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+Project Gutenberg's The Physiology of Marriage, 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.net
+
+
+Title: The Physiology of Marriage, Complete
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2005 [EBook #16205]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+                     THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE;
+                                 OR,
+     THE MUSINGS OF AN ECLECTIC PHILOSOPHER ON THE HAPPINESS AND
+                     UNHAPPINESS OF MARRIED LIFE
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION
+
+"Marriage is not an institution of nature. The family in the east is
+entirely different from the family in the west. Man is the servant of
+nature, and the institutions of society are grafts, not spontaneous
+growths of nature. Laws are made to suit manners, and manners vary.
+
+"Marriage must therefore undergo the gradual development towards
+perfection to which all human affairs submit."
+
+These words, pronounced in the presence of the Conseil d'Etat by
+Napoleon during the discussion of the civil code, produced a profound
+impression upon the author of this book; and perhaps unconsciously he
+received the suggestion of this work, which he now presents to the
+public. And indeed at the period during which, while still in his
+youth, he studied French law, the word ADULTERY made a singular
+impression upon him. Taking, as it did, a prominent place in the code,
+this word never occurred to his mind without conjuring up its mournful
+train of consequences. Tears, shame, hatred, terror, secret crime,
+bloody wars, families without a head, and social misery rose like a
+sudden line of phantoms before him when he read the solemn word
+ADULTERY! Later on, when he became acquainted with the most cultivated
+circles of society, the author perceived that the rigor of marriage
+laws was very generally modified by adultery. He found that the number
+of unhappy homes was larger than that of happy marriages. In fact, he
+was the first to notice that of all human sciences that which relates
+to marriage was the least progressive. But this was the observation of
+a young man; and with him, as with so many others, this thought, like
+a pebble flung into the bosom of a lake, was lost in the abyss of his
+tumultuous thoughts. Nevertheless, in spite of himself the author was
+compelled to investigate, and eventually there was gathered within his
+mind, little by little, a swarm of conclusions, more or less just, on
+the subject of married life. Works like the present one are formed in
+the mind of the author with as much mystery as that with which
+truffles grow on the scented plains of Perigord. Out of the primitive
+and holy horror which adultery caused him and the investigation which
+he had thoughtlessly made, there was born one morning a trifling
+thought in which his ideas were formulated. This thought was really a
+satire upon marriage. It was as follows: A husband and wife found
+themselves in love with each other for the first time after
+twenty-seven years of marriage.
+
+He amused himself with this little axiom and passed a whole week in
+delight, grouping around this harmless epigram the crowd of ideas
+which came to him unconsciously and which he was astonished to find
+that he possessed. His humorous mood yielded at last to the claims of
+serious investigation. Willing as he was to take a hint, the author
+returned to his habitual idleness. Nevertheless, this slight germ of
+science and of joke grew to perfection, unfostered, in the fields of
+thought. Each phase of the work which had been condemned by others
+took root and gathered strength, surviving like the slight branch of a
+tree which, flung upon the sand by a winter's storm, finds itself
+covered at morning with white and fantastic icicles, produced by the
+caprices of nightly frosts. So the sketch lived on and became the
+starting point of myriad branching moralizations. It was like a
+polypus which multiplies itself by generation. The feelings of youth,
+the observations which a favorable opportunity led him to make, were
+verified in the most trifling events of his after life. Soon this mass
+of ideas became harmonized, took life, seemed, as it were, to become a
+living individual and moved in the midst of those domains of fancy,
+where the soul loves to give full rein to its wild creations. Amid all
+the distractions of the world and of life, the author always heard a
+voice ringing in his ears and mockingly revealing the secrets of
+things at the very moment he was watching a woman as she danced,
+smiled, or talked. Just as Mephistopheles pointed out to Faust in that
+terrific assemblage at the Brocken, faces full of frightful augury, so
+the author was conscious in the midst of the ball of a demon who would
+strike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him: "Do you
+notice that enchanting smile? It is a grin of hatred." And then the
+demon would strut about like one of the captains in the old comedies
+of Hardy. He would twitch the folds of a lace mantle and endeavor to
+make new the fretted tinsel and spangles of its former glory. And then
+like Rabelais he would burst into loud and unrestrainable laughter,
+and would trace on the street-wall a word which might serve as a
+pendant to the "Drink!" which was the only oracle obtainable from the
+heavenly bottle. This literary Trilby would often appear seated on
+piles of books, and with hooked fingers would point out with a grin of
+malice two yellow volumes whose title dazzled the eyes. Then when he
+saw he had attracted the author's attention he spelt out, in a voice
+alluring as the tones of an harmonica, _Physiology of Marriage_! But,
+almost always he appeared at night during my dreams, gentle as some
+fairy guardian; he tried by words of sweetness to subdue the soul
+which he would appropriate to himself. While he attracted, he also
+scoffed at me; supple as a woman's mind, cruel as a tiger, his
+friendliness was more formidable than his hatred, for he never yielded
+a caress without also inflicting a wound. One night in particular he
+exhausted the resources of his sorceries, and crowned all by a last
+effort. He came, he sat on the edge of the bed like a young maiden
+full of love, who at first keeps silence but whose eyes sparkle, until
+at last her secret escapes her.
+
+"This," said he, "is a prospectus of a new life-buoy, by means of
+which one can pass over the Seine dry-footed. This other pamphlet is
+the report of the Institute on a garment by wearing which we can pass
+through flames without being burnt. Have you no scheme which can
+preserve marriage from the miseries of excessive cold and excessive
+heat? Listen to me! Here we have a book on the _Art_ of preserving
+foods; on the _Art_ of curing smoky chimneys; on the _Art_ of making
+good mortar; on the _Art_ of tying a cravat; on the _Art_ of carving
+meat."
+
+In a moment he had named such a prodigious number of books that the
+author felt his head go round.
+
+"These myriads of books," says he, "have been devoured by readers; and
+while everybody does not build a house, and some grow hungry, and
+others have no cravat, or no fire to warm themselves at, yet everybody
+to some degree is married. But come look yonder."
+
+He waved his hand, and appeared to bring before me a distant ocean
+where all the books of the world were tossing up and down like
+agitated waves. The octodecimos bounded over the surface of the water.
+The octavos as they were flung on their way uttered a solemn sound,
+sank to the bottom, and only rose up again with great difficulty,
+hindered as they were by duodecimos and works of smaller bulk which
+floated on the top and melted into light foam. The furious billows
+were crowded with journalists, proof-readers, paper-makers,
+apprentices, printers' agents, whose hands alone were seen mingled in
+the confusion among the books. Millions of voices rang in the air,
+like those of schoolboys bathing. Certain men were seen moving hither
+and thither in canoes, engaged in fishing out the books, and landing
+them on the shore in the presence of a tall man, of a disdainful air,
+dressed in black, and of a cold, unsympathetic expression. The whole
+scene represented the libraries and the public. The demon pointed out
+with his finger a skiff freshly decked out with all sails set and
+instead of a flag bearing a placard. Then with a peal of sardonic
+laughter, he read with a thundering voice: _Physiology of Marriage_.
+
+The author fell in love, the devil left him in peace, for he would
+have undertaken more than he could handle if he had entered an
+apartment occupied by a woman. Several years passed without bringing
+other torments than those of love, and the author was inclined to
+believe that he had been healed of one infirmity by means of another
+which took its place. But one evening he found himself in a Parisian
+drawing-room where one of the men among the circle who stood round the
+fireplace began the conversation by relating in a sepulchral voice the
+following anecdote:
+
+
+A peculiar thing took place at Ghent while I was staying there. A lady
+ten years a widow lay on her bed attacked by mortal sickness. The
+three heirs of collateral lineage were waiting for her last sigh. They
+did not leave her side for fear that she would make a will in favor of
+the convent of Beguins belonging to the town. The sick woman kept
+silent, she seemed dozing and death appeared to overspread very
+gradually her mute and livid face. Can't you imagine those three
+relations seated in silence through that winter midnight beside her
+bed? An old nurse is with them and she shakes her head, and the doctor
+sees with anxiety that the sickness has reached its last stage, and
+holds his hat in one hand and with the other makes a sign to the
+relations, as if to say to them: "I have no more visits to make here."
+Amid the solemn silence of the room is heard the dull rustling of a
+snow-storm which beats upon the shutters. For fear that the eyes of
+the dying woman might be dazzled by the light, the youngest of the
+heirs had fitted a shade to the candle which stood near that bed so
+that the circle of light scarcely reached the pillow of the deathbed,
+from which the sallow countenance of the sick woman stood out like a
+figure of Christ imperfectly gilded and fixed upon a cross of
+tarnished silver. The flickering rays shed by the blue flames of a
+crackling fire were therefore the sole light of this sombre chamber,
+where the denouement of a drama was just ending. A log suddenly rolled
+from the fire onto the floor, as if presaging some catastrophe. At the
+sound of it the sick woman quickly rose to a sitting posture. She
+opened two eyes, clear as those of a cat, and all present eyed her in
+astonishment. She saw the log advance, and before any one could check
+an unexpected movement which seemed prompted by a kind of delirium,
+she bounded from her bed, seized the tongs and threw the coal back
+into the fireplace. The nurse, the doctor, the relations rushed to her
+assistance; they took the dying woman in their arms. They put her back
+in bed; she laid her head upon her pillow and after a few minutes
+died, keeping her eyes fixed even after her death upon that plank in
+the floor which the burning brand had touched. Scarcely had the
+Countess Van Ostroem expired when the three co-heirs exchanged looks
+of suspicion, and thinking no more about their aunt, began to examine
+the mysterious floor. As they were Belgians their calculations were as
+rapid as their glances. An agreement was made by three words uttered
+in a low voice that none of them should leave the chamber. A servant
+was sent to fetch a carpenter. Their collateral hearts beat excitedly
+as they gathered round the treasured flooring, and watched their young
+apprentice giving the first blow with his chisel. The plank was cut
+through.
+
+"My aunt made a sign," said the youngest of the heirs.
+
+"No; it was merely the quivering light that made it appear so,"
+replied the eldest, who kept one eye on the treasure and the other on
+the corpse.
+
+The afflicted relations discovered exactly on the spot where the brand
+had fallen a certain object artistically enveloped in a mass of
+plaster.
+
+"Proceed," said the eldest of the heirs.
+
+The chisel of the apprentice then brought to light a human head and
+some odds and ends of clothing, from which they recognized the count
+whom all the town believed to have died at Java, and whose loss had
+been bitterly deplored by his wife.
+
+
+The narrator of this old story was a tall spare man, with light eyes
+and brown hair, and the author thought he saw in him a vague
+resemblance to the demon who had before this tormented him; but the
+stranger did not show the cloven foot. Suddenly the word ADULTERY
+sounded in the ears of the author; and this word woke up in his
+imagination the most mournful countenances of that procession which
+before this had streamed by on the utterance of the magic syllables.
+From that evening he was haunted and persecuted by dreams of a work
+which did not yet exist; and at no period of his life was the author
+assailed with such delusive notions about the fatal subject of this
+book. But he bravely resisted the fiend, although the latter referred
+the most unimportant incidents of life to this unknown work, and like
+a customhouse officer set his stamp of mockery upon every occurrence.
+
+Some days afterwards the author found himself in the company of two
+ladies. The first of them had been one of the most refined and the
+most intellectual women of Napoleon's court. In his day she occupied a
+lofty position, but the sudden appearance of the Restoration caused
+her downfall; she became a recluse. The second, who was young and
+beautiful, was at that time living at Paris the life of a fashionable
+woman. They were friends, because, the one being forty and the other
+twenty-two years old, they were seldom rivals on the same field. The
+author was considered quite insignificant by the first of the two
+ladies, and since the other soon discovered this, they carried on in
+his presence the conversation which they had begun in a frank
+discussion of a woman's lot.
+
+"Have you noticed, dear, that women in general bestow their love only
+upon a fool?"
+
+"What do you mean by that, duchess? And how can you make your remark
+fit in with the fact that they have an aversion for their husbands?"
+
+"These women are absolute tyrants!" said the author to himself. "Has
+the devil again turned up in a mob cap?"
+
+"No, dear, I am not joking," replied the duchess, "and I shudder with
+fear for myself when I coolly consider people whom I have known in
+other times. Wit always has a sparkle which wounds us, and the man who
+has much of it makes us fear him perhaps, and if he is a proud man he
+will be capable of jealousy, and is not therefore to our taste. In
+fact, we prefer to raise a man to our own height rather than to have
+to climb up to his. Talent has great successes for us to share in, but
+the fool affords enjoyment to us; and we would sooner hear said 'that
+is a very handsome man' than to see our lover elected to the
+Institute."
+
+"That's enough, duchess! You have absolutely startled me."
+
+And the young coquette began to describe the lovers about whom all the
+women of her acquaintance raved; there was not a single man of
+intellect among them.
+
+"But I swear by my virtue," she said, "their husbands are worth more."
+
+"But these are the sort of people they choose for husbands," the
+duchess answered gravely.
+
+"Tell me," asked the author, "is the disaster which threatens the
+husband in France quite inevitable?"
+
+"It is," replied the duchess, with a smile; "and the rage which
+certain women breathe out against those of their sex, whose
+unfortunate happiness it is to entertain a passion, proves what a
+burden to them is their chastity. If it were not for fear of the
+devil, one would be Lais; another owes her virtue to the dryness of
+her selfish heart; a third to the silly behaviour of her first lover;
+another still--"
+
+The author checked this outpour of revelation by confiding to the two
+ladies his design for the work with which he had been haunted; they
+smiled and promised him their assistance. The youngest, with an air of
+gaiety suggested one of the first chapters of the undertaking, by
+saying that she would take upon herself to prove mathematically that
+women who are entirely virtuous were creatures of reason.
+
+When the author got home he said at once to his demon:
+
+"Come! I am ready; let us sign the compact."
+
+But the demon never returned.
+
+If the author has written here the biography of his book he has not
+acted on the prompting of fatuity. He relates facts which may furnish
+material for the history of human thought, and will without doubt
+explain the work itself. It may perhaps be important to certain
+anatomists of thought to be told that the soul is feminine. Thus
+although the author made a resolution not to think about the book
+which he was forced to write, the book, nevertheless, was completed.
+One page of it was found on the bed of a sick man, another on the sofa
+of a boudoir. The glances of women when they turned in the mazes of a
+waltz flung to him some thoughts; a gesture or a word filled his
+disdainful brain with others. On the day when he said to himself,
+"This work, which haunts me, shall be achieved," everything vanished;
+and like the three Belgians, he drew forth a skeleton from the place
+over which he had bent to seize a treasure.
+
+A mild, pale countenance took the place of the demon who had tempted
+me; it wore an engaging expression of kindliness; there were no sharp
+pointed arrows of criticism in its lineaments. It seemed to deal more
+with words than with ideas, and shrank from noise and clamor. It was
+perhaps the household genius of the honorable deputies who sit in the
+centre of the Chamber.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better," it said, "to let things be as they are? Are
+things so bad? We ought to believe in marriage as we believe in the
+immortality of the soul; and you are certainly not making a book to
+advertise the happiness of marriage. You will surely conclude that
+among a million of Parisian homes happiness is the exception. You will
+find perhaps that there are many husbands disposed to abandon their
+wives to you; but there is not a single son who will abandon his
+mother. Certain people who are hit by the views which you put forth
+will suspect your morals and will misrepresent your intentions. In a
+word, in order to handle social sores, one ought to be a king, or a
+first consul at least."
+
+Reason, although it appeared under a form most pleasing to the author,
+was not listened to; for in the distance Folly tossed the coxcomb of
+Panurge, and the author wished to seize it; but, when he tried to
+catch it, he found that it was as heavy as the club of Hercules.
+Moreover, the cure of Meudon adorned it in such fashion that a young
+man who was less pleased with producing a good work than with wearing
+fine gloves could not even touch it.
+
+"Is our work completed?" asked the younger of the two feminine
+assistants of the author.
+
+"Alas! madame," I said, "will you ever requite me for all the hatreds
+which that work will array against me?"
+
+She waved her hand, and then the author replied to her doubt by a look
+of indifference.
+
+"What do you mean? Would you hesitate? You must publish it without
+fear. In the present day we accept a book more because it is in
+fashion than because it has anything in it."
+
+Although the author does not here represent himself as anything more
+than the secretary of two ladies, he has in compiling their
+observations accomplished a double task. With regard to marriage he
+has here arranged matters which represent what everybody thinks but no
+one dares to say; but has he not also exposed himself to public
+displeasure by expressing the mind of the public? Perhaps, however,
+the eclecticism of the present essay will save it from condemnation.
+All the while that he indulges in banter the author has attempted to
+popularize certain ideas which are particularly consoling. He has
+almost always endeavored to lay bare the hidden springs which move the
+human soul. While undertaking to defend the most material interests of
+man, judging them or condemning them, he will perhaps bring to light
+many sources of intellectual delight. But the author does not
+foolishly claim always to put forth his pleasantries in the best of
+taste; he has merely counted upon the diversity of intellectual
+pursuits in expectation of receiving as much blame as approbation. The
+subject of his work was so serious that he is constantly launched into
+anecdote; because at the present day anecdotes are the vehicle of all
+moral teaching, and the anti-narcotic of every work of literature. In
+literature, analysis and investigation prevail, and the wearying of
+the reader increases in proportion with the egotism of the writer.
+This is one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall a book, and
+the present author has been quite aware of it. He has therefore so
+arranged the topics of this long essay as to afford resting places for
+the reader. This method has been successfully adopted by a writer, who
+produced on the subject of Taste a work somewhat parallel to that
+which is here put forth on the subject of Marriage. From the former
+the present writer may be permitted to borrow a few words in order to
+express a thought which he shares with the author of them. This
+quotation will serve as an expression of homage to his predecessor,
+whose success has been so swiftly followed by his death:
+
+"When I write and speak of myself in the singular, this implies a
+confidential talk with the reader; he can examine the statement,
+discuss it, doubt and even ridicule it; but when I arm myself with the
+formidable WE, I become the professor and demand submission."--
+Brillat-Savarin, Preface to the _Physiology of Taste_.
+
+     DECEMBER 5, 1829.
+
+
+
+
+
+                             FIRST PART.
+
+
+
+                      A GENERAL CONSIDERATION.
+
+
+We will declaim against stupid laws until they are changed, and in the
+meantime blindly submit to them.--Diderot, _Supplement to the Voyage
+of Bougainville_.
+
+
+
+                            MEDITATION I.
+
+                             THE SUBJECT.
+
+Physiology, what must I consider your meaning?
+
+Is not your object to prove that marriage unites for life two beings
+who do not know each other?
+
+That life consists in passion, and that no passion survives marriage?
+
+That marriage is an institution necessary for the preservation of
+society, but that it is contrary to the laws of nature?
+
+That divorce, this admirable release from the misfortunes of marriage,
+should with one voice be reinstated?
+
+That, in spite of all its inconveniences, marriage is the foundation
+on which property is based?
+
+That it furnishes invaluable pledges for the security of government?
+
+That there is something touching in the association of two human
+beings for the purpose of supporting the pains of life?
+
+That there is something ridiculous in the wish that one and the same
+thoughts should control two wills?
+
+That the wife is treated as a slave?
+
+That there has never been a marriage entirely happy?
+
+That marriage is filled with crimes and that the known murders are not
+the worst?
+
+That fidelity is impossible, at least to the man?
+
+That an investigation if it could be undertaken would prove that in
+the transmission of patrimonial property there was more risk than
+security?
+
+That adultery does more harm than marriage does good?
+
+That infidelity in a woman may be traced back to the earliest ages of
+society, and that marriage still survives this perpetuation of
+treachery?
+
+That the laws of love so strongly link together two human beings that
+no human law can put them asunder?
+
+That while there are marriages recorded on the public registers, there
+are others over which nature herself has presided, and they have been
+dictated either by the mutual memory of thought, or by an utter
+difference of mental disposition, or by corporeal affinity in the
+parties named; that it is thus that heaven and earth are constantly at
+variance?
+
+That there are many husbands fine in figure and of superior intellect
+whose wives have lovers exceedingly ugly, insignificant in appearance
+or stupid in mind?
+
+All these questions furnish material for books; but the books have
+been written and the questions are constantly reappearing.
+
+Physiology, what must I take you to mean?
+
+Do you reveal new principles? Would you pretend that it is the right
+thing that woman should be made common? Lycurgus and certain Greek
+peoples as well as Tartars and savages have tried this.
+
+Can it possibly be right to confine women? The Ottomans once did so,
+and nowadays they give them their liberty.
+
+Would it be right to marry young women without providing a dowry and
+yet exclude them from the right of succeeding to property? Some
+English authors and some moralists have proved that this with the
+admission of divorce is the surest method of rendering marriage happy.
+
+Should there be a little Hagar in each marriage establishment? There
+is no need to pass a law for that. The provision of the code which
+makes an unfaithful wife liable to a penalty in whatever place the
+crime be committed, and that other article which does not punish the
+erring husband unless his concubine dwells beneath the conjugal roof,
+implicitly admits the existence of mistresses in the city.
+
+Sanchez has written a dissertation on the penal cases incident to
+marriage; he has even argued on the illegitimacy and the opportuneness
+of each form of indulgence; he has outlined all the duties, moral,
+religious and corporeal, of the married couple; in short his work
+would form twelve volumes in octavo if the huge folio entitled _De
+Matrimonio_ were thus represented.
+
+Clouds of lawyers have flung clouds of treatises over the legal
+difficulties which are born of marriage. There exist several works on
+the judicial investigation of impotency.
+
+Legions of doctors have marshaled their legions of books on the
+subject of marriage in its relation to medicine and surgery.
+
+In the nineteenth century the _Physiology of Marriage_ is either an
+insignificant compilation or the work of a fool written for other
+fools; old priests have taken their balances of gold and have weighed
+the most trifling scruples of the marriage consciences; old lawyers
+have put on their spectacles and have distinguished between every kind
+of married transgression; old doctors have seized the scalpel and
+drawn it over all the wounds of the subject; old judges have mounted
+to the bench and have decided all the cases of marriage dissolution;
+whole generations have passed unuttered cries of joy or of grief on
+the subject, each age has cast its vote into the urn; the Holy Spirit,
+poets and writers have recounted everything from the days of Eve to
+the Trojan war, from Helen to Madame de Maintenon, from the mistress
+of Louis XIV to the woman of their own day.
+
+Physiology, what must I consider your meaning?
+
+Shall I say that you intend to publish pictures more or less
+skillfully drawn, for the purpose of convincing us that a man marries:
+
+From ambition--that is well known;
+
+From kindness, in order to deliver a girl from the tyranny of her
+mother;
+
+From rage, in order to disinherit his relations;
+
+From scorn of a faithless mistress;
+
+From weariness of a pleasant bachelor life;
+
+From folly, for each man always commits one;
+
+In consequence of a wager, which was the case with Lord Byron;
+
+From interest, which is almost always the case;
+
+From youthfulness on leaving college, like a blockhead;
+
+From ugliness,--fear of some day failing to secure a wife;
+
+Through Machiavelism, in order to be the heir of some old woman at an
+early date;
+
+From necessity, in order to secure the standing to _our_ son;
+
+From obligation, the damsel having shown herself weak;
+
+From passion, in order to become more surely cured of it;
+
+On account of a quarrel, in order to put an end to a lawsuit;
+
+From gratitude, by which he gives more than he has received;
+
+From goodness, which is the fate of doctrinaires;
+
+From the condition of a will when a dead uncle attaches his legacy to
+some girl, marriage with whom is the condition of succession;
+
+From custom, in imitation of his ancestors;
+
+From old age, in order to make an end of life;
+
+From _yatidi_, that is the hour of going to bed and signifies amongst
+the Turks all bodily needs;
+
+From religious zeal, like the Duke of Saint-Aignan, who did not wish
+to commit sin?[*]
+
+[*] The foregoing queries came in (untranslatable) alphabetic order in
+    the original.--Editor
+
+But these incidents of marriage have furnished matter for thirty
+thousand comedies and a hundred thousand romances.
+
+Physiology, for the third and last time I ask you--What is your
+meaning?
+
+So far everything is commonplace as the pavement of the street,
+familiar as a crossway. Marriage is better known than the Barabbas of
+the Passion. All the ancient ideas which it calls to light permeate
+literature since the world is the world, and there is not a single
+opinion which might serve to the advantage of the world, nor a
+ridiculous project which could not find an author to write it up, a
+printer to print it, a bookseller to sell it and a reader to read it.
+
+Allow me to say to you like Rabelais, who is in every sense our
+master:
+
+"Gentlemen, God save and guard you! Where are you? I cannot see you;
+wait until I put on my spectacles. Ah! I see you now; you, your wives,
+your children. Are you in good health? I am glad to hear it."
+
+But it is not for you that I am writing. Since you have grown-up
+children that ends the matter.
+
+Ah! it is you, illustrious tipplers, pampered and gouty, and you,
+tireless pie-cutters, favorites who come dear; day-long
+pantagruellists who keep your private birds, gay and gallant, and who
+go to tierce, to sexts, to nones, and also to vespers and compline and
+never tire of going.
+
+It is not for you that the _Physiology of Marriage_ is addressed, for
+you are not married and may you never be married. You herd of bigots,
+snails, hypocrites, dotards, lechers, booted for pilgrimage to Rome,
+disguised and marked, as it were, to deceive the world. Go back, you
+scoundrels, out of my sight! Gallows birds are ye all--now in the
+devil's name will you not begone? There are none left now but the good
+souls who love to laugh; not the snivelers who burst into tears in
+prose or verse, whatever their subject be, who make people sick with
+their odes, their sonnets, their meditation; none of these dreamers,
+but certain old-fashioned pantagruellists who don't think twice about
+it when they are invited to join a banquet or provoked to make a
+repartee, who can take pleasure in a book like _Pease and the Lard_
+with commentary of Rabelais, or in the one entitled _The Dignity of
+Breeches_, and who esteem highly the fair books of high degree, a
+quarry hard to run down and redoubtable to wrestle with.
+
+It no longer does to laugh at a government, my friend, since it has
+invented means to raise fifteen hundred millions by taxation. High
+ecclesiastics, monks and nuns are no longer so rich that we can drink
+with them; but let St. Michael come, he who chased the devil from
+heaven, and we shall perhaps see the good time come back again! There
+is only one thing in France at the present moment which remains a
+laughing matter, and that is marriage. Disciples of Panurge, ye are
+the only readers I desire. You know how seasonably to take up and lay
+down a book, how to get the most pleasure out of it, to understand the
+hint in a half word--how to suck nourishment from a marrow-bone.
+
+The men of the microscope who see nothing but a speck, the
+census-mongers--have they reviewed the whole matter? Have they
+pronounced without appeal that it is as impossible to write a book on
+marriage as to make new again a broken pot?
+
+Yes, master fool. If you begin to squeeze the marriage question you
+squirt out nothing but fun for the bachelors and weariness for the
+married men. It is everlasting morality. A million printed pages would
+have no other matter in them.
+
+In spite of this, here is my first proposition: marriage is a fight to
+the death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven,
+because it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love;
+the fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty,
+remains in the hands of the cleverer of the two.
+
+Undoubtedly. But do you see in this a fresh idea?
+
+Well, I address myself to the married men of yesterday and of to-day;
+to those who on leaving the Church or the registration office indulge
+the hope of keeping their wives for themselves alone; to those whom
+some form or other of egotism or some indefinable sentiment induces to
+say when they see the marital troubles of another, "This will never
+happen to me."
