Madame de Fischtaminel’s! I +wept sincerely. Until now I had a right to give my husband credit for +many things which he did not possess, but in the existence of which +young married women pertinaciously believe. + +“How many great troubles are included in this petty one! You men are a +vulgar set. There is not a woman who does not carry her delicacy so +far as to embroider her past life with the most delightful fibs, while +you--but I have had my revenge.” + +“Madame,” I say, “you are giving this young lady too much information.” + +“True,” she returns, “I will tell you the sequel some other time.” + +“Thus, you see, mademoiselle,” I say, “you imagine you are buying a +neckerchief and you find a _petty trouble_ round your neck: if you get +it given to you--” + +“It’s a _great_ trouble,” retorts the woman of distinction. “Let us stop +here.” + +The moral of this fable is that you must wear your neckerchief without +thinking too much about it. The ancient prophets called this world, even +in their time, a valley of woe. Now, at that period, the Orientals had, +with the permission of the constituted authorities, a swarm of comely +slaves, besides their wives! What shall we call the valley of the Seine +between Calvary and Charenton, where the law allows but one lawful wife. + + + + +THE UNIVERSAL AMADIS. + +You will understand at once that I began to gnaw the head of my cane, +to consult the ceiling, to gaze at the fire, to examine Caroline’s foot, +and I thus held out till the marriageable young lady was gone. + +“You must excuse me,” I said, “if I have remained behind, perhaps in +spite of you: but your vengeance would lose by being recounted by and +by, and if it constituted a petty trouble for your husband, I have the +greatest interest in hearing it, and you shall know why.” + +“Ah,” she returned, “that expression, ‘_it’s altogether moral,_’ which +he gave as an excuse, shocked me to the last degree. It was a great +consolation, truly, to me, to know that I held the place, in his +household, of a piece of furniture, a block; that my kingdom lay among +the kitchen utensils, the accessories of my toilet, and the physicians’ +prescriptions; that our conjugal love had been assimilated to dinner +pills, to veal soup and white mustard; that Madame de Fischtaminel +possessed my husband’s soul, his admiration, and that she charmed +and satisfied his intellect, while I was a kind of purely physical +necessity! What do you think of a woman’s being degraded to the +situation of a soup or a plate of boiled beef, and without parsley, at +that! Oh, I composed a catilinic, that evening--” + +“Philippic is better.” + +“Well, either. I’ll say anything you like, for I was perfectly furious, +and I don’t remember what I screamed in the desert of my bedroom. Do you +suppose that this opinion that husbands have of their wives, the parts +they give them, is not a singular vexation for us? Our petty troubles +are always pregnant with greater ones. My Adolphe needed a lesson. You +know the Vicomte de Lustrac, a desperate amateur of women and music, +an epicure, one of those ex-beaux of the Empire, who live upon their +earlier successes, and who cultivate themselves with excessive care, in +order to secure a second crop?” + +“Yes,” I said, “one of those laced, braced, corseted old fellows of +sixty, who work such wonders by the grace of their forms, and who might +give a lesson to the youngest dandies among us.” + +“Monsieur de Lustrac is as selfish as a king, but gallant and +pretentious, spite of his jet black wig.” + +“As to his whiskers, he dyes them.” + +“He goes to ten parties in an evening: he’s a butterfly.” + +“He gives capital dinners and concerts, and patronizes inexperienced +songstresses.” + +“He takes bustle for pleasure.” + +“Yes, but he makes off with incredible celerity whenever a misfortune +occurs. Are you in mourning, he avoids you. Are you confined, he awaits +your churching before he visits you. He possesses a mundane frankness +and a social intrepidity which challenge admiration.” + +“But does it not require courage to appear to be what one really is?” I +asked. + +“Well,” she resumed, after we had exchanged our observations on this +point, “this young old man, this universal Amadis, whom we call among +ourselves Chevalier _Petit-Bon-Homme-vil-encore_, became the object of +my admiration. I made him a few of those advances which never compromise +a woman; I spoke of the good taste exhibited in his latest waistcoats +and in his canes, and he thought me a lady of extreme amiability. I +thought him a chevalier of extreme youth; he called upon me; I put on a +number of little airs, and pretended to be unhappy at home, and to have +deep sorrows. You know what a woman means when she talks of her sorrows, +and complains that she is not understood. The old ape replied much +better than a young man would, and I had the greatest difficulty in +keeping a straight face while I listened to him. + +“‘Ah, that’s the way with husbands, they pursue the very worst polity, +they respect their wives, and, sooner or later, every woman is enraged +at finding herself respected, and divines the secret education to which +she is entitled. Once married, you ought not to live like a little +school-girl, etc.’ + +“As he spoke, he leaned over me, he squirmed, he was horrible to see. He +looked like a wooden Nuremberg doll, he stuck out his chin, he stuck out +his chair, he stuck out his hand--in short, after a variety of marches +and countermarches, of declarations that were perfectly angelic--” + +“No!” + +“Yes. _Petit-Bon-Homme-vil-encore_ had abandoned the classicism of +his youth for the romanticism now in fashion: he spoke of the soul, +of angels, of adoration, of submission, he became ethereal, and of the +darkest blue. He took me to the opera, and handed me to my carriage. +This old young man went when I went, his waistcoats multiplied, he +compressed his waist, he excited his horse to a gallop in order to catch +and accompany my carriage to the promenade: he compromised me with the +grace of a young collegian, and was considered madly in love with me. +I was steadfastly cruel, but accepted his arm and his bouquets. We were +talked about. I was delighted, and managed before long to be surprised +by my husband, with the viscount on the sofa in my boudoir, holding +my hands in his, while I listened in a sort of external ecstasy. It +is incredible how much a desire for vengeance will induce us to put up +with! I appeared vexed at the entrance of my husband, who made a scene +on the viscount’s departure: ‘I assure you, sir,’ said I, after having +listened to his reproaches, ‘that _it’s altogether moral_.’ My husband +saw the point and went no more to Madame de Fischtaminel’s. I received +Monsieur de Lustrac no more, either.” + +“But,” I interrupted, “this Lustrac that you, like many others, take for +a bachelor, is a widower, and childless.” + +“Really!” + +“No man ever buried his wife deeper than he buried his: she will hardly +be found at the day of judgment. He married before the Revolution, and +your _altogether moral_ reminds me of a speech of his that I shall have +to repeat for your benefit. Napoleon appointed Lustrac to an important +office, in a conquered province. Madame de Lustrac, abandoned for +governmental duties, took a private secretary for her private affairs, +though it was altogether moral: but she was wrong in selecting him +without informing her husband. Lustrac met this secretary in a state +of some excitement, in consequence of a lively discussion in his wife’s +chamber, and at an exceedingly early hour in the morning. The city +desired nothing better than to laugh at its governor, and this adventure +made such a sensation that Lustrac himself begged the Emperor to recall +him. Napoleon desired his representatives to be men of morality, and +he held that such disasters as this must inevitably take from a man’s +consideration. You know that among the Emperor’s unhappy passions, was +that of reforming his court and his government. Lustrac’s request was +granted, therefore, but without compensation. When he returned to Paris, +he reappeared at his mansion, with his wife; he took her into society--a +step which is certainly conformable to the most refined habits of the +aristocracy--but then there are always people who want to find out about +it. They inquired the reason of this chivalrous championship. ‘So you +are reconciled, you and Madame de Lustrac,’ some one said to him in the +lobby of the Emperor’s theatre, ‘you have pardoned her, have you? So +much the better.’ ‘Oh,’ replied he, with a satisfied air, ‘I became +convinced--’ ‘Ah, that she was innocent, very good.’ ‘No, I became +convinced that it was altogether physical.’” + +Caroline smiled. + +“The opinion of your admirer reduced this weighty trouble to what is, in +this case as in yours, a very petty one.” + +“A petty trouble!” she exclaimed, “and pray for what do you take the +fatigue of coquetting with a de Lustrac, of whom I have made an enemy! +Ah, women often pay dearly enough for the bouquets they receive and the +attentions they accept. Monsieur de Lustrac said of me to Monsieur de +Bourgarel, ‘I would not advise you to pay court to that woman; she is +too dear.’” + + + + +WITHOUT AN OCCUPATION. + + +“PARIS, 183- “You ask me, dear mother, whether I am happy with my +husband. Certainly Monsieur de Fischtaminel was not the ideal of my +dreams. I submitted to your will, as you know. His fortune, that +supreme consideration, spoke, indeed, sufficiently loud. With +these arguments,--a marriage, without stooping, with the Count +de Fischtaminel, his having thirty thousand a year, and a home at +Paris--you were strongly armed against your poor daughter. Besides, +Monsieur de Fischtaminel is good looking for a man of thirty-six years; +he received the cross of the Legion of Honor from Napoleon upon the +field of battle, he is an ex-colonel, and had it not been for the +Restoration, which put him upon half-pay, he would be a general. These +are certainly extenuating circumstances. + +“Many women consider that I have made a good match, and I am bound to +confess that there is every appearance of happiness,--for the public, +that is. But you will acknowledge that if you had known of the return +of my Uncle Cyrus and of his intention to leave me his money, you would +have given me the privilege of choosing for myself. + +“I have nothing to say against Monsieur de Fischtaminel: he does not +gamble, he is indifferent to women, he doesn’t like wine, and he has no +expensive fancies: he possesses, as you said, all the negative qualities +which make husbands passable. Then, what is the matter with him? Well, +mother, he has nothing to do. We are together the whole blessed day! +Would you believe that it is during the night, when we are the most +closely united, that I am the most alone? His sleep is my asylum, my +liberty begins when he slumbers. This state of siege will yet make me +sick: I am never alone. If Monsieur de Fischtaminel were jealous, I +should have a resource. There would then be a struggle, a comedy: but +how could the aconite of jealousy have taken root in his soul? He +has never left me since our marriage. He feels no shame in stretching +himself out upon a sofa and remaining there for hours together. + +“Two felons pinioned to the same chain do not find time hang heavy: +for they have their escape to think of. But we have no subject of +conversation; we have long since talked ourselves out. A little while +ago he was so far reduced as to talk politics. But even politics are +exhausted, Napoleon, unfortunately for me, having died at St. Helena, as +is well known. + +“Monsieur de Fischtaminel abhors reading. If he sees me with a book, he +comes and says a dozen times an hour--‘Nina, dear, haven’t you finished +yet?’ + +“I endeavored to persuade this innocent persecutor to ride out every day +on horseback, and I alleged a consideration usually conclusive with men +of forty years,--his health! But he said that after having been twelve +years on horseback, he felt the need of repose. + +“My husband, dear mother, is a man who absorbs you, he uses up the vital +fluid of his neighbor, his ennui is gluttonous: he likes to be amused +by those who call upon us, and, after five years of wedlock, no one +ever comes: none visit us but those whose intentions are evidently +dishonorable for him, and who endeavor, unsuccessfully, to amuse him, +in order to earn the right to weary his wife. + +“Monsieur de Fischtaminel, mother, opens the door of my chamber, or of +the room to which I have flown for refuge, five or six times an hour, +and comes up to me in an excited way, and says, ‘Well, what are you +doing, my belle?’ (the expression in fashion during the Empire) without +perceiving that he is constantly repeating the same phrase, which is to +me like the one pint too much that the executioner formerly poured into +the torture by water. + +“Then there’s another bore! We can’t go to walk any more. A promenade +without conversation, without interest, is impossible. My husband walks +with me for the walk, as if he were alone. I have the fatigue without +the pleasure. + +“The interval between getting up and breakfast is employed in my toilet, +in my household duties; and I manage to get through with this part of +the day. But between breakfast and dinner, there is a whole desert to +plough, a waste to traverse. My husband’s want of occupation does not +leave me a moment of repose, he overpowers me by his uselessness; his +idle life positively wears me out. His two eyes always open and gazing +at mine compel me to keep them lowered. Then his monotonous remarks: + +“‘What o’clock is it, love? What are you doing now? What are you +thinking of? What do you mean to do? Where shall we go this evening? +Anything new? What weather! I don’t feel well, etc., etc.’ + +“All these variations upon the same theme--the interrogation +point--which compose Fischtaminel’s repertory, will drive me mad. Add to +these leaden arrows everlastingly shot off at me, one last trait which +will complete the description of my happiness, and you will understand +my life. + +“Monsieur de Fischtaminel, who went away in 1809, with the rank of +sub-lieutenant, at the age of eighteen, has had no other education than +that due to discipline, to the natural sense of honor of a noble and a +soldier: but though he possesses tact, the sentiment of probity, and +a proper subordination, his ignorance is gross, he knows absolutely +nothing, and he has a horror of learning anything. Oh, dear mother, what +an accomplished door-keeper this colonel would have made, had he +been born in indigence! I don’t think a bit the better of him for his +bravery, for he did not fight against the Russians, the Austrians, or +the Prussians: he fought against ennui. When he rushed upon the enemy, +Captain Fischtaminel’s purpose was to get away from himself. He married +because he had nothing else to do. + +“We have another slight difficulty to content with: my husband harasses +the servants to such a degree that we change them every six months. + +“I so ardently desire, dear mother, to remain a virtuous woman, that I +am going to try the effect of traveling for half the year. During the +winter, I shall go every evening to the Italian or the French opera, +or to parties: but I don’t know whether our fortune will permit such an +expenditure. Uncle Cyrus ought to come to Paris--I would take care of +him as I would of an inheritance. + +“If you discover a cure for my woes, let your daughter know of it--your +daughter who loves you as much as she deplores her misfortunes, and who +would have been glad to call herself by some other name than that of + + “NINA FISCHTAMINEL.” + + +Besides the necessity of describing this petty trouble, which could only +be described by the pen of a woman,--and what a woman she was!--it was +necessary to make you acquainted with a character whom you saw only in +profile in the first half of this book, the queen of the particular set +in which Caroline lived,--a woman both envied and adroit, who succeeded +in conciliating, at an early date, what she owed to the world with the +requirements of the heart. This letter is her absolution. + + + + +INDISCRETIONS. + +Women are either chaste--or vain--or simply proud. They are therefore +all subject to the following petty trouble: + +Certain husbands are so delighted to have, in the form of a wife, +a woman to themselves,--a possession exclusively due to the legal +ceremony,--that they dread the public’s making a mistake, and they +hasten to brand their consort, as lumber-dealers brand their logs while +floating down stream, or as the Berry stock-raisers brand their sheep. +They bestow names of endearment, right before people, upon their wives: +names taken, after the Roman fashion (columbella), from the animal +kingdom, as: my chick, my duck, my dove, my lamb; or, choosing from +the vegetable kingdom, they call them: my cabbage, my fig (this only in +Provence), my plum (this only in Alsatia). Never:--My flower! Pray note +this discretion. + +Or else, which is more serious, they call their +wives:--Bobonne,--mother,--daughter,--good woman,--old lady: this last +when she is very young. + +Some venture upon names of doubtful propriety, such as: Mon bichon, ma +niniche, Tronquette! + +We once heard one of our politicians, a man extremely remarkable for his +ugliness, call his wife, _Moumoutte_! + +“I would rather he would strike me,” said this unfortunate to her +neighbor. + +“Poor little woman, she is really unhappy,” resumed the neighbor, +looking at me when Moumoutte had gone: “when she is in company with +her husband she is upon pins and needles, and keeps out of his way. One +evening, he actually seized her by the neck and said: ‘Come fatty, let’s +go home!’” + +It has been alleged that the cause of a very famous husband-poisoning +with arsenic, was nothing less than a series of constant indiscretions +like these that the wife had to bear in society. This husband used to +give the woman he had won at the point of the Code, public little +taps on her shoulder, he would startle her by a resounding kiss, +he dishonored her by a conspicuous tenderness, seasoned by those +impertinent attentions the secret of which belongs to the French savages +who dwell in the depths of the provinces, and whose manners are very +little known, despite the efforts of the realists in fiction. It was, +it is said, this shocking situation,--one perfectly appreciated by +a discerning jury,--which won the prisoner a verdict softened by the +extenuating circumstances. + +The jurymen said to themselves: + +“For a wife to murder her husband for these conjugal offences, is +certainly going rather far; but then a woman is very excusable, when she +is so harassed!” + +We deeply regret, in the interest of elegant manners, that these +arguments are not more generally known. Heaven grant, therefore, +that our book may have an immense success, as women will obtain this +advantage from it, that they will be treated as they deserve, that is, +as queens. + +In this respect, love is much superior to marriage, it is proud of +indiscreet sayings and doings. There are some women that seek them, fish +for them, and woe to the man who does not now and then commit one! + +What passion lies in an accidental _thou_! + +Out in the country I heard a husband call his wife: “Ma berline!” She +was delighted with it, and saw nothing ridiculous in it: she called +her husband, “Mon fiston!” This delicious couple were ignorant of the +existence of such things as petty troubles. + +It was in observing this happy pair that the author discovered this +axiom: + + +Axiom:--In order to be happy in wedlock, you must either be a man of +genius married to an affectionate and intellectual woman, or, by a +chance which is not as common as might be supposed, you must both of you +be exceedingly stupid. + + +The too celebrated history of the cure of a wounded self-love by +arsenic, proves that, properly speaking, there are no petty troubles for +women in married life. + + +Axiom.--Woman exists by sentiment where man exists by action. + + +Now, sentiment can at any moment render a petty trouble either a great +misfortune, or a wasted life, or an eternal misery. Should Caroline +begin, in her ignorance of life and the world, by inflicting upon her +husband the vexations of her stupidity (re-read REVELATIONS), Adolphe, +like any other man, may find a compensation in social excitement: +he goes out, comes back, goes here and there, has business. But for +Caroline, the question everywhere is, To love or not to love, to be or +not to be loved. + +Indiscretions are in harmony with the character of the individuals, with +times and places. Two examples will suffice. + + +Here is the first. A man is by nature dirty and ugly: he is ill-made and +repulsive. There are men, and often rich ones, too, who, by a sort +of unobserved constitution, soil a new suit of clothes in twenty-four +hours. They were born disgusting. It is so disgraceful for a women to +be anything more than just simply a wife to this sort of Adolphe, that +a certain Caroline had long ago insisted upon the suppression of the +modern _thee_ and _thou_ and all other insignia of the wifely dignity. +Society had been for five or six years accustomed to this sort of thing, +and supposed Madame and Monsieur completely separated, and all the more +so as it had noticed the accession of a Ferdinand II. + +One evening, in the presence of a dozen persons, this man said to his +wife: “Caroline, hand me the tongs, there’s a love.” It is nothing, and +yet everything. It was a domestic revelation. + +Monsieur de Lustrac, the Universal Amadis, hurried to Madame de +Fischtaminel’s, narrated this little scene with all the spirit at +his command, and Madame de Fischtaminel put on an air something like +Celimene’s and said: “Poor creature, what an extremity she must be in!” + +I say nothing of Caroline’s confusion,--you have already divined it. + + +Here is the second. Think of the frightful situation in which a lady of +great refinement was lately placed: she was conversing agreeably at her +country seat near Paris, when her husband’s servant came and whispered +in her ear, “Monsieur has come, madame.” + +“Very well, Benoit.” + +Everybody had heard the rumblings of the vehicle. It was known that the +husband had been at Paris since Monday, and this took place on Saturday, +at four in the afternoon. + +“He’s got something important to say to you, madame.” + +Though this dialogue was held in a whisper, it was perfectly understood, +and all the more so from the fact that the lady of the house turned +from the pale hue of the Bengal rose to the brilliant crimson of the +wheatfield poppy. She nodded and went on with the conversation, and +managed to leave her company on the pretext of learning whether her +husband had succeeded in an important undertaking or not: but she seemed +plainly vexed at Adolphe’s want of consideration for the company who +were visiting her. + +During their youth, women want to be treated as divinities, they love +the ideal; they cannot bear the idea of being what nature intended them +to be. + +Some husbands, on retiring to the country, after a week in town, are +worse than this: they bow to the company, put their arm round their +wife’s waist, take a little walk with her, appear to be talking +confidentially, disappear in a clump of trees, get lost, and reappear +half an hour afterward. + +This, ladies, is a genuine petty trouble for a young woman, but for a +woman beyond forty, this sort of indiscretion is so delightful, that the +greatest prudes are flattered by it, for, be it known: + +That women of a certain age, women on the shady side, want to be treated +as mortals, they love the actual; they cannot bear the idea of no longer +being what nature intended them to be. + + +Axiom.--Modesty is a relative virtue; there is the modesty of the woman +of twenty, the woman of thirty, the woman of forty-five. + + +Thus the author said to a lady who told him to guess at her age: +“Madame, yours is the age of indiscretion.” + +This charming woman of thirty-nine was making a Ferdinand much too +conspicuous, while her daughter was trying to conceal her Ferdinand I. + + + + +BRUTAL DISCLOSURES. + + +FIRST STYLE. Caroline adores Adolphe, she thinks him handsome, she +thinks him superb, especially in his National Guard uniform. She starts +when a sentinel presents arms to him, she considers him moulded like +a model, she regards him as a man of wit, everything he does is right, +nobody has better taste than he, in short, she is crazy about Adolphe. + +It’s the old story of Cupid’s bandage. This is washed every ten years, +and newly embroidered by the altered manners of the period, but it has +been the same old bandage since the days of Greece. + +Caroline is at a ball with one of her young friends. A man well known +for his bluntness, whose acquaintance she is to make later in life, +but whom she now sees for the first time, Monsieur Foullepointe, has +commenced a conversation with Caroline’s friend. According to the custom +of society, Caroline listens to this conversation without mingling in +it. + +“Pray tell me, madame,” says Monsieur Foullepointe, “who is that queer +man who has been talking about the Court of Assizes before a gentleman +whose acquittal lately created such a sensation: he is all the while +blundering, like an ox in a bog, against everybody’s sore spot. A lady +burst into tears at hearing him tell of the death of a child, as she +lost her own two months ago.” + +“Who do you mean?” + +“Why, that fat man, dressed like a waiter in a cafe, frizzled like a +barber’s apprentice, there, he’s trying now to make himself agreeable to +Madame de Fischtaminel.” + +“Hush,” whispers the lady quite alarmed, “it’s the husband of the little +woman next to me!” + +“Ah, it’s your husband?” says Monsieur Foullepointe. “I am delighted, +madame, he’s a charming man, so vivacious, gay and witty. I am going to +make his acquaintance immediately.” + +And Foullepointe executes his retreat, leaving a bitter suspicion in +Caroline’s soul, as to the question whether her husband is really as +handsome as she thinks him. + + +SECOND STYLE. Caroline, annoyed by the reputation of Madame Schinner, +who is credited with the possession of epistolary talents, and +styled the “Sevigne of the note”, tired of hearing about Madame de +Fischtaminel, who has ventured to write a little 32mo book on the +education of the young, in which she has boldly reprinted Fenelon, +without the style:--Caroline has been working for six months upon a tale +tenfold poorer than those of Berquin, nauseatingly moral, and flamboyant +in style. + +After numerous intrigues such as women are skillful in managing in the +interest of their vanity, and the tenacity and perfection of which would +lead you to believe that they have a third sex in their head, this tale, +entitled “The Lotus,” appears in three installments in a leading daily +paper. It is signed Samuel Crux. + +When Adolphe takes up the paper at breakfast, Caroline’s heart beats up +in her very throat: she blushes, turns pale, looks away and stares at +the ceiling. When Adolphe’s eyes settle upon the feuilleton, she can +bear it no longer: she gets up, goes out, comes back, having replenished +her stock of audacity, no one knows where. + +“Is there a feuilleton this morning?” she asks with an air that she +thinks indifferent, but which would disturb a husband still jealous of +his wife. + +“Yes, one by a beginner, Samuel Crux. The name is a disguise, clearly: +the tale is insignificant enough to drive an insect to despair, if he +could read: and vulgar, too: the style is muddy, but then it’s--” + +Caroline breathes again. “It’s--” she suggests. + +“It’s incomprehensible,” resumes Adolphe. “Somebody must have paid +Chodoreille five or six hundred francs to insert it; or else it’s the +production of a blue-stocking in high society who has promised to invite +Madame Chodoreille to her house; or perhaps it’s the work of a woman +in whom the editor is personally interested. Such a piece of stupidity +cannot be explained any other way. Imagine, Caroline, that it’s all +about a little flower picked on the edge of a wood in a sentimental +walk, which a gentleman of the Werther school has sworn to keep, which +he has had framed, and which the lady claims again eleven years after +(the poor man has had time to change his lodgings three times). It’s +quite new, about as old as Sterne or Gessner. What makes me think it’s +a woman, is that the first literary idea of the whole sex is to take +vengeance