+
+I address myself to those sailors who after witnessing the foundering
+of other ships still put to sea; to those bachelors who after
+witnessing the shipwreck of virtue in a marriage of another venture
+upon wedlock. And this is my subject, eternally now, yet eternally
+old!
+
+A young man, or it may be an old one, in love or not in love, has
+obtained possession by a contract duly recorded at the registration
+office in heaven and on the rolls of the nation, of a young girl with
+long hair, with black liquid eyes, with small feet, with dainty
+tapering fingers, with red lips, with teeth of ivory, finely formed,
+trembling with life, tempting and plump, white as a lily, loaded with
+the most charming wealth of beauty. Her drooping eyelashes seem like
+the points of the iron crown; her skin, which is as fresh as the calyx
+of a white camelia, is streaked with the purple of the red camelia;
+over her virginal complexion one seems to see the bloom of young fruit
+and the delicate down of a young peach; the azure veins spread a
+kindling warmth over this transparent surface; she asks for life and
+she gives it; she is all joy and love, all tenderness and candor; she
+loves her husband, or at least believes she loves him.
+
+The husband who is in love says in the bottom of his heart: "Those
+eyes will see no one but me, that mouth will tremble with love for me
+alone, that gentle hand will lavish the caressing treasures of delight
+on me alone, that bosom will heave at no voice but mine, that
+slumbering soul will awake at my will alone; I only will entangle my
+fingers in those shining tresses; I alone will indulge myself in
+dreamily caressing that sensitive head. I will make death the guardian
+of my pillow if only I may ward off from the nuptial couch the
+stranger who would violate it; that throne of love shall swim in the
+blood of the rash or of my own. Tranquillity, honor, happiness, the
+ties of home, the fortune of my children, all are at stake there; I
+would defend them as a lioness defends her cubs. Woe unto him who
+shall set foot in my lair!"
+
+Well now, courageous athlete, we applaud your intention. Up to the
+present moment no geographer has ventured to trace the lines of
+longitude and latitude in the ocean of marriage. Old husbands have
+been ashamed to point out the sand banks, the reefs, the shallows, the
+breakers, the monsoons, the coasts and currents which have wrecked
+their ships, for their shipwrecks brought them shame. There was no
+pilot, no compass for those pilgrims of marriage. This work is
+intended to supply the desideratum.
+
+Without mentioning grocers and drapers, there are so many people
+occupied in discovering the secret motives of women, that it is really
+a work of charity to classify for them, by chapter and verse, all the
+secret situations of marriage; a good table of contents will enable
+them to put their finger on each movement of their wives' heart, as a
+table of logarithms tells them the product of a given multiplication.
+
+And now what do you think about that? Is not this a novel undertaking,
+and one which no philosopher has as yet approached, I mean this
+attempt to show how a woman may be prevented from deceiving her
+husband? Is not this the comedy of comedies? Is it not a second
+_speculum vitae humanae_. We are not now dealing with the abstract
+questions which we have done justice to already in this Meditation. At
+the present day in ethics as in exact science, the world asks for
+facts for the results of observation. These we shall furnish.
+
+Let us begin then by examining the true condition of things, by
+analyzing the forces which exist on either side. Before arming our
+imaginary champion let us reckon up the number of his enemies. Let us
+count the Cossacks who intend to invade his little domain.
+
+All who wish may embark with us on this voyage, all who can may laugh.
+Weigh anchor; hoist sail! You know exactly the point from which you
+start. You have this advantage over a great many books that are
+written.
+
+As for our fancy of laughing while we weep, and of weeping while we
+laugh, as the divine Rabelais drank while he ate and ate while he
+drank; as for our humor, to put Heraclitus and Democritus on the same
+page and to discard style or premeditated phrase--if any of the crew
+mutiny, overboard with the doting cranks, the infamous classicists,
+the dead and buried romanticists, and steer for the blue water!
+
+Everybody perhaps will jeeringly remark that we are like those who say
+with smiling faces, "I am going to tell you a story that will make you
+laugh!" But it is the proper thing to joke when speaking of marriage!
+In short, can you not understand that we consider marriage as a
+trifling ailment to which all of us are subject and upon which this
+volume is a monograph?
+
+"But you, your bark or your work starts off like those postilions who
+crack their whips because their passengers are English. You will not
+have galloped at full speed for half a league before you dismount to
+mend a trace or to breathe your horses. What is the good of blowing
+the trumpet before victory?"
+
+Ah! my dear pantagruellists, nowadays to claim success is to obtain
+it, and since, after all, great works are only due to the expansion of
+little ideas, I do not see why I should not pluck the laurels, if only
+for the purpose of crowning those dirty bacon faces who join us in
+swallowing a dram. One moment, pilot, let us not start without making
+one little definition.
+
+Reader, if from time to time you meet in this work the terms virtue or
+virtuous, let us understand that virtue means a certain labored
+facility by which a wife keeps her heart for her husband; at any rate,
+that the word is not used in a general sense, and I leave this
+distinction to the natural sagacity of all.
+
+
+
+                            MEDITATION II.
+
+                         MARRIAGE STATISTICS.
+
+The administration has been occupied for nearly twenty years in
+reckoning how many acres of woodland, meadow, vineyard and fallow are
+comprised in the area of France. It has not stopped there, but has
+also tried to learn the number and species of the animals to be found
+there. Scientific men have gone still further; they have reckoned up
+the cords of wood, the pounds of beef, the apples and eggs consumed in
+Paris. But no one has yet undertaken either in the name of marital
+honor or in the interest of marriageable people, or for the advantage
+of morality and the progress of human institutions, to investigate the
+number of honest wives. What! the French government, if inquiry is
+made of it, is able to say how many men it has under arms, how many
+spies, how many employees, how many scholars; but, when it is asked
+how many virtuous women, it can answer nothing! If the King of France
+took into his head to choose his august partner from among his
+subjects, the administration could not even tell him the number of
+white lambs from whom he could make his choice. It would be obliged to
+resort to some competition which awards the rose of good conduct, and
+that would be a laughable event.
+
+Were the ancients then our masters in political institutions as in
+morality? History teaches us that Ahasuerus, when he wished to take a
+wife from among the damsels of Persia, chose Esther, the most virtuous
+and the most beautiful. His ministers therefore must necessarily have
+discovered some method of obtaining the cream of the population.
+Unfortunately the Bible, which is so clear on all matrimonial
+questions, has omitted to give us a rule for matrimonial choice.
+
+Let us try to supply this gap in the work of the administration by
+calculating the sum of the female sex in France. Here we call the
+attention of all friends to public morality, and we appoint them
+judges of our method of procedure. We shall attempt to be particularly
+liberal in our estimations, particularly exact in our reasoning, in
+order that every one may accept the result of this analysis.
+
+The inhabitants of France are generally reckoned at thirty millions.
+
+Certain naturalists think that the number of women exceeds that of
+men; but as many statisticians are of the opposite opinion, we will
+make the most probable calculation by allowing fifteen millions for
+the women.
+
+We will begin by cutting down this sum by nine millions, which stands
+for those who seem to have some resemblance to women, but whom we are
+compelled to reject upon serious considerations.
+
+Let us explain:
+
+Naturalists consider man to be no more than a unique species of the
+order bimana, established by Dumeril in his _Analytic Zoology_, page
+16; and Bory de Saint Vincent thinks that the ourang-outang ought to
+be included in the same order if we would make the species complete.
+
+If these zoologists see in us nothing more than a mammal with
+thirty-two vertebrae possessing the hyoid bone and more folds in the
+hemispheres of the brain than any other animal; if in their opinion no
+other differences exist in this order than those produced by the
+influence of climate, on which are founded the nomenclature of fifteen
+species whose scientific names it is needless to cite, the
+physiologists ought also to have the right of making species and
+sub-species in accordance with definite degrees of intelligence and
+definite conditions of existence, oral and pecuniary.
+
+Now the nine millions of human creatures which we here refer to
+present at first sight all the attributes of the human race; they have
+the hyoid bone, the coracoid process, the acromion, the zygomatic
+arch. It is therefore permitted for the gentlemen of the Jardin des
+Plantes to classify them with the bimana; but our Physiology will
+never admit that women are to be found among them. In our view, and in
+the view of those for whom this book is intended, a woman is a rare
+variety of the human race, and her principal characteristics are due
+to the special care men have bestowed upon its cultivation,--thanks to
+the power of money and the moral fervor of civilization! She is
+generally recognized by the whiteness, the fineness and softness of
+her skin. Her taste inclines to the most spotless cleanliness. Her
+fingers shrink from encountering anything but objects which are soft,
+yielding and scented. Like the ermine she sometimes dies for grief on
+seeing her white tunic soiled. She loves to twine her tresses and to
+make them exhale the most attractive scents; to brush her rosy nails,
+to trim them to an almond shape, and frequently to bathe her delicate
+limbs. She is not satisfied to spend the night excepting on the
+softest down, and excepting on hair-cushioned lounges, she loves best
+to take a horizontal position. Her voice is of penetrating sweetness;
+her movements are full of grace. She speaks with marvelous fluency.
+She does not apply herself to any hard work; and, nevertheless, in
+spite of her apparent weakness, there are burdens which she can bear
+and move with miraculous ease. She avoids the open sunlight and wards
+it off by ingenious appliances. For her to walk is exhausting. Does
+she eat? This is a mystery. Has she the needs of other species? It is
+a problem. Although she is curious to excess she allows herself easily
+to be caught by any one who can conceal from her the slightest thing,
+and her intellect leads her to seek incessantly after the unknown.
+Love is her religion; she thinks how to please the one she loves. To
+be beloved is the end of all her actions; to excite desire is the
+motive of every gesture. She dreams of nothing excepting how she may
+shine, and moves only in a circle filled with grace and elegance. It
+is for her the Indian girl has spun the soft fleece of Thibet goats,
+Tarare weaves its airy veils, Brussels sets in motion those shuttles
+which speed the flaxen thread that is purest and most fine, Bidjapour
+wrenches from the bowels of the earth its sparkling pebbles, and the
+Sevres gilds its snow-white clay. Night and day she reflects upon new
+costumes and spends her life in considering dress and in plaiting her
+apparel. She moves about exhibiting her brightness and freshness to
+people she does not know, but whose homage flatters her, while the
+desire she excites charms her, though she is indifferent to those who
+feel it. During the hours which she spends in private, in pleasure,
+and in the care of her person, she amuses herself by caroling the
+sweetest strains. For her France and Italy ordain delightful concerts
+and Naples imparts to the strings of the violin an harmonious soul.
+This species is in fine at once the queen of the world and the slave
+of passion. She dreads marriage because it ends by spoiling her
+figure, but she surrenders herself to it because it promises
+happiness. If she bears children it is by pure chance, and when they
+are grown up she tries to conceal them.
+
+These characteristics taken at random from among a thousand others are
+not found amongst those beings whose hands are as black as those of
+apes and their skin tanned like the ancient parchments of an _olim_;
+whose complexion is burnt brown by the sun and whose neck is wrinkled
+like that of a turkey; who are covered with rags; whose voice is
+hoarse; whose intelligence is nil; who think of nothing but the bread
+box, and who are incessantly bowed in toil towards the ground; who
+dig; who harrow; who make hay, glean, gather in the harvest, knead the
+bread and strip hemp; who, huddled among domestic beasts, infants and
+men, dwell in holes and dens scarcely covered with thatch; to whom it
+is of little importance from what source children rain down into their
+homes. Their work it is to produce many and to deliver them to misery
+and toil, and if their love is not like their labor in the fields it
+is at least as much a work of chance.
+
+Alas! if there are throughout the world multitudes of trades-women who
+sit all day long between the cradle and the sugar-cask, farmers' wives
+and daughters who milk the cows, unfortunate women who are employed
+like beasts of burden in the manufactories, who all day long carry the
+loaded basket, the hoe and the fish-crate, if unfortunately there
+exist these common human beings to whom the life of the soul, the
+benefits of education, the delicious tempests of the heart are an
+unattainable heaven; and if Nature has decreed that they should have
+coracoid processes and hyoid bones and thirty-two vertebrae, let them
+remain for the physiologist classed with the ourang-outang. And here
+we make no stipulations for the leisure class; for those who have the
+time and the sense to fall in love; for the rich who have purchased
+the right of indulging their passions; for the intellectual who have
+conquered a monopoly of fads. Anathema on all those who do not live by
+thought. We say Raca and fool to all those who are not ardent, young,
+beautiful and passionate. This is the public expression of that secret
+sentiment entertained by philanthropists who have learned to read and
+can keep their own carriage. Among the nine millions of the
+proscribed, the tax-gatherer, the magistrate, the law-maker and the
+priest doubtless see living souls who are to be ruled and made subject
+to the administration of justice. But the man of sentiment, the
+philosopher of the boudoir, while he eats his fine bread, made of
+corn, sown and harvested by these creatures, will reject them and
+relegate them, as we do, to a place outside the genus Woman. For them,
+there are no women excepting those who can inspire love; and there is
+no living being but the creature invested with the priesthood of
+thought by means of a privileged education, and with whom leisure has
+developed the power of imagination; in other words that only is a
+human being whose soul dreams, in love, either of intellectual
+enjoyments or of physical delights.
+
+We would, however, make the remark that these nine million female
+pariahs produce here and there a thousand peasant girls who from
+peculiar circumstances are as fair as Cupids; they come to Paris or to
+the great cities and end up by attaining the rank of _femmes comme il
+faut_; but to set off against these two or three thousand favored
+creatures, there are one hundred thousand others who remain servants
+or abandon themselves to frightful irregularities. Nevertheless, we
+are obliged to count these Pompadours of the village among the
+feminine population.
+
+Our first calculation is based upon the statistical discovery that in
+France there are eighteen millions of the poor, ten millions of people
+in easy circumstances and two millions of the rich.
+
+There exist, therefore, in France only six millions of women in whom
+men of sentiment are now interested, have been interested, or will be
+interested.
+
+Let us subject this social elite to a philosophic examination.
+
+We think, without fear of being deceived, that married people who have
+lived twenty years together may sleep in peace without fear of having
+their love trespassed upon or of incurring the scandal of a lawsuit
+for criminal conversation.
+
+From these six millions of individuals we must subtract about two
+millions of women who are extremely attractive, because for the last
+forty years they have seen the world; but since they have not the
+power to make any one fall in love with them, they are on the outside
+of the discussion now before us. If they are unhappy enough to receive
+no attention for the sake of amiability, they are soon seized with
+ennui; they fall back upon religion, upon the cultivation of pets,
+cats, lap-dogs, and other fancies which are no more offensive than
+their devoutness.
+
+The calculations made at the Bureau of Longitudes concerning
+population authorize us again to subtract from the total mentioned two
+millions of young girls, pretty enough to kill; they are at present in
+the A B C of life and innocently play with other children, without
+dreading that these little hobbledehoys, who now make them laugh, will
+one day make them weep.
+
+Again, of the two millions of the remaining women, what reasonable man
+would not throw out a hundred thousand poor girls, humpbacked, plain,
+cross-grained, rickety, sickly, blind, crippled in some way, well
+educated but penniless, all bound to be spinsters, and by no means
+tempted to violate the sacred laws of marriage?
+
+Nor must we retain the one hundred thousand other girls who become
+sisters of St. Camille, Sisters of Charity, monastics, teachers,
+ladies' companions, etc. And we must put into this blessed company a
+number of young people difficult to estimate, who are too grown up to
+play with little boys and yet too young to sport their wreath of
+orange blossoms.
+
+Finally, of the fifteen million subjects which remain at the bottom of
+our crucible we must eliminate five hundred thousand other
+individuals, to be reckoned as daughters of Baal, who subserve the
+appetites of the base. We must even comprise among those, without fear
+that they will be corrupted by their company, the kept women, the
+milliners, the shop girls, saleswomen, actresses, singers, the girls
+of the opera, the ballet-dancers, upper servants, chambermaids, etc.
+Most of these creatures excite the passions of many people, but they
+would consider it immodest to inform a lawyer, a mayor, an
+ecclesiastic or a laughing world of the day and hour when they
+surrendered to a lover. Their system, justly blamed by an inquisitive
+world, has the advantage of laying upon them no obligations towards
+men in general, towards the mayor or the magistracy. As these women do
+not violate any oath made in public, they have no connection whatever
+with a work which treats exclusively of lawful marriage.
+
+Some one will say that the claims made by this essay are very slight,
+but its limitations make just compensation for those which amateurs
+consider excessively padded. If any one, through love for a wealthy
+dowager, wishes to obtain admittance for her into the remaining
+million, he must classify her under the head of Sisters of Charity,
+ballet-dancers, or hunchbacks; in fact we have not taken more than
+five hundred thousand individuals in forming this last class, because
+it often happens, as we have seen above, that the nine millions of
+peasant girls make a large accession to it. We have for the same
+reason omitted the working-girl class and the hucksters; the women of
+these two sections are the product of efforts made by nine millions of
+female bimana to rise to the higher civilization. But for its
+scrupulous exactitude many persons might regard this statistical
+meditation as a mere joke.
+
+We have felt very much inclined to form a small class of a hundred
+thousand individuals as a crowning cabinet of the species, to serve as
+a place of shelter for women who have fallen into a middle estate,
+like widows, for instance; but we have preferred to estimate in round
+figures.
+
+It would be easy to prove the fairness of our analysis: let one
+reflection be sufficient.
+
+The life of a woman is divided into three periods, very distinct from
+each other: the first begins in the cradle and ends on the attainment
+of a marriageable age; the second embraces the time during which a
+woman belongs to marriage; the third opens with the critical period,
+the ending with which nature closes the passions of life. These three
+spheres of existence, being almost equal in duration, might be
+employed for the classification into equal groups of a given number of
+women. Thus in a mass of six millions, omitting fractions, there are
+about two million girls between one and eighteen, two millions women
+between eighteen and forty and two millions of old women. The caprices
+of society have divided the two millions of marriageable women into
+three main classes, namely: those who remain spinsters for reasons
+which we have defined; those whose virtue does not reckon in the
+obtaining of husbands, and the million of women lawfully married, with
+whom we have to deal.
+
+You see then, by the exact sifting out of the feminine population,
+that there exists in France a little flock of barely a million white
+lambs, a privileged fold into which every wolf is anxious to enter.
+
+Let us put this million of women, already winnowed by our fan, through
+another examination.
+
+To arrive at the true idea of the degree of confidence which a man
+ought to have in his wife, let us suppose for a moment that all wives
+will deceive their husbands.
+
+On this hypothesis, it will be proper to cut out about one-twentieth,
+viz., young people who are newly married and who will be faithful to
+their vows for a certain time.
+
+Another twentieth will be in ill-health. This will be to make a very
+modest allowance for human infirmities.
+
+Certain passions, which we are told destroy the dominion of the man
+over the heart of his wife, namely, aversion, grief, the bearing of
+children, will account for another twentieth.
+
+Adultery does not establish itself in the heart of a married woman
+with the promptness of a pistol-shot. Even when sympathy with another
+rouses feelings on first sight, a struggle always takes place, whose
+duration discounts the total sum of conjugal infidelities. It would be
+an insult to French modesty not to admit the duration of this struggle
+in a country so naturally combative, without referring to at least a
+twentieth in the total of married women; but then we will suppose that
+there are certain sickly women who preserve their lovers while they
+are using soothing draughts, and that there are certain wives whose
+confinement makes sarcastic celibates smile. In this way we shall
+vindicate the modesty of those who enter upon the struggle from
+motives of virtue. For the same reason we should not venture to
+believe that a woman forsaken by her lover will find a new one on the
+spot; but this discount being much more uncertain than the preceding
+one, we will estimate it at one-fortieth.
+
+These several rebates will reduce our sum total to eight hundred
+thousand women, when we come to calculate the number of those who are
+likely to violate married faith. Who would not at the present moment
+wish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not
+the supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming
+creatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their
+life and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of social
+religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chief
+glory of France.
+
+It is in the midst of this million we are bound to investigate:
+
+The number of honest women;
+
+The number of virtuous women.
+
+The work of investigating this and of arranging the results under two
+categories requires whole meditations, which may serve as an appendix
+to the present one.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION III.
+
+                         OF THE HONEST WOMAN.
+
+The preceding meditation has proved that we possess in France a
+floating population of one million women reveling in the privilege of
+inspiring those passions which a gallant man avows without shame, or
+dissembles with delight. It is then among this million of women that
+we must carry our lantern of Diogenes in order to discover the honest
+women of the land.
+
+This inquiry suggests certain digressions.
+
+Two young people, well dressed, whose slender figures and rounded arms
+suggest a paver's tool, and whose boots are elegantly made, meet one
+morning on the boulevard, at the end of the Passage des Panoramas.
+
+"What, is this you?"
+
+"Yes, dear boy; it looks like me, doesn't it?"
+
+Then they laugh, with more or less intelligence, according to the
+nature of the joke which opens the conversation.
+
+When they have examined each other with the sly curiosity of a police
+officer on the lookout for a clew, when they are quite convinced of
+the newness of each other's gloves, of each other's waistcoat and of
+the taste with which their cravats are tied; when they are pretty
+certain that neither of them is down in the world, they link arms and
+if they start from the Theater des Varietes, they have not reached
+Frascati's before they have asked each other a roundabout question
+whose free translation may be this:
+
+"Whom are you living with now?"
+
+As a general rule she is a charming woman.
+
+Who is the infantryman of Paris into whose ear there have not dropped,
+like bullets in the day of battle, thousands of words uttered by the
+passer-by, and who has not caught one of those numberless sayings
+which, according to Rabelais, hang frozen in the air? But the majority
+of men take their way through Paris in the same manner as they live
+and eat, that is, without thinking about it. There are very few
+skillful musicians, very few practiced physiognomists who can
+recognize the key in which these vagrant notes are set, the passion
+that prompts these floating words. Ah! to wander over Paris! What an
+adorable and delightful existence is that! To saunter is a science; it
+is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to
+saunter is to live. The young and pretty women, long contemplated with
+ardent eyes, would be much more admissible in claiming a salary than
+the cook who asks for twenty sous from the Limousin whose nose with
+inflated nostrils took in the perfumes of beauty. To saunter is to
+enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the
+sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque
+physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand
+existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for
+the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their
+passions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard
+to the categorical question which is always with us?
+
+"She is thirty-five years old, but you would not think she was more
+than twenty!" said an enthusiastic youth with sparkling eyes, who,
+freshly liberated from college, would, like Cherubin, embrace all.
+
+"Zounds! Mine has dressing-gowns of batiste and diamond rings for the
+evening!" said a lawyer's clerk.
+
+"But she has a box at the Francais!" said an army officer.
+
+"At any rate," cried another one, an elderly man who spoke as if he
+were standing on the defence, "she does not cost me a sou! In our case
+--wouldn't you like to have the same chance, my respected friend?"
+
+And he patted his companion lightly on the shoulder.
+
+"Oh! she loves me!" said another. "It seems too good to be true; but
+she has the most stupid of husbands! Ah!--Buffon has admirably
+described the animals, but the biped called husband--"
+
+What a pleasant thing for a married man to hear!
+
+"Oh! what an angel you are, my dear!" is the answer to a request
+discreetly whispered into the ear.
+
+"Can you tell me her name or point her out to me?"
+
+"Oh! no; she is an honest woman."
+
+When a student is loved by a waitress, he mentions her name with pride
+and takes his friends to lunch at her house. If a young man loves a
+woman whose husband is engaged in some trade dealing with articles of
+necessity, he will answer, blushingly, "She is the wife of a
+haberdasher, of a stationer, of a hatter, of a linen-draper, of a
+clerk, etc."
+
+But this confession of love for an inferior which buds and blows in
+the midst of packages, loaves of sugar, or flannel waistcoats is
+always accompanied with an exaggerated praise of the lady's fortune.
+The husband alone is engaged in the business; he is rich; he has fine
+furniture. The loved one comes to her lover's house; she wears a
+cashmere shawl; she owns a country house, etc.
+
+In short, a young man is never wanting in excellent arguments to prove
+that his mistress is very nearly, if not quite, an honest woman. This
+distinction originates in the refinement of our manners and has become
+as indefinite as the line which separates _bon ton_ from vulgarity.
+What then is meant by an honest woman?
+
+On this point the vanity of women, of their lovers, and even that of
+their husbands, is so sensitive that we had better here settle upon
+some general rules, which are the result of long observation.
+
+Our one million of privileged women represent a multitude who are
+eligible for the glorious title of honest women, but by no means all
+are elected to it. The principles on which these elections are based
+may be found in the following axioms:
+
+
+                              APHORISMS.
+
+                                  I.
+           An honest woman is necessarily a married woman.
+
+                                 II.
+              An honest woman is under forty years old.
+
+                                 III.
+   A married woman whose favors are to be paid for is not an honest
+   woman.
+
+                                 IV.
+   A married woman who keeps a private carriage is an honest woman.
+
+                                  V.
+       A woman who does her own cooking is not an honest woman.
+
+                                 VI.
+When a man has made enough to yield an income of twenty thousand
+francs, his wife is an honest woman, whatever the business in which
+his fortune was made.
+
+                                 VII.
+A woman who says "letter of change" for letter of exchange, who says
+of a man, "He is an elegant gentleman," can never be an honest woman,
+whatever fortune she possesses.
+
+                                VIII.
+ An honest woman ought to be in a financial condition such as forbids
+ her lover to think she will ever cost him anything.
+
+                                 IX.
+ A woman who lives on the third story of any street excepting the Rue
+ de Rivoli and the Rue de Castiglione is not an honest woman.
+
+                                  X.
+The wife of a banker is always an honest woman, but the woman who sits
+at the cashier's desk cannot be one, unless her husband has a very
+large business and she does not live over his shop.
+
+                                 XI.
+The unmarried niece of a bishop when she lives with him can pass for
+an honest woman, because if she has an intrigue she has to deceive her
+uncle.
+
+                                 XII.
+      An honest woman is one whom her lover fears to compromise.
+
+                                XIII.
+           The wife of an artist is always an honest woman.
+
+
+By the application of these principles even a man from Ardeche can
+resolve all the difficulties which our subject presents.
+
+In order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely
+educated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to
+pass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life
+of soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she
+lives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris. These
+two financial limits will suggest to you how many honest women are to
+be reckoned on in the million, for they are really a mere product of
+our statistical calculations.
+
+Now three hundred thousand independent people, with an income of
+fifteen thousand francs, represent the sum total of those who live on
+pensions, on annuities and the interest of treasury bonds and
+mortgages.
+
+Three hundred thousand landed proprietors enjoy an income of three
+thousand five hundred francs and represent all territorial wealth.
+
+Two hundred thousand payees, at the rate of fifteen hundred francs
+each, represent the distribution of public funds by the state budget,
+by the budgets of the cities and departments, less the national debt,
+church funds and soldier's pay, (i.e. five sous a day with allowances
+for washing, weapons, victuals, clothes, etc.).
+
+Two hundred thousand fortunes amassed in commerce, reckoning the
+capital at twenty thousand francs in each case, represent all the
+commercial establishments possible in France.
+
+Here we have a million husbands represented.
+
+But at what figure shall we count those who have an income of fifty,
+of a hundred, of two, three, four, five, and six hundred francs only,
+from consols or some other investment?
+
+How many landed proprietors are there who pay taxes amounting to no
+more than a hundred sous, twenty francs, one hundred francs, two
+hundred, or two hundred and eighty?
+
+At what number shall we reckon those of the governmental leeches, who
+are merely quill-drivers with a salary of six hundred francs a year?