on some one.” + +Adolphe might go on pulling “The Lotus” to pieces; Caroline’s ears are +full of the tinkling of bells. She is like the woman who threw herself +over the Pont des Arts, and tried to find her way ten feet below the +level of the Seine. + + +ANOTHER STYLE. Caroline, in her paroxysms of jealousy, has discovered a +hiding place used by Adolphe, who, as he can’t trust his wife, and as he +knows she opens his letters and rummages in his drawers, has endeavored +to save his correspondence with Hector from the hooked fingers of the +conjugal police. + +Hector is an old schoolmate, who has married in the Loire Inferieure. + +Adolphe lifts up the cloth of his writing desk, a cloth the border of +which has been embroidered by Caroline, the ground being blue, black +or red velvet,--the color, as you see, is perfectly immaterial,--and he +slips his unfinished letters to Madame de Fischtaminel, to his friend +Hector, between the table and the cloth. + +The thickness of a sheet of paper is almost nothing, velvet is a downy, +discreet material, but, no matter, these precautions are in vain. The +male devil is fairly matched by the female devil: Tophet will furnish +them of all genders. Caroline has Mephistopheles on her side, the demon +who causes tables to spurt forth fire, and who, with his ironic finger +points out the hiding place of keys--the secret of secrets. + +Caroline has noticed the thickness of a letter sheet between this velvet +and this table: she hits upon a letter to Hector instead of hitting upon +one to Madame de Fischtaminel, who has gone to Plombieres Springs, and +reads the following: + + +“My dear Hector: + +“I pity you, but you have acted wisely in entrusting me with a knowledge +of the difficulties in which you have voluntarily involved yourself. You +never would see the difference between the country woman and the woman +of Paris. In the country, my dear boy, you are always face to face +with your wife, and, owing to the ennui which impels you, you rush +headforemost into the enjoyment of your bliss. This is a great error: +happiness is an abyss, and when you have once reached the bottom, you +never get back again, in wedlock. + +“I will show you why. Let me take, for your wife’s sake, the shortest +path--the parable. + +“I remember having made a journey from Paris to Ville-Parisis, in that +vehicle called a ‘bus: distance, twenty miles: ‘bus, lumbering: horse, +lame. Nothing amuses me more than to draw from people, by the aid of +that gimlet called the interrogation, and to obtain, by means of an +attentive air, the sum of information, anecdotes and learning that +everybody is anxious to part with: and all men have such a sum, the +peasant as well as the banker, the corporal as well as the marshal of +France. + +“I have often noticed how ready these casks, overflowing with wit, are +to open their sluices while being transported by diligence or ‘bus, or +by any vehicle drawn by horses, for nobody talks in a railway car. + +“At the rate of our exit from Paris, the journey would take full seven +hours: so I got an old corporal to talk, for my diversion. He could +neither read nor write: he was entirely illiterate. Yet the journey +seemed short. The corporal had been through all the campaigns, he +told me of things perfectly unheard of, that historians never trouble +themselves about. + +“Ah! Hector, how superior is practice to theory! Among other things, and +in reply to a question relative to the infantry, whose courage is much +more tried by marching than by fighting, he said this, which I give you +free from circumlocution: + +“‘Sir, when Parisians were brought to our 45th, which Napoleon called +The Terrible (I am speaking of the early days of the Empire, when the +infantry had legs of steel, and when they needed them), I had a way of +telling beforehand which of them would remain in the 45th. They marched +without hurrying, they did their little six leagues a day, neither +more nor less, and they pitched camp in condition to begin again on the +morrow. The plucky fellows who did ten leagues and wanted to run to the +victory, stopped half way at the hospital.’ + +“The worthy corporal was talking of marriage while he thought he was +talking of war, and you have stopped half way, Hector, at the hospital. + +“Remember the sympathetic condolence of Madame de Sevigne counting out +three hundred thousand francs to Monsieur de Grignan, to induce him to +marry one of the prettiest girls in France! ‘Why,’ said she to herself, +‘he will have to marry her every day, as long as she lives! Decidedly, I +don’t think three hundred francs too much.’ Is it not enough to make the +bravest tremble? + +“My dear fellow, conjugal happiness is founded, like that of nations, +upon ignorance. It is a felicity full of negative conditions. + +“If I am happy with my little Caroline, it is due to the strictest +observance of that salutary principle so strongly insisted upon in the +_Physiology of Marriage_. I have resolved to lead my wife through +paths beaten in the snow, until the happy day when infidelity will be +difficult. + +“In the situation in which you have placed yourself, and which resembles +that of Duprez, who, on his first appearance at Paris, went to singing +with all the voice his lungs would yield, instead of imitating Nourrit, +who gave the audience just enough to enchant them, the following, I +think, is your proper course to--” + + +The letter broke off here: Caroline returned it to its place, at the +same time wondering how she would make her dear Adolphe expiate his +obedience to the execrable precepts of the _Physiology of Marriage_. + + + + +A TRUCE. + +This trouble doubtless occurs sufficiently often and in different ways +enough in the existence of married women, for this personal incident to +become the type of the genus. + +The Caroline in question here is very pious, she loves her husband very +much, her husband asserts that she loves him too much, even: but this is +a piece of marital conceit, if, indeed, it is not a provocation, as he +only complains to his wife’s young lady friends. + +When a person’s conscience is involved, the least thing becomes +exceedingly serious. Madame de ----- has told her young friend, Madame +de Fischtaminel, that she had been compelled to make an extraordinary +confession to her spiritual director, and to perform penance, the +director having decided that she was in a state of mortal sin. This +lady, who goes to mass every morning, is a woman of thirty-six years, +thin and slightly pimpled. She has large soft black eyes, her upper lip +is strongly shaded: still her voice is sweet, her manners gentle, her +gait noble--she is a woman of quality. + +Madame de Fischtaminel, whom Madame de ----- has made her friend (nearly +all pious women patronize a woman who is considered worldly, on the +pretext of converting her),--Madame de Fischtaminel asserts that these +qualities, in this Caroline of the Pious Sort, are a victory of religion +over a rather violent natural temper. + +These details are necessary to describe the trouble in all its horror. + +This lady’s Adolphe had been compelled to leave his wife for two +months, in April, immediately after the forty days’ fast that Caroline +scrupulously observes. Early in June, therefore, madame expected her +husband, she expected him day by day. From one hope to another, + + “Conceived every morn and deferred every eve.” + +She got along as far as Sunday, the day when her presentiments, which +had now reached a state of paroxysm, told her that the longed-for +husband would arrive at an early hour. + +When a pious woman expects her husband, and that husband has been absent +from home nearly four months, she takes much more pains with her toilet +than a young girl does, though waiting for her first betrothed. + +This virtuous Caroline was so completely absorbed in exclusively +personal preparations, that she forgot to go to eight o’clock mass. She +proposed to hear a low mass, but she was afraid of losing the delight of +her dear Adolphe’s first glance, in case he arrived at early dawn. +Her chambermaid--who respectfully left her mistress alone in the +dressing-room where pious and pimpled ladies let no one enter, not even +their husbands, especially if they are thin--her chambermaid heard her +exclaim several times, “If it’s your master, let me know!” + +The rumbling of a vehicle having made the furniture rattle, Caroline +assumed a mild tone to conceal the violence of her legitimate emotions. + +“Oh! ‘tis he! Run, Justine: tell him I am waiting for him here.” + Caroline trembled so that she dropped into an arm-chair. + +The vehicle was a butcher’s wagon. + +It was in anxieties like this that the eight o’clock mass slipped by, +like an eel in his slime. Madame’s toilet operations were resumed, for +she was engaged in dressing. The chambermaid’s nose had already been the +recipient of a superb muslin chemise, with a simple hem, which Caroline +had thrown at her from the dressing-room, though she had given her the +same kind for the last three months. + +“What are you thinking of, Justine? I told you to choose from the +chemises that are not numbered.” + +The unnumbered chemises were only seven or eight, in the most +magnificent trousseau. They are chemises gotten up and embroidered with +the greatest care: a woman must be a queen, a young queen, to have a +dozen. Each one of Caroline’s was trimmed with valenciennes round the +bottom, and still more coquettishly garnished about the neck. This +feature of our manners will perhaps serve to suggest a suspicion, in +the masculine world, of the domestic drama revealed by this exceptional +chemise. + +Caroline had put on a pair of Scotch thread stockings, little prunella +buskins, and her most deceptive corsets. She had her hair dressed in the +fashion that most became her, and embellished it with a cap of the most +elegant form. It is unnecessary to speak of her morning gown. A pious +lady who lives at Paris and who loves her husband, knows as well as a +coquette how to choose those pretty little striped patterns, have them +cut with an open waist, and fastened by loops to buttons in a way which +compels her to refasten them two or three times in an hour, with little +airs more or less charming, as the case may be. + +The nine o’clock mass, the ten o’clock mass, every mass, went by in +these preparations, which, for women in love, are one of their twelve +labors of Hercules. + +Pious women rarely go to church in a carriage, and they are right. +Except in the case of a pouring shower, or intolerably bad weather, a +person ought not to appear haughty in the place where it is becoming to +be humble. Caroline was afraid to compromise the freshness of her dress +and the purity of her thread stockings. Alas! these pretexts concealed a +reason. + +“If I am at church when Adolphe comes, I shall lose the pleasure of his +first glance: and he will think I prefer high mass to him.” + +She made this sacrifice to her husband in a desire to please him--a +fearfully worldly consideration. Prefer the creature to the Creator! A +husband to heaven! Go and hear a sermon and you will learn what such an +offence will cost you. + +“After all,” says Caroline, quoting her confessor, “society is founded +upon marriage, which the Church has included among its sacraments.” + +And this is the way in which religious instruction may be put aside in +favor of a blind though legitimate love. Madame refused breakfast, and +ordered the meal to be kept hot, just as she kept herself ready, at a +moment’s notice, to welcome the precious absentee. + +Now these little things may easily excite a laugh: but in the first +place they are continually occurring with couples who love each +other, or where one of them loves the other: besides, in a woman +so strait-laced, so reserved, so worthy, as this lady, these +acknowledgments of affection went beyond the limits imposed upon her +feelings by the lofty self-respect which true piety induces. When Madame +de Fischtaminel narrated this little scene in a devotee’s life, dressing +it up with choice by-play, acted out as ladies of the world know how to +act out their anecdotes, I took the liberty of saying that it was the +Canticle of canticles in action. + +“If her husband doesn’t come,” said Justine to the cook, “what will +become of us? She has already thrown her chemise in my face.” + +At last, Caroline heard the crack of a postilion’s whip, the well-known +rumbling of a traveling carriage, the racket made by the hoofs of +post-horses, and the jingling of their bells! Oh, she could doubt no +longer, the bells made her burst forth, as thus: + +“The door! Open the door! ‘Tis he, my husband! Will you never go to the +door!” And the pious woman stamped her foot and broke the bell-rope. + +“Why, madame,” said Justine, with the vivacity of a servant doing her +duty, “it’s some people going away.” + +“Upon my word,” replied Caroline, half ashamed, to herself, “I will +never let Adolphe go traveling again without me.” + +A Marseilles poet--it is not known whether it was Mery or +Barthelemy--acknowledged that if his best fried did not arrive +punctually at the dinner hour, he waited patiently five minutes: at the +tenth minute, he felt a desire to throw the napkin in his face: at the +twelfth he hoped some great calamity would befall him: at the fifteenth, +he would not be able to restrain himself from stabbing him several times +with a dirk. + +All women, when expecting somebody, are Marseilles poets, if, indeed, +we may compare the vulgar throes of hunger to the sublime Canticle of +canticles of a pious wife, who is hoping for the joys of a husband’s +first glance after a three months’ absence. Let all those who love and +who have met again after an absence ten thousand times accursed, be good +enough to recall their first glance: it says so many things that the +lovers, if in the presence of a third party, are fain to lower their +eyes! This poem, in which every man is as great as Homer, in which +he seems a god to the woman who loves him, is, for a pious, thin and +pimpled lady, all the more immense, from the fact that she has not, like +Madame de Fischtaminel, the resource of having several copies of it. In +her case, her husband is all she’s got! + +So you will not be surprised to learn that Caroline missed every mass +and had