+
+How many merchants who have nothing but a fictitious capital shall we
+admit? These men are rich in credit and have not a single actual sou,
+and resemble the sieves through which Pactolus flows. And how many
+brokers whose real capital does not amount to more than a thousand,
+two thousand, four thousand, five thousand francs? Business!--my
+respects to you!
+
+Let us suppose more people to be fortunate than actually are so. Let
+us divide this million into parts; five hundred thousand domestic
+establishments will have an income ranging from a hundred to three
+thousand francs, and five thousand women will fulfill the conditions
+which entitle them to be called honest women.
+
+After these observations, which close our meditation on statistics, we
+are entitled to cut out of this number one hundred thousand
+individuals; consequently we can consider it to be proven
+mathematically that there exist in France no more than four hundred
+thousand women who can furnish to men of refinement the exquisite and
+exalted enjoyments which they look for in love.
+
+And here it is fitting to make a remark to the adepts for whom we
+write, that love does not consist in a series of eager conversations,
+of nights of pleasure, of an occasional caress more or less well-timed
+and a spark of _amour-propre_ baptized by the name of jealousy. Our
+four hundred thousand women are not of those concerning whom it may be
+said, "The most beautiful girl in the world can give only what she
+has." No, they are richly endowed with treasures which appeal to our
+ardent imaginations, they know how to sell dear that which they do not
+possess, in order to compensate for the vulgarity of that which they
+give.
+
+Do we feel more pleasure in kissing the glove of a grisette than in
+draining the five minutes of pleasure which all women offer to us?
+
+Is it the conversation of a shop-girl which makes you expect boundless
+delights?
+
+In your intercourse with a woman who is beneath you, the delight of
+flattered _amour-propre_ is on her side. You are not in the secret of
+the happiness which you give.
+
+In a case of a woman above you, either in fortune or social position,
+the ticklings of vanity are not only intense, but are equally shared.
+A man can never raise his mistress to his own level; but a woman
+always puts her lover in the position that she herself occupies. "I
+can make princes and you can make nothing but bastards," is an answer
+sparkling with truth.
+
+If love is the first of passions, it is because it flatters all the
+rest of them at the same time. We love with more or less intensity in
+proportion to the number of chords which are touched by the fingers of
+a beautiful mistress.
+
+Biren, the jeweler's son, climbing into the bed of the Duchesse de
+Courlande and helping her to sign an agreement that he should be
+proclaimed sovereign of the country, as he was already of the young
+and beautiful queen, is an example of the happiness which ought to be
+given to their lovers by our four hundred thousand women.
+
+If a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the heads
+which crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artistic
+woman of fashion. Now we all love more or less to be at the top.
+
+It is on this brilliant section of the nation that the attack is made
+by men whose education, talent or wit gives them the right to be
+considered persons of importance with regard to that success of which
+people of every country are so proud; and only among this class of
+women is the wife to be found whose heart has to be defended at all
+hazard by our husband.
+
+What does it matter whether the considerations which arise from the
+existence of a feminine aristocracy are or are not equally applicable
+to other social classes? That which is true of all women exquisite in
+manners, language and thought, in whom exceptional educational
+facilities have developed a taste for art and a capacity for feeling,
+comparing and thinking, who have a high sense of propriety and
+politeness and who actually set the fashion in French manners, ought
+to be true also in the case of women whatever their nation and
+whatever their condition. The man of distinction to whom this book is
+dedicated must of necessity possess a certain mental vision, which
+makes him perceive the various degrees of light that fill each class
+and comprehend the exact point in the scale of civilization to which
+each of our remarks is severally applicable.
+
+Would it not be then in the highest interests of morality, that we
+should in the meantime try to find out the number of virtuous women
+who are to be found among these adorable creatures? Is not this a
+question of marito-national importance?
+
+
+
+                            MEDITATION IV.
+
+                        OF THE VIRTUOUS WOMAN.
+
+The question, perhaps, is not so much how many virtuous women there
+are, as what possibility there is of an honest woman remaining
+virtuous.
+
+In order to throw light upon a point so important, let us cast a rapid
+glance over the male population.
+
+From among our fifteen millions of men we must cut off, in the first
+place, the nine millions of bimana of thirty-two vertebrae and exclude
+from our physiological analysis all but six millions of people. The
+Marceaus, the Massenas, the Rousseaus, the Diderots and the Rollins
+often sprout forth suddenly from the social swamp, when it is in a
+condition of fermentation; but, here we plead guilty of deliberate
+inaccuracy. These errors in calculation are likely, however, to give
+all their weight to our conclusion and to corroborate what we are
+forced to deduce in unveiling the mechanism of passion.
+
+From the six millions of privileged men, we must exclude three
+millions of old men and children.
+
+It will be affirmed by some one that this subtraction leaves a
+remainder of four millions in the case of women.
+
+This difference at first sight seems singular, but is easily accounted
+for.
+
+The average age at which women are married is twenty years and at
+forty they cease to belong to the world of love.
+
+Now a young bachelor of seventeen is apt to make deep cuts with his
+penknife in the parchment of contracts, as the chronicles of scandal
+will tell you.
+
+On the other hand, a man at fifty-two is more formidable than at any
+other age. It is at this fair epoch of life that he enjoys an
+experience dearly bought, and probably all the fortune that he will
+ever require. The passions by which his course is directed being the
+last under whose scourge he will move, he is unpitying and determined,
+like the man carried away by a current who snatches at a green and
+pliant branch of willow, the young nursling of the year.
+
+
+                                 XIV.
+    Physically a man is a man much longer than a woman is a woman.
+
+
+With regard to marriage, the difference in duration of the life of
+love with a man and with a woman is fifteen years. This period is
+equal to three-fourths of the time during which the infidelities of
+the woman can bring unhappiness to her husband. Nevertheless, the
+remainder in our subtraction from the sum of men only differs by a
+sixth or so from that which results in our subtraction from the sum of
+women.
+
+Great is the modest caution of our estimates. As to our arguments,
+they are founded on evidence so widely known, that we have only
+expounded them for the sake of being exact and in order to anticipate
+all criticism.
+
+It has, therefore, been proved to the mind of every philosopher,
+however little disposed he may be to forming numerical estimates, that
+there exists in France a floating mass of three million men between
+seventeen and fifty-two, all perfectly alive, well provided with
+teeth, quite resolved on biting, in fact, biting and asking nothing
+better than the opportunity of walking strong and upright along the
+way to Paradise.
+
+The above observations entitle us to separate from this mass of men a
+million husbands. Suppose for an instant that these, being satisfied
+and always happy, like our model husband, confine themselves to
+conjugal love.
+
+Our remainder of two millions do not require five sous to make love.
+
+It is quite sufficient for a man to have a fine foot and a clear eye
+in order to dismantle the portrait of a husband.
+
+It is not necessary that he should have a handsome face nor even a
+good figure;
+
+Provided that a man appears to be intellectual and has a distinguished
+expression of face, women never look where he comes from but where he
+is going to;
+
+The charms of youth are the unique equipage of love;
+
+A coat made by Brisson, a pair of gloves bought from Boivin, elegant
+shoes, for whose payment the dealer trembles, a well-tied cravat are
+sufficient to make a man king of the drawing-room;
+
+And soldiers--although the passion for gold lace and aiguillettes has
+died away--do not soldiers form of themselves a redoubtable legion of
+celibates? Not to mention Eginhard--for he was a private secretary
+--has not a newspaper recently recorded how a German princess
+bequeathed her fortune to a simple lieutenant of cuirassiers in the
+imperial guard?
+
+But the notary of the village, who in the wilds of Gascony does not
+draw more than thirty-six deeds a year, sends his son to study law at
+Paris; the hatter wishes his son to be a notary, the lawyer destines
+his to be a judge, the judge wishes to become a minister in order that
+his sons may be peers. At no epoch in the world's history has there
+been so eager a thirst for education. To-day it is not intellect but
+cleverness that promenades the streets. From every crevice in the
+rocky surface of society brilliant flowers burst forth as the spring
+brings them on the walls of a ruin; even in the caverns there droop
+from the vaulted roof faintly colored tufts of green vegetation. The
+sun of education permeates all. Since this vast development of
+thought, this even and fruitful diffusion of light, we have scarcely
+any men of superiority, because every single man represents the whole
+education of his age. We are surrounded by living encyclopaedias who
+walk about, think, act and wish to be immortalized. Hence the
+frightful catastrophes of climbing ambitions and insensate passions.
+We feel the want of other worlds; there are more hives needed to
+receive the swarms, and especially are we in need of more pretty
+women.
+
+But the maladies by which a man is afflicted do not nullify the sum
+total of human passion. To our shame be it spoken, a woman is never so
+much attached to us as when we are sick.
+
+With this thought, all the epigrams written against the little sex
+--for it is antiquated nowadays to say the fair sex--ought to be
+disarmed of their point and changed into madrigals of eulogy! All men
+ought to consider that the sole virtue of a woman is to love and that
+all women are prodigiously virtuous, and at that point to close the
+book and end their meditation.
+
+Ah! do you not remember that black and gloomy hour when lonely and
+suffering, making accusations against men and especially against your
+friends, weak, discouraged, and filled with thoughts of death, your
+head supported by a fevered pillow and stretched upon a sheet whose
+white trellis-work of linen was stamped upon your skin, you traced
+with your eyes the green paper which covered the walls of your silent
+chamber? Do you recollect, I say, seeing some one noiselessly open
+your door, exhibiting her fair young face, framed with rolls of gold,
+and a bonnet which you had never seen before? She seemed like a star
+in a stormy night, smiling and stealing towards you with an expression
+in which distress and happiness were blended, and flinging herself
+into your arms!
+
+"How did you manage it? What did you tell your husband?" you ask.
+
+"Your husband!"--Ah! this brings us back again into the depths of our
+subject.
+
+
+                                 XV.
+  Morally the man is more often and longer a man than the woman is a
+                                women.
+
+
+On the other hand we ought to consider that among these two millions
+of celibates there are many unhappy men, in whom a profound sense of
+their misery and persistent toil have quenched the instinct of love;
+
+That they have not all passed through college, that there are many
+artisans among them, many footmen--the Duke of Gevres, an extremely
+plain and short man, as he walked through the park of Versailles saw
+several lackeys of fine appearance and said to his friends, "Look how
+these fellows are made by us, and how they imitate us"--that there are
+many contractors, many trades people who think of nothing but money;
+many drudges of the shop;
+
+That there are men more stupid and actually more ugly than God would
+have made them;
+
+That there are those whose character is like a chestnut without a
+kernel;
+
+That the clergy are generally chaste;
+
+That there are men so situated in life that they can never enter the
+brilliant sphere in which honest women move, whether for want of a
+coat, or from their bashfulness, or from the failure of a mahout to
+introduce them.
+
+But let us leave to each one the task of adding to the number of these
+exceptions in accordance with his personal experience--for the object
+of a book is above all things to make people think--and let us
+instantly suppress one-half of the sum total and admit only that there
+are one million of hearts worthy of paying homage to honest women.
+This number approximately includes those who are superior in all
+departments. Women love only the intellectual, but justice must be
+done to virtue.
+
+As for these amiable celibates, each of them relates a string of
+adventures, all of which seriously compromise honest women. It would
+be a very moderate and reserved computation to attribute no more than
+three adventures to each celibate; but if some of them count their
+adventures by the dozen, there are many more who confine themselves to
+two or three incidents of passion and some to a single one in their
+whole life, so that we have in accordance with the statistical method
+taken the average. Now if the number of celibates be multiplied by the
+number of their excesses in love the result will be three millions of
+adventures; to set against this we have only four hundred thousand
+honest women!
+
+If the God of goodness and indulgence who hovers over the worlds does
+not make a second washing of the human race, it is doubtless because
+so little success attended the first.
+
+Here then we have a people, a society which has been sifted, and you
+see the result!
+
+
+                                 XVI.
+ Manners are the hypocrisy of nations, and hypocrisy is more or less
+                               perfect.
+
+
+                                XVII.
+      Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.
+
+
+Physical love is a craving like hunger, excepting that man eats all
+the time, and in love his appetite is neither so persistent nor so
+regular as at the table.
+
+A piece of bread and a carafe of water will satisfy the hunger of any
+man; but our civilization has brought to light the science of
+gastronomy.
+
+Love has its piece of bread, but it has also its science of loving,
+that science which we call coquetry, a delightful word which the
+French alone possess, for that science originated in this country.
+
+Well, after all, isn't it enough to enrage all husbands when they
+think that man is so endowed with an innate desire to change from one
+food to another, that in some savage countries, where travelers have
+landed, they have found alcoholic drinks and ragouts?
+
+Hunger is not so violent as love; but the caprices of the soul are
+more numerous, more bewitching, more exquisite in their intensity than
+the caprices of gastronomy; but all that the poets and the experiences
+of our own life have revealed to us on the subject of love, arms us
+celibates with a terrible power: we are the lion of the Gospel seeking
+whom we may devour.
+
+Then, let every one question his conscience on this point, and search
+his memory if he has ever met a man who confined himself to the love
+of one woman only!
+
+How, alas! are we to explain, while respecting the honor of all the
+peoples, the problem which results from the fact that three millions
+of burning hearts can find no more than four hundred thousand women on
+which they can feed? Should we apportion four celibates for each woman
+and remember that the honest women would have already established,
+instinctively and unconsciously, a sort of understanding between
+themselves and the celibates, like that which the presidents of royal
+courts have initiated, in order to make their partisans in each
+chamber enter successively after a certain number of years?
+
+That would be a mournful way of solving the difficulty!
+
+Should we make the conjecture that certain honest women act in
+dividing up the celibates, as the lion in the fable did? What! Surely,
+in that case, half at least of our altars would become whited
+sepulchres!
+
+Ought one to suggest for the honor of French ladies that in the time
+of peace all other countries should import into France a certain
+number of their honest women, and that these countries should mainly
+consist of England, Germany and Russia? But the European nations would
+in that case attempt to balance matters by demanding that France
+should export a certain number of her pretty women.
+
+Morality and religion suffer so much from such calculations as this,
+that an honest man, in an attempt to prove the innocence of married
+women, finds some reason to believe that dowagers and young people are
+half of them involved in this general corruption, and are liars even
+more truly than are the celibates.
+
+But to what conclusion does our calculation lead us? Think of our
+husbands, who to the disgrace of morals behave almost all of them like
+celibates and glory _in petto_ over their secret adventures.
+
+Why, then we believe that every married man, who is at all attached to
+his wife from honorable motives, can, in the words of the elder
+Corneille, seek a rope and a nail; _foenum habet in cornu_.
+
+It is, however, in the bosom of these four hundred thousand honest
+women that we must, lantern in hand, seek for the number of the
+virtuous women in France! As a matter of fact, we have by our
+statistics of marriage so far only set down the number of those
+creatures with which society has really nothing to do. Is it not true
+that in France the honest people, the people _comme il faut_, form a
+total of scarcely three million individuals, namely, our one million
+of celibates, five hundred thousand honest women, five hundred
+thousand husbands, and a million of dowagers, of infants and of young
+girls?
+
+Are you then astonished at the famous verse of Boileau? This verse
+proves that the poet had cleverly fathomed the discovery
+mathematically propounded to you in these tiresome meditations and
+that his language is by no means hyperbolical.
+
+Nevertheless, virtuous women there certainly are:
+
+Yes, those who have never been tempted and those who die at their
+first child-birth, assuming that their husbands had married them
+virgins;
+
+Yes, those who are ugly as the Kaifakatadary of the Arabian Nights;
+
+Yes, those whom Mirabeau calls "fairy cucumbers" and who are composed
+of atoms exactly like those of strawberry and water-lily roots.
+Nevertheless, we need not believe that!
+
+Further, we acknowledge that, to the credit of our age, we meet, ever
+since the revival of morality and religion and during our own times,
+some women, here and there, so moral, so religious, so devoted to
+their duties, so upright, so precise, so stiff, so virtuous, so--that
+the devil himself dare not even look at them; they are guarded on all
+sides by rosaries, hours of prayer and directors. Pshaw!
+
+We will not attempt to enumerate the women who are virtuous from
+stupidity, for it is acknowledged that in love all women have
+intellect.
+
+In conclusion, we may remark that it is not impossible that there
+exist in some corner of the earth women, young, pretty and virtuous,
+whom the world does not suspect.
+
+But you must not give the name of virtuous woman to her who, in her
+struggle against an involuntary passion, has yielded nothing to her
+lover whom she idolizes. She does injury in the most cruel way in
+which it can possibly be done to a loving husband. For what remains to
+him of his wife? A thing without name, a living corpse. In the very
+midst of delight his wife remains like the guest who has been warned
+by Borgia that certain meats were poisoned; he felt no hunger, he ate
+sparingly or pretended to eat. He longed for the meat which he had
+abandoned for that provided by the terrible cardinal, and sighed for
+the moment when the feast was over and he could leave the table.
+
+What is the result which these reflections on the feminine virtue lead
+to? Here they are; but the last two maxims have been given us by an
+eclectic philosopher of the eighteenth century.
+
+
+                                XVIII.
+  A virtuous woman has in her heart one fibre less or one fibre more
+          than other women; she is either stupid or sublime.
+
+
+                                 XIX.
+      The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.
+
+
+                                 XX.
+The most virtuous women have in them something which is never chaste.
+
+
+                                 XXI.
+"That a man of intellect has doubts about his mistress is conceivable,
+           but about his wife!--that would be too stupid."
+
+
+                                XXII.
+ "Men would be insufferably unhappy if in the presence of women they
+thought the least bit in the world of that which they know by heart."
+
+
+The number of those rare women who, like the Virgins of the Parable,
+have kept their lamps lighted, will always appear very small in the
+eyes of the defenders of virtue and fine feeling; but we must needs
+exclude it from the total sum of honest women, and this subtraction,
+consoling as it is, will increase the danger which threatens husbands,
+will intensify the scandal of their married life, and involve, more or
+less, the reputation of all other lawful spouses.
+
+What husband will be able to sleep peacefully beside his young and
+beautiful wife while he knows that three celibates, at least, are on
+the watch; that if they have not already encroached upon his little
+property, they regard the bride as their destined prey, for sooner or
+later she will fall into their hands, either by stratagem, compulsive
+conquest or free choice? And it is impossible that they should fail
+some day or other to obtain victory!
+
+What a startling conclusion!
+
+On this point the purist in morality, the _collets montes_ will accuse
+us perhaps of presenting here conclusions which are excessively
+despairing; they will be desirous of putting up a defence, either for
+the virtuous women or the celibates; but we have in reserve for them a
+final remark.
+
+Increase the number of honest women and diminish the number of
+celibates, as much as you choose, you will always find that the result
+will be a larger number of gallant adventurers than of honest women;
+you will always find a vast multitude driven through social custom to
+commit three sorts of crime.
+
+If they remain chaste, their health is injured, while they are the
+slaves of the most painful torture; they disappoint the sublime ends
+of nature, and finally die of consumption, drinking milk on the
+mountains of Switzerland!
+
+If they yield to legitimate temptations, they either compromise the
+honest women, and on this point we re-enter on the subject of this
+book, or else they debase themselves by a horrible intercourse with
+the five hundred thousand women of whom we spoke in the third category
+of the first Meditation, and in this case, have still considerable
+chance of visiting Switzerland, drinking milk and dying there!
+
+Have you never been struck, as we have been, by a certain error of
+organization in our social order, the evidence of which gives a moral
+certainty to our last calculations?
+
+The average age at which a man marries is thirty years; the average
+age at which his passions, his most violent desires for genesial
+delight are developed, is twenty years. Now during the ten fairest
+years of his life, during the green season in which his beauty, his
+youth and his wit make him more dangerous to husbands than at any
+other epoch of his life, his finds himself without any means of
+satisfying legitimately that irresistible craving for love which burns
+in his whole nature. During this time, representing the sixth part of
+human life, we are obliged to admit that the sixth part or less of our
+total male population and the sixth part which is the most vigorous is
+placed in a position which is perpetually exhausting for them, and
+dangerous for society.
+
+"Why don't they get married?" cries a religious woman.
+
+But what father of good sense would wish his son to be married at
+twenty years of age?
+
+Is not the danger of these precocious unions apparent at all? It would
+seem as if marriage was a state very much at variance with natural
+habitude, seeing that it requires a special ripeness of judgment in
+those who conform to it. All the world knows what Rousseau said:
+"There must always be a period of libertinage in life either in one
+state or another. It is an evil leaven which sooner or later
+ferments."
+
+Now what mother of a family is there who would expose her daughter to
+the risk of this fermentation when it has not yet taken place?
+
+On the other hand, what need is there to justify a fact under whose
+domination all societies exist? Are there not in every country, as we
+have demonstrated, a vast number of men who live as honestly as
+possible, without being either celibates or married men?
+
+Cannot these men, the religious women will always ask, abide in
+continence like the priests?
+
+Certainly, madame.
+
+Nevertheless, we venture to observe that the vow of chastity is the
+most startling exception to the natural condition of man which society
+makes necessary; but continence is the great point in the priest's
+profession; he must be chaste, as the doctor must be insensible to
+physical sufferings, as the notary and the advocate insensible to the
+misery whose wounds are laid bare to their eyes, as the soldier to the
+sight of death which he meets on the field of battle. From the fact
+that the requirements of civilization ossify certain fibres of the
+heart and render callous certain membranes, we must not necessarily
+conclude that all men are bound to undergo this partial and
+exceptional death of the soul. This would be to reduce the human race
+to a condition of atrocious moral suicide.
+
+But let it be granted that, in the atmosphere of a drawing-room the
+most Jansenistic in the world, appears a young man of twenty-eight who
+has scrupulously guarded his robe of innocence and is as truly
+virginal as the heath-cock which gourmands enjoy. Do you not see that
+the most austere of virtuous women would merely pay him a sarcastic
+compliment on his courage; the magistrate, the strictest that ever
+mounted a bench, would shake his head and smile, and all the ladies
+would hide themselves, so that he might not hear their laughter? When
+the heroic and exceptional young victim leaves the drawing-room, what
+a deluge of jokes bursts upon his innocent head? What a shower of
+insults! What is held to be more shameful in France than impotence,
+than coldness, than the absence of all passion, than simplicity?
+
+The only king of France who would not have laughed was perhaps Louis
+XIII; but as for his roue of a father, he would perhaps have banished
+the young man, either under the accusation that he was no Frenchman or
+from a conviction that he was setting a dangerous example.
+
+Strange contradiction! A young man is equally blamed if he passes life
+in Holy Land, to use an expression of bachelor life. Could it possibly
+be for the benefit of the honest women that the prefects of police,
+and mayors of all time have ordained that the passions of the public
+shall not manifest themselves until nightfall, and shall cease at
+eleven o'clock in the evening?
+
+Where do you wish that our mass of celibates should sow their wild
+oats? And who is deceived on this point? as Figaro asks. Is it the
+governments or the governed? The social order is like the small boys
+who stop their ears at the theatre, so as not to hear the report of
+the firearms. Is society afraid to probe its wound or has it
+recognized the fact that evil is irremediable and things must be
+allowed to run their course? But there crops up here a question of
+legislation, for it is impossible to escape the material and social
+dilemma created by this balance of public virtue in the matter of
+marriage. It is not our business to solve this difficulty; but suppose
+for a moment that society in order to save a multitude of families,
+women and honest girls, found itself compelled to grant to certain
+licensed hearts the right of satisfying the desire of the celibates;
+ought not our laws then to raise up a professional body consisting of
+female Decii who devote themselves for the republic, and make a
+rampart of their bodies round the honest families? The legislators
+have been very wrong hitherto in disdaining to regulate the lot of
+courtesans.
+
+
+                                XXIII.
+        The courtesan is an institution if she is a necessity.
+
+
+This question bristles with so many ifs and buts that we will bequeath
+it for solution to our descendants; it is right that we shall leave
+them something to do. Moreover, its discussion is not germane to this
+work; for in this, more than in any other age, there is a great
+outburst of sensibility; at no other epoch have there been so many
+rules of conduct, because never before has it been so completely
+accepted that pleasure comes from the heart. Now, what man of
+sentiment is there, what celibate is there, who, in the presence of
+four hundred thousand young and pretty women arrayed in the splendors
+of fortune and the graces of wit, rich in treasures of coquetry, and
+lavish in the dispensing of happiness, would wish to go--? For shame!
+
+Let us put forth for the benefit of our future legislature in clear
+and brief axioms the result arrived at during the last few years.
+
+
+                                XXIV.
+    In the social order, inevitable abuses are laws of nature, in
+ accordance with which mankind should frame their civil and political
+                             institutes.
+
+
+                                 XXV.
+"Adultery is like a commercial failure, with this difference," says
+Chamfort, "that it is the innocent party who has been ruined and who
+bears the disgrace."
+
+
+In France the laws that relate to adultery and those that relate to
+bankruptcy require great modifications. Are they too indulgent? Do
+they sin on the score of bad principles? _Caveant consules_!
+
+Come now, courageous athlete, who have taken as your task that which
+is expressed in the little apostrophe which our first Meditation
+addresses to people who have the charge of a wife, what are you going
+to say about it? We hope that this rapid review of the question does
+not make you tremble, that you are not one of those men whose nervous
+fluid congeals at the sight of a precipice or a boa constrictor! Well!
+my friend, he who owns soil has war and toil. The men who want your
+gold are more numerous than those who want your wife.
+
+After all, husbands are free to take these trifles for arithmetical
+estimates, or arithmetical estimates for trifles. The illusions of
+life are the best things in life; that which is most respectable in
+life is our futile credulity. Do there not exist many people whose
+principles are merely prejudices, and who not having the force of
+character to form their own ideas of happiness and virtue accept what
+is ready made for them by the hand of legislators? Nor do we address
+those Manfreds who having taken off too many garments wish to raise
+all the curtains, that is, in moments when they are tortured by a sort
+of moral spleen. By them, however, the question is boldly stated and
+we know the extent of the evil.
+
+It remains that we should examine the chances and changes which each
+man is likely to meet in marriage, and which may weaken him in that
+struggle from which our champion should issue victorious.
+
+
+
+                            MEDITATION V.
+
+                         OF THE PREDESTINED.
+
+Predestined means destined in advance for happiness or unhappiness.
+Theology has seized upon this word and employs it in relation to the
+happy; we give to the term a meaning which is unfortunate to our elect
+of which one can say in opposition to the Gospel, "Many are called,
+many are chosen."
+
+Experience has demonstrated that there are certain classes of men more
+subject than others to certain infirmities; the Gascons are given to
+exaggeration and Parisians to vanity. As we see that apoplexy attacks
+people with short necks, or butchers are liable to carbuncle, as gout
+attacks the rich, health the poor, deafness kings, paralysis
+administrators, so it has been remarked that certain classes of
+husbands and their wives are more given to illegitimate passions. Thus
+they forestall the celibates, they form another sort of aristocracy.
+If any reader should be enrolled in one of these aristocratic classes
+he will, we hope, have sufficient presence of mind, he or at least his
+wife, instantly to call to mind the favorite axiom of Lhomond's Latin
+Grammar: "No rule without exception." A friend of the house may even
+recite the verse--
+
+  "Present company always excepted."
+
+And then every one will have the right to believe, _in petto_, that he
+forms the exception. But our duty, the interest which we take in
+husbands and the keen desire which we have to preserve young and
+pretty women from the caprices and catastrophes which a lover brings
+in his train, force us to give notice to husbands that they ought to
+be especially on their guard.
+
+In this recapitulation first are to be reckoned the husbands whom
+business, position or public office calls from their houses and
+detains for a definite time. It is these who are the standard-bearers
+of the brotherhood.