no breakfast. This hunger and thirst for Adolphe gave her a +violent cramp in the stomach. She did not think of religion once during +the hours of mass, nor during those of vespers. She was not comfortable +when she sat, and she was very uncomfortable when she stood: Justine +advised her to go to bed. Caroline, quite overcome, retired at about +half past five in the evening, after having taken a light soup: but she +ordered a dainty supper at ten. + +“I shall doubtless sup with my husband,” she said. + +This speech was the conclusion of dreadful catalinics, internally +fulminated. She had reached the Marseilles poet’s several stabs with a +dirk. So she spoke in a tone that was really terrible. At three in the +morning Caroline was in a profound sleep: Adolphe arrived without her +hearing either carriage, or horse, or bell, or opening door! + +Adolphe, who would not permit her to be disturbed, went to bed in the +spare room. When Caroline heard of his return in the morning, two tears +issued from her eyes; she rushed to the spare room without the slightest +preparatory toilet; a hideous attendant, posted on the threshold, +informed her that her husband, having traveled two hundred leagues and +been two nights without sleep, requested that he might not be awakened: +he was exceedingly tired. + +Caroline--pious woman that she was--opened the door violently without +being able to wake the only husband that heaven had given her, and then +hastened to church to listen to a thanksgiving mass. + +As she was visibly snappish for three whole days, Justine remarked, in +reply to an unjust reproach, and with a chambermaid’s finesse: + +“Why, madame, your husband’s got back!” + +“He has only got back to Paris,” returned the pious Caroline. + + + + +USELESS CARE. + +Put yourself in the place of a poor woman of doubtful beauty, who owes +her husband to the weight of her dowry, who gives herself infinite +pains, and spends a great deal of money to appear to advantage and +follow the fashions, who does her best to keep house sumptuously and yet +economically--a house, too, not easy to manage--who, from morality and +dire necessity, perhaps, loves no one but her husband, who has no other +study but the happiness of this precious husband, who, to express all in +one word, joins the maternal sentiment _to the sentiment of her duties_. +This underlined circumlocution is the paraphrase of the word love in the +language of prudes. + +Have you put yourself in her place? Well, this too-much-loved husband +by chance remarked at his friend Monsieur de Fischtaminel’s, that he was +very fond of mushrooms _a l’Italienne_. + +If you have paid some attention to the female nature, in its good, +great, and grand manifestations, you know that for a loving wife there +is no greater pleasure than that of seeing the beloved one absorbing his +favorite viands. This springs from the fundamental idea upon which +the affection of women is based: that of being the source of all +his pleasures, big and little. Love animates everything in life, and +conjugal love has a peculiar right to descend to the most trivial +details. + +Caroline spends two or three days in inquiries before she learns how the +Italians dress mushrooms. She discovers a Corsican abbe who tells her +that at Biffi’s, in the rue de Richelieu, she will not only learn how +the Italians dress mushrooms, but that she will be able to obtain some +Milanese mushrooms. Our pious Caroline thanks the Abbe Serpolini, and +resolves to send him a breviary in acknowledgment. + +Caroline’s cook goes to Biffi’s, comes back from Biffi’s, and exhibits +to the countess a quantity of mushrooms as big as the coachman’s ears. + +“Very good,” she says, “did he explain to you how to cook them?” + +“Oh, for us cooks, them’s a mere nothing,” replies the cook. + +As a general rule, cooks know everything, in the cooking way, except how +a cook may feather his nest. + +At evening, during the second course, all Caroline’s fibres quiver +with pleasure at observing the servant bringing to the table a certain +suggestive dish. She has positively waited for this dinner as she had +waited for her husband. + +But between waiting with certainty and expecting a positive pleasure, +there is, to the souls of the elect--and everybody will include a woman +who adores her husband among the elect--there is, between these two +worlds of expectation, the difference that exists between a fine night +and a fine day. + +The dish is presented to the beloved Adolphe, he carelessly plunges +his spoon in and helps himself, without perceiving Caroline’s extreme +emotion, to several of those soft, fat, round things, that travelers who +visit Milan do not for a long time recognize; they take them for some +kind of shell-fish. + +“Well, Adolphe?” + +“Well, dear.” + +“Don’t you recognize them?” + +“Recognize what?” + +“Your mushrooms _a l’Italienne_?” + +“These mushrooms! I thought they were--well, yes, they _are_ mushrooms!” + +“Yes, and _a l’Italienne_, too.” + +“Pooh, they are old preserved mushrooms, _a la milanaise_. I abominate +them!” + +“What kind is it you like, then?” + +“_Fungi trifolati_.” + +Let us observe--to the disgrace of an epoch which numbers and labels +everything, which puts the whole creation in bottles, which is at this +moment classifying one hundred and fifty thousand species of insects, +giving them all the termination _us_, so that a _Silbermanus_ is the +same individual in all countries for the learned men who dissect a +butterfly’s legs with pincers--that we still want a nomenclature for +the chemistry of the kitchen, to enable all the cooks in the world to +produce precisely similar dishes. It would be diplomatically agreed that +French should be the language of the kitchen, as Latin has been adopted +by the scientific for botany and entomology, unless it were desired to +imitate them in that, too, and thus really have kitchen Latin. + +“My dear,” resumes Adolphe, on seeing the clouded and lengthened face of +his chaste Caroline, “in France the dish in question is called Mushrooms +_a l’Italienne, a la provencale, a la bordelaise_. The mushrooms +are minced, fried in oil with a few ingredients whose names I have +forgotten. You add a taste of garlic, I believe--” + +Talk about calamities, of petty troubles! This, do you see, is, to a +woman’s heart, what the pain of an extracted tooth is to a child of +eight. _Ab uno disce omnes_: which means, “There’s one of them: find the +rest in your memory.” For we have taken this culinary description as a +prototype of the vexations which afflict loving but indifferently loved +women. + + + + +SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE. + +A woman full of faith in the man she loves is a romancer’s fancy. This +feminine personage no more exists than does a rich dowry. A woman’s +confidence glows perhaps for a few moments, at the dawn of love, and +disappears in a trice like a shooting star. + +With women who are neither Dutch, nor English, nor Belgian, nor from any +marshy country, love is a pretext for suffering, an employment for the +superabundant powers of their imaginations and their nerves. + +Thus the second idea that takes possession of a happy woman, one who is +really loved, is the fear of losing her happiness, for we must do her +the justice to say that her first idea is to enjoy it. All who possess +treasures are in dread of thieves, but they do not, like women, lend +wings and feet to their golden stores. + +The little blue flower of perfect felicity is not so common, that the +heaven-blessed man who possesses it, should be simpleton enough to +abandon it. + + +Axiom.--A woman is never deserted without a reason. + + +This axiom is written in the heart of hearts of every woman. Hence the +rage of a woman deserted. + +Let us not infringe upon the petty troubles of love: we live in a +calculating epoch when women are seldom abandoned, do what they may: +for, of all wives or women, nowadays, the legitimate is the least +expensive. Now, every woman who is loved, has gone through the petty +annoyance of suspicion. This suspicion, whether just or unjust, +engenders a multitude of domestic troubles, and here is the biggest of +all. + +Caroline is one day led to notice that her cherished Adolphe leaves her +rather too often upon a matter of business, that eternal Chaumontel’s +affair, which never comes to an end. + + +Axiom.--Every household has its Chaumontel’s affair. (See TROUBLE WITHIN +TROUBLE.) + + +In the first place, a woman no more believes in matters of business than +publishers and managers do in the illness of actresses and authors. The +moment a beloved creature absents himself, though she has rendered him +even too happy, every woman straightway imagines that he has hurried +away to some easy conquest. In this respect, women endow men with +superhuman faculties. Fear magnifies everything, it dilates the eyes and +the heart: it makes a woman mad. + +“Where is my husband going? What is my husband doing? Why has he left +me? Why did he not take me with him?” + +These four questions are the four cardinal points of the compass +of suspicion, and govern the stormy sea of soliloquies. From these +frightful tempests which ravage a woman’s heart springs an ignoble, +unworthy resolution, one which every woman, the duchess as well as the +shopkeeper’s wife, the baroness as well as the stockbroker’s lady, the +angel as well as the shrew, the indifferent as well as the passionate, +at once puts into execution. They imitate the government, every one +of them; they resort to espionage. What the State has invented in the +public interest, they consider legal, legitimate and permissible, in the +interest of their love. This fatal woman’s curiosity reduces them to +the necessity of having agents, and the agent of any woman who, in this +situation, has not lost her self-respect,--a situation in which her +jealousy will not permit her to respect anything: neither your little +boxes, nor your clothes, nor the drawers of your treasury, of your +desk, of your table, of your bureau, nor your pocketbook with private +compartments, nor your papers, nor your traveling dressing-case, nor +your toilet articles (a woman discovers in this way that her husband +dyed his moustache when he was a bachelor), nor your india-rubber +girdles--her agent, I say, the only one in whom a woman trusts, is her +maid, for her maid understands her, excuses her, and approves her. + +In the paroxysm of excited curiosity, passion and jealousy, a woman +makes no calculations, takes no observations. She simply wishes to know +the whole truth. + +And Justine is delighted: she sees her mistress compromising herself +with her, and she espouses her passion, her dread, her fears and her +suspicions, with terrible friendship. Justine and Caroline hold councils +and have secret interviews. All espionage involves such relationships. +In this pass, a maid becomes the arbitress of the fate of the married +couple. Example: Lord Byron. + +“Madame,” Justine one day observes, “monsieur really _does_ go out to +see a woman.” + +Caroline turns pale. + +“But don’t be alarmed, madame, it’s an old woman.” + +“Ah, Justine, to some men no women are old: men are inexplicable.” + +“But, madame, it isn’t a lady, it’s a woman, quite a common woman.” + +“Ah, Justine, Lord Byron loved a fish-wife at Venice, Madame de +Fischtaminel told me so.” + +And Caroline bursts into tears. + +“I’ve been pumping Benoit.” + +“What is Benoit’s opinion?” + +“Benoit thinks that the woman is a go-between, for monsieur keeps his +secret from everybody, even from Benoit.” + +For a week Caroline lives the life of the damned; all her savings go to +pay spies and to purchase reports. + +Finally, Justine goes to see the woman, whose name is Madame Mahuchet; +she bribes her and learns at last that her master has preserved a +witness of his youthful follies, a nice little boy that looks very much +like him, and that this woman is his nurse, the second-hand mother who +has charge of little Frederick, who pays his quarterly school-bills, and +through whose hands pass the twelve hundred or two thousand francs which +Adolphe is supposed annually to lose at cards. + +“What of the mother?” exclaims Caroline. + +To end the matter, Justine, Caroline’s good genius, proves to her that +M’lle Suzanne Beauminet, formerly a grisette and somewhat later Madame +Sainte-Suzanne, died at the hospital, or else that she has made her +fortune, or else, again, that her place in society is so low there is no +danger of madame’s ever meeting her. + +Caroline breathes again: the dirk has been drawn from her heart, she +is quite happy; but she had no children but daughters, and would like +a boy. This little drama of unjust suspicions, this comedy of the +conjectures to which Mother Mahuchet gives rise, these phases of a +causeless jealousy, are laid down here as the type of a situation, the +varieties of which are as innumerable as characters, grades and sorts. + +This source of petty troubles is pointed out here, in order that women +seated upon the river’s bank may contemplate in it the course of their +own married life, following its ascent or descent, recalling their own +adventures to mind, their untold disasters, the foibles which caused +their errors, and the peculiar fatalities to which were due an instant +of frenzy, a moment of unnecessary despair, or sufferings which they +might have spared themselves, happy in their self-delusions. + +This vexation has a corollary in the following, one which is much more +serious and often without remedy, especially when its root lies among +vices of another kind, and which do not concern us, for, in this work, +women are invariably esteemed honest--until the end. + + + + +THE DOMESTIC TYRANT. + +“My dear Caroline,” says Adolphe one day to his wife, “are you satisfied +with Justine?” + +“Yes, dear, quite so.” + +“Don’t you think she speaks to you rather impertinently?” + +“Do you suppose I would notice a maid? But it seems _you_ notice her!” + +“What do you say?” asks Adolphe in an indignant way that is always +delightful to women. + +Justine is a genuine maid for an actress, a woman of thirty stamped by +the small-pox with innumerable dimples, in which the loves are far from +sporting: she is as brown as opium, has a good deal of leg and not much +body, gummy eyes, and a tournure to match. She would like to have Benoit +marry her, but at this unexpected suggestion, Benoit asked for his +discharge. Such is the portrait of the domestic tyrant enthroned by +Caroline’s jealousy. + +Justine takes her coffee in the morning, in bed, and manages to have +it as good as, not to say better than, that of her mistress. Justine +sometimes goes out without asking leave, dressed like the wife of a +second-class banker. She sports a pink hat, one of her mistress’ old +gowns made over, an elegant shawl, shoes of bronze kid, and jewelry of +doubtful character. + +Justine is sometimes in a bad humor, and makes her mistress feel that +she too is a woman like herself, though she is not married. She has her +whims, her fits of melancholy, her caprices. She even dares to have her +nerves! She replies curtly, she makes herself insupportable to the other +servants, and, to conclude, her wages have been considerably increased. + +“My dear, this girl is getting more intolerable every day,” says Adolphe +one morning to his wife, on noticing Justine listening at the key-hole, +“and if you don’t send her away, I will!” + +Caroline, greatly alarmed, is obliged to give Justine a talking to, +while her husband is out. + +“Justine, you take advantage of my kindness to you: you have high wages, +here, you have perquisites, presents: try to keep your place, for my +husband wants to send you away.” + +The maid humbles herself to the earth, she sheds tears: she is so +attached to madame! Ah! she would rush into the fire for her: she would +let herself be chopped into mince-meat: she is ready for anything. + +“If you had anything to conceal, madame, I would take it on myself and +say it was me!” + +“Very well, Justine, very good, my girl,” says Caroline, terrified: “but +that’s not the point: just try to keep in your place.” + +“Ah, ha!” says Justine to herself, “monsieur wants to send me away, does +he? Wait and see the deuce of a life I’ll lead you, you old curmudgeon!” + +A week after, Justine, who is dressing her mistress’ hair, looks in +the glass to make sure that Caroline can see all the grimaces of her +countenance: and Caroline very soon inquires, “Why, what’s the matter, +Justine?” + +“I would tell you, readily, madame, but then, madame, you are so weak +with monsieur!” + +“Come, go on, what is it?” + +“I know now, madame, why master wanted to show me the door: he has +confidence in nobody but Benoit, and Benoit is playing the mum with me.” + +“Well, what does that prove? Has anything been discovered?” + +“I’m sure that between the two they are plotting something against you +madame,” returns the maid with authority. + +Caroline, whom Justine watches in the glass, turns pale: all the +tortures of the previous petty trouble return, and Justine sees that +she has become as indispensable to her mistress as spies are to the +government when a conspiracy is discovered. Still, Caroline’s friends +do not understand why she keeps so disagreeable a servant girl, one who +wears a hat, whose manners are impertinent, and who gives herself the +airs of a lady. + +This stupid domination is talked of at Madame Deschars’, at Madame de +Fischtaminel’s, and the company consider it funny. A few ladies think +they can see certain monstrous reasons for it, reasons which compromise +Caroline’s honor. + + +Axiom.--In society, people can put cloaks on every kind of truth, even +the prettiest. + + +In short the _aria della calumnia_ is executed precisely as if Bartholo +were singing it. + +It is averred that Caroline cannot discharge her maid. + +Society devotes itself desperately to discovering the secret of this +enigma. Madame de Fischtaminel makes fun of Adolphe who goes home in a +rage, has a scene with Caroline and discharges Justine. + +This produces such an effect upon Justine, that she falls sick, and +takes to her bed. Caroline observes to her husband, that it would be +awkward to turn a girl in Justine’s condition into the street, a girl +who is so much attached to them, too, and who has been with them sine +their marriage. + +“Let her go then as soon as she is well!” says Adolphe. + +Caroline, reassured in regard to Adolphe, and indecently swindled +by Justine, at last comes to desire to get rid of her: she applies a +violent remedy to the disease, and makes up her mind to go under the +Caudine Forks of another petty trouble, as follows: + + + + +THE AVOWAL. + +One morning, Adolphe is petted in a very unusual manner. The too happy +husband wonders what may be the cause of this development of affection, +and he hears Caroline, in her most winning tones, utter the word: +“Adolphe?” + +“Well?” he replies, in alarm at the internal agitation betrayed by +Caroline’s voice. + +“Promise not to be angry.” + +“Well.” + +“Not to be vexed with me.” + +“Never. Go on.” + +“To forgive me and never say anything about it.” + +“But tell me what it is!” + +“Besides, you are the one that’s in the wrong--” + +“Speak, or I’ll go away.” + +“There’s no one but you that can get me out of the scrape--and it was +you that got me into it.” + +“Come, come.” + +“It’s about--” + +“About--” + +“About Justine!” + +“Don’t speak of her, she’s discharged. I won’t see her again, her style +of conduct exposes your reputation--” + +“What can people say--what have they said?” + +The scene changes, the result of which is a secondary explanation which +makes Caroline blush, as she sees the bearing of the suppositions of her +best friends. + +“Well, now, Adolphe, it’s to you I owe all this. Why didn’t you tell me +about Frederick?” + +“Frederick the Great? The King of Prussia?” + +“What creatures men are! Hypocrite, do you want to make me believe that +you have forgotten your son so soon, M’lle Suzanne Beauminet’s son?” + +“Then you know--?” + +“The whole thing! And old other Mahuchet, and your absences from home to +give him a good dinner on holidays.” + +“How like moles you pious women can be if you try!” exclaims Adolphe, in +his terror. + +“It was Justine that found it out.” + +“Ah! Now I understand the reason of her insolence.” + +“Oh, your Caroline has been very wretched, dear, and this spying system, +which was produced by my love for you, for I do love you, and +madly too,--if you deceived me, I would fly to the extremity of +creation,--well, as I was going to say, this unfounded jealousy has put +me in Justine’s power, so, my precious, get me out of it the best way +you can!” + +“Let this teach you, my angel, never to make use of your servants, if +you want them to be of use to you. It is the lowest of tyrannies, this +being at the mercy of one’s people.” + +Adolphe takes advantage of this circumstance to alarm Caroline, he +thinks of future Chaumontel’s affairs, and would be glad to have no more +espionage. + +Justine is sent for, Adolphe peremptorily dismisses her without waiting +to hear her explanation. Caroline imagines her vexations at an end. She +gets another maid. + +Justine, whose twelve or fifteen thousand francs have attracted the +notice of a water carrier, becomes Madame Chavagnac, and goes into +the apple business. Ten months after, in Adolphe’s absence, Caroline +receives a letter written upon school-boy paper, in strides which would +require orthopedic treatment for three months, and thus conceived: + + +“Madam! + +“Yu ar shaimphoolly diseeved bi yure huzban fur mame Deux +fischtaminelle, hee goze their evry eavning, yu ar az blynde az a Batt. +Your gott wott yu dizzurv, and I am Glad ovit, and I have thee honur ov +prezenting yu the assurunz ov Mi moaste ds Sting guischt respecks.” + + +Caroline starts like a lion who has been stung by a bumble-bee; she +places herself once more, and of her own accord, upon the griddle of +suspicion, and begins her struggle with the unknown all over again. + +When she has discovered the injustice of her suspicions, there comes +another letter with an offer to furnish her with details relative to a +Chaumontel’s affair which Justine has unearthed. + +The petty trouble of avowals, ladies, is often more serious than this, +as you perhaps have occasion to remember. + + + + +HUMILIATIONS. + +To the glory of women, let it be said, they care for their husbands even +when their husbands care no more for them, not only because there are +more ties, socially speaking, between a married woman and a man, than +between the man and the wife; but also because woman has more delicacy +and honor than man, the chief conjugal question apart, as a matter of +course. + + +Axiom.--In a husband, there is only a man; in a married woman, there is +a man, a father, a mother and a woman. + + +A married woman has sensibility enough for four, or for five even, if +you look closely. + +Now, it is not improper to observe in this place, that, in a woman’s +eyes, love is a general absolution: the man who is a good lover may +commit crimes, if he will, he is always as pure as snow in the eyes of +her who loves him, if he truly loves her. As to a married woman, loved +or not, she feels so deeply that the honor and consideration of her +husband are the fortune of her children, that she acts like the woman in +love,--so active is the sense of community of interest. + +This profound sentiment engenders, for certain Carolines, petty troubles +which, unfortunately for this book, have their dismal side. + +Adolphe is compromised. We will not enumerate all the methods of +compromising oneself, for we might become personal. Let us take, as an +example, the social error which our epoch excuses, permits, understands +and commits the most of any--the case of an honest robbery, of +skillfully concealed corruption in office, or of some misrepresentation +that becomes excusable when it has succeeded, as, for instance, having +an understanding with parties in power, for the sale of property at the +highest possible price to a city, or a country. + +Thus, in a bankruptcy, Adolphe, in order to protect himself (this means +to recover his claims), has become mixed up in certain unlawful doings +which may bring a man to the necessity of testifying before the Court of +Assizes. In fact, it is not known that the daring creditor will not be +considered a party. + +Take notice that in all cases of bankruptcy, protecting oneself is +regarded as the most sacred of duties, even by the most respectable +houses: the thing is to keep the bad side of the protection out of +sight, as they do in prudish England. + +Adolphe does not know what to do, as his counsel has told him not to +appear in the matter: so he has recourse to Caroline. He gives her a +lesson, he coaches her, he teaches her the Code, he examines her dress, +he equips her as a brig sent on a voyage, and despatches her to the +office of some judge, or some syndic. The judge is apparently a man +of severe morality, but in reality a libertine: he retains his serious +expression on seeing a pretty woman enter, and makes sundry very +uncomplimentary remarks about Adolphe. + +“I pity you, madame, you belong to a man who may involve you in numerous +unpleasant affairs: a few more matters like this, and he will be quite +disgraced. Have you any children? Excuse my asking; you are so young, +it is perfectly natural.” And the judge comes as near to Caroline as +possible. + +“Yes, sir.” + +“Ah, great heavens! what a prospect is yours! My first thought was for +the woman, but now I pity you doubly, I think of the mother. Ah, how you +must have suffered in coming here! Poor, poor woman!” + +“Ah, sir, you take an interest in me, do you not?” + +“Alas, what can I do?” says the judge, darting a glance sidewise at +Caroline. “What you ask of me is a dereliction of duty, and I am a +magistrate before I am a man.” + +“Oh, sir, only be a man--” + +“Are you aware of the full bearing of that request, fair creature?” At +this point the magistrate tremblingly takes Caroline’s hand. + +Caroline, who remembers that the honor of her husband and children is at +stake, says to herself that this is not the time to play the prude. +She abandons her hand, making just resistance enough for the old man +(happily he is an old man) to consider it a favor. + +“Come, come, my beauty,” resumes the judge, “I should be loath to cause +so lovely a woman to shed tears; we’ll see about it. You shall come +to-morrow evening and tell me the whole affair. We must look at the +papers, we will examine them together--” + +“Sir--” + +“It’s indispensable.” + +“But, sir--” + +“Don’t be alarmed, my dear, a judge is likely to know how to grant what +is due to justice and--” he puts on a shrewd look here--“to beauty.” + +“But, sir--” + +“Be quite at your ease,” he adds, holding her hand closely in his, “and +we’ll try to reduce this great crime down to a peccadillo.” And he goes +to the door with Caroline, who is frightened to death at an appointment +thus proposed. + +The syndic is a lively young man, and he receives Madame Adolphe with a +smile. He smiles at everything, and he smiles as he takes her round +the waist with an agility which leaves Caroline no time to resist, +especially as she says to herself, “Adolphe particularly recommended me +not to vex the syndic.” + +Nevertheless Caroline escapes, in the interest of the syndic himself, +and again pronounces the “Sir!” which she had said three times to the +judge. + +“Don’t be angry with me, you are irresistible, you are an angel, and +your husband is a monster: for what does he mean by sending a siren to a +young man whom he knows to be inflammable!” + +“Sir, my husband could not come himself; he is in bed, very sick, and +you threatened him so terribly that the urgency of the matter--” + +“Hasn’t he got a lawyer, an attorney?” + +Caroline is terrified by this remark which reveals Adolphe’s profound +rascality. + +“He supposed, sir, that you would have pity upon the mother of a family, +upon her children--” + +“Ta, ta, ta,” returns the syndic. “You have come to influence my +independence, my conscience, you want me to give the creditors up +to you: well, I’ll do more, I give you up my heart, my fortune! Your +husband wants to save _his_ honor, _my_ honor is at your disposal!” + +“Sir,” cries Caroline, as she tries to raise the syndic who has thrown +himself at her feet. “You alarm me!” + +She plays the terrified female and thus reaches the door, getting out +of a delicate situation as women know how to do it, that is, without +compromising anything or anybody. + +“I will come again,” she says smiling, “when you behave better.” + +“You leave me thus! Take care! Your husband may yet find himself seated +at the bar of the Court of Assizes: he is accessory to a fraudulent +bankruptcy, and we know several things about him that are not by any +means honorable. It is not his first departure from rectitude; he has +done a good many dirty things, he has been mixed up in disgraceful +intrigues, and you are singularly careful of the honor of a man who +cares as little for his own honor as he does for yours.” + +Caroline, alarmed by these words, lets go the door, shuts it and comes +back. + +“What do you mean, sir?” she exclaims, furious at this outrageous +broadside. + +“Why, this affair--” + +“Chaumontel’s affair?” + +“No, his speculations in houses that he had built by people that were +insolvent.” + +Caroline remembers the enterprise undertaken by Adolphe to double his +income: (See _The Jesuitism of Women_) she trembles. Her curiosity is in +the syndic’s favor. + +“Sit down here. There, at this distance, I will behave well, but I can +look at you.” + +And he narrates, at length, the conception due to du Tillet the banker, +interrupting himself to say: “Oh, what a pretty, cunning, little foot; +no one but you could have such a foot as that--_Du Tillet, therefore, +compromised._ What an ear, too! You have been doubtless told that you +had a delicious ear--_And du Tillet was right, for judgment had already +been given_--I love small ears, but let me have a model of yours, and +I will do anything you like--_du Tillet profited by this to throw the +whole loss on your idiotic husband_: oh, what a charming silk, you are +divinely dressed!” + +“Where were we, sir?” + +“How can I remember while admiring your Raphaelistic head?” + +At the twenty-seventh compliment, Caroline considers the syndic a man of +wit: she makes him a polite speech, and goes away without learning much +more of the enterprise which, not long before had swallowed up three +hundred thousand francs. + +There are many huge variations of this petty trouble. + + +EXAMPLE. Adolphe is brave and susceptible: he is walking on the Champs +Elysees, where there is a crowd of people; in this crowd are several +ill-mannered young men who indulge in jokes of doubtful propriety: +Caroline puts up with them and pretends not to hear them, in order to +keep her husband out of a duel. + + +ANOTHER EXAMPLE. A child belonging to the genus Terrible, exclaims in +the presence of everybody: + +“Mamma, would you let Justine hit me?” + +“Certainly not.” + +“Why do you ask, my little man?” inquires Madame Foullepointe. + +“Because she just gave father a big slap, and he’s ever so much stronger +than me.” + +Madame Foullepointe laughs, and Adolphe, who intended to pay court to +her, is cruelly joked by her, after having had a first last quarrel with +Caroline. + + + + +THE LAST QUARREL. + +In every household, husbands and wives must one day hear the striking +of a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, a great, +noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, if it is not +even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband, all +is over, she loves him no more. So, conjugal love expires in the last +quarrel that a woman gives herself the trouble to raise. + + +Axiom.--When a woman ceases to quarrel with her husband, the Minotaur +has seated himself in a corner arm-chair, tapping his boots with his +cane. + + +Every woman must remember her last quarrel, that supreme petty trouble +which often explodes about nothing, but more often still on some +occasion of a brutal fact or of a decisive proof. This cruel farewell +to faith, to the childishness of love, to virtue even, is in a degree as +capricious as life itself. Like life it varies in every house. + +Here, the author ought perhaps to search out all the varieties of +quarrels, if he desires to be precise. + +Thus, Caroline may have discovered that the judicial robe of the syndic +in Chaumontel’s affair, hides a robe of infinitely softer stuff, of an +agreeable, silky color: that Chaumontel’s hair, in short, is fair, and +that his eyes are blue. + +Or else Caroline, who arose before Adolphe, may have seen his greatcoat +thrown wrong side out across a chair; the edge of a little perfumed +paper, just peeping out of the side-pocket, may have attracted her by +its whiteness, like a ray of the sun entering a dark room through a +crack in the window: or else, while taking Adolphe in her arms and +feeling his pocket, she may have caused the note to crackle: or else she +may have been informed of the state of things by a foreign odor that she +has long noticed upon him, and may have read these lines: + + +“Ungraitfull wun, wot du yu supoz I no About Hipolite. Kum, and yu shal +se whether I Love yu.” + + +Or this: + +“Yesterday, love, you made me wait for you: what will it be to-morrow?” + + +Or this: + +“The women who love you, my dear sir, are very unhappy in hating you +so, when you are not with them: take care, for the hatred which exists +during your absence, may possibly encroach upon the hours you spend in +their company.” + + +Or this: + +“You traitorous Chodoreille, what were you doing yesterday on the +boulevard with a woman hanging on your arm? If it was your wife, accept +my compliments of condolence upon her absent charms: she has doubtless +deposited them at the pawnbroker’s, and the ticket to redeem them with +is lost.” + + +Four notes emanating from the grisette, the lady, the pretentious woman +in middle life, and the actress, among whom Adolphe has chosen his +_belle_ (according to the Fischtaminellian vocabulary). + +Or else Caroline, taken veiled by Ferdinand to Ranelagh Garden, sees +with her own eyes Adolphe abandoning himself furiously to the polka, +holding one of the ladies of honor to Queen Pomare in his arms; or else, +again, Adolphe has for the seventh time, made a mistake in the name, +and called his wife Juliette, Charlotte or Lisa: or, a grocer or +restaurateur sends to the house, during Adolphe’s absence, certain +damning bills which fall into Caroline’s hands. + + +PAPERS RELATING TO CHAUMONTEL’S AFFAIR. + + (Private Tables Served.) + + M. Adolphe to Perrault, + + To 1 Pate de Foie Gras delivered at Madame + Schontz’s, the 6th of January, fr. 22.50 + Six bottle of assorted wines, 70.00 + To one special breakfast delivered at Congress + Hotel, the 11th of February, at No. 21---- + Stipulated price, 100.00 + ______ + + Total, Francs, 192.50 + + +Caroline examines the dates and remembers them as appointments made for +business connected with Chaumontel’s affair. Adolphe had designated the +sixth of January as the day fixed for a meeting at which the creditors +in Chaumontel’s affair were to receive the sums due them. On the +eleventh of February he had an appointment with the notary, in order to +sign a receipt relative to Chaumontel’s affair. + +Or else--but an attempt to mention all the chances of discovery would be +the undertaking of a madman. + +Every woman will remember to herself how the bandage with which her eyes +were bound fell off: how, after many doubts, and agonies of heart, +she made up her mind to have a final quarrel for the simple purpose of +finishing the romance, putting the seal to the book, stipulating for her +independence, or beginning life over again. + +Some women are fortunate enough to have anticipated their husbands, and +they then have the quarrel as a sort of justification. + +Nervous women give way to a burst of passion and commit acts of +violence. + +Women of mild temper assume a decided tone which appalls the most +intrepid husbands. Those who have no vengeance ready shed a great many +tears. + +Those who love you forgive you. Ah, they conceive so readily, like the +woman called “Ma berline,” that their Adolphe must be loved by the women +of France, that they are rejoiced to possess, legally, a man about whom +everybody goes crazy. + +Certain women with lips tight shut like a vise, with a muddy complexion +and thin arms, treat themselves to the malicious pleasure of promenading +their Adolphe through the quagmire of falsehood and contradiction: +they question him (see _Troubles within Troubles_), like a magistrate +examining a criminal, reserving the spiteful enjoyment of crushing +his denials by positive proof at a decisive moment. Generally, in this +supreme scene of conjugal life, the fair sex is the executioner, while, +in the contrary case, man is the assassin. + +This is the way of it: This last quarrel (you shall know why the author +has called it the _last_), is always terminated by a solemn, sacred +promise, made by scrupulous, noble, or simply intelligent women (that is +to say, by all women), and which we give here in its grandest form. + +“Enough, Adolphe! We love each other no more; you have deceived me, and +I shall never forget it. I may forgive it, but I can never forget it.” + +Women represent themselves as implacable only to render their +forgiveness charming: they have anticipated God. + +“We have now to live in common like two friends,” continues Caroline. +“Well, let us live like two comrades, two brothers, I do not wish to +make your life intolerable, and I never again will speak to you of what +has happened--” + +Adolphe gives Caroline his hand: she takes it, and shakes it in the +English style. Adolphe thanks Caroline, and catches a glimpse of bliss: +he has converted his wife into a sister, and hopes to be a bachelor +again. + +The next day Caroline indulges in a very witty allusion (Adolphe cannot +help laughing at it) to Chaumontel’s affair. In society she makes +general remarks which, to Adolphe, are very particular remarks, about +their last quarrel. + +At the end of a fortnight a day never passes without Caroline’s +recalling their last quarrel by saying: “It was the day when I found +Chaumontel’s bill in your pocket:” or “it happened since our last +quarrel:” or, “it was the day when, for the first time, I had a clear +idea of life,” etc. She assassinates Adolphe, she martyrizes him! In +society she gives utterance to terrible things. + +“We are happy, my dear [to a lady], when we love each other no longer: +it’s then that we learn how to make ourselves beloved,” and she looks at +Ferdinand. + +In short, the last quarrel never comes to an end, and from this fact +flows the following axiom: + + +Axiom.--Putting yourself in the wrong with your lawful wife, is solving +the problem of Perpetual Motion. + + + + +A SIGNAL FAILURE. + +Women, and especially married women, stick ideas into their brain-pan +precisely as they stick pins into a pincushion, and the devil +himself,--do you mind?--could not get them out: they reserve to +themselves the exclusive right of sticking them in, pulling them out, +and sticking them in again. + +Caroline is riding home one evening from Madame Foullepointe’s in a +violent state of jealousy and ambition. + +Madame Foullepointe, the lioness--but this word requires an explanation. +It is a fashionable neologism, and gives expression to certain rather +meagre ideas relative to our present society: you must use it, if you +want to describe a woman who is all the rage. This lioness rides on +horseback every day, and Caroline has taken it into her head to learn to +ride also. + +Observe that in this conjugal phase, Adolphe and Caroline are in the +season which we have denominated _A Household Revolution_, and that they +have had two or three _Last Quarrels_. + +“Adolphe,” she says, “do you want to do me a favor?” + +“Of course.” + +“Won’t you refuse?” + +“If your request is reasonable, I am willing--” + +“Ah, already--that’s a true husband’s word--if--” + +“Come, what is it?” + +“I want to learn to ride on horseback.” + +“Now, is it a possible thing, Caroline?” + +Caroline looks out of the window, and tries to wipe away a dry tear. + +“Listen,” resumes Adolphe; “I cannot let you go alone to the +riding-school; and I cannot go with you while business gives me the +annoyance it does now. What’s the matter? I think I have given you +unanswerable reasons.” + +Adolphe foresees the hiring of a stable, the purchase of a pony, +the introduction of a groom and of a servant’s horse into the +establishment--in short, all the nuisance of female lionization. + +When a man gives a woman reasons instead of giving her what she +wants--well, few men have ventured to descend into that small abyss +called the heart, to test the power of the tempest that suddenly bursts +forth there. + +“Reasons! If you want reasons, here they are!” exclaims Caroline. “I am +your wife: you don’t seem to care to please me any more. And as to the +expenses, you greatly overrate them, my dear.” + +Women have as many inflections of voice to pronounce these words, _My +dear_, as the Italians have to say _Amico_. I have counted twenty-nine +which express only various degrees of hatred. + +“Well, you’ll see,” resumes Caroline, “I shall be sick, and you will pay +the apothecary and the doctor as much as the price of a horse. I shall +be walled up here at home, and that’s all you want. I asked the favor of +you, though I was sure of a refusal: I only wanted to know how you would +go to work to give it.” + +“But, Caroline--” + +“Leave me alone at the riding-school!” she continues without listening. +“Is that a reason? Can’t I go with Madame de Fischtaminel? Madame de +Fischtaminel is learning to ride on horseback, and I don’t imagine that +Monsieur de Fischtaminel goes with her.” + +“But, Caroline--” + +“I am delighted with your solicitude. You think a great deal of me, +really. Monsieur de Fischtaminel has more confidence in his wife, than +you have in yours. He does not go with her, not he! Perhaps it’s on +account of this confidence that you don’t want me at the school, where I +might see your goings on with the fair Fischtaminel.” + +Adolphe tries to hide his vexation at this torrent of words, which +begins when they are still half way from home, and has no sea to empty +into. When Caroline is in her room, she goes on in the same way. + +“You see that if reasons could restore my health or prevent me from +desiring a kind of exercise pointed out by nature herself, I should not +be in want of reasons, and that I know all the reasons that there are, +and that I went over with the reasons before I spoke to you.” + +This, ladies, may with the more truth be called the prologue to +the conjugal drama, from the fact that it is vigorously delivered, +embellished with a commentary of gestures, ornamented with glances +and all the other vignettes with which you usually illustrate such +masterpieces. + +Caroline, when she has once planted in Adolphe’s heart the apprehension +of a scene of constantly reiterated demands, feels her hatred for his +control largely increase. Madame pouts, and she pouts so fiercely, +that Adolphe is forced to notice it, on pain of very disagreeable +consequences, for all is over, be sure of that, between two beings +married by the mayor, or even at Gretna Green, when one of them no +longer notices the sulkings of the other. + + +Axiom.--A sulk that has struck in is a deadly poison. + + +It was to prevent this suicide of love that our ingenious France +invented boudoirs. Women could not well have Virgil’s willows in the +economy of our modern dwellings. On the downfall of oratories, these +little cubbies become boudoirs. + +This conjugal drama has three acts. The act of the prologue is already +played. Then comes the act of false coquetry: one of those in which +French women have the most success. + +Adolphe is walking about the room, divesting himself of his apparel, and +the man thus engaged, divests himself of his strength as well as of his +clothing. To every man of forty, this axiom will appear profoundly just: + + +Axiom.--The ideas of a man who has taken his boots and his suspenders +off, are no longer those of a man who is still sporting these two +tyrants of the mind. + + +Take notice that this is only an axiom in wedded life. In morals, it is +what we call a relative theorem. + +Caroline watches, like a jockey on the race course, the moment when +she can distance her adversary. She makes her preparations to be +irresistibly fascinating to Adolphe. + +Women possess a power of mimicking pudicity, a knowledge of secrets +which might be those of a frightened dove, a particular register for +singing, like Isabella, in the fourth act of _Robert le Diable: “Grace +pour toi! Grace pour moi!”_ which leave jockeys and horse trainers +whole miles behind. As usual, the _Diable_ succumbs. It is the eternal +history, the grand Christian mystery of the bruised serpent, of the +delivered woman becoming the great social force, as the Fourierists say. +It is especially in this that the difference between the Oriental slave +and the Occidental wife appears. + +Upon the conjugal pillow, the second act ends by a number of onomatopes, +all of them favorable to peace. Adolphe, precisely like children in +the presence of a slice of bread and molasses, promises everything that +Caroline wants. + + +THIRD ACT. As the curtain rises, the stage represents a chamber in a +state of extreme disorder. Adolphe, in his dressing gown, tries to go +out furtively and without waking Caroline, who is sleeping profoundly, +and finally does go out. + +Caroline, exceedingly happy, gets up, consults her mirror, and makes +inquiries about breakfast. An hour afterward, when she is ready she +learns that breakfast is served. + +“Tell monsieur.” + +“Madame, he is in the little parlor.” + +“What a nice man he is,” she says, going up to Adolphe, and talking the +babyish, caressing language of the honey-moon. + +“What for, pray?” + +“Why, to let his little Liline ride the horsey.” + + +OBSERVATION. During the honey-moon, some few married couples,--very +young ones,--make use of languages, which, in ancient days, Aristotle +classified and defined. (See his Pedagogy.) Thus they are perpetually +using such terminations as _lala_, _nana_, _coachy-poachy_, just +as mothers and nurses use them to babies. This is one of the secret +reasons, discussed and recognized in big quartos by the Germans, +which determined the Cabires, the creators of the Greek mythology, to +represent Love as a child. There are other reasons very well known to +women, the principal of which is, that, in their opinion, love in men is +always _small_. + + +“Where did you get that idea, my sweet? You must have dreamed it!” + +“What!” + +Caroline stands stark still: she opens wide her eyes which are already +considerably widened by amazement. Being inwardly epileptic, she says +not a word: she merely gazes at Adolphe. Under the satanic fires of +their gaze, Adolphe turns half way round toward the dining-room; but +he asks himself whether it would not be well to let Caroline take one +lesson, and to tip the wink to the riding-master, to disgust her with +equestrianism by the harshness of his style of instruction. + +There is nothing so terrible as an actress who reckons upon a success, +and who _fait four_. + +In the language of the stage, to _faire four_ is to play to a wretchedly +thin house, or to obtain not the slightest applause. It is taking great +pains for nothing, in short a _signal failure_. + +This petty trouble--it is very petty--is reproduced in a thousand ways +in married life, when the honey-moon is over, and when the wife has no +personal fortune. + +In spite of the author’s repugnance to inserting anecdotes in an +exclusively aphoristic work, the tissue of which will bear nothing +but the most delicate and subtle observations,--from the nature of the +subject at least,--it seems to him necessary to illustrate this page by +an incident narrated by one of our first physicians. This repetition of +the subject involves a rule of conduct very much in use with the doctors +of Paris. + +A certain husband was in our Adolphe’s situation. His Caroline, having +once made a signal failure, was determined to conquer, for Caroline +often does conquer! (See _The Physiology of Marriage_, Meditation XXVI, +Paragraph _Nerves_.) She had been lying about on the sofas for two +months, getting up at noon, taking no part in the amusements of +the city. She would not go to the theatre,--oh, the disgusting +atmosphere!--the lights, above all, the lights! Then the bustle, coming +out, going in, the music,--it might be fatal, it’s so terribly exciting! + +She would not go on excursions to the country, oh, certainly it was her +desire to do so!--but she would like (desiderata) a carriage of her own, +horses of her own--her husband would not give her an equipage. And as to +going in hacks, in hired conveyances, the bare thought gave her a rising +at the stomach! + +She would not have any cooking--the smell of the meats produced a sudden +nausea. She drank innumerable drugs that her maid never saw her take. + +In short, she expended large amounts of time and money in attitudes, +privations, effects, pearl-white to give her the pallor of a corpse, +machinery, and the like, precisely as when the manager of a theatre +spreads rumors about a piece gotten up in a style of Oriental +magnificence, without regard to expense! + +This couple had got so far as to believe that even a journey to the +springs, to Ems, to Hombourg, to Carlsbad, would hardly cure the +invalid: but madame would not budge, unless she could go in her own +carriage. Always that carriage! + +Adolphe held out, and would not yield. + +Caroline, who was a woman of great sagacity, admitted that her husband +was right. + +“Adolphe is right,” she said to her friends, “it is I who am +unreasonable: he can not, he ought not, have a carriage yet: men know +better than we do the situation of their business.” + +At times Adolphe was perfectly furious! Women have ways about them that +demand the justice of Tophet itself. Finally, during the third month, he +met one of his school friends, a lieutenant in the corps of physicians, +modest as all young doctors are: he had had his epaulettes one day only, +and could give the order to fire! + +“For a young woman, a young doctor,” said our Adolphe to himself. + +And he proposed to the future Bianchon to visit his wife and tell him +the truth about her condition. + +“My dear, it is time that you should have a physician,” said Adolphe +that evening to his wife, “and here is the best for a pretty woman.” + +The novice makes a conscientious examination, questions madame, feels +her pulse discreetly, inquires into the slightest symptoms, and, at +the end, while conversing, allows a smile, an expression, which, if +not ironical, are extremely incredulous, to play involuntarily upon his +lips, and his lips are quite in sympathy with his eyes. He prescribes +some insignificant remedy, and insists upon its importance, promising to +call again to observe its effect. In the ante-chamber, thinking himself +alone with his school-mate, he indulges in an inexpressible shrug of the +shoulders. + +“There’s nothing the matter with your wife, my boy,” he says: “she is +trifling with both you and me.” + +“Well, I thought so.” + +“But if she continues the joke, she will make herself sick in earnest: I +am too sincerely your friend to enter into such a speculation, for I am +determined that there shall be an honest man beneath the physician, in +me--” + +“My wife wants a carriage.” + +As in the _Solo on the Hearse_, this Caroline listened at the door. + +Even at the present day, the young doctor is obliged to clear his path +of the calumnies which this charming woman is continually throwing into +it: and for the sake of a quiet life, he has been obliged to confess his +little error--a young man’s error--and to mention his enemy by name, in +order to close her lips. + + + + +THE CHESTNUTS IN THE FIRE. + +No one can tell how many shades and gradations there are in misfortune, +for everything depends upon the character of the individual, upon the +force of the imagination, upon the strength of the nerves. If it is +impossible to catch these so variable shades, we may at least point out +the most striking colors, and the principal attendant incidents. The +author has therefore reserved this petty trouble for the last, for it is +the only one that is at once comic and disastrous. + +The author flatters himself that he has mentioned the principal +examples. Thus, women who have arrived safely at the haven, the happy +age of forty, the period when they are delivered from scandal, calumny, +suspicion, when their liberty begins: these women will certainly do him +the justice to state that all the critical situations of a family are +pointed out or represented in this book. + +Caroline has her Chaumontel’s affair. She has learned how to induce +Adolphe to go out unexpectedly, and has an understanding with Madame de +Fischtaminel. + +In every household, within a given time, ladies like Madame de +Fischtaminel become Caroline’s main resource. + +Caroline pets Madame de Fischtaminel with all the tenderness that the +African army is now bestowing upon Abd-el-Kader: she is as solicitous +in her behalf as a physician is anxious to avoid curing a rich +hypochondriac. Between the two, Caroline and Madame de Fischtaminel +invent occupations for dear Adolphe, when neither of them desire the +presence of that demigod among their penates. Madame de Fischtaminel and +Caroline, who have become, through the efforts of Madame Foullepointe, +the best friends in the world, have even gone so far as to learn and +employ that feminine free-masonry, the rites of which cannot be made +familiar by any possible initiation. + +If Caroline writes the following little note to Madame de Fischtaminel: + + +“Dearest Angel: + +“You will probably see Adolphe to-morrow, but do not keep him too long, +for I want to go to ride with him at five: but if you are desirous of +taking him to ride yourself, do so and I will take him up. You ought to +teach me your secret for entertaining used-up people as you do.” + + +Madame de Fischtaminel says to herself: “Gracious! So I shall have that +fellow on my hands to-morrow from twelve o’clock to five.” + + +Axiom.--Men do not always know a woman’s positive request when they see +it; but another woman never mistakes it: she does the contrary. + + +Those sweet little beings called women, and especially Parisian women, +are the prettiest jewels that social industry has invented. Those who +do not adore them, those who do not feel a constant jubilation at seeing +them laying their plots while braiding their hair, creating special +idioms for themselves and constructing with their slender fingers +machines strong enough to destroy the most powerful fortunes, must be +wanting in a positive sense. + +On one occasion Caroline takes the most minute precautions. She writes +the day before to Madame Foullepointe to go to St. Maur with Adolphe, +to look at a piece of property for sale there. Adolphe would go to +breakfast with her. She aids Adolphe in dressing. She twits him with the +care he bestows upon his toilet, and asks absurd questions about Madame +Foullepointe. + +“She’s real nice, and I think she is quite tired of Charles: you’ll +inscribe her yet upon your catalogue, you old Don Juan: but you won’t +have any further need of Chaumontel’s affair; I’m no longer jealous, +you’ve got a passport. Do you like that better than being adored? +Monster, observe how considerate I am.” + +So soon as her husband has gone, Caroline, who had not omitted, the +previous evening, to write to Ferdinand to come to breakfast with her, +equips herself in a costume which, in that charming eighteenth century +so calumniated by republicans, humanitarians and idiots, women of +quality called their fighting-dress. + +Caroline has taken care of everything. Love is the first house servant +in the world, so the table is set with positively diabolic coquetry. +There is the white damask cloth, the little blue service, the silver +gilt urn, the chiseled milk pitcher, and flowers all round! + +If it is winter, she has got some grapes, and has rummaged the cellar +for the very best old wine. The rolls are from the most famous baker’s. +The succulent dishes, the _pate de foie gras_, the whole of this elegant +entertainment, would have made the author of the Glutton’s Almanac neigh +with impatience: it would make a note-shaver smile, and tell a professor +of the old University what the matter in hand is. + +Everything is prepared. Caroline has been ready since the night before: +she contemplates her work. Justine sighs and arranges the furniture. +Caroline picks off the yellow leaves of the plants in the windows. A +woman, in these cases, disguises what we may call the prancings of the +heart, by those meaningless occupations in which the fingers have all +the grip of pincers, when the pink nails burn, and when this unspoken +exclamation rasps the throat: “He hasn’t come yet!” + +What a blow is this announcement by Justine: “Madame, here’s a letter!” + +A letter in place of Ferdinand! How does she ever open it? What ages +of life slip by as she unfolds it! Women know this by experience! As +to men, when they are in such maddening passes, they murder their +shirt-frills. + +“Justine, Monsieur Ferdinand is ill!” exclaims Caroline. “Send for a +carriage.” + +As Justine goes down stairs, Adolphe comes up. + +“My poor mistress!” observes Justine. “I guess she won’t want the +carriage now.” + +“Oh my! Where have you come from?” cries Caroline, on seeing Adolphe +standing in ecstasy before her voluptuous breakfast. + +Adolphe, whose wife long since gave up treating _him_ to such charming +banquets, does not answer. But he guesses what it all means, as he +sees the cloth inscribed with the delightful ideas which Madame de +Fischtaminel or the syndic of Chaumontel’s affair have often inscribed +for him upon tables quite as elegant. + +“Whom are you expecting?” he asks in his turn. + +“Who could it be, except Ferdinand?” replies Caroline. + +“And is he keeping you waiting?” + +“He is sick, poor fellow.” + +A quizzical idea enters Adolphe’s head, and he replies, winking with one +eye only: “I have just seen him.” + +“Where?” + +“In front of the Cafe de Paris, with some friends.” + +“But why have you come back?” says Caroline, trying to conceal her +murderous fury. + +“Madame Foullepointe, who was tired of Charles, you said, has been with +him at Ville d’Avray since yesterday.” + +Adolphe sits down, saying: “This has happened very appropriately, for +I’m as hungry as two bears.” + +Caroline sits down, too, and looks at Adolphe stealthily: she weeps +internally: but she very soon asks, in a tone of voice that she manages +to render indifferent, “Who was Ferdinand with?” + +“With some fellows who lead him into bad company. The young man is +getting spoiled: he goes to Madame Schontz’s. You ought to write to your +uncle. It was probably some breakfast or other, the result of a bet made +at M’lle Malaga’s.” He looks slyly at Caroline, who drops her eyes to +conceal her tears. “How beautiful you have made yourself this morning,” + Adolphe resumes. “Ah, you are a fair match for your breakfast. I don’t +think Ferdinand will make as good a meal as I shall,” etc., etc. + +Adolphe manages the joke so cleverly that he inspires his wife with the +idea of punishing Ferdinand. Adolphe, who claims to be as hungry as two +bears, causes Caroline to forget that a carriage waits for her at the +door. + +The female that tends the gate at the house Ferdinand lives in, arrives +at about two o’clock, while Adolphe is asleep on a sofa. That Iris of +bachelors comes to say to Caroline that Monsieur Ferdinand is very much +in need of some one. + +“He’s drunk, I suppose,” says Caroline in a rage. + +“He fought a duel this morning, madame.” + +Caroline swoons, gets up and rushes to Ferdinand, wishing Adolphe at the +bottom of the sea. + +When women are the victims of these little inventions, which are quite +as adroit as their own, they are sure to exclaim, “What abominable +monsters men are!” + + + + +ULTIMA RATIO. + +We have come to our last observation. Doubtless this work is beginning +to tire you quite as much as its subject does, if you are married. + +This work, which, according to the author, is to the _Physiology of +Marriage_ what Fact is to Theory, or History to Philosophy, has its +logic, as life, viewed as a whole, has its logic, also. + +This logic--fatal, terrible--is as follows. At the close of the first +part of the book--a book filled with serious pleasantry--Adolphe has +reached, as you must have noticed, a point of complete indifference in +matrimonial matters. + +He has read novels in which the writers advise troublesome husbands +to embark for the other world, or to live in peace with the fathers +of their children, to pet and adore them: for if literature is the +reflection of manners, we must admit that our manners recognize the +defects pointed out by the _Physiology of Marriage_ in this fundamental +institution. More than one great genius has dealt this social basis +terrible blows, without shaking it. + +Adolphe has especially read his wife too closely, and disguises his +indifference by this profound word: indulgence. He is indulgent with +Caroline, he sees in her nothing but the mother of his children, a good +companion, a sure friend, a brother. + +When the petty troubles of the wife cease, Caroline, who is more clever +than her husband, has come to profit by this advantageous indulgence: +but she does not give her dear Adolphe up. It is woman’s nature never +to yield any of her rights. DIEU ET MON DROIT--CONJUGAL! is, as is well +known, the motto of England, and is especially so to-day. + +Women have such a love of domination that we will relate an anecdote, +not ten years old, in point. It is a very young anecdote. + +One of the grand dignitaries of the Chamber of Peers had a Caroline, as +lax as Carolines usually are. The name is an auspicious one for women. +This dignitary, extremely old at the time, was on one side of the +fireplace, and Caroline on the other. Caroline was hard upon the lustrum +when women no longer tell their age. A friend came in to inform them of +the marriage of a general who had lately been intimate in their house. + +Caroline at once had a fit of despair, with genuine tears; she screamed +and made the grand dignitary’s head ache to such a degree, that he +tried to console her. In the midst of his condolences, the count forgot +himself so far as to say--“What can you expect, my dear, he really could +not marry you!” + +And this was one of the highest functionaries of the state, but a friend +of Louis XVIII, and necessarily a little bit Pompadour. + +The whole difference, then, between the situation of Adolphe and that +of Caroline, consists in this: though he no longer cares about her, she +retains the right to care about him. + +Now, let us listen to “What _they_ say,” the theme of the concluding +chapter of this work. + + + + +COMMENTARY. IN WHICH IS EXPLAINED LA FELICITA OF FINALES. + +Who has not heard an Italian opera in the course of his life? You must +then have noticed the musical abuse of the word _felicita_, so lavishly +used by the librettist and the chorus at the moment when everybody is +deserting his box or leaving the house. + +Frightful image of life. We quit it just when we hear _la felicita_. + +Have you reflected upon the profound truth conveyed by this finale, at +the instant when the composer delivers his last note and the author his +last line, when the orchestra gives the last pull at the fiddle-bow and +the last puff at the bassoon, when the principal singers say “Let’s go +to supper!” and the chorus people exclaim “How lucky, it doesn’t rain!” + Well, in every condition in life, as in an Italian opera, there comes +a time when the joke is over, when the trick is done, when people must +make up their minds to one thing or the other, when everybody is singing +his own _felicita_ for himself. After having gone through with all +the duos, the solos, the stretti, the codas, the concerted pieces, the +duettos, the nocturnes, the phases which these few scenes, chosen from +the ocean of married life, exhibit you, and which are themes whose +variations have doubtless been divined by persons with brains as well +as by the shallow--for so far as suffering is concerned, we are all +equal--the greater part of Parisian households reach, without a given +time, the following final chorus: + +THE WIFE, _to a young woman in the conjugal Indian Summer_. My dear, I +am the happiest woman in the world. Adolphe is the model of husbands, +kind, obliging, not a bit of a tease. Isn’t he, Ferdinand? + +Caroline addresses Adolphe’s cousin, a young man with a nice cravat, +glistening hair and patent leather boots: his coat is cut in the most +elegant fashion: he has a crush hat, kid gloves, something very choice +in the way of a waistcoat, the very best style of moustaches, whiskers, +and a goatee a la Mazarin; he is also endowed with a profound, mute, +attentive admiration of Caroline. + +FERDINAND. Adolphe is happy to have a wife like you! What does he want? +Nothing. + +THE WIFE. In the beginning, we were always vexing each other: but now +we get along marvelously. Adolphe no longer does anything but what he +likes, he never puts himself out: I never ask him where he is going nor +what he has seen. Indulgence, my dear, is the great secret of happiness. +You, doubtless, are still in the period of petty troubles, causeless +jealousies, cross-purposes, and all sorts of little botherations. What +is the good of all this? We women have but a short life, at the best. +How much? Ten good years! Why should we fill them with vexation? I was +like you. But, one fine morning, I made the acquaintance of Madame de +Fischtaminel, a charming woman, who taught me how to make a husband +happy. Since then, Adolphe has changed radically; he has become +perfectly delightful. He is the first to say to me, with anxiety, with +alarm, even, when I am going to the theatre, and he and I are still +alone at seven o’clock: “Ferdinand is coming for you, isn’t he?” Doesn’t +he, Ferdinand? + +FERDINAND. We are the best cousins in the world. + +THE INDIAN SUMMER WIFE, _very much affected_. Shall I ever come to that? + +THE HUSBAND, _on the Italian Boulevard_. My dear boy [he has +button-holed Monsieur de Fischtaminel], you still believe that marriage +is based upon passion. Let me tell you that the best way, in conjugal +life, is to have a plenary indulgence, one for the other, on condition +that appearances be preserved. I am the happiest husband in the world. +Caroline is a devoted friend, she would sacrifice everything for me, +even my cousin Ferdinand, if it were necessary: oh, you may laugh, but +she is ready to do anything. You entangle yourself in your laughable +ideas of dignity, honor, virtue, social order. We can’t have our life +over again, so we must cram it full of pleasure. Not the smallest bitter +word has been exchanged between Caroline and me for two years past. I +have, in Caroline, a friend to whom I can tell everything, and who +would be amply able to console me in a great emergency. There is not the +slightest deceit between us, and we know perfectly well what the state +of things is. We have thus changed our duties into pleasures. We are +often happier, thus, than in that insipid season called the honey-moon. +She says to me, sometimes, “I’m out of humor, go away.” The storm then +falls upon my cousin. Caroline never puts on her airs of a victim, now, +but speaks in the kindest manner of me to the whole world. In short, she +is happy in my pleasures. And as she is a scrupulously honest woman, she +is conscientious to the last degree in her use of our fortune. My house +is well kept. My wife leaves me the right to dispose of my reserve +without the slightest control on her part. That’s the way of it. We have +oiled our wheels and cogs, while you, my dear Fischtaminel, have put +gravel in yours. + +CHORUS, _in a parlor during a ball_. Madame Caroline is a charming +woman. + +A WOMAN IN A TURBAN. Yes, she is very proper, very dignified. + +A WOMAN WHO HAS SEVEN CHILDREN. Ah! she learned early how to manage her +husband. + +ONE OF FERDINAND’S FRIENDS. But she loves her husband exceedingly. +Besides, Adolphe is a man of great distinction and experience. + +ONE OF MADAME DE FISCHTAMINEL’S FRIENDS. He adores his wife. There’s no +fuss at their house, everybody is at home there. + +MONSIEUR FOULLEPOINTE. Yes, it’s a very agreeable house. + +A WOMAN ABOUT WHOM THERE IS A GOOD DEAL OF SCANDAL. Caroline is kind and +obliging, and never talks scandal of anybody. + +A YOUNG LADY, _returning to her place after a dance_. Don’t you remember +how tiresome she was when she visited the Deschars? + +MADAME DE FISCHTAMINEL. Oh! She and her husband were two bundles of +briars--continually quarreling. [She goes away.] + +AN ARTIST. I hear that the individual known as Deschars is getting +dissipated: he goes round town-- + +A WOMAN, _alarmed at the turn the conversation is taking, as her +daughter can hear_. Madame de Fischtaminel is charming, this evening. + +A WOMAN OF FORTY, _without employment_. Monsieur Adolphe appears to be +as happy as his wife. + +A YOUNG LADY. Oh! what a sweet man Monsieur Ferdinand is! [Her mother +reproves her by a sharp nudge with her foot.] What’s the matter, mamma? + +HER MOTHER, _looking at her fixedly_. A young woman should not speak so, +my dear, of any one but her betrothed, and Monsieur Ferdinand is not a +marrying man. + +A LADY DRESSED RATHER LOW IN THE NECK, _to another lady dressed equally +low, in a whisper_. The fact is, my dear, the moral of all this is that +there are no happy couples but couples of four. + +A FRIEND, _whom the author was so imprudent as to consult_. Those last +words are false. + +THE AUTHOR. Do you think so? + +THE FRIEND, _who has just been married_. You all of you use your ink in +depreciating social life, on the pretext of enlightening us! Why, +there are couples a hundred, a thousand times happier than your boasted +couples of four. + +THE AUTHOR. Well, shall I deceive the marrying class of the population, +and scratch the passage out? + +THE FRIEND. No, it will be taken merely as the point of a song in a +vaudeville. + +THE AUTHOR. Yes, a method of passing truths off upon society. + +THE FRIEND, _who sticks to his opinion_. Such truths as are destined to +be passed off upon it. + +THE AUTHOR, _who wants to have the last word_. Who and what is there +that does not pass off, or become passe? When your wife is twenty years +older, we will resume this conversation. + +THE FRIEND. You revenge yourself cruelly for your inability to write the +history of happy homes. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Petty Troubles of Married Life, +Complete, by Honore de Balzac + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIED LIFE *** + +***** This file should be named 16146-0.txt or 16146-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/1/4/16146/ + +Produced by Dagny + +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. 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