+
+Among them, we would reckon magistrates, holding office during
+pleasure or for life, and obliged to remain at the Palace for the
+greater portion of the day; other functionaries sometimes find means
+to leave their office at business hours; but a judge or a public
+prosecutor, seated on his cushion of lilies, is bound even to die
+during the progress of the hearing. There is his field of battle.
+
+It is the same with the deputies and peers who discuss the laws, of
+ministers who share the toils of the king, of secretaries who work
+with the ministers, of soldiers on campaign, and indeed with the
+corporal of the police patrol, as the letter of Lafleur, in the
+_Sentimental Journey_, plainly shows.
+
+Next to the men who are obliged to be absent from home at certain
+fixed hours, come the men whom vast and serious undertakings leave not
+one minute for love-making; their foreheads are always wrinkled with
+anxiety, their conversation is generally void of merriment.
+
+At the head of these unfortunates we must place the bankers, who toil
+in the acquisition of millions, whose heads are so full of
+calculations that the figures burst through their skulls and range
+themselves in columns of addition on their foreheads.
+
+These millionaires, forgetting most of the time the sacred laws of
+marriage and the attention due to the tender flower which they have
+undertaken to cultivate, never think of watering it or of defending it
+from the heat and cold. They scarcely recognize the fact that the
+happiness of their spouses is in their keeping; if they ever do
+remember this, it is at table, when they see seated before them a
+woman in rich array, or when a coquette, fearing their brutal repulse,
+comes, gracious as Venus, to ask them for cash-- Oh! it is then, that
+they recall, sometimes very vividly, the rights specified in the two
+hundred and thirteenth article of the civil code, and their wives are
+grateful to them; but like the heavy tariff which the law lays upon
+foreign merchandise, their wives suffer and pay the tribute, in virtue
+of the axiom which says: "There is no pleasure without pain."
+
+The men of science who spend whole months in gnawing at the bone of an
+antediluvian monster, in calculating the laws of nature, when there is
+an opportunity to peer into her secrets, the Grecians and Latinists
+who dine on a thought of Tacitus, sup on a phrase of Thucydides, spend
+their life in brushing the dust from library shelves, in keeping guard
+over a commonplace book, or a papyrus, are all predestined. So great
+is their abstraction or their ecstasy, that nothing that goes on
+around them strikes their attention. Their unhappiness is consummated;
+in full light of noon they scarcely even perceive it. Oh happy men! a
+thousand times happy! Example: Beauzee, returning home after session
+at the Academy, surprises his wife with a German. "Did not I tell you,
+madame, that it was necessary that I shall go," cried the stranger.
+"My dear sir," interrupted the academician, "you ought to say that I
+_should_ go!"
+
+Then there come, lyre in hand, certain poets whose whole animal
+strength has left the ground floor and mounted to the upper story.
+They know better how to mount Pegasus than the beast of old Peter,
+they rarely marry, although they are accustomed to lavish the fury of
+their passions on some wandering or imaginary Chloris.
+
+But the men whose noses are stained with snuff;
+
+But those who, to their misfortune, have a perpetual cold in their
+head;
+
+But the sailors who smoke or chew;
+
+But those men whose dry and bilious temperament makes them always look
+as if they had eaten a sour apple;
+
+But the men who in private life have certain cynical habits,
+ridiculous fads, and who always, in spite of everything, look
+unwashed;
+
+But the husbands who have obtained the degrading name of "hen-pecked";
+
+Finally the old men who marry young girls.
+
+All these people are _par excellence_ among the predestined.
+
+There is a final class of the predestined whose ill-fortune is almost
+certain, we mean restless and irritable men, who are inclined to
+meddle and tyrannize, who have a great idea of domestic domination,
+who openly express their low ideas of women and who know no more about
+life than herrings about natural history. When these men marry, their
+homes have the appearance of a wasp whose head a schoolboy has cut
+off, and who dances here and there on a window pane. For this sort of
+predestined the present work is a sealed book. We do not write any
+more for those imbeciles, walking effigies, who are like the statues
+of a cathedral, than for those old machines of Marly which are too
+weak to fling water over the hedges of Versailles without being in
+danger of sudden collapse.
+
+I rarely make my observations on the conjugal oddities with which the
+drawing-room is usually full, without recalling vividly a sight which
+I once enjoyed in early youth:
+
+In 1819 I was living in a thatched cottage situated in the bosom of
+the delightful valley l'Isle-Adam. My hermitage neighbored on the park
+of Cassan, the sweetest of retreats, the most fascinating in aspect,
+the most attractive as a place to ramble in, the most cool and
+refreshing in summer, of all places created by luxury and art. This
+verdant country-seat owes its origin to a farmer-general of the good
+old times, a certain Bergeret, celebrated for his originality; who
+among other fantastic dandyisms adopted the habit of going to the
+opera, with his hair powdered in gold; he used to light up his park
+for his own solitary delectation and on one occasion ordered a
+sumptuous entertainment there, in which he alone took part. This
+rustic Sardanapalus returned from Italy so passionately charmed with
+the scenery of that beautiful country that, by a sudden freak of
+enthusiasm, he spent four or five millions in order to represent in
+his park the scenes of which he had pictures in his portfolio. The
+most charming contrasts of foliage, the rarest trees, long valleys,
+and prospects the most picturesque that could be brought from abroad,
+Borromean islands floating on clear eddying streams like so many rays,
+which concentrate their various lustres on a single point, on an Isola
+Bella, from which the enchanted eye takes in each detail at its
+leisure, or on an island in the bosom of which is a little house
+concealed under the drooping foliage of a century-old ash, an island
+fringed with irises, rose-bushes, and flowers which appears like an
+emerald richly set. Ah! one might rove a thousand leagues for such a
+place! The most sickly, the most soured, the most disgusted of our men
+of genius in ill health would die of satiety at the end of fifteen
+days, overwhelmed with the luscious sweetness of fresh life in such a
+spot.
+
+The man who was quite regardless of the Eden which he thus possessed
+had neither wife nor children, but was attached to a large ape which
+he kept. A graceful turret of wood, supported by a sculptured column,
+served as a dwelling place for this vicious animal, who being kept
+chained and rarely petted by his eccentric master, oftener at Paris
+than in his country home, had gained a very bad reputation. I
+recollect seeing him once in the presence of certain ladies show
+almost as much insolence as if he had been a man. His master was
+obliged to kill him, so mischievous did he gradually become.
+
+One morning while I was sitting under a beautiful tulip tree in
+flower, occupied in doing nothing but inhaling the lovely perfumes
+which the tall poplars kept confined within the brilliant enclosure,
+enjoying the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters
+and the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head
+by clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of
+my future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before
+from Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has
+nothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear
+anything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If
+the distant notes of Roland's Horn had only filled the air with life,
+perhaps--but a noisy fiddler like this, who undertakes to bring to you
+the expression of human ideas and the phraseology of music! This
+Amphion, who was walking up and down the dining-room, finished by
+taking a seat on the window-sill, exactly in front of the monkey.
+Perhaps he was looking for an audience. Suddenly I saw the animal
+quietly descend from his little dungeon, stand upon his hind feet, bow
+his head forward like a swimmer and fold his arms over his bosom like
+Spartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker,
+summoned by a sweet voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir not
+unknown to me, laid his violin on the window-sill and made off like a
+swallow who rejoins his companion by a rapid level swoop. The great
+monkey, whose chain was sufficiently long, approached the window and
+gravely took in hand the violin. I don't know whether you have ever
+had as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to learn music, but
+at the present moment, when I laugh much less than I did in those
+careless days, I never think of that monkey without a smile; the
+semi-man began by grasping the instrument with his fist and by
+sniffing
+at it as if he were tasting the flavor of an apple. The snort from his
+nostrils probably produced a dull harmonious sound in the sonorous
+wood and then the orang-outang shook his head, turned over the violin,
+turned it back again, raised it up in the air, lowered it, held it
+straight out, shook it, put it to his ear, set it down, and picked it
+up again with a rapidity of movement peculiar to these agile
+creatures. He seemed to question the dumb wood with faltering sagacity
+and in his gestures there was something marvelous as well as
+infantile. At last he undertook with grotesque gestures to place the
+violin under his chin, while in one hand he held the neck; but like a
+spoiled child he soon wearied of a study which required skill not to
+be obtained in a moment and he twitched the strings without being able
+to draw forth anything but discordant sounds. He seemed annoyed, laid
+the violin on the window-sill and snatching up the bow he began to
+push it to and fro with violence, like a mason sawing a block of
+stone. This effort only succeeded in wearying his fastidious ears, and
+he took the bow with both hands and snapped it in two on the innocent
+instrument, source of harmony and delight. It seemed as if I saw
+before me a schoolboy holding under him a companion lying face
+downwards, while he pommeled him with a shower of blows from his fist,
+as if to punish him for some delinquency. The violin being now tried
+and condemned, the monkey sat down upon the fragments of it and amused
+himself with stupid joy in mixing up the yellow strings of the broken
+bow.
+
+Never since that day have I been able to look upon the home of the
+predestined without comparing the majority of husbands to this
+orang-outang trying to play the violin.
+
+Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love
+is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is
+necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of
+them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious
+which befits it. How many monkeys--men, I mean--marry without knowing
+what a woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wives
+as the ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken the heart
+which they did not understand, as they might dim and disdain the
+amulet whose secret was unknown to them. They are children their whole
+life through, who leave life with empty hands after having talked
+about love, about pleasure, about licentiousness and virtue as slaves
+talk about liberty. Almost all of them married with the most profound
+ignorance of women and of love. They commenced by breaking in the door
+of a strange house and expected to be welcomed in this drawing-room.
+But the rudest artist knows that between him and his instrument, of
+wood, or of ivory, there exists a mysterious sort of friendship. He
+knows by experience that it takes years to establish this
+understanding between an inert matter and himself. He did not
+discover, at the first touch, the resources, the caprices, the
+deficiencies, the excellencies of his instrument. It did not become a
+living soul for him, a source of incomparable melody until he had
+studied for a long time; man and instrument did not come to understand
+each other like two friends, until both of them had been skillfully
+questioned and tested by frequent intercourse.
+
+Can a man ever learn woman and know how to decipher this wondrous
+strain of music, by remaining through life like a seminarian in his
+cell? Is it possible that a man who makes it his business to think for
+others, to judge others, to rule others, to steal money from others,
+to feed, to heal, to wound others--that, in fact, any of our
+predestined, can spare time to study a woman? They sell their time for
+money, how can they give it away for happiness? Money is their god. No
+one can serve two masters at the same time. Is not the world,
+moreover, full of young women who drag along pale and weak, sickly and
+suffering? Some of them are the prey of feverish inflammations more or
+less serious, others lie under the cruel tyranny of nervous attacks
+more or less violent. All the husbands of these women belong to the
+class of the ignorant and the predestined. They have caused their own
+misfortune and expended as much pains in producing it as the husband
+artist would have bestowed in bringing to flower the late and
+delightful blooms of pleasure. The time which an ignorant man passes
+to consummate his own ruin is precisely that which a man of knowledge
+employs in the education of his happiness.
+
+
+                                XXVI.
+             Do not begin marriage by a violation of law.
+
+
+In the preceding meditations we have indicated the extent of the evil
+with the reckless audacity of those surgeons, who boldly induce the
+formation of false tissues under which a shameful wound is concealed.
+Public virtue, transferred to the table of our amphitheatre, has lost
+even its carcass under the strokes of the scalpel. Lover or husband,
+have you smiled, or have you trembled at this evil? Well, it is with
+malicious delight that we lay this huge social burden on the
+conscience of the predestined. Harlequin, when he tried to find out
+whether his horse could be accustomed to go without food, was not more
+ridiculous than the men who wish to find happiness in their home and
+yet refuse to cultivate it with all the pains which it demands. The
+errors of women are so many indictments of egotism, neglect and
+worthlessness in husbands.
+
+Yet it is yours, reader, it pertains to you, who have often condemned
+in another the crime which you yourself commit, it is yours to hold
+the balance. One of the scales is quite loaded, take care what you are
+going to put in the other. Reckon up the number of predestined ones
+who may be found among the total number of married people, weigh them,
+and you will then know where the evil is seated.
+
+Let us try to penetrate more deeply into the causes of this conjugal
+sickliness.
+
+The word love, when applied to the reproduction of the species, is the
+most hateful blasphemy which modern manners have taught us to utter.
+Nature, in raising us above the beasts by the divine gift of thought,
+had rendered us very sensitive to bodily sensations, emotional
+sentiment, cravings of appetite and passions. This double nature of
+ours makes of man both an animal and a lover. This distinction gives
+the key to the social problem which we are considering.
+
+Marriage may be considered in three ways, politically, as well as from
+a civil and moral point of view: as a law, as a contract and as an
+institution. As a law, its object is a reproduction of the species; as
+a contract, it relates to the transmission of property; as an
+institution, it is a guarantee which all men give and by which all are
+bound: they have father and mother, and they will have children.
+Marriage, therefore, ought to be the object of universal respect.
+Society can only take into consideration those cardinal points, which,
+from a social point of view, dominate the conjugal question.
+
+Most men have no other views in marrying, than reproduction, property
+or children; but neither reproduction nor property nor children
+constitutes happiness. The command, "Increase and multiply," does not
+imply love. To ask of a young girl whom we have seen fourteen times in
+fifteen days, to give you love in the name of law, the king and
+justice, is an absurdity worthy of the majority of the predestined.
+
+Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment; happiness in
+marriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair.
+Hence it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himself
+bound by certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed the
+benefit of the social law which consecrates the natural craving, he
+must obey also the secret laws of nature by which sentiments unfold
+themselves. If he stakes his happiness on being himself loved, he must
+himself love sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.
+
+But to feel this passion is always to feel desire. Can a man always
+desire his wife?
+
+Yes.
+
+It is as absurd to deny that it is possible for a man always to love
+the same woman, as it would be to affirm that some famous musician
+needed several violins in order to execute a piece of music or compose
+a charming melody.
+
+Love is the poetry of the senses. It has the destiny of all that which
+is great in man and of all that which proceeds from his thought.
+Either it is sublime, or it is not. When once it exists, it exists
+forever and goes on always increasing. This is the love which the
+ancients made the child of heaven and earth.
+
+Literature revolves round seven situations; music expresses everything
+with seven notes; painting employs but seven colors; like these three
+arts, love perhaps founds itself on seven principles, but we leave
+this investigation for the next century to carry out.
+
+If poetry, music and painting have found infinite forms of expression,
+pleasure should be even more diversified. For in the three arts which
+aid us in seeking, often with little success, truth by means of
+analogy, the man stands alone with his imagination, while love is the
+union of two bodies and of two souls. If the three principal methods
+upon which we rely for the expression of thought require preliminary
+study in those whom nature has made poets, musicians or painters, is
+it not obvious that, in order, to be happy, it is necessary to be
+initiated into the secrets of pleasure? All men experience the craving
+for reproduction, as all feel hunger and thirst; but all are not
+called to be lovers and gastronomists. Our present civilization has
+proved that taste is a science, and it is only certain privileged
+beings who have learned how to eat and drink. Pleasure considered as
+an art is still waiting for its physiologists. As for ourselves, we
+are contented with pointing out that ignorance of the principles upon
+which happiness is founded, is the sole cause of that misfortune which
+is the lot of all the predestined.
+
+It is with the greatest timidity that we venture upon the publication
+of a few aphorisms which may give birth to this new art, as casts have
+created the science of geology; and we offer them for the meditation
+of philosophers, of young marrying people and of the predestined.
+
+
+                        CATECHISM OF MARRIAGE.
+
+
+                                XXVII.
+                        Marriage is a science.
+
+
+                               XXVIII.
+A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected
+                         at least one woman.
+
+
+                                XXIX.
+           The fate of the home depends on the first night.
+
+
+                                 XXX.
+A woman deprived of her free will can never have the credit of making
+                             a sacrifice.
+
+
+                                XXXI.
+In love, putting aside all consideration of the soul, the heart of a
+woman is like a lyre which does not reveal its secret, excepting to
+him who is a skillful player.
+
+
+                                XXXII.
+Independently of any gesture of repulsion, there exists in the soul of
+all women a sentiment which tends, sooner or later, to proscribe all
+pleasure devoid of passionate feeling.
+
+
+                               XXXIII.
+The interest of a husband as much as his honor forbids him to indulge
+  a pleasure which he has not had the skill to make his wife desire.
+
+
+                                XXXIV.
+Pleasure being caused by the union of sensation and sentiment, we can
+say without fear of contradiction that pleasures are a sort of
+material ideas.
+
+
+                                XXXV.
+As ideas are capable of infinite combination, it ought to be the same
+                           with pleasures.
+
+
+                                XXXVI.
+In the life of man there are no two moments of pleasure exactly alike,
+ any more than there are two leaves of identical shape upon the same
+                                tree.
+
+
+                               XXXVII.
+If there are differences between one moment of pleasure and another, a
+             man can always be happy with the same woman.
+
+
+                               XXXVIII.
+To seize adroitly upon the varieties of pleasure, to develop them, to
+impart to them a new style, an original expression, constitutes the
+genius of a husband.
+
+
+                                XXXIX.
+Between two beings who do not love each other this genius is
+licentiousness; but the caresses over which love presides are always
+pure.
+
+
+                                 XL.
+    The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most
+                             voluptuous.
+
+
+                                 XLI.
+      The most virtuous woman can be forward without knowing it.
+
+
+                                XLII.
+When two human beings are united by pleasure, all social
+conventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef on
+which many vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgets
+there is a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal
+love ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of its
+eyes, excepting at the due season.
+
+
+                                XLIII.
+ Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but
+                          in striking true.
+
+
+                                XLIV.
+To call a desire into being, to nourish it, to develop it, to bring it
+to full growth, to excite it, to satisfy it, is a complete poem of
+itself.
+
+
+                                 XLV.
+The progression of pleasures is from the distich to the quatrain, from
+the quatrain to the sonnet, from the sonnet to the ballad, from the
+ballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to
+the dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool.
+
+
+                                XLVI.
+                 Each night ought to have its _menu_.
+
+
+                                XLVII.
+    Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours
+                  everything, that is, familiarity.
+
+
+                               XLVIII.
+ If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of
+          two consecutive nights, he has married too early.
+
+
+                                XLIX.
+It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it
+is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things
+from time to time.
+
+
+                                  L.
+ A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to
+                               awaken.
+
+
+                                 LI.
+The man who enters his wife's dressing-room is either a philosopher or
+                             an imbecile.
+
+
+                                 LII.
+       The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man.
+
+
+                                LIII.
+  The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a
+                               throne.
+
+
+                                 LIV.
+ A man must not flatter himself that he knows his wife, and is making
+           her happy unless he sees her often at his knees.
+
+
+It is to the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions
+of snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men
+that Sterne addressed, in _Tristram Shandy_, the letter written by
+Walter Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marry
+the widow Wadman.
+
+These celebrated instructions which the most original of English
+writers has comprised in this letter, suffice with some few exceptions
+to complete our observations on the manner in which husbands should
+behave to their wives; and we offer it in its original form to the
+reflections of the predestined, begging that they will meditate upon
+it as one of the most solid masterpieces of human wit.
+
+
+ "MY DEAR BROTHER TOBY,
+
+ "What I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of
+  love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee--tho' not
+  so well for me--that thou hast occasion for a letter of
+  instructions upon that head, and that I am able to write it to
+  thee.
+
+ "Had it been the good pleasure of Him who disposes of our lots, and
+  thou no sufferer by the knowledge, I had been well content that
+  thou should'st have dipped the pen this moment into the ink
+  instead of myself; but that not being the case--Mrs. Shandy being
+  now close beside me, preparing for bed--I have thrown together
+  without order, and just as they have come into my mind, such hints
+  and documents as I deem may be of use to thee; intending, in this,
+  to give thee a token of my love; not doubting, my dear Toby, of
+  the manner in which it will be accepted.
+
+ "In the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion in
+  the affair--though I perceive from a glow in my cheek, that I
+  blush as I begin to speak to thee upon the subject, as well
+  knowing, notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how few of its
+  offices thou neglectest--yet I would remind thee of one (during
+  the continuance of thy courtship) in a particular manner, which I
+  would not have omitted; and that is, never to go forth upon the
+  enterprise, whether it be in the morning or in the afternoon,
+  without first recommending thyself to the protection of Almighty
+  God, that He may defend thee from the evil one.
+
+ "Shave the whole top of thy crown clean once at least every four or
+  five days, but oftener if convenient; lest in taking off thy wig
+  before her, thro' absence of mind, she should be able to discover
+  how much has been cut away by Time--how much by Trim.
+
+ "'Twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her fancy.
+
+ "Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim,
+  Toby--
+
+ "_'That women are timid.'_ And 'tis well they are--else there would
+  be no dealing with them.
+
+ "Let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang too loose about thy
+  thighs, like the trunk-hose of our ancestors.
+
+ "A just medium prevents all conclusions.
+
+ "Whatever thou hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to utter
+  it in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches
+  it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: For this
+  cause, if thou canst help it, never throw down the tongs and
+  poker.
+
+ "Avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse
+  with her, and do whatever lies in thy power at the same time, to
+  keep from her all books and writings which tend there to: there
+  are some devotional tracts, which if thou canst entice her to
+  read over, it will be well: but suffer her not to look into
+  _Rabelais_, or _Scarron_, or _Don Quixote_.
+
+ "They are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear
+  Toby, that there is no passion so serious as lust.
+
+ "Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her
+  parlor.
+
+ "And if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sofa with her, and
+  she gives thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers--beware of
+  taking it--thou canst not lay thy hand upon hers, but she will
+  feel the temper of thine. Leave that and as many other things as
+  thou canst, quite undetermined; by so doing, thou wilt have her
+  curiosity on thy side; and if she is not conquered by that, and
+  thy Asse continues still kicking, which there is great reason to
+  suppose--thou must begin, with first losing a few ounces of blood
+  below the ears, according to the practice of the ancient
+  Scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits of the appetite by
+  that means.
+
+ "_Avicenna_, after this, is for having the part anointed with the
+  syrup of hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges--and I
+  believe rightly. But thou must eat little or no goat's flesh, nor
+  red deer--nor even foal's flesh by any means; and carefully
+  abstain--that is, as much as thou canst,--from peacocks, cranes,
+  coots, didappers and water-hens.
+
+ "As for thy drink--I need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of
+  Vervain and the herb Hanea, of which Aelian relates such effects;
+  but if thy stomach palls with it--discontinue it from time to
+  time, taking cucumbers, melons, purslane, water-lilies, woodbine,
+  and lettuce, in the stead of them.
+
+ "There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present--
+
+ "Unless the breaking out of a fresh war.--So wishing everything,
+  dear Toby, for the best,
+
+    "I rest thy affectionate brother,
+
+        "WALTER SHANDY."
+
+
+Under the present circumstances Sterne himself would doubtless have
+omitted from his letter the passage about the ass; and, far from
+advising the predestined to be bled he would have changed the regimen
+of cucumbers and lettuces for one eminently substantial. He
+recommended the exercise of economy, in order to attain to the power
+of magic liberality in the moment of war, thus imitating the admirable
+example of the English government, which in time of peace has two
+hundred ships in commission, but whose shipwrights can, in time of
+need, furnish double that quantity when it is desirable to scour the
+sea and carry off a whole foreign navy.
+
+When a man belongs to the small class of those who by a liberal
+education have been made masters of the domain of thought, he ought
+always, before marrying, to examine his physical and moral resources.
+To contend advantageously with the tempest which so many attractions
+tend to raise in the heart of his wife, a husband ought to possess,
+besides the science of pleasure and a fortune which saves him from
+sinking into any class of the predestined, robust health, exquisite
+tact, considerable intellect, too much good sense to make his
+superiority felt, excepting on fit occasions, and finally great
+acuteness of hearing and sight.
+
+If he has a handsome face, a good figure, a manly air, and yet falls
+short of all these promises, he will sink into the class of the
+predestined. On the other hand, a husband who is plain in features but
+has a face full of expression, will find himself, if his wife once
+forgets his plainness, in a situation most favorable for his struggle
+against the genius of evil.
+
+He will study (and this is a detail omitted from the letter of Sterne)
+to give no occasion for his wife's disgust. Also, he will resort
+moderately to the use of perfumes, which, however, always expose
+beauty to injurious suspicions.
+
+He ought as carefully to study how to behave and how to pick out
+subjects of conversation, as if he were courting the most inconstant
+of women. It is for him that a philosopher has made the following
+reflection:
+
+"More than one woman has been rendered unhappy for the rest of her
+life, has been lost and dishonored by a man whom she has ceased to
+love, because he took off his coat awkwardly, trimmed one of his nails
+crookedly, put on a stocking wrong side out, and was clumsy with a
+button."
+
+One of the most important of his duties will be to conceal from his
+wife the real state of his fortune, so that he may satisfy her fancies
+and caprices as generous celibates are wont to do.
+
+Then the most difficult thing of all, a thing to accomplish which
+superhuman courage is required, is to exercise the most complete
+control over the ass of which Sterne speaks. This ass ought to be as
+submissive as a serf of the thirteenth century was to his lord; to
+obey and be silent, advance and stop, at the slightest word.
+
+Even when equipped with these advantages, a husband enters the lists
+with scarcely any hope of success. Like all the rest, he still runs
+the risk of becoming, for his wife, a sort of responsible editor.
+
+"And why!" will exclaim certain good but small-minded people, whose
+horizon is limited to the tip of their nose, "why is it necessary to
+take so much pains in order to love, and why is it necessary to go to
+school beforehand, in order to be happy in your own home? Does the
+government intend to institute a professional chair of love, just as
+it has instituted a chair of law?"
+
+This is our answer:
+
+These multiplied rules, so difficult to deduce, these minute
+observations, these ideas which vary so as to suit different
+temperaments, are innate, so to speak, in the heart of those who are
+born for love; just as his feeling of taste and his indescribable
+felicity in combining ideas are natural to the soul of the poet, the
+painter or the musician. The men who would experience any fatigue in
+putting into practice the instructions given in this Meditation are
+naturally predestined, just as he who cannot perceive the connection
+which exists between two different ideas is an imbecile. As a matter
+of fact, love has its great men although they be unrecognized, as war
+has its Napoleons, poetry its Andre Cheniers and philosophy its
+Descartes.
+
+This last observation contains the germ of a true answer to the
+question which men from time immemorial have been asking: Why are
+happy marriages so very rare?
+
+This phenomenon of the moral world is rarely met with for the reason
+that people of genius are rarely met with. A passion which lasts is a
+sublime drama acted by two performers of equal talent, a drama in
+which sentiments form the catastrophe, where desires are incidents and
+the lightest thought brings a change of scene. Now how is it possible,
+in this herd of bimana which we call a nation, to meet, on any but
+rare occasions, a man and a woman who possess in the same degree the
+genius of love, when men of talent are so thinly sown and so rare in
+all other sciences, in the pursuit of which the artist needs only to
+understand himself, in order to attain success?
+
+Up to the present moment, we have been confronted with making a
+forecast of the difficulties, to some degree physical, which two
+married people have to overcome, in order to be happy; but what a task
+would be ours if it were necessary to unfold the startling array of
+moral obligations which spring from their differences in character?
+Let us cry halt! The man who is skillful enough to guide the
+temperament will certainly show himself master of the soul of another.
+
+We will suppose that our model husband fulfills the primary conditions
+necessary, in order that he may dispute or maintain possession of his
+wife, in spite of all assailants. We will admit that he is not to be
+reckoned in any of the numerous classes of the predestined which we
+have passed in review. Let us admit that he has become imbued with the
+spirit of all our maxims; that he has mastered the admirable science,
+some of whose precepts we have made known; that he has married wisely,
+that he knows his wife, that he is loved by her; and let us continue
+the enumeration of all those general causes which might aggravate the
+critical situation which we shall represent him as occupying for the
+instruction of the human race.
+
+
+
+                            MEDITATION VI.
+
+                         OF BOARDING SCHOOLS.
+
+If you have married a young lady whose education has been carried on
+at a boarding school, there are thirty more obstacles to your
+happiness, added to all those which we have already enumerated, and
+you are exactly like a man who thrusts his hands into a wasp's nest.
+
+Immediately, therefore, after the nuptial blessing has been
+pronounced, without allowing yourself to be imposed upon by the
+innocent ignorance, the frank graces and the modest countenance of
+your wife, you ought to ponder well and faithfully follow out the
+axioms and precepts which we shall develop in the second part of this
+book. You should even put into practice the rigors prescribed in the
+third part, by maintaining an active surveillance, a paternal
+solicitude at all hours, for the very day after your marriage, perhaps
+on the evening of your wedding day, there is danger in the house.
+
+I mean to say that you should call to mind the secret and profound
+instruction which the pupils have acquired _de natura rerum_,--of the
+nature of things. Did Lapeyrouse, Cook or Captain Peary ever show so
+much ardor in navigating the ocean towards the Poles as the scholars
+of the Lycee do in approaching forbidden tracts in the ocean of
+pleasure? Since girls are more cunning, cleverer and more curious than
+boys, their secret meetings and their conversations, which all the art
+of their teachers cannot check, are necessarily presided over by a
+genius a thousand times more informal than that of college boys. What
+man has ever heard the moral reflections and the corrupting
+confidences of these young girls? They alone know the sports at which
+honor is lost in advance, those essays in pleasure, those promptings
+in voluptuousness, those imitations of bliss, which may be compared to
+the thefts made by greedy children from a dessert which is locked up.
+A girl may come forth from her boarding school a virgin, but never
+chaste. She will have discussed, time and time again at secret
+meetings, the important question of lovers, and corruption will
+necessarily have overcome her heart or her spirit.
+
+Nevertheless, we will admit that your wife has not participated in
+these virginal delights, in these premature deviltries. Is she any
+better because she has never had any voice in the secret councils of
+grown-up girls? No! She will, in any case, have contracted a
+friendship with other young ladies, and our computation will be
+modest, if we attribute to her no more than two or three intimate
+friends. Are you certain that after your wife has left boarding
+school, her young friends have not there been admitted to those
+confidences, in which an attempt is made to learn in advance, at least
+by analogy, the pastimes of doves? And then her friends will marry;
+you will have four women to watch instead of one, four characters to
+divine, and you will be at the mercy of four husbands and a dozen
+celibates, of whose life, principles and habits you are quite
+ignorant, at a time when our meditations have revealed to you certain
+coming of a day when you will have your hands full with the people
+whom you married with your wife. Satan alone could have thought of
+placing a girl's boarding school in the middle of a large town! Madame
+Campan had at least the wisdom to set up her famous institution at
+Ecouen. This sensible precaution proved that she was no ordinary
+woman. There, her young ladies did not gaze upon the picture gallery
+of the streets, the huge and grotesque figures and the obscene words
+drawn by some evil-spirited pencil. They had not perpetually before
+their eyes the spectacle of human infirmities exhibited at every
+barrier in France, and treacherous book-stalls did not vomit out upon
+them in secret the poison of books which taught evil and set passion
+on fire. This wise school-mistress, moreover, could only at Ecouen
+preserve a young lady for you spotless and pure, if, even there, that
+were possible. Perhaps you hope to find no difficulty in preventing
+your wife from seeing her school friends? What folly! She will meet
+them at the ball, at the theatre, out walking and in the world at
+large; and how many services two friends can render each other! But we
+will meditate upon this new subject of alarm in its proper place and
+order.
+
+Nor is this all; if your mother-in-law sent her daughter to a boarding
+school, do you believe that this was out of solicitude for her
+daughter? A girl of twelve or fifteen is a terrible Argus; and if your
+mother-in-law did not wish to have an Argus in her house I should be
+inclined to suspect that your mother-in-law belonged undoubtedly to
+the most shady section of our honest women. She will, therefore, prove
+for her daughter on every occasion either a deadly example or a
+dangerous adviser.
+
+Let us stop here!--The mother-in-law requires a whole Meditation for
+herself.
+
+So that, whichever way you turn, the bed of marriage, in this
+connection, is equally full of thorns.
+
+Before the Revolution, several aristocratic families used to send
+their daughters to the convent. This example was followed by a number
+of people who imagined that in sending their daughters to a school
+where the daughters of some great noblemen were sent, they would
+assume the tone and manners of aristocrats. This delusion of pride
+was, from the first, fatal to domestic happiness; for the convents had
+all the disadvantages of other boarding schools. The idleness that
+prevailed there was more terrible. The cloister bars inflame the
+imagination. Solitude is a condition very favorable to the devil; and
+one can scarcely imagine what ravages the most ordinary phenomena of
+life are able to leave in the soul of these young girls, dreamy,
+ignorant and unoccupied.
+
+Some of them, by reason of their having indulged idle fancies, are led
+into curious blunders. Others, having indulged in exaggerated ideas of
+married life, say to themselves, as soon as they have taken a husband,
+"What! Is this all?" In every way, the imperfect instruction, which is
+given to girls educated in common, has in it all the danger of
+ignorance and all the unhappiness of science.
+
+A young girl brought up at home by her mother or by her virtuous,
+bigoted, amiable or cross-grained old aunt; a young girl, whose steps
+have never crossed the home threshold without being surrounded by
+chaperons, whose laborious childhood has been wearied by tasks, albeit
+they were profitless, to whom in short everything is a mystery, even
+the Seraphin puppet show, is one of those treasures which are met
+with, here and there in the world, like woodland flowers surrounded by
+brambles so thick that mortal eye cannot discern them. The man who
+owns a flower so sweet and pure as this, and leaves it to be
+cultivated by others, deserves his unhappiness a thousand times over.
+He is either a monster or a fool.
+
+And if in the preceding Meditation we have succeeded in proving to you
+that by far the greater number of men live in the most absolute
+indifference to their personal honor, in the matter of marriage, is it
+reasonable to believe that any considerable number of them are
+sufficiently rich, sufficiently intellectual, sufficiently penetrating
+to waste, like Burchell in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, one or two years
+in studying and watching the girls whom they mean to make their wives,
+when they pay so little attention to them after conjugal possession
+during that period of time which the English call the honeymoon, and
+whose influence we shall shortly discuss?
+
+Since, however, we have spent some time in reflecting upon this
+important matter, we would observe that there are many methods of
+choosing more or less successfully, even though the choice be promptly
+made.
+
+It is, for example, beyond doubt that the probabilities will be in
+your favor:
+
+I. If you have chosen a young lady whose temperament resembles that of
+the women of Louisiana or the Carolinas.
+
+To obtain reliable information concerning the temperament of a young
+person, it is necessary to put into vigorous operation the system
+which Gil Blas prescribes, in dealing with chambermaids, a system
+employed by statesmen to discover conspiracies and to learn how the
+ministers have passed the night.
+
+II. If you choose a young lady who, without being plain, does not
+belong to the class of pretty women.
+
+We regard it as an infallible principle that great sweetness of
+disposition united in a woman with plainness that is not repulsive,
+form two indubitable elements of success in securing the greatest
+possible happiness to the home.
+
+But would you learn the truth? Open your Rousseau; for there is not a
+single question of public morals whose trend he has not pointed out in
+advance. Read:
+
+"Among people of fixed principles the girls are careless, the women
+severe; the contrary is the case among people of no principle."
+
+To admit the truth enshrined in this profound and truthful remark is
+to conclude, that there would be fewer unhappy marriages if men wedded
+their mistresses. The education of girls requires, therefore,
+important modifications in France. Up to this time French laws and
+French manners instituted to distinguish between a misdemeanor and a
+crime, have encouraged crime. In reality the fault committed by a
+young girl is scarcely ever a misdemeanor, if you compare it with that
+committed by the married woman. Is there any comparison between the
+danger of giving liberty to girls and that of allowing it to wives?
+The idea of taking a young girl on trial makes more serious men think
+than fools laugh. The manners of Germany, of Switzerland, of England
+and of the United States give to young ladies such rights as in France
+would be considered the subversion of all morality; and yet it is
+certain that in these countries there are fewer unhappy marriages than
+in France.
+
+
+                                 LV.
+"Before a woman gives herself entirely up to her lover, she ought to
+consider well what his love has to offer her. The gift of her esteem
+and confidence should necessarily precede that of her heart."
+
+
+Sparkling with truth as they are, these lines probably filled with
+light the dungeon, in the depths of which Mirabeau wrote them; and the
+keen observation which they bear witness to, although prompted by the
+most stormy of his passions, has none the less influence even now in
+solving the social problem on which we are engaged. In fact, a
+marriage sealed under the auspices of the religious scrutiny which
+assumes the existence of love, and subjected to the atmosphere of that
+disenchantment which follows on possession, ought naturally to be the
+most firmly-welded of all human unions.
+
+A woman then ought never to reproach her husband for the legal right,
+in virtue of which she belongs to him. She ought not to find in this
+compulsory submission any excuse for yielding to a lover, because some
+time after her marriage she has discovered in her own heart a traitor
+whose sophisms seduce her by asking twenty times an hour, "Wherefore,
+since she has been given against her will to a man whom she does not
+love, should she not give herself, of her own free-will, to a man whom
+she does love." A woman is not to be tolerated in her complaints
+concerning faults inseparable from human nature. She has, in advance,
+made trial of the tyranny which they exercise, and taken sides with
+the caprices which they exhibit.
+
+A great many young girls are likely to be disappointed in their hopes
+of love!--But will it not be an immense advantage to them to have
+escaped being made the companions of men whom they would have had the
+right to despise?
+
+Certain alarmists will exclaim that such an alteration in our manners
+would bring about a public dissoluteness which would be frightful;
+that the laws, and the customs which prompt the laws, could not after
+all authorize scandal and immorality; and if certain unavoidable
+abuses do exist, at least society ought not to sanction them.
+
+It is easy to say, in reply, first of all, that the proposed system
+tends to prevent those abuses which have been hitherto regarded as
+incapable of prevention; but, the calculations of our statistics,
+inexact as they are, have invariably pointed out a widely prevailing
+social sore, and our moralists may, therefore, be accused of
+preferring the greater to the lesser evil, the violation of the
+principle on which society is constituted, to the granting of a
+certain liberty to girls; and dissoluteness in mothers of families,
+such as poisons the springs of public education and brings unhappiness
+upon at least four persons, to dissoluteness in a young girl, which
+only affects herself or at the most a child besides. Let the virtue of
+ten virgins be lost rather than forfeit this sanctity of morals, that
+crown of honor with which the mother of a family should be invested!
+In the picture presented by a young girl abandoned by her betrayer,
+there is something imposing, something indescribably sacred; here we
+see oaths violated, holy confidences betrayed, and on the ruins of a
+too facile virtue innocence sits in tears, doubting everything,
+because compelled to doubt the love of a father for his child. The
+unfortunate girl is still innocent; she may yet become a faithful
+wife, a tender mother, and, if the past is mantled in clouds, the
+future is blue as the clear sky. Shall we not find these tender tints
+in the gloomy pictures of loves which violate the marriage law? In the
+one, the woman is the victim, in the other, she is a criminal. What
+hope is there for the unfaithful wife? If God pardons the fault, the
+most exemplary life cannot efface, here below, its living
+consequences. If James I was the son of Rizzio, the crime of Mary
+lasted as long as did her mournful though royal house, and the fall of
+the Stuarts was the justice of God.
+
+But in good faith, would the emancipation of girls set free such a
+host of dangers?
+
+It is very easy to accuse a young person for suffering herself to be
+deceived, in the desire to escape, at any price, from the condition of
+girlhood; but such an accusation is only just in the present condition
+of our manners. At the present day, a young person knows nothing about
+seduction and its snares, she relies altogether upon her weakness, and
+mingling with this reliance the convenient maxims of the fashionable
+world, she takes as her guide while under the control of those desires
+which everything conspires to excite, her own deluding fancies, which
+prove a guide all the more treacherous, because a young girl rarely
+ever confides to another the secret thoughts of her first love.
+
+If she were free, an education free from prejudices would arm her
+against the love of the first comer. She would, like any one else, be
+very much better able to meet dangers of which she knew, than perils
+whose extent had been concealed from her. And, moreover, is it
+necessary for a girl to be any the less under the watchful eye of her
+mother, because she is mistress of her own actions? Are we to count as
+nothing the modesty and the fears which nature has made so powerful in
+the soul of a young girl, for the very purpose of preserving her from
+the misfortune of submitting to a man who does not love her? Again,
+what girl is there so thoughtless as not to discern, that the most
+immoral man wishes his wife to be a woman of principle, as masters
+desire their servants to be perfect; and that, therefore, her virtue
+is the richest and the most advantageous of all possessions?
+
+After all, what is the question before us? For what do you think we
+are stipulating? We are making a claim for five or six hundred
+thousand maidens, protected by their instinctive timidity, and by the
+high price at which they rate themselves; they understand how to
+defend themselves, just as well as they know how to sell themselves.
+The eighteen millions of human beings, whom we have excepted from this
+consideration, almost invariably contract marriages in accordance with
+the system which we are trying to make paramount in our system of
+manners; and as to the intermediary classes by which we poor bimana
+are separated from the men of privilege who march at the head of a
+nation, the number of castaway children which these classes, although
+in tolerably easy circumstances, consign to misery, goes on increasing
+since the peace, if we may believe M. Benoiston de Chateauneuf, one of
+the most courageous of those savants who have devoted themselves to
+the arid yet useful study of statistics. We may guess how deep-seated
+is the social hurt, for which we propound a remedy, if we reckon the
+number of natural children which statistics reveal, and the number of
+illicit adventures whose evidence in high society we are forced to
+suspect. But it is difficult here to make quite plain all the
+advantages which would result from the emancipation of young girls.
+When we come to observe the circumstances which attend a marriage,
+such as our present manners approve of, judicious minds must
+appreciate the value of that system of education and liberty, which we
+demand for young girls, in the name of reason and nature. The
+prejudice which we in France entertain in favor of the virginity of
+brides is the most silly of all those which still survive among us.
+The Orientals take their brides without distressing themselves about
+the past and lock them up in order to be more certain about the
+future; the French put their daughters into a sort of seraglio
+defended by their mothers, by prejudice, and by religious ideas, and
+give the most complete liberty to their wives, thus showing themselves
+much more solicitous about a woman's past than about her future. The
+point we are aiming at is to bring about a reversal of our system of
+manners. If we did so we should end, perhaps, by giving to faithful
+married life all the flavor and the piquancy which women of to-day
+find in acts of infidelity.
+
+But this discussion would take us far from our subject, if it led us
+to examine, in all its details, the vast improvement in morals which
+doubtless will distinguish twentieth century France; for morals are
+reformed only very gradually! Is it not necessary, in order to produce
+the slightest change, that the most daring dreams of the past century
+become the most trite ideas of the present one? We have touched upon
+this question merely in a trifling mood, for the purposes of showing
+that we are not blind to its importance, and of bequeathing also to
+posterity the outline of a work, which they may complete. To speak
+more accurately there is a third work to be composed; the first
+concerns courtesans, while the second is the physiology of pleasure!
+
+"When there are ten of us, we cross ourselves."
+
+In the present state of our morals and of our imperfect civilization,
+a problem crops up which for the moment is insoluble, and which
+renders superfluous all discussion on the art of choosing a wife; we
+commend it, as we have done all the others, to the meditation of
+philosophers.
+
+
+                               PROBLEM.
+
+It has not yet been decided whether a wife is forced into infidelity
+by the impossibility of obtaining any change, or by the liberty which
+is allowed her in this connection.
+
+Moreover, as in this work we pitch upon a man at the moment that he is
+newly married, we declare that if he has found a wife of sanguine
+temperament, of vivid imagination, of a nervous constitution or of an
+indolent character, his situation cannot fail to be extremely serious.
+
+A man would find himself in a position of danger even more critical if
+his wife drank nothing but water [see the Meditation entitled
+_Conjugal Hygiene_]; but if she had some talent for singing, or if she
+were disposed to take cold easily, he should tremble all the time; for
+it must be remembered that women who sing are at least as passionate
+as women whose mucous membrane shows extreme delicacy.
+
+Again, this danger would be aggravated still more if your wife were
+less than seventeen; or if, on the other hand, her general complexion
+were pale and dull, for this sort of woman is almost always
+artificial.
+
+But we do not wish to anticipate here any description of the terrors
+which threaten husbands from the symptoms of unhappiness which they
+read in the character of their wives. This digression has already
+taken us too far from the subject of boarding schools, in which so
+many catastrophes are hatched, and from which issue so many young
+girls incapable of appreciating the painful sacrifices by which the
+honest man who does them the honor of marrying them, has obtained
+opulence; young girls eager for the enjoyments of luxury, ignorant of
+our laws, ignorant of our manners, claim with avidity the empire which
+their beauty yields them, and show themselves quite ready to turn away
+from the genuine utterances of the heart, while they readily listen to
+the buzzing of flattery.
+
+This Meditation should plant in the memory of all who read it, even
+those who merely open the book for the sake of glancing at it or
+distracting their mind, an intense repugnance for young women educated
+in a boarding school, and if it succeeds in doing so, its services to
+the public will have already proved considerable.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION VII.
+
+                          OF THE HONEYMOON.
+
+If our meditations prove that it is almost impossible for a married
+woman to remain virtuous in France, our enumeration of the celibates
+and the predestined, our remarks upon the education of girls, and our
+rapid survey of the difficulties which attend the choice of a wife
+will explain up to a certain point this national frailty. Thus, after
+indicating frankly the aching malady under which the social slate is
+laboring, we have sought for the causes in the imperfection of the
+laws, in the irrational condition of our manners, in the incapacity of
+our minds, and in the contradictions which characterize our habits. A
+single point still claims our observation, and that is the first
+onslaught of the evil we are confronting.
+
+We reach this first question on approaching the high problems
+suggested by the honeymoon; and although we find here the starting
+point of all the phenomena of married life, it appears to us to be the
+brilliant link round which are clustered all our observations, our
+axioms, our problems, which have been scattered deliberately among the
+wise quips which our loquacious meditations retail. The honeymoon
+would seem to be, if we may use the expression, the apogee of that
+analysis to which we must apply ourselves, before engaging in battle
+our two imaginary champions.
+
+The expression _honeymoon_ is an Anglicism, which has become an idiom
+in all languages, so gracefully does it depict the nuptial season
+which is so fugitive, and during which life is nothing but sweetness
+and rapture; the expression survives as illusions and errors survive,
+for it contains the most odious of falsehoods. If this season is
+presented to us as a nymph crowned with fresh flowers, caressing as a
+siren, it is because in it is unhappiness personified and unhappiness
+generally comes during the indulgence of folly.
+
+The married couple who intend to love each other during their whole
+life have no notion of a honeymoon; for them it has no existence, or
+rather its existence is perennial; they are like the immortals who do
+not understand death. But the consideration of this happiness is not
+germane to our book; and for our readers marriage is under the
+influence of two moons, the honeymoon and the Red-moon. This last
+terminates its course by a revolution, which changes it to a crescent;
+and when once it rises upon a home its light there is eternal.
+
+How can the honeymoon rise upon two beings who cannot possibly love
+each other?
+
+How can it set, when once it has risen?
+
+Have all marriages their honeymoon?
+
+Let us proceed to answer these questions in order.
+
+It is in this connection that the admirable education which we give to
+girls, and the wise provisions made by the law under which men marry,
+bear all their fruit. Let us examine the circumstances which precede
+and attend those marriages which are least disastrous.
+
+The tone of our morals develops in the young girl whom you make your
+wife a curiosity which is naturally excessive; but as mothers in
+France pique themselves on exposing their girls every day to the fire
+which they do not allow to scorch them, this curiosity has no limit.
+
+Her profound ignorance of the mysteries of marriage conceals from this
+creature, who is as innocent as she is crafty, a clear view of the
+dangers by which marriage is followed; and as marriage is incessantly
+described to her as an epoch in which tyranny and liberty equally
+prevail, and in which enjoyment and supremacy are to be indulged in,
+her desires are intensified by all her interest in an existence as yet
+unfulfilled; for her to marry is to be called up from nothingness into
+life!
+
+If she has a disposition for happiness, for religion, for morality,
+the voices of the law and of her mother have repeated to her that this
+happiness can only come to her from you.
+
+Obedience if it is not virtue, is at least a necessary thing with her;
+for she expects everything from you. In the first place, society
+sanctions the slavery of a wife, but she does not conceive even the
+wish to be free, for she feels herself weak, timid and ignorant.
+
+Of course she tries to please you, unless a chance error is committed,
+or she is seized by a repugnance which it would be unpardonable in you
+not to divine. She tries to please because she does not know you.
+
+In a word, in order to complete your triumph, you take her at a moment
+when nature demands, often with some violence, the pleasure of which
+you are the dispenser. Like St. Peter you hold the keys of Paradise.
+
+I would ask of any reasonable creature, would a demon marshal round
+the angel whose ruin he had vowed all the elements of disaster with
+more solicitude than that with which good morals conspire against the
+happiness of a husband? Are you not a king surrounded by flatterers?
+
+This young girl, with all her ignorance and all her desires, committed
+to the mercy of a man who, even though he be in love, cannot know her
+shrinking and secret emotions, will submit to him with a certain sense
+of shame, and will be obedient and complaisant so long as her young
+imagination persuades her to expect the pleasure or the happiness of
+that morrow which never dawns.
+
+In this unnatural situation social laws and the laws of nature are in
+conflict, but the young girl obediently abandons herself to it, and,
+from motives of self-interest, suffers in silence. Her obedience is a
+speculation; her complaisance is a hope; her devotion to you is a sort
+of vocation, of which you reap the advantage; and her silence is
+generosity. She will remain the victim of your caprices so long as she
+does not understand them; she will suffer from the limitations of your
+character until she has studied it; she will sacrifice herself without
+love, because she believed in the show of passion you made at the
+first moment of possession; she will no longer be silent when once she
+has learned the uselessness of her sacrifices.
+
+And then the morning arrives when the inconsistencies which have
+prevailed in this union rise up like branches of a tree bent down for
+a moment under a weight which has been gradually lightened. You have
+mistaken for love the negative attitude of a young girl who was
+waiting for happiness, who flew in advance of your desires, in the
+hope that you would go forward in anticipation of hers, and who did
+not dare to complain of the secret unhappiness, for which she at first
+accused herself. What man could fail to be the dupe of a delusion
+prepared at such long range, and in which a young innocent woman is at
+once the accomplice and the victim? Unless you were a divine being it
+would be impossible for you to escape the fascination with which
+nature and society have surrounded you. Is not a snare set in
+everything which surrounds you on the outside and influences you
+within? For in order to be happy, is it not necessary to control the
+impetuous desires of your senses? Where is the powerful barrier to
+restrain her, raised by the light hand of a woman whom you wish to
+please, because you do not possess? Moreover, you have caused your
+troops to parade and march by, when there was no one at the window;
+you have discharged your fireworks whose framework alone was left,
+when your guest arrived to see them. Your wife, before the pledges of
+marriage, was like a Mohican at the Opera: the teacher becomes
+listless, when the savage begins to understand.
+
+
+                                      LVI.
+In married life, the moment when two hearts come to understand each
+other is sudden as a flash of lightning, and never returns, when once
+it is passed.
+
+
+This first entrance into life of two persons, during which a woman is
+encouraged by the hope of happiness, by the still fresh sentiment of
+her married duty, by the wish to please, by the sense of virtue which
+begins to be so attractive as soon as it shows love to be in harmony
+with duty, is called the honeymoon. How can it last long between two
+beings who are united for their whole life, unless they know each
+other perfectly? If there is one thing which ought to cause
+astonishment it is this, that the deplorable absurdities which our
+manners heap up around the nuptial couch give birth to so few hatreds!
+But that the life of the wise man is a calm current, and that of the
+prodigal a cataract; that the child, whose thoughtless hands have
+stripped the leaves from every rose upon his pathway, finds nothing
+but thorns on his return, that the man who in his wild youth has
+squandered a million, will never enjoy, during his life, the income of
+forty thousand francs, which this million would have provided--are
+trite commonplaces, if one thinks of the moral theory of life; but new
+discoveries, if we consider the conduct of most men. You may see here
+a true image of all honeymoons; this is their history, this is the
+plain fact and not the cause that underlies it.
+
+But that men endowed with a certain power of thought by a privileged
+education, and accustomed to think deliberately, in order to shine in
+politics, literature, art, commerce or private life--that these men
+should all marry with the intention of being happy, of governing a
+wife, either by love or by force, and should all tumble into the same
+pitfall and should become foolish, after having enjoyed a certain
+happiness for a certain time,--this is certainly a problem whose
+solution is to be found rather in the unknown depths of the human
+soul, than in the quasi physical truths, on the basis of which we have
+hitherto attempted to explain some of these phenomena. The risky
+search for the secret laws, which almost all men are bound to violate
+without knowing it, under these circumstances, promises abundant glory
+for any one even though he make shipwreck in the enterprise upon which
+we now venture to set forth. Let us then make the attempt.
+
+In spite of all that fools have to say about the difficulty they have
+had in explaining love, there are certain principles relating to it as
+infallible as those of geometry; but in each character these are
+modified according to its tendency; hence the caprices of love, which
+are due to the infinite number of varying temperaments. If we were
+permitted never to see the various effects of light without also
+perceiving on what they were based, many minds would refuse to believe
+in the movement of the sun and in its oneness. Let the blind men cry
+out as they like; I boast with Socrates, although I am not as wise as
+he was, that I know of naught save love; and I intend to attempt the
+formulation of some of its precepts, in order to spare married people
+the trouble of cudgeling their brains; they would soon reach the limit
+of their wit.
+
+Now all the preceding observations may be resolved into a single
+proposition, which may be considered either the first or last term in
+this secret theory of love, whose statement would end by wearying us,
+if we did not bring it to a prompt conclusion. This principle is
+contained in the following formula:
+
+
+                                LVII.
+Between two beings susceptible of love, the duration of passion is in
+proportion to the original resistance of the woman, or to the
+obstacles which the accidents of social life put in the way of your
+happiness.
+
+
+If you have desired your object only for one day, your love perhaps
+will not last more than three nights. Where must we seek for the
+causes of this law? I do not know. If you cast your eyes around you,
+you will find abundant proof of this rule; in the vegetable world the
+plants which take the longest time to grow are those which promise to
+have the longest life; in the moral order of things the works produced
+yesterday die to-morrow; in the physical world the womb which
+infringes the laws of gestation bears dead fruit. In everything, a
+work which is permanent has been brooded over by time for a long
+period. A long future requires a long past. If love is a child,
+passion is a man. This general law, which all men obey, to which all
+beings and all sentiments must submit, is precisely that which every
+marriage infringes, as we have plainly shown. This principle has given
+rise to the love tales of the Middle Ages; the Amadises, the
+Lancelots, the Tristans of ballad literature, whose constancy may
+justly be called fabulous, are allegories of the national mythology
+which our imitation of Greek literature nipped in the bud. These
+fascinating characters, outlined by the imagination of the
+troubadours, set their seal and sanction upon this truth.
+
+
+                                LVIII.
+We do not attach ourselves permanently to any possessions, excepting
+in proportion to the trouble, toil and longing which they have cost
+us.
+
+
+All our meditations have revealed to us about the basis of the
+primordial law of love is comprised in the following axiom, which is
+at the same time the principle and the result of the law.
+
+
+                                 LIX.
+     In every case we receive only in proportion to what we give.
+
+
+This last principle is so self-evident that we will not attempt to
+demonstrate it. We merely add a single observation which appears to us
+of some importance. The writer who said: "Everything is true, and
+everything is false," announced a fact which the human intellect,
+naturally prone to sophism, interprets as it chooses, but it really
+seems as though human affairs have as many facets as there are minds
+that contemplate them. This fact may be detailed as follows:
+
+There cannot be found, in all creation, a single law which is not
+counterbalanced by a law exactly contrary to it; life in everything is
+maintained by the equilibrium of two opposing forces. So in the
+present subject, as regards love, if you give too much, you will not
+receive enough. The mother who shows her children her whole tenderness
+calls forth their ingratitude, and ingratitude is occasioned, perhaps,
+by the impossibility of reciprocation. The wife who loves more than
+she is loved must necessarily be the object of tyranny. Durable love
+is that which always keeps the forces of two human beings in
+equilibrium. Now this equilibrium may be maintained permanently; the
+one who loves the more ought to stop at the point of the one who loves
+the less. And is it not, after all the sweetest sacrifice that a
+loving heart can make, that love should so accommodate itself as to
+adjust the inequality?
+
+What sentiment of admiration must rise in the soul of a philosopher on
+discovering that there is, perhaps, but one single principle in the
+world, as there is but one God; and that our ideas and our affections
+are subject to the same laws which cause the sun to rise, the flowers
+to bloom, the universe to teem with life!
+
+Perhaps, we ought to seek in the metaphysics of love the reasons for
+the following proposition, which throws the most vivid light on the
+question of honeymoons and of Red-moons:
+
+
+                               THEOREM.
+
+  Man goes from aversion to love; but if he has begun by loving, and
+     afterwards comes to feel aversion, he never returns to love.
+
+
+In certain human organisms the feelings are dwarfed, as the thought
+may be in certain sterile imaginations. Thus, just as some minds have
+the faculty of comprehending the connections existing between
+different things without formal deduction; and as they have the
+faculty of seizing upon each formula separately, without combining
+them, or without the power of insight, comparison and expression; so
+in the same way, different souls may have more or less imperfect ideas
+of the various sentiments. Talent in love, as in every other art,
+consists in the power of forming a conception combined with the power
+of carrying it out. The world is full of people who sing airs, but who
+omit the _ritornello_, who have quarters of an idea, as they have
+quarters of sentiment, but who can no more co-ordinate the movements
+of their affections than of their thoughts. In a word, they are
+incomplete. Unite a fine intelligence with a dwarfed intelligence and
+you precipitate a disaster; for it is necessary that equilibrium be
+preserved in everything.
+
+We leave to the philosophers of the boudoir or to the sages of the
+back parlor to investigate the thousand ways in which men of different
+temperaments, intellects, social positions and fortunes disturb this
+equilibrium. Meanwhile we will proceed to examine the last cause for
+the setting of the honeymoon and the rising of the Red-moon.
+
+There is in life one principle more potent than life itself. It is a
+movement whose celerity springs from an unknown motive power. Man is
+no more acquainted with the secret of this revolution than the earth
+is aware of that which causes her rotation. A certain something, which
+I gladly call the current of life, bears along our choicest thoughts,
+makes use of most people's will and carries us on in spite of
+ourselves. Thus, a man of common-sense, who never fails to pay his
+bills, if he is a merchant, a man who has been able to escape death,
+or what perhaps is more trying, sickness, by the observation of a
+certain easy but daily regimen, is completely and duly nailed up
+between the four planks of his coffin, after having said every
+evening: "Dear me! to-morrow I will not forget my pills!" How are we
+to explain this magic spell which rules all the affairs of life? Do
+men submit to it from a want of energy? Men who have the strongest
+wills are subject to it. Is it default of memory? People who possess
+this faculty in the highest degree yield to its fascination.
+
+Every one can recognize the operation of this influence in the case of
+his neighbor, and it is one of the things which exclude the majority
+of husbands from the honeymoon. It is thus that the wise man, survivor
+of all reefs and shoals, such as we have pointed out, sometimes falls
+into the snares which he himself has set.
+
+I have myself noticed that man deals with marriage and its dangers in
+very much the same way that he deals with wigs; and perhaps the
+following phases of thought concerning wigs may furnish a formula for
+human life in general.
+
+FIRST EPOCH.--Is it possible that I shall ever have white hair?
+
+SECOND EPOCH.--In any case, if I have white hair, I shall never wear a
+wig. Good Lord! what is more ugly than a wig?
+
+One morning you hear a young voice, which love much oftener makes to
+vibrate than lulls to silence, exclaiming:
+
+"Well, I declare! You have a white hair!"
+
+THIRD EPOCH.--Why not wear a well-made wig which people would not
+notice? There is a certain merit in deceiving everybody; besides, a
+wig keeps you warm, prevents taking cold, etc.
+
+FOURTH EPOCH.--The wig is so skillfully put on that you deceive every
+one who does not know you.
+
+The wig takes up all your attention, and _amour-propre_ makes you
+every morning as busy as the most skillful hairdresser.
+
+FIFTH EPOCH.--The neglected wig. "Good heavens! How tedious it is, to
+have to go with bare head every evening, and to curl one's wig every
+morning!"
+
+SIXTH EPOCH.--The wig allows certain white hairs to escape; it is put
+on awry and the observer perceives on the back of your neck a white
+line, which contrasts with the deep tints pushed back by the collar of
+your coat.
+
+SEVENTH EPOCH.--Your wig is as scraggy as dog's tooth grass; and
+--excuse the expression--you are making fun of your wig.
+
+"Sir," said one of the most powerful feminine intelligences which have
+condescended to enlighten me on some of the most obscure passages in
+my book, "what do you mean by this wig?"
+
+"Madame," I answered, "when a man falls into a mood of indifference
+with regard to his wig, he is,--he is--what your husband probably is
+not."
+
+"But my husband is not--" (she paused and thought for a moment). "He
+is not amiable; he is not--well, he is not--of an even temper; he is
+not--"
+
+"Then, madame, he would doubtless be indifferent to his wig!"
+
+We looked at each other, she with a well-assumed air of dignity, I
+with a suppressed smile.
+
+"I see," said I, "that we must pay special respect to the ears of the
+little sex, for they are the only chaste things about them."
+
+I assumed the attitude of a man who has something of importance to
+disclose, and the fair dame lowered her eyes, as if she had some
+reason to blush.
+
+"Madame, in these days a minister is not hanged, as once upon a time,
+for saying yes or no; a Chateaubriand would scarcely torture Francoise
+de Foix, and we wear no longer at our side a long sword ready to
+avenge an insult. Now in a century when civilization has made such
+rapid progress, when we can learn a science in twenty-four lessons,
+everything must follow this race after perfection. We can no longer
+speak the manly, rude, coarse language of our ancestors. The age in
+which are fabricated such fine, such brilliant stuffs, such elegant
+furniture, and when are made such rich porcelains, must needs be the
+age of periphrase and circumlocution. We must try, therefore, to coin
+a new word in place of the comic expression which Moliere used; since
+the language of this great man, as a contemporary author has said, is
+too free for ladies who find gauze too thick for their garments. But
+people of the world know, as well as the learned, how the Greeks had
+an innate taste for mysteries. That poetic nation knew well how to
+invest with the tints of fable the antique traditions of their
+history. At the voice of their rhapsodists together with their poets
+and romancers, kings became gods and their adventures of gallantry
+were transformed into immortal allegories. According to M. Chompre,
+licentiate in law, the classic author of the _Dictionary of
+Mythology_, the labyrinth was 'an enclosure planted with trees and
+adorned with buildings arranged in such a way that when a young man
+once entered, he could no more find his way out.' Here and there
+flowery thickets were presented to his view, but in the midst of a
+multitude of alleys, which crossed and recrossed his path and bore the
+appearance of a uniform passage, among the briars, rocks and thorns,
+the patient found himself in combat with an animal called the
+Minotaur.
+
+"Now, madame, if you will allow me the honor of calling to your mind
+the fact that the Minotaur was of all known beasts that which
+Mythology distinguishes as the most dangerous; that in order to save
+themselves from his ravages, the Athenians were bound to deliver to
+him, every single year, fifty virgins; you will perhaps escape the
+error of good M. Chompre, who saw in the labyrinth nothing but an
+English garden; and you will recognize in this ingenious fable a
+refined allegory, or we may better say a faithful and fearful image of
+the dangers of marriage. The paintings recently discovered at
+Herculaneum have served to confirm this opinion. And, as a matter of
+fact, learned men have for a long time believed, in accordance with
+the writings of certain authors, that the Minotaur was an animal
+half-man, half-bull; but the fifth panel of ancient paintings at
+Herculaneum represents to us this allegorical monster with a body
+entirely human; and, to take away all vestige of doubt, he lies
+crushed at the feet of Theseus. Now, my dear madame, why should we not
+ask Mythology to come and rescue us from that hypocrisy which is
+gaining ground with us and hinders us from laughing as our fathers
+laughed? And thus, since in the world a young lady does not very well
+know how to spread the veil under which an honest woman hides her
+behavior, in a contingency which our grandfathers would have roughly
+explained by a single word, you, like a crowd of beautiful but
+prevaricating ladies, you content yourselves with saying, 'Ah! yes,
+she is very amiable, but,'--but what?--'but she is often very
+inconsistent--.' I have for a long time tried to find out the meaning
+of this last word, and, above all, the figure of rhetoric by which you
+make it express the opposite of that which it signifies; but all my
+researches have been in vain. Vert-Vert used the word last, and was
+unfortunately addressed to the innocent nuns whose infidelities did
+not in any way infringe the honor of the men. When a woman is
+_inconsistent_ the husband must be, according to me, _minotaurized_.
+If the minotaurized man is a fine fellow, if he enjoys a certain
+esteem,--and many husbands really deserve to be pitied,--then in
+speaking of him, you say in a pathetic voice, 'M. A--- is a very
+estimable man, his wife is exceedingly pretty, but they say he is not
+happy in his domestic relations.' Thus, madame, the estimable man who
+is unhappy in his domestic relations, the man who has an inconsistent
+wife, or the husband who is minotaurized are simply husbands as they
+appear in Moliere. Well, then, O goddess of modern taste, do not these
+expressions seem to you characterized by a transparency chaste enough
+for anybody?"
+
+"Ah! mon Dieu!" she answered, laughing, "if the thing is the same,
+what does it matter whether it be expressed in two syllables or in a
+hundred?"
+
+She bade me good-bye, with an ironical nod and disappeared, doubtless
+to join the countesses of my preface and all the metaphorical
+creatures, so often employed by romance-writers as agents for the
+recovery or composition of ancient manuscripts.
+
+As for you, the more numerous and the more real creatures who read my
+book, if there are any among you who make common cause with my
+conjugal champion, I give you notice that you will not at once become
+unhappy in your domestic relations. A man arrives at this conjugal
+condition not suddenly, but insensibly and by degrees. Many husbands
+have even remained unfortunate in their domestic relations during
+their whole life and have never known it. This domestic revolution
+develops itself in accordance with fixed rules; for the revolutions of
+the honeymoon are as regular as the phases of the moon in heaven, and
+are the same in every married house. Have we not proved that moral
+nature, like physical nature, has its laws?
+
+Your young wife will never take a lover, as we have elsewhere said,
+without making serious reflections. As soon as the honeymoon wanes,
+you will find that you have aroused in her a sentiment of pleasure
+which you have not satisfied; you have opened to her the book of life;
+and she has derived an excellent idea from the prosaic dullness which
+distinguishes your complacent love, of the poetry which is the natural
+result when souls and pleasures are in accord. Like a timid bird, just
+startled by the report of a gun which has ceased, she puts her head
+out of her nest, looks round her, and sees the world; and knowing the
+word of a charade which you have played, she feels instinctively the
+void which exists in your languishing passion. She divines that it is
+only with a lover that she can regain the delightful exercise of her
+free will in love.
+
+You have dried the green wood in preparation for a fire.
+
+In the situation in which both of you find yourselves, there is no
+woman, even the most virtuous, who would not be found worthy of a
+_grande passion_, who has not dreamed of it, and who does not believe
+that it is easily kindled, for there is always found a certain
+_amour-propre_ ready to reinforce that conquered enemy--a jaded wife.
+
+"If the role of an honest woman were nothing more than perilous," said
+an old lady to me, "I would admit that it would serve. But it is
+tiresome; and I have never met a virtuous woman who did not think
+about deceiving somebody."
+
+And then, before any lover presents himself, a wife discusses with
+herself the legality of the act; she enters into a conflict with her
+duties, with the law, with religion and with the secret desires of a
+nature which knows no check-rein excepting that which she places upon
+herself. And then commences for you a condition of affairs totally
+new; then you receive the first intimation which nature, that good and
+indulgent mother, always gives to the creatures who are exposed to any
+danger. Nature has put a bell on the neck of the Minotaur, as on the
+tail of that frightful snake which is the terror of travelers. And
+then appear in your wife what we will call the first symptoms, and woe
+to him who does not know how to contend with them. Those who in
+reading our book will remember that they saw those symptoms in their
+own domestic life can pass to the conclusion of this work, where they
+will find how they may gain consolation.
+
+The situation referred to, in which a married couple bind themselves
+for a longer or a shorter time, is the point from which our work
+starts, as it is the end at which our observations stop. A man of
+intelligence should know how to recognize the mysterious indications,
+the obscure signs and the involuntary revelation which a wife
+unwittingly exhibits; for the next Meditation will doubtless indicate
+the more evident of the manifestations to neophytes in the sublime
+science of marriage.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION VIII.
+
+                        OF THE FIRST SYMPTOMS.
+
+When your wife reaches that crisis in which we have left her, you
+yourself are wrapped in a pleasant and unsuspicious security. You have
+so often seen the sun that you begin to think it is shining over
+everybody. You therefore give no longer that attention to the least
+action of your wife, which was impelled by your first outburst of
+passion.
+
+This indolence prevents many husbands from perceiving the symptoms
+which, in their wives, herald the first storm; and this disposition of
+mind has resulted in the minotaurization of more husbands than have
+either opportunity, carriages, sofas and apartments in town.
+
+The feeling of indifference in the presence of danger is to some
+degree justified by the apparent tranquillity which surrounds you. The
+conspiracy which is formed against you by our million of hungry
+celibates seems to be unanimous in its advance. Although all are
+enemies of each other and know each other well, a sort of instinct
+forces them into co-operation.
+
+Two persons are married. The myrmidons of the Minotaur, young and old,
+have usually the politeness to leave the bride and bridegroom entirely
+to themselves at first. They look upon the husband as an artisan,
+whose business it is to trim, polish, cut into facets and mount the
+diamond, which is to pass from hand to hand in order to be admired all
+around. Moreover, the aspect of a young married couple much taken with
+each other always rejoices the heart of those among the celibates who
+are known as _roues_; they take good care not to disturb the
+excitement by which society is to be profited; they also know that
+heavy showers to not last long. They therefore keep quiet; they watch,
+and wait, with incredible vigilance, for the moment when bride and
+groom begin to weary of the seventh heaven.
+
+The tact with which celibates discover the moment when the breeze
+begins to rise in a new home can only be compared to the indifference
+of those husbands for whom the Red-moon rises. There is, even in
+intrigue, a moment of ripeness which must be waited for. The great man
+is he who anticipates the outcome of certain circumstances. Men of
+fifty-two, whom we have represented as being so dangerous, know very
+well, for example, that any man who offers himself as lover to a woman
+and is haughtily rejected, will be received with open arms three
+months afterwards. But it may be truly said that in general married
+people in betraying their indifference towards each other show the
+same naivete with which they first betrayed their love. At the time
+when you are traversing with madame the ravishing fields of the
+seventh heaven--where according to their temperament, newly married
+people remain encamped for a longer or shorter time, as the preceding
+Meditation has proved--you go little or not at all into society. Happy
+as you are in your home, if you do go abroad, it will be for the
+purpose of making up a choice party and visiting the theatre, the
+country, etc. From the moment you the newly wedded make your
+appearance in the world again, you and your bride together, or
+separately, and are seen to be attentive to each other at balls, at
+parties, at all the empty amusements created to escape the void of an
+unsatisfied heart, the celibates discern that your wife comes there in
+search of distraction; her home, her husband are therefore wearisome
+to her.
+
+At this point the celibate knows that half of the journey is
+accomplished. At this point you are on the eve of being minotaurized,
+and your wife is likely to become inconsistent; which means that she
+is on the contrary likely to prove very consistent in her conduct,
+that she has reasoned it out with astonishing sagacity and that you
+are likely very soon to smell fire. From that moment she will not in
+appearance fail in any of her duties, and will put on the colors of
+that virtue in which she is most lacking. Said Crebillon:
+
+    "Alas!
+  Is it right to be heir of the man who we slay?"
+
+Never has she seemed more anxious to please you. She will seek, as
+much as possible, to allay the secret wounds which she thinks about
+inflicting upon your married bliss, she will do so by those little
+attentions which induce you to believe in the eternity of her love;
+hence the proverb, "Happy as a fool." But in accordance with the
+character of women, they either despise their own husbands from the
+very fact that they find no difficulty in deceiving them; or they hate
+them when they find themselves circumvented by them; or they fall into
+a condition of indifference towards them, which is a thousand times
+worse than hatred. In this emergency, the first thing which may be
+diagnosed in a woman is a decided oddness of behavior. A woman loves
+to be saved from herself, to escape her conscience, but without the
+eagerness shown in this connection by wives who are thoroughly
+unhappy. She dresses herself with especial care, in order, she will
+tell you, to flatter your _amour-propre_ by drawing all eyes upon her
+in the midst of parties and public entertainments.
+
+When she returns to the bosom of her stupid home you will see that, at
+times, she is gloomy and thoughtful, then suddenly laughing and gay as
+if beside herself; or assuming the serious expression of a German when
+he advances to the fight. Such varying moods always indicate the
+terrible doubt and hesitation to which we have already referred. There
+are women who read romances in order to feast upon the images of love
+cleverly depicted and always varied, of love crowned yet triumphant;
+or in order to familiarize themselves in thought with the perils of an
+intrigue.
+
+She will profess the highest esteem for you, she will tell you that
+she loves you as a sister; and that such reasonable friendship is the
+only true, the only durable friendship, the only tie which it is the
+aim of marriage to establish between man and wife.
+
+She will adroitly distinguish between the duties which are all she has
+to perform and the rights which she can demand to exercise.
+
+She views with indifference, appreciated by you alone, all the details
+of married happiness. This sort of happiness, perhaps, has never been
+very agreeable to her and moreover it is always with her. She knows it
+well, she has analyzed it; and what slight but terrible evidence comes
+from these circumstances to prove to an intelligent husband that this
+frail creature argues and reasons, instead of being carried away on
+the tempest of passion.
+
+
+                                 LX.
+               The more a man judges the less he loves.
+
+
+And now will burst forth from her those pleasantries at which you will
+be the first to laugh and those reflections which will startle you by
+their profundity; now you will see sudden changes of mood and the
+caprices of a mind which hesitates. At times she will exhibit extreme
+tenderness, as if she repented of her thoughts and her projects;
+sometimes she will be sullen and at cross-purposes with you; in a
+word, she will fulfill the _varium et mutabile femina_ which we
+hitherto have had the folly to attribute to the feminine temperament.
+Diderot, in his desire to explain the mutations almost atmospheric in
+the behavior of women, has even gone so far as to make them the
+offspring of what he calls _la bete feroce_; but we never see these
+whims in a woman who is happy.
+
+These symptoms, light as gossamer, resemble the clouds which scarcely
+break the azure surface of the sky and which they call flowers of the
+storm. But soon their colors take a deeper intensity.
+
+In the midst of this solemn premeditation, which tends, as Madame de
+Stael says, to bring more poetry into life, some women, in whom
+virtuous mothers either from considerations of worldly advantage of
+duty or sentiment, or through sheer hypocrisy, have inculcated
+steadfast principles, take the overwhelming fancies by which they are
+assailed for suggestions of the devil; and you will see them therefore
+trotting regularly to mass, to midday offices, even to vespers. This
+false devotion exhibits itself, first of all in the shape of pretty
+books of devotion in a costly binding, by the aid of which these dear
+sinners attempt in vain to fulfill the duties imposed by religion, and
+long neglected for the pleasures of marriage.
+
+Now here we will lay down a principle, and you must engrave it on your
+memory in letters of fire.
+
+When a young woman suddenly takes up religious practices which she has
+before abandoned, this new order of life always conceals a motive
+highly significant, in view of her husband's happiness. In the case of
+at least seventy-nine women out of a hundred this return to God proves
+that they have been inconsistent, or that they intend to become so.
+
+But a symptom more significant still and more decisive, and one that
+every husband should recognize under pain of being considered a fool,
+is this:
+
+At the time when both of you are immersed in the illusive delights of
+the honeymoon, your wife, as one devoted to you, would constantly
+carry out your will. She was happy in the power of showing the ready
+will, which both of you mistook for love, and she would have liked for
+you to have asked her to walk on the edge of the roof, and
+immediately, nimble as a squirrel, she would have run over the tiles.
+In a word, she found an ineffable delight in sacrificing to you that
+_ego_ which made her a being distinct from yours. She had identified
+herself with your nature and was obedient to that vow of the heart,
+_Una caro_.
+
+All this delightful promptness of an earlier day gradually faded away.
+Wounded to find her will counted as nothing, your wife will attempt,
+nevertheless, to reassert it by means of a system developed gradually,
+and from day to day, with increased energy.
+
+This system is founded upon what we may call the dignity of the
+married woman. The first effect of this system is to mingle with your
+pleasures a certain reserve and a certain lukewarmness, of which you
+are the sole judge.
+
+According to the greater or lesser violence of your sensual passion,
+you have perhaps discerned some of those twenty-two pleasures which in
+other times created in Greece twenty-two kinds of courtesans, devoted
+especially to these delicate branches of the same art. Ignorant and
+simple, curious and full of hope, your young wife may have taken some
+degrees in this science as rare as it is unknown, and which we
+especially commend to the attention of the future author of
+_Physiology of Pleasure_.
+
+Lacking all these different kinds of pleasure, all these caprices of
+soul, all these arrows of love, you are reduced to the most common of
+love fashions, of that primitive and innocent wedding gait, the calm
+homage which the innocent Adam rendered to our common Mother and which
+doubtless suggested to the Serpent the idea of taking them in. But a
+symptom so complete is not frequent. Most married couples are too good
+Christians to follow the usages of pagan Greece, so we have ranged,
+among the last symptoms, the appearance in the calm nuptial couch of
+those shameless pleasures which spring generally from lawless passion.
+In their proper time and place we will treat more fully of this
+fascinating diagnostic; at this point, things are reduced to a
+listlessness and conjugal repugnance which you alone are in a
+condition to appreciate.
+
+At the same time that she is ennobling by her dignity the objects of
+marriage, your wife will pretend that she ought to have her opinion
+and you yours. "In marrying," she will say, "a woman does not vow that
+she will abdicate the throne of reason. Are women then really slaves?
+Human laws can fetter the body; but the mind!--ah! God has placed it
+so near Himself that no human hand can touch it."
+
+These ideas necessarily proceed either from the too liberal teachings
+which you have allowed her to receive, or from some reflections which
+you have permitted her to make. A whole Meditation has been devoted to
+_Home Instruction_.
+
+Then your wife begins to say, "_My_ chamber, _my_ bed, _my_
+apartment." To many of your questions she will reply, "But, my dear,
+this is no business of yours!" Or: "Men have their part in the
+direction of the house, and women have theirs." Or, laughing at men
+who meddle in household affairs, she will affirm that "men do not
+understand some things."
+
+The number of things which you do not understand increases day by day.
+
+One fine morning, you will see in your little church two altars, where
+before you never worshiped but at one. The altar of your wife and your
+own altar have become distinct, and this distinction will go on
+increasing, always in accordance with the system founded upon the
+dignity of woman.
+
+Then the following ideas will appear, and they will be inculcated in
+you whether you like it or not, by means of a living force very
+ancient in origin and little known. Steam-power, horse-power,
+man-power, and water-power are good inventions, but nature has
+provided
+women with a moral power, in comparison with which all other powers
+are nothing; we may call it _rattle-power_. This force consists in a
+continuance of the same sound, in an exact repetition of the same
+words, in a reversion, over and over again, to the same ideas, and
+this so unvaried, that from hearing them over and over again you will
+admit them, in order to be delivered from the discussion. Thus the
+power of the rattle will prove to you:
+
+That you are very fortunate to have such an excellent wife;
+
+That she has done you too much honor in marrying you;
+
+That women often see clearer than men;
+
+That you ought to take the advice of your wife in everything, and
+almost always ought to follow it;
+
+That you ought to respect the mother of your children, to honor her
+and have confidence in her;
+
+That the best way to escape being deceived, is to rely upon a wife's
+refinement, for according to certain old ideas which we have had the
+weakness to give credit, it is impossible for a man to prevent his
+wife from minotaurizing him;
+
+That a lawful wife is a man's best friend;
+
+That a woman is mistress in her own house and queen in her
+drawing-room, etc.
+
+Those who wish to oppose a firm resistance to a woman's conquest,
+effected by means of her dignity over man's power, fall into the
+category of the predestined.
+
+At first, quarrels arise which in the eye of wives give an air of
+tyranny to husbands. The tyranny of a husband is always a terrible
+excuse for inconsistency in a wife. Then, in their frivolous
+discussions they are enabled to prove to their families and to ours,
+to everybody and to ourselves, that we are in the wrong. If, for the
+sake of peace, or from love, you acknowledge the pretended rights of
+women, you yield an advantage to your wife by which she will profit
+eternally. A husband, like a government, ought never to acknowledge a
+mistake. In case you do so, your power will be outflanked by the
+subtle artifices of feminine dignity; then all will be lost; from that
+moment she will advance from concession to concession until she has
+driven you from her bed.
+
+The woman being shrewd, intelligent, sarcastic and having leisure to
+meditate over an ironical phrase, can easily turn you into ridicule
+during a momentary clash of opinions. The day on which she turns you
+into ridicule, sees the end of your happiness. Your power has expired.
+A woman who has laughed at her husband cannot henceforth love him. A
+man should be, to the woman who is in love with him, a being full of
+power, of greatness, and always imposing. A family cannot exist
+without despotism. Think of that, ye nations!
+
+Now the difficult course which a man has to steer in presence of such
+serious incidents as these, is what we may call the _haute politique_
+of marriage, and is the subject of the second and third parts of our
+book. That breviary of marital Machiavelism will teach you the manner
+in which you may grow to greatness within that frivolous mind, within
+that soul of lacework, to use Napoleon's phrase. You may learn how a
+man may exhibit a soul of steel, may enter upon this little domestic
+war without ever yielding the empire of his will, and may do so
+without compromising his happiness. For if you exhibit any tendency to
+abdication, your wife will despise you, for the sole reason that she
+has discovered you to be destitute of mental vigor; you are no longer
+a _man_ to her.
+
+But we have not yet reached the point at which are to be developed
+those theories and principles, by means of which a man may unite
+elegance of manners with severity of measures; let it suffice us, for
+the moment, to point out the importance of impending events and let us
+pursue our theme.
+
+At this fatal epoch, you will see that she is adroitly setting up a
+right to go out alone.
+
+You were at one time her god, her idol. She has now reached that
+height of devotion at which it is permitted to see holes in the
+garments of the saints.
+
+"Oh, mon Dieu! My dear," said Madame de la Valliere to her husband,
+"how badly you wear your sword! M. de Richelieu has a way of making it
+hang straight at his side, which you ought to try to imitate; it is in
+much better taste."
+
+"My dear, you could not tell me in a more tactful manner that we have
+been married five months!" replied the Duke, whose repartee made his
+fortune in the reign of Louis XV.
+
+She will study your character in order to find weapons against you.
+Such a study, which love would hold in horror, reveals itself in the
+thousand little traps which she lays purposely to make you scold her;
+when a woman has no excuse for minotaurizing her husband she sets to
+work to make one.
+
+She will perhaps begin dinner without waiting for you.
+
+If you drive through the middle of the town, she will point out
+certain objects which escaped your notice; she will sing before you
+without feeling afraid; she will interrupt you, sometimes vouchsafe no
+reply to you, and will prove to you, in a thousand different ways,
+that she is enjoying at your side the use of all her faculties and
+exercising her private judgment.
+
+She will try to abolish entirely your influence in the management of
+the house and to become sole mistress of your fortune. At first this
+struggle will serve as a distraction for her soul, whether it be empty
+or in too violent commotion; next, she will find in your opposition a
+new motive for ridicule. Slang expressions will not fail her, and in
+France we are so quickly vanquished by the ironical smile of another!
+
+At other times headaches and nervous attacks make their appearance;
+but these symptoms furnish matter for a whole future Meditation. In
+the world she will speak of you without blushing, and will gaze at you
+with assurance. She will begin to blame your least actions because
+they are at variance with her ideas, or her secret intentions. She
+will take no care of what pertains to you, she will not even know
+whether you have all you need. You are no longer her paragon.
+
+In imitation of Louis XIV, who carried to his mistresses the bouquets
+of orange blossoms which the head gardener of Versailles put on his
+table every morning, M. de Vivonne used almost every day to give his
+wife choice flowers during the early period of his marriage. One
+morning he found the bouquet lying on the side table without having
+been placed, as usual, in a vase of water.
+
+"Oh! Oh!" said he, "if I am not a cuckold, I shall very soon be one."
+
+You go on a journey for eight days and you receive no letters, or you
+receive one, three pages of which are blank.--Symptom.
+
+You come home mounted on a valuable horse which you like very much,
+and between her kisses your wife shows her uneasiness about the horse
+and his fodder.--Symptom.
+
+To these features of the case, you will be able to add others. We
+shall endeavor in the present volume always to paint things in bold
+fresco style and leave the miniatures to you. According to the
+characters concerned, the indications which we are describing, veiled
+under the incidents of ordinary life, are of infinite variety. One man
+may discover a symptom in the way a shawl is put on, while another
+needs to receive a fillip to his intellect, in order to notice the
+indifference of his mate.
+
+Some fine spring morning, the day after a ball, or the eve of a
+country party, this situation reaches its last phase; your wife is
+listless and the happiness within her reach has no more attractions
+for her. Her mind, her imagination, perhaps her natural caprices call
+for a lover. Nevertheless, she dare not yet embark upon an intrigue
+whose consequences and details fill her with dread. You are still
+there for some purpose or other; you are a weight in the balance,
+although a very light one. On the other hand, the lover presents
+himself arrayed in all the graces of novelty and all the charms of
+mystery. The conflict which has arisen in the heart of your wife
+becomes, in presence of the enemy, more real and more full of peril
+than before. Very soon the more dangers and risks there are to be run,
+the more she burns to plunge into that delicious gulf of fear,
+enjoyment, anguish and delight. Her imagination kindles and sparkles,
+her future life rises before her eyes, colored with romantic and
+mysterious hues. Her soul discovers that existence has already taken
+its tone from this struggle which to a woman has so much solemnity in
+it. All is agitation, all is fire, all is commotion within her. She
+lives with three times as much intensity as before, and judges the
+future by the present. The little pleasure which you have lavished
+upon her bears witness against you; for she is not excited as much by
+the pleasures which she has received, as by those which she is yet to
+enjoy; does not imagination show her that her happiness will be keener
+with this lover, whom the laws deny her, than with you? And then, she
+finds enjoyment even in her terror and terror in her enjoyment. Then
+she falls in love with this imminent danger, this sword of Damocles
+hung over her head by you yourself, thus preferring the delirious
+agonies of such a passion, to that conjugal inanity which is worse to
+her than death, to that indifference which is less a sentiment than
+the absence of all sentiment.
+
+You, who must go to pay your respects to the Minister of Finance, to
+write memorandums at the bank, to make your reports at the Bourse, or
+to speak in the Chamber; you, young men, who have repeated with many
+others in our first Meditation the oath that you will defend your
+happiness in defending your wife, what can you oppose to these desires
+of hers which are so natural? For, with these creatures of fire, to
+live is to feel; the moment they cease to experience emotion they are
+dead. The law in virtue of which you take your position produces in
+her this involuntary act of minotaurism. "There is one sequel," said
+D'Alembert, "to the laws of movement." Well, then, where are your
+means of defence?-- Where, indeed?
+
+Alas! if your wife has not yet kissed the apple of the Serpent, the
+Serpent stands before her; you sleep, we are awake, and our book
+begins.
+
+Without inquiring how many husbands, among the five hundred thousand
+which this book concerns, will be left with the predestined; how many
+have contracted unfortunate marriages; how many have made a bad
+beginning with their wives; and without wishing to ask if there be
+many or few of this numerous band who can satisfy the conditions
+required for struggling against the danger which is impending, we
+intend to expound in the second and third part of this work the
+methods of fighting the Minotaur and keeping intact the virtue of
+wives. But if fate, the devil, the celibate, opportunity, desire your
+ruin, in recognizing the progress of all intrigues, in joining in the
+battles which are fought by every home, you will possibly be able to
+find some consolation. Many people have such a happy disposition, that
+on showing to them the condition of things and explaining to them the
+why and the wherefore, they scratch their foreheads, rub their hands,
+stamp on the ground, and are satisfied.
+
+
+
+                            MEDITATION IX.
+
+                              EPILOGUE.
+
+Faithful to our promise, this first part has indicated the general
+causes which bring all marriages to the crises which we are about to
+describe; and, in tracing the steps of this conjugal preamble, we have
+also pointed out the way in which the catastrophe is to be avoided,
+for we have pointed out the errors by which it is brought about.
+
+But these first considerations would be incomplete if, after
+endeavoring to throw some light upon the inconsistency of our ideas,
+of our manners and of our laws, with regard to a question which
+concerns the life of almost all living beings, we did not endeavor to
+make plain, in a short peroration, the political causes of the
+infirmity which pervades all modern society. After having exposed the
+secret vices of marriage, would it not be an inquiry worthy of
+philosophers to search out the causes which have rendered it so
+vicious?
+
+The system of law and of manners which so far directs women and
+controls marriage in France, is the outcome of ancient beliefs and
+traditions which are no longer in accordance with the eternal
+principles of reason and of justice, brought to light by the great
+Revolution of 1789.
+
+Three great disturbances have agitated France; the conquest of the
+country by the Romans, the establishment of Christianity and the
+invasion of the Franks. Each of these events has left a deep impress
+upon the soil, upon the laws, upon the manners and upon the intellect
+of the nation.
+
+Greece having one foot on Europe and the other on Asia, was influenced
+by her voluptuous climate in the choice of her marriage institutions;
+she received them from the East, where her philosophers, her
+legislators and her poets went to study the abstruse antiquities of
+Egypt and Chaldea. The absolute seclusion of women which was
+necessitated under the burning sun of Asia prevailed under the laws of
+Greece and Ionia. The women remained in confinement within the marbles
+of the gyneceum. The country was reduced to the condition of a city,
+to a narrow territory, and the courtesans who were connected with art
+and religion by so many ties, were sufficient to satisfy the first
+passions of the young men, who were few in number, since their
+strength was elsewhere taken up in the violent exercises of that
+training which was demanded of them by the military system of those
+heroic times.
+
+At the beginning of her royal career Rome, having sent to Greece to
+seek such principles of legislation as might suit the sky of Italy,
+stamped upon the forehead of the married woman the brand of complete
+servitude. The senate understood the importance of virtue in a
+republic, hence the severity of manners in the excessive development
+of the marital and paternal power. The dependence of the woman on her
+husband is found inscribed on every code. The seclusion prescribed by
+the East becomes a duty, a moral obligation, a virtue. On these
+principles were raised temples to modesty and temples consecrated to
+the sanctity of marriage; hence, sprang the institution of censors,
+the law of dowries, the sumptuary laws, the respect for matrons and
+all the characteristics of the Roman law. Moreover, three acts of
+feminine violation either accomplished or attempted, produced three
+revolutions! And was it not a grand event, sanctioned by the decrees
+of the country, that these illustrious women should make their
+appearances on the political arena! Those noble Roman women, who were
+obliged to be either brides or mothers, passed their life in
+retirement engaged in educating the masters of the world. Rome had no
+courtesans because the youth of the city were engaged in eternal war.
+If, later on, dissoluteness appeared, it merely resulted from the
+despotism of emperors; and still the prejudices founded upon ancient
+manners were so influential that Rome never saw a woman on a stage.
+These facts are not put forth idly in scanning the history of marriage
+in France.
+
+After the conquest of Gaul, the Romans imposed their laws upon the
+conquered; but they were incapable of destroying both the profound
+respect which our ancestors entertained for women and the ancient
+superstitions which made women the immediate oracles of God. The Roman
+laws ended by prevailing, to the exclusion of all others, in this
+country once known as the "land of written law," or _Gallia togata_,
+and their ideas of marriage penetrated more or less into the "land of
+customs."
+
+But, during the conflict of laws with manners, the Franks invaded the
+Gauls and gave to the country the dear name of France. These warriors
+came from the North and brought the system of gallantry which had
+originated in their western regions, where the mingling of the sexes
+did not require in those icy climates the jealous precautions of the
+East. The women of that time elevated the privations of that kind of
+life by the exaltation of their sentiments. The drowsy minds of the
+day made necessary those varied forms of delicate solicitation, that
+versatility of address, the fancied repulse of coquetry, which belong
+to the system whose principles have been unfolded in our First Part,
+as admirably suited to the temperate clime of France.
+
+To the East, then, belong the passion and the delirium of passion, the
+long brown hair, the harem, the amorous divinities, the splendor, the
+poetry of love and the monuments of love.-- To the West, the liberty
+of wives, the sovereignty of their blond locks, gallantry, the fairy
+life of love, the secrecy of passion, the profound ecstasy of the
+soul, the sweet feelings of melancholy and the constancy of love.
+
+These two systems, starting from opposite points of the globe, have
+come into collision in France; in France, where one part of the
+country, Languedoc, was attracted by Oriental traditions, while the
+other, Languedoil, was the native land of a creed which attributes to
+woman a magical power. In the Languedoil, love necessitates mystery,
+in the Languedoc, to see is to love.
+
+At the height of this struggle came the triumphant entry of
+Christianity into France, and there it was preached by women, and
+there it consecrated the divinity of a woman who in the forests of
+Brittany, of Vendee and of Ardennes took, under the name of
+Notre-Dame, the place of more than one idol in the hollow of old
+Druidic oaks.
+
+If the religion of Christ, which is above all things a code of
+morality and politics, gave a soul to all living beings, proclaimed
+that equality of all in the sight of God, and by such principles as
+these fortified the chivalric sentiments of the North, this advantage
+was counterbalanced by the fact, that the sovereign pontiff resided at
+Rome, of which seat he considered himself the lawful heir, through the
+universality of the Latin tongue, which became that of Europe during
+the Middle Ages, and through the keen interest taken by monks, writers
+and lawyers in establishing the ascendency of certain codes,
+discovered by a soldier in the sack of Amalfi.
+
+These two principles of the servitude and the sovereignty of women
+retain possession of the ground, each of them defended by fresh
+arguments.
+
+The Salic law, which was a legal error, was a triumph for the
+principle of political and civil servitude for women, but it did not
+diminish the power which French manners accorded them, for the
+enthusiasm of chivalry which prevailed in Europe supplanted the party
+of manners against the party of law.
+
+And in this way was created that strange phenomenon which since that
+time has characterized both our national despotism and our
+legislation; for ever since those epochs which seemed to presage the
+Revolution, when the spirit of philosophy rose and reflected upon the
+history of the past, France has been the prey of many convulsions.
+Feudalism, the Crusades, the Reformation, the struggle between the
+monarchy and the aristocracy. Despotism and Priestcraft have so
+closely held the country within their clutches, that woman still
+remains the subject of strange counter-opinions, each springing from
+one of the three great movements to which we have referred. Was it
+possible that the woman question should be discussed and woman's
+political education and marriage should be ventilated when feudalism
+threatened the throne, when reform menaced both king and barons, and
+the people, between the hierarchy and the empire, were forgotten?
+According to a saying of Madame Necker, women, amid these great
+movements, were like the cotton wool put into a case of porcelain.
+They were counted for nothing, but without them everything would have
+been broken.
+
+A married woman, then, in France presents the spectacle of a queen out
+at service, of a slave, at once free and a prisoner; a collision
+between these two principles which frequently occurred, produced odd
+situations by the thousand. And then, woman was physically little
+understood, and what was actually sickness in her, was considered a
+prodigy, witchcraft or monstrous turpitude. In those days these
+creatures, treated by the law as reckless children, and put under
+guardianship, were by the manners of the time deified and adored. Like
+the freedmen of emperors, they disposed of crowns, they decided
+battles, they awarded fortunes, they inspired crimes and revolutions,
+wonderful acts of virtue, by the mere flash of their glances, and yet
+they possessed nothing and were not even possessors of themselves.
+They were equally fortunate and unfortunate. Armed with their weakness
+and strong in instinct, they launched out far beyond the sphere which
+the law allotted them, showing themselves omnipotent for evil, but
+impotent for good; without merit in the virtues that were imposed upon
+them, without excuse in their vices; accused of ignorance and yet
+denied an education; neither altogether mothers nor altogether wives.
+Having all the time to conceal their passions, while they fostered
+them, they submitted to the coquetry of the Franks, while they were
+obliged like Roman women, to stay within the ramparts of their castles
+and bring up those who were to be warriors. While no system was
+definitely decided upon by legislation as to the position of women,
+their minds were left to follow their inclinations, and there are
+found among them as many who resemble Marion Delorme as those who
+resemble Cornelia; there are vices among them, but there are as many
+virtues. These were creatures as incomplete as the laws which governed
+them; they were considered by some as a being midway between man and
+the lower animals, as a malignant beast which the laws could not too
+closely fetter, and which nature had destined, with so many other
+things, to serve the pleasure of men; while others held woman to be an
+angel in exile, a source of happiness and love, the only creature who
+responded to the highest feelings of man, while her miseries were to
+be recompensed by the idolatry of every heart. How could the
+consistency, which was wanting in a political system, be expected in
+the general manners of the nation?
+
+And so woman became what circumstances and men made her, instead of
+being what the climate and native institutions should have made her;
+sold, married against her taste, in accordance with the _Patria
+potestas_ of the Romans, at the same time that she fell under the
+marital despotism which desired her seclusion, she found herself
+tempted to take the only reprisals which were within her power. Then
+she became a dissolute creature, as soon as men ceased to be intently
+occupied in intestine war, for the same reason that she was a virtuous
+woman in the midst of civil disturbances. Every educated man can fill
+in this outline, for we seek from movements like these the lessons and
+not the poetic suggestion which they yield.
+
+The Revolution was too entirely occupied in breaking down and building
+up, had too many enemies, or followed perhaps too closely on the
+deplorable times witnessed under the regency and under Louis XV, to
+pay any attention to the position which women should occupy in the
+social order.
+
+The remarkable men who raised the immortal monument which our codes
+present were almost all old-fashioned students of law deeply imbued
+with a spirit of Roman jurisprudence; and moreover they were not the
+founders of any political institutions. Sons of the Revolution, they
+believed, in accordance with that movement, that the law of divorce
+wisely restricted and the bond of dutiful submission were sufficient
+ameliorations of the previous marriage law. When that former order of
+things was remembered, the change made by the new legislation seemed
+immense.
+
+At the present day the question as to which of these two principles
+shall triumph rests entirely in the hands of our wise legislators. The
+past has teaching which should bear fruit in the future. Have we lost
+all sense of the eloquence of fact?
+
+The principles of the East resulted in the existence of eunuchs and
+seraglios; the spurious social standing of France has brought in the
+plague of courtesans and the more deadly plague of our marriage
+system; and thus, to use the language of a contemporary, the East
+sacrifices to paternity men and the principle of justice; France,
+women and modesty. Neither the East nor France has attained the goal
+which their institutions point to; for that is happiness. The man is
+not more loved by the women of a harem than the husband is sure of
+being in France, as the father of his children; and marrying is not
+worth what it costs. It is time to offer no more sacrifice to this
+institution, and to amass a larger sum of happiness in the social
+state by making our manners and our institution conformable to our
+climate.
+
+Constitutional government, a happy mixture of two extreme political
+systems, despotism and democracy, suggests by the necessity of
+blending also the two principles of marriage, which so far clash
+together in France. The liberty which we boldly claim for young people
+is the only remedy for the host of evils whose source we have pointed
+out, by exposing the inconsistencies resulting from the bondage in
+which girls are kept. Let us give back to youth the indulgence of
+those passions, those coquetries, love and its terrors, love and its
+delights, and that fascinating company which followed the coming of
+the Franks. At this vernal season of life no fault is irreparable, and
+Hymen will come forth from the bosom of experiences, armed with
+confidence, stripped of hatred, and love in marriage will be
+justified, because it will have had the privilege of comparison.
+
+In this change of manners the disgraceful plague of public
+prostitution will perish of itself. It is especially at the time when
+the man possesses the frankness and timidity of adolescence, that in
+his pursuit of happiness he is competent to meet and struggle with
+great and genuine passions of the heart. The soul is happy in making
+great efforts of whatever kind; provided that it can act, that it can
+stir and move, it makes little difference, even though it exercise its
+power against itself. In this observation, the truth of which
+everybody can see, there may be found one secret of successful
+legislation, of tranquillity and happiness. And then, the pursuit of
+learning has now become so highly developed that the most tempestuous
+of our coming Mirabeaus can consume his energy either in the
+indulgence of a passion or the study of a science. How many young
+people have been saved from debauchery by self-chosen labors or the
+persistent obstacles put in the way of a first love, a love that was
+pure! And what young girl does not desire to prolong the delightful
+childhood of sentiment, is not proud to have her nature known, and has
+not felt the secret tremblings of timidity, the modesty of her secret
+communings with herself, and wished to oppose them to the young
+desires of a lover inexperienced as herself! The gallantry of the
+Franks and the pleasures which attend it should then be the portion of
+youth, and then would naturally result a union of soul, of mind, of
+character, of habits, of temperament and of fortune, such as would
+produce the happy equilibrium necessary for the felicity of the
+married couple. This system would rest upon foundations wider and
+freer, if girls were subjected to a carefully calculated system of
+disinheritance; or if, in order to force men to choose only those who
+promised happiness by their virtues, their character or their talents,
+they married as in the United States without dowry.
+
+In that case, the system adopted by the Romans could advantageously be
+applied to the married women who when they were girls used their
+liberty. Being exclusively engaged in the early education of their
+children, which is the most important of all maternal obligations,
+occupied in creating and maintaining the happiness of the household,
+so admirably described in the fourth book of _Julie_, they would be in
+their houses like the women of ancient Rome, living images of
+Providence, which reigns over all, and yet is nowhere visible. In this
+case, the laws covering the infidelity of the wife should be extremely
+severe. They should make the penalty disgrace, rather than inflict
+painful or coercive sentences. France has witnessed the spectacle of
+women riding asses for the pretended crime of magic, and many an
+innocent woman has died of shame. In this may be found the secret of
+future marriage legislation. The young girls of Miletus delivered
+themselves from marriage by voluntary death; the senate condemned the
+suicides to be dragged naked on a hurdle, and the other virgins
+condemned themselves for life.
+
+Women and marriage will never be respected until we have that radical
+change in manners which we are now begging for. This profound thought
+is the ruling principle in the two finest productions of an immortal
+genius. _Emile_ and _La Nouvelle Heloise_ are nothing more than two
+eloquent pleas for the system. The voice there raised will resound
+through the ages, because it points to the real motives of true
+legislation, and the manners which will prevail in the future. By
+placing children at the breast of their mothers, Jean-Jacques rendered
+an immense service to the cause of virtue; but his age was too deeply
+gangrened with abuses to understand the lofty lessons unfolded in
+those two poems; it is right to add also that the philosopher was in
+these works overmastered by the poet, and in leaving in the heart of
+_Julie_ after her marriage some vestiges of her first love, he was led
+astray by the attractiveness of a poetic situation, more touching
+indeed, but less useful than the truth which he wished to display.
+
+Nevertheless, if marriage in France is an unlimited contract to which
+men agree with a silent understanding that they may thus give more
+relish to passion, more curiosity, more mystery to love, more
+fascination to women; if a woman is rather an ornament to the
+drawing-room, a fashion-plate, a portmanteau, than a being whose
+functions in the order politic are an essential part of the country's
+prosperity and the nation's glory, a creature whose endeavors in life
+vie in utility with those of men--I admit that all the above theory,
+all these long considerations sink into nothingness at the prospect of
+such an important destiny!----
+
+But after having squeezed a pound of actualities in order to obtain
+one drop of philosophy, having paid sufficient homage to that passion
+for the historic, which is so dominant in our time, let us turn our
+glance upon the manners of the present period. Let us take the cap and
+bells and the coxcomb of which Rabelais once made a sceptre, and let
+us pursue the course of this inquiry without giving to one joke more
+seriousness than comports with it, and without giving to serious
+things the jesting tone which ill befits them.
+
+
+
+
+
+                             SECOND PART
+
+
+
+               MEANS OF DEFENCE, INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR.
+
+                       "To be or not to be,
+                        That is the question."
+                                --Shakspeare, _Hamlet_.
+
+
+
+                            MEDITATION X.
+
+                    A TREATISE ON MARITAL POLICY.
+
+When a man reaches the position in which the first part of this book
+sets him, we suppose that the idea of his wife being possessed by
+another makes his heart beat, and rekindles his passion, either by an
+appeal to his _amour propre_, his egotism, or his self-interest, for
+unless he is still on his wife's side, he must be one of the lowest of
+men and deserves his fate.
+
+In this trying moment it is very difficult for a husband to avoid
+making mistakes; for, with regard to most men, the art of ruling a
+wife is even less known than that of judiciously choosing one.
+However, marital policy consists chiefly in the practical application
+of three principles which should be the soul of your conduct. The
+first is never to believe what a woman says; the second, always to
+look for the spirit without dwelling too much upon the letter of her
+actions; and the third, not to forget that a woman is never so
+garrulous as when she holds her tongue, and is never working with more
+energy than when she keeps quiet.
+
+From the moment that your suspicions are aroused, you ought to be like
+a man mounted on a tricky horse, who always watches the ears of the
+beast, in fear of being thrown from the saddle.
+
+But art consists not so much in the knowledge of principles, as in the
+manner of applying them; to reveal them to ignorant people is to put a
+razor in the hand of a monkey. Moreover, the first and most vital of
+your duties consists in perpetual dissimulation, an accomplishment in
+which most husbands are sadly lacking. In detecting the symptoms of
+minotaurism a little too plainly marked in the conduct of their wives,
+most men at once indulge in the most insulting suspicions. Their minds
+contract a tinge of bitterness which manifests itself in their
+conversation, and in their manners; and the alarm which fills their
+heart, like the gas flame in a glass globe, lights up their
+countenances so plainly, that it accounts for their conduct.
+
+Now a woman, who has twelve hours more than you have each day to
+reflect and to study you, reads the suspicion written upon your face
+at the very moment that it arises. She will never forget this
+gratuitous insult. Nothing can ever remedy that. All is now said and
+done, and the very next day, if she has opportunity, she will join the
+ranks of inconsistent women.
+
+You ought then to begin under these circumstances to affect towards
+your wife the same boundless confidence that you have hitherto had in
+her. If you begin to lull her anxieties by honeyed words, you are
+lost, she will not believe you; for she has her policy as you have
+yours. Now there is as much need for tact as for kindliness in your
+behavior, in order to inculcate in her, without her knowing it, a
+feeling of security, which will lead her to lay back her ears, and
+prevent you from using rein or spur at the wrong moment.
+
+But how can we compare a horse, the frankest of all animals, to a
+being, the flashes of whose thought, and the movements of whose
+impulses render her at moments more prudent than the Servite
+Fra-Paolo, the most terrible adviser that the Ten at Venice ever had;
+more deceitful than a king; more adroit than Louis XI; more profound
+than Machiavelli; as sophistical as Hobbes; as acute as Voltaire; as
+pliant as the fiancee of Mamolin; and distrustful of no one in the
+whole wide world but you?
+
+Moreover, to this dissimulation, by means of which the springs that
+move your conduct ought to be made as invisible as those that move the
+world, must be added absolute self-control. That diplomatic
+imperturbability, so boasted of by Talleyrand, must be the least of
+your qualities; his exquisite politeness and the grace of his manners
+must distinguish your conversation. The professor here expressly
+forbids you to use your whip, if you would obtain complete control
+over your gentle Andalusian steed.
+
+
+                                 LXI.
+ If a man strike his mistress it is a self-inflicted wound; but if he
+                    strike his wife it is suicide!
+
+
+How can we think of a government without police, an action without
+force, a power without weapons?--Now this is exactly the problem which
+we shall try to solve in our future meditations. But first we must
+submit two preliminary observations. They will furnish us with two
+other theories concerning the application of all the mechanical means
+which we propose you should employ. An instance from life will refresh
+these arid and dry dissertations: the hearing of such a story will be
+like laying down a book, to work in the field.
+
+In the year 1822, on a fine morning in the month of February, I was
+traversing the boulevards of Paris, from the quiet circles of the
+Marais to the fashionable quarters of the Chaussee-d'Antin, and I
+observed for the first time, not without a certain philosophic joy,
+the diversity of physiognomy and the varieties of costume which, from
+the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule even to the Madeleine, made each portion of
+the boulevard a world of itself, and this whole zone of Paris, a grand
+panorama of manners. Having at that time no idea of what the world
+was, and little thinking that one day I should have the audacity to
+set myself up as a legislator on marriage, I was going to take lunch
+at the house of a college friend, who was perhaps too early in life
+afflicted with a wife and two children. My former professor of
+mathematics lived at a short distance from the house of my college
+friend, and I promised myself the pleasure of a visit to this worthy
+mathematician before indulging my appetite for the dainties of
+friendship. I accordingly made my way to the heart of a study, where
+everything was covered with a dust which bore witness to the lofty
+abstraction of the scholar. But a surprise was in store for me there.
+I perceived a pretty woman seated on the arm of an easy chair, as if
+mounted on an English horse; her face took on the look of conventional
+surprise worn by mistresses of the house towards those they do not
+know, but she did not disguise the expression of annoyance which, at
+my appearance, clouded her countenance with the thought that I was
+aware how ill-timed was my presence. My master, doubtless absorbed in
+an equation, had not yet raised his head; I therefore waved my right
+hand towards the young lady, like a fish moving his fin, and on tiptoe
+I retired with a mysterious smile which might be translated "I will
+not be the one to prevent him committing an act of infidelity to
+Urania." She nodded her head with one of those sudden gestures whose
+graceful vivacity is not to be translated into words.
+
+"My good friend, don't go away," cried the geometrician. "This is my
+wife!"
+
+I bowed for the second time!--Oh, Coulon! Why wert thou not present to
+applaud the only one of thy pupils who understood from that moment the
+expression, "anacreontic," as applied to a bow?--The effect must have
+been very overwhelming; for Madame the Professoress, as the Germans
+say, rose hurriedly as if to go, making me a slight bow which seemed
+to say: "Adorable!----" Her husband stopped her, saying:
+
+"Don't go, my child, this is one of my pupils."
+
+The young woman bent her head towards the scholar as a bird perched on
+a bough stretches its neck to pick up a seed.
+
+"It is not possible," said the husband, heaving a sigh, "and I am
+going to prove it to you by A plus B."
+
+"Let us drop that, sir, I beg you," she answered, pointing with a wink
+to me.
+
+If it had been a problem in algebra, my master would have understood
+this look, but it was Chinese to him, and so he went on.
+
+"Look here, child, I constitute you judge in the matter; our income is
+ten thousand francs."
+
+At these words I retired to the door, as if I were seized with a wild
+desire to examine the framed drawings which had attracted my
+attention. My discretion was rewarded by an eloquent glance. Alas! she
+did not know that in Fortunio I could have played the part of
+Sharp-Ears, who heard the truffles growing.
+
+"In accordance with the principles of general economy," said my
+master, "no one ought to spend in rent and servant's wages more than
+two-tenths of his income; now our apartment and our attendance cost
+altogether a hundred louis. I give you twelve hundred francs to dress
+with" [in saying this he emphasized every syllable]. "Your food," he
+went on, takes up four thousand francs, our children demand at lest
+twenty-five louis; I take for myself only eight hundred francs;
+washing, fuel and light mount up to about a thousand francs; so that
+there does not remain, as you see, more than six hundred francs for
+unforeseen expenses. In order to buy the cross of diamonds, we must
+draw a thousand crowns from our capital, and if once we take that
+course, my little darling, there is no reason why we should not leave
+Paris which you love so much, and at once take up our residence in the
+country, in order to retrench. Children and household expenses will
+increase fast enough! Come, try to be reasonable!"
+
+"I suppose I must," she said, "but you will be the only husband in
+Paris who has not given a New Year's gift to his wife."
+
+And she stole away like a school-boy who goes to finish an imposed
+duty. My master made a gesture of relief. When he saw the door close
+he rubbed his hands, he talked of the war in Spain; and I went my way
+to the Rue de Provence, little knowing that I had received the first
+installment of a great lesson in marriage, any more than I dreamt of
+the conquest of Constantinople by General Diebitsch. I arrived at my
+host's house at the very moment they were sitting down to luncheon,
+after having waited for me the half hour demanded by usage. It was, I
+believe, as she opened a _pate de foie gras_ that my pretty hostess
+said to her husband, with a determined air:
+
+"Alexander, if you were really nice you would give me that pair of
+ear-rings that we saw at Fossin's."
+
+"You shall have them," cheerfully replied my friend, drawing from his
+pocketbook three notes of a thousand francs, the sight of which made
+his wife's eyes sparkle. "I can no more resist the pleasure of
+offering them to you," he added, "than you can that of accepting them.
+This is the anniversary of the day I first saw you, and the diamonds
+will perhaps make you remember it!----"
+
+"You bad man!" said she, with a winning smile.
+
+She poked two fingers into her bodice, and pulling out a bouquet of
+violets she threw them with childlike contempt into the face of my
+friend. Alexander gave her the price of the jewels, crying out:
+
+"I had seen the flowers!"
+
+I shall never forget the lively gesture and the eager joy with which,
+like a cat which lays its spotted paw upon a mouse, the little woman
+seized the three bank notes; she rolled them up blushing with
+pleasure, and put them in the place of the violets which before had
+perfumed her bosom. I could not help thinking about my old
+mathematical master. I did not then see any difference between him and
+his pupil, than that which exists between a frugal man and a prodigal,
+little thinking that he of the two who seemed to calculate the better,
+actually calculated the worse. The luncheon went off merrily. Very
+soon, seated in a little drawing-room newly decorated, before a
+cheerful fire which gave warmth and made our hearts expand as in
+spring
+time, I felt compelled to make this loving couple a guest's
+compliments on the furnishing of their little bower.
+
+"It is a pity that all this costs so dear," said my friend, "but it is
+right that the nest be worthy of the bird; but why the devil do you
+compliment me upon curtains which are not paid for?--You make me
+remember, just at the time I am digesting lunch, that I still owe two
+thousand francs to a Turk of an upholsterer."
+
+At these words the mistress of the house made a mental inventory of
+the pretty room with her eyes, and the radiancy of her face changed to
+thoughtfulness. Alexander took me by the hand and led me to the recess
+of a bay window.
+
+"Do you happen," he said in a low voice, "to have a thousand crowns to
+lend me? I have only twelve thousand francs income, and this year--"
+
+"Alexander," cried the dear creature, interrupting her husband, while,
+rushing up, she offered him the three banknotes, "I see now that it is
+a piece of folly--"
+
+"What do you mean?" answered he, "keep your money."
+
+"But, my love, I am ruining you! I ought to know that you love me so
+much, that I ought not to tell you all that I wish for."
+
+"Keep it, my darling, it is your lawful property--nonsense, I shall
+gamble this winter and get all that back again!"
+
+"Gamble!" cried she, with an expression of horror. "Alexander, take
+back these notes! Come, sir, I wish you to do so."
+
+"No, no," replied my friend, repulsing the white and delicious little
+hand. "Are you not going on Thursday to a ball of Madame de B-----?"
+
+"I will think about what you asked of me," said I to my comrade.
+
+I went away bowing to his wife, but I saw plainly after that scene
+that my anacreontic salutation did not produce much effect upon her.
+
+"He must be mad," thought I as I went away, "to talk of a thousand
+crowns to a law student."
+
+Five days later I found myself at the house of Madame de B-----, whose
+balls were becoming fashionable. In the midst of the quadrilles I saw
+the wife of my friend and that of the mathematician. Madame Alexander
+wore a charming dress; some flowers and white muslin were all that
+composed it. She wore a little cross _a la Jeannette_, hanging by a
+black velvet ribbon which set off the whiteness of her scented skin;
+long pears of gold decorated her ears. On the neck of Madame the
+Professoress sparkled a superb cross of diamonds.
+
+"How funny that is," said I to a personage who had not yet studied the
+world's ledger, nor deciphered the heart of a single woman.
+
+That personage was myself. If I had then the desire to dance with
+those fair women, it was simply because I knew a secret which
+emboldened my timidity.
+
+"So after all, madame, you have your cross?" I said to her first.
+
+"Well, I fairly won it!" she replied, with a smile hard to describe.
+
+"How is this! no ear-rings?" I remarked to the wife of my friend.
+
+"Ah!" she replied, "I have enjoyed possession of them during a whole
+luncheon time, but you see that I have ended by converting Alexander."
+
+"He allowed himself to be easily convinced?"
+
+She answered with a look of triumph.
+
+Eight years afterwards, this scene suddenly rose to my memory, though
+I had long since forgotten it, and in the light of the candles I
+distinctly discerned the moral of it. Yes, a woman has a horror of
+being convinced of anything; when you try to persuade her she
+immediately submits to being led astray and continues to play the role
+which nature gave her. In her view, to allow herself to be won over is
+to grant a favor, but exact arguments irritate and confound her; in
+order to guide her you must employ the power which she herself so
+frequently employs and which lies in an appeal to sensibility. It is
+therefore in his wife, and not in himself, that a husband can find the
+instruments of his despotism; as diamond cuts diamond so must the
+woman be made to tyrannize over herself. To know how to offer the
+ear-rings in such a way that they will be returned, is a secret whose
+application embraces the slightest details of life. And now let us
+pass to the second observation.
+
+"He who can manage property of one toman, can manage one of an hundred
+thousand," says an Indian proverb; and I, for my part, will enlarge
+upon this Asiatic adage and declare, that he who can govern one woman
+can govern a nation, and indeed there is very much similarity between
+these two governments. Must not the policy of husbands be very nearly
+the same as the policy of kings? Do not we see kings trying to amuse
+the people in order to deprive them of their liberty; throwing food at
+their heads for one day, in order to make them forget the misery of a
+whole year; preaching to them not to steal and at the same time
+stripping them of everything; and saying to them: "It seems to me that
+if I were the people I should be virtuous"? It is from England that we
+obtain the precedent which husbands should adopt in their houses.
+Those who have eyes ought to see that when the government is running
+smoothly the Whigs are rarely in power. A long Tory ministry has
+always succeeded an ephemeral Liberal cabinet. The orators of a
+national party resemble the rats which wear their teeth away in
+gnawing the rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as they smell
+the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman is
+the Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in which we have
+left her she might naturally aspire to the conquest of more than one
+privilege. Shut your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to waste her
+strength in mounting half the steps of your throne; and when she is on
+the point of touching your sceptre, fling her back to the ground,
+quite gently and with infinite grace, saying to her: "Bravo!" and
+leaving her to expect success in the hereafter. The craftiness of this
+manoeuvre will prove a fine support to you in the employment of any
+means which it may please you to choose from your arsenal, for the
+object of subduing your wife.
+
+Such are the general principles which a husband should put into
+practice, if he wishes to escape mistakes in ruling his little
+kingdom. Nevertheless, in spite of what was decided by the minority at
+the council of Macon (Montesquieu, who had perhaps foreseen the coming
+of constitutional government has remarked, I forget in what part of
+his writings, that good sense in public assemblies is always found on
+the side of the minority), we discern in a woman a soul and a body,
+and we commence by investigating the means to gain control of her
+moral nature. The exercise of thought, whatever people may say, is
+more noble than the exercise of bodily organs, and we give precedence
+to science over cookery and to intellectual training over hygiene.
+
+
+
+                            MEDITATION XI.
+
+                       INSTRUCTION IN THE HOME.
+
+Whether wives should or should not be put under instruction--such is
+the question before us. Of all those which we have discussed this is
+the only one which has two extremes and admits of no compromise.
+Knowledge and ignorance, such are the two irreconcilable terms of this
+problem. Between these two abysses we seem to see Louis XVIII
+reckoning up the felicities of the eighteenth century, and the
+unhappiness of the nineteenth. Seated in the centre of the seesaw,
+which he knew so well how to balance by his own weight, he
+contemplates at one end of it the fanatic ignorance of a lay brother,
+the apathy of a serf, the shining armor on the horses of a banneret;
+he thinks he hears the cry, "France and Montjoie-Saint-Denis!" But he
+turns round, he smiles as he sees the haughty look of a manufacturer,
+who is captain in the national guard; the elegant carriage of a stock
+broker; the simple costume of a peer of France turned journalist and
+sending his son to the Polytechnique; then he notices the costly
+stuffs, the newspapers, the steam engines; and he drinks his coffee
+from a cup of Sevres, at the bottom of which still glitters the "N"
+surmounted by a crown.
+
+"Away with civilization! Away with thought!"--That is your cry. You
+ought to hold in horror the education of women for the reason so well
+realized in Spain, that it is easier to govern a nation of idiots than
+a nation of scholars. A nation degraded is happy: if she has not the
+sentiment of liberty, neither has she the storms and disturbances
+which it begets; she lives as polyps live; she can be cut up into two
+or three pieces and each piece is still a nation, complete and living,
+and ready to be governed by the first blind man who arms himself with
+the pastoral staff.
+
+What is it that produces this wonderful characteristic of humanity?
+Ignorance; ignorance is the sole support of despotism, which lives on
+darkness and silence. Now happiness in the domestic establishment as
+in a political state is a negative happiness. The affection of a
+people for a king, in an absolute monarchy, is perhaps less contrary
+to nature than the fidelity of a wife towards her husband, when love
+between them no longer exists. Now we know that, in your house, love
+at this moment has one foot on the window-sill. It is necessary for
+you, therefore, to put into practice that salutary rigor by which M.
+de Metternich prolongs his _statu quo_; but we would advise you to do
+so with more tact and with still more tenderness; for your wife is
+more crafty than all the Germans put together, and as voluptuous as
+the Italians.
+
+You should, therefore, try to put off as long as possible the fatal
+moment when your wife asks you for a book. This will be easy. You will
+first of all pronounce in a tone of disdain the phrase "Blue
+stocking;" and, on her request being repeated, you will tell her what
+ridicule attaches, among the neighbors, to pedantic women.
+
+You will then repeat to her, very frequently, that the most lovable
+and the wittiest women in the world are found at Paris, where women
+never read;
+
+That women are like people of quality who, according to Mascarillo,
+know everything without having learned anything; that a woman while
+she is dancing, or while she is playing cards, without even having the
+appearance of listening, ought to know how to pick up from the
+conversation of talented men the ready-made phrases out of which fools
+manufacture their wit at Paris;
+
+That in this country decisive judgments on men and affairs are passed
+round from hand to hand; and that the little cutting phrase with which
+a woman criticises an author, demolishes a work, or heaps contempt on
+a picture, has more power in the world than a court decision;
+
+That women are beautiful mirrors, which naturally reflect the most
+brilliant ideas;
+
+That natural wit is everything, and the best education is gained
+rather from what we learn in the world than by what we read in books;
+
+That, above all, reading ends in making the eyes dull, etc.
+
+To think of leaving a woman at liberty to read the books which her
+character of mind may prompt her to choose! This is to drop a spark in
+a powder magazine; it is worse than that, it is to teach your wife to
+separate herself from you; to live in an imaginary world, in a
+Paradise. For what do women read? Works of passion, the _Confessions_
+of Rousseau, romances, and all those compositions which work most
+powerfully on their sensibility. They like neither argument nor the
+ripe fruits of knowledge. Now have you ever considered the results
+which follow these poetical readings?
+
+Romances, and indeed all works of imagination, paint sentiments and
+events with colors of a very different brilliancy from those presented
+by nature. The fascination of such works springs less from the desire
+which each author feels to show his skill in putting forth choice and
+delicate ideas than from the mysterious working of the human
+intellect. It is characteristic of man to purify and refine everything
+that he lays up in the treasury of his thoughts. What human faces,
+what monuments of the dead are not made more beautiful than actual
+nature in the artistic representation? The soul of the reader assists
+in this conspiracy against the truth, either by means of the profound
+silence which it enjoys in reading or by the fire of mental conception
+with which it is agitated or by the clearness with which imagery is
+reflected in the mirror of the understanding. Who has not seen on
+reading the _Confessions_ of Jean-Jacques, that Madame de Warens is
+described as much prettier than she ever was in actual life? It might
+almost be said that our souls dwell with delight upon the figures
+which they had met in a former existence, under fairer skies; that
+they accept the creations of another soul only as wings on which they
+may soar into space; features the most delicate they bring to
+perfection by making them their own; and the most poetic expression
+which appears in the imagery of an author brings forth still more
+ethereal imagery in the mind of a reader. To read is to join with the
+writer in a creative act. The mystery of the transubstantiation of
+ideas, originates perhaps in the instinctive consciousness that we
+have of a vocation loftier than our present destiny. Or, is it based
+on the lost tradition of a former life? What must that life have been,
+if this slight residuum of memory offers us such volumes of delight?
+
+Moreover, in reading plays and romances, woman, a creature much more
+susceptible than we are to excitement, experiences the most violent
+transport. She creates for herself an ideal existence beside which all
+reality grows pale; she at once attempts to realize this voluptuous
+life, to take to herself the magic which she sees in it. And, without
+knowing it, she passes from spirit to letter and from soul to sense.
+
+And would you be simple enough to believe that the manners, the
+sentiments of a man like you, who usually dress and undress before
+your wife, can counterbalance the influence of these books and
+outshine the glory of their fictitious lovers, in whose garments the
+fair reader sees neither hole nor stain?--Poor fool! too late, alas!
+for her happiness and for yours, your wife will find out that the
+_heroes_ of poetry are as rare in real life as the _Apollos_ of
+sculpture!
+
+Very many husbands will find themselves embarrassed in trying to
+prevent their wives from reading, yet there are certain people who
+allege that reading has this advantage, that men know what their wives
+are about when they have a book in hand. In the first place you will
+see, in the next Meditation, what a tendency the sedentary life has to
+make a woman quarrelsome; but have you never met those beings without
+poetry, who succeed in petrifying their unhappy companions by reducing
+life to its most mechanical elements? Study great men in their
+conversation and learn by heart the admirable arguments by which they
+condemn poetry and the pleasures of imagination.
+
+But if, after all your efforts, your wife persists in wishing to read,
+put at her disposal at once all possible books from the A B C of her
+little boy to _Rene_, a book more dangerous to you when in her hands
+than _Therese Philosophe_. You might create in her an utter disgust
+for reading by giving her tedious books; and plunge her into utter
+idiocy with _Marie Alacoque_, _The Brosse de Penitence_, or with the
+chansons which were so fashionable in the time of Louis XV; but later
+on you will find, in the present volume, the means of so thoroughly
+employing your wife's time, that any kind of reading will be quite out
+of the question.
+
+And first of all, consider the immense resources which the education
+of women has prepared for you in your efforts to turn your wife from
+her fleeting taste for science. Just see with what admirable stupidity
+girls lend themselves to reap the benefit of the education which is
+imposed upon them in France; we give them in charge to nursery maids,
+to companions, to governesses who teach them twenty tricks of coquetry
+and false modesty, for every single noble and true idea which they
+impart to them. Girls are brought up as slaves, and are accustomed to
+the idea that they are sent into the world to imitate their
+grandmothers, to breed canary birds, to make herbals, to water little
+Bengal rose-bushes, to fill in worsted work, or to put on collars.
+Moreover, if a little girl in her tenth year has more refinement than
+a boy of twenty, she is timid and awkward. She is frightened at a
+spider, chatters nonsense, thinks of dress, talks about the fashions
+and has not the courage to be either a watchful mother or a chaste
+wife.
+
+Notice what progress she had made; she has been shown how to paint
+roses, and to embroider ties in such a way as to earn eight sous a
+day. She has learned the history of France in _Ragois_ and chronology
+in the _Tables du Citoyen Chantreau_, and her young imagination has
+been set free in the realm of geography; all without any aim,
+excepting that of keeping away all that might be dangerous to her
+heart; but at the same time her mother and her teachers repeat with
+unwearied voice the lesson, that the whole science of a woman lies in
+knowing how to arrange the fig leaf which our Mother Eve wore. "She
+does not hear for fifteen years," says Diderot, "anything else but 'my
+daughter, your fig leaf is on badly; my daughter, your fig leaf is on
+well; my daughter, would it not look better so?'"
+
+Keep your wife then within this fine and noble circle of knowledge. If
+by chance your wife wishes to have a library, buy for her Florian,
+Malte-Brun, _The Cabinet des Fees_, _The Arabian Nights_, Redoute's
+_Roses_, _The Customs of China_, _The Pigeons_, by Madame Knip, the
+great work on Egypt, etc. Carry out, in short, the clever suggestion
+of that princess who, when she was told of a riot occasioned by the
+dearness of bread, said, "Why don't they eat cake?"
+
+Perhaps, one evening, your wife will reproach you for being sullen and
+not speaking to her; perhaps she will say that you are ridiculous,
+when you have just made a pun; but this is one of the slight
+annoyances incident to our system; and, moreover, what does it matter
+to you that the education of women in France is the most pleasant of
+absurdities, and that your marital obscurantism has brought a doll to
+your arms? As you have not sufficient courage to undertake a fairer
+task, would it not be better to lead your wife along the beaten track
+of married life in safety, than to run the risk of making her scale
+the steep precipices of love? She is likely to be a mother: you must
+not exactly expect to have Gracchi for sons, but to be really _pater
+quem nuptiae demonstrant_; now, in order to aid you in reaching this
+consummation, we must make this book an arsenal from which each one,
+in accordance with his wife's character and his own, may choose
+weapons fit to employ against the terrible genius of evil, which is
+always ready to rise up in the soul of a wife; and since it may fairly
+be considered that the ignorant are the most cruel opponents of
+feminine education, this Meditation will serve as a breviary for the
+majority of husbands.
+
+If a woman has received a man's education, she possesses in very truth
+the most brilliant and most fertile sources of happiness both to
+herself and to her husband; but this kind of woman is as rare as
+happiness itself; and if you do not possess her for your wife, your
+best course is to confine the one you do possess, for the sake of your
+common felicity, to the region of ideas she was born in, for you must
+not forget that one moment of pride in her might destroy you, by
+setting on the throne a slave who would immediately be tempted to
+abuse her power.
+
+After all, by following the system prescribed in this Meditation, a
+man of superiority will be relieved from the necessity of putting his
+thoughts into small change, when he wishes to be understood by his
+wife, if indeed this man of superiority has been guilty of the folly
+of marrying one of those poor creatures who cannot understand him,
+instead of choosing for his wife a young girl whose mind and heart he
+has tested and studied for a considerable time.
+
+Our aim in this last matrimonial observation has not been to advise
+all men of superiority to seek for women of superiority and we do not
+wish each one to expound our principles after the manner of Madame de
+Stael, who attempted in the most indelicate manner to effect a union
+between herself and Napoleon. These two beings would have been very
+unhappy in their domestic life; and Josephine was a wife accomplished
+in a very different sense from this virago of the nineteenth century.
+
+And, indeed, when we praise those undiscoverable girls so happily
+educated by chance, so well endowed by nature, whose delicate souls
+endure so well the rude contact of the great soul of him we call _a
+man_, we mean to speak of those rare and noble creatures of whom
+Goethe has given us a model in his Claire of _Egmont_; we are thinking
+of those women who seek no other glory than that of playing their part
+well; who adapt themselves with amazing pliancy to the will and
+pleasure of those whom nature has given them for masters; soaring at
+one time into the boundless sphere of their thought and in turn
+stooping to the simple task of amusing them as if they were children;
+understanding well the inconsistencies of masculine and violent souls,
+understanding also their slightest word, their most puzzling looks;
+happy in silence, happy also in the midst of loquacity; and well aware
+that the pleasures, the ideas and the moral instincts of a Lord Byron
+cannot be those of a bonnet-maker. But we must stop; this fair picture
+has led us too far from our subject; we are treating of marriage and
+not of love.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XII.
+
+                       THE HYGIENE OF MARRIAGE.
+
+The aim of this Meditation is to call to your attention a new method
+of defence, by which you may reduce the will of your new wife to a
+condition of utter and abject submission. This is brought about by the
+reaction upon her moral nature of physical changes, and the wise
+lowering of her physical condition by a diet skillfully controlled.
+
+This great and philosophical question of conjugal medicine will
+doubtless be regarded favorably by all who are gouty, are impotent, or
+suffer from catarrh; and by that legion of old men whose dullness we
+have quickened by our article on the predestined. But it principally
+concerns those husbands who have courage enough to enter into those
+paths of machiavelism, such as would not have been unworthy of that
+great king of France who endeavored to secure the happiness of the
+nation at the expense of certain noble heads. Here, the subject is the
+same. The amputation or the weakening of certain members is always to
+the advantage of the whole body.
+
+Do you think seriously that a celibate who has been subject to a diet
+consisting of the herb hanea, of cucumbers, of purslane and the
+applications of leeches to his ears, as recommended by Sterne, would
+be able to carry by storm the honor of your wife? Suppose that a
+diplomat had been clever enough to affix a permanent linen plaster to
+the head of Napoleon, or to purge him every morning: Do you think that
+Napoleon, Napoleon the Great, would ever have conquered Italy? Was
+Napoleon, during his campaign in Russia, a prey to the most horrible
+pangs of dysuria, or was he not? That is one of the questions which
+has weighed upon the minds of the whole world. Is it not certain that
+cooling applications, douches, baths, etc., produce great changes in
+more or less acute affections of the brain? In the middle of the heat
+of July when each one of your pores slowly filters out and returns to
+the devouring atmosphere the glasses of iced lemonade which you have
+drunk at a single draught, have you ever felt the flame of courage,
+the vigor of thought, the complete energy which rendered existence
+light and sweet to you some months before?
+
+No, no; the iron most closely cemented into the hardest stone will
+raise and throw apart the most durable monument, by reason of the
+secret influence exercised by the slow and invisible variations of
+heat and cold, which vex the atmosphere. In the first place, let us be
+sure that if atmospheric mediums have an influence over man, there is
+still a stronger reason for believing that man, in turn, influences
+the imagination of his kind, by the more or less vigor with which he
+projects his will and thus produces a veritable atmosphere around him.
+
+It is in this fact that the power of the actor's talent lies, as well
+as that of poetry and of fanaticism; for the former is the eloquence
+of words, as the latter is the eloquence of actions; and in this lies
+the foundation of a science, so far in its infancy.
+
+This will, so potent in one man against another, this nervous and
+fluid force, eminently mobile and transmittable, is itself subject to
+the changing condition of our organization, and there are many
+circumstances which make this frail organism of ours to vary. At this
+point, our metaphysical observation shall stop and we will enter into
+an analysis of the circumstances which develop the will of man and
+impart to it a grater degree of strength or weakness.
+
+Do not believe, however, that it is our aim to induce you to put
+cataplasms on the honor of your wife, to lock her up in a sweating
+house, or to seal her up like a letter; no. We will not even attempt
+to teach you the magnetic theory which would give you the power to
+make your will triumph in the soul of your wife; there is not a single
+husband who would accept the happiness of an eternal love at the price
+of this perpetual strain laid upon his animal forces. But we shall
+attempt to expound a powerful system of hygiene, which will enable you
+to put out the flame when your chimney takes fire. The elegant women
+of Paris and the provinces (and these elegant women form a very
+distinguished class among the honest women) have plenty of means of
+attaining the object which we propose, without rummaging in the
+arsenal of medicine for the four cold specifics, the water-lily and
+the thousand inventions worthy only of witches. We will leave to
+Aelian his herb hanea and to Sterne the purslane and cucumber which
+indicate too plainly his antiphlogistic purpose.
+
+You should let your wife recline all day long on soft armchairs, in
+which she sinks into a veritable bath of eiderdown or feathers; you
+should encourage in every way that does no violence to your
+conscience, the inclination which women have to breathe no other air
+but the scented atmosphere of a chamber seldom opened, where daylight
+can scarcely enter through the soft, transparent curtains.
+
+You will obtain marvelous results from this system, after having
+previously experienced the shock of her excitement; but if you are
+strong enough to support this momentary transport of your wife you
+will soon see her artificial energy die away. In general, women love
+to live fast, but, after their tempest of passion, return to that
+condition of tranquillity which insures the happiness of a husband.
+
+Jean-Jacques, through the instrumentality of his enchanting Julie,
+must have proved to your wife that it was infinitely becoming to
+refrain from affronting her delicate stomach and her refined palate by
+making chyle out of coarse lumps of beef, and enormous collops of
+mutton. Is there anything purer in the world than those interesting
+vegetables, always fresh and scentless, those tinted fruits, that
+coffee, that fragrant chocolate, those oranges, the golden apples of
+Atalanta, the dates of Arabia and the biscuits of Brussels, a
+wholesome and elegant food which produces satisfactory results, at the
+same time that it imparts to a woman an air of mysterious originality?
+By the regimen which she chooses she becomes quite celebrated in her
+immediate circle, just as she would be by a singular toilet, a
+benevolent action or a _bon mot_. Pythagoras must needs have cast his
+spell over her, and become as much petted by her as a poodle or an
+ape.
+
+Never commit the imprudence of certain men who, for the sake of
+putting on the appearance of wit, controvert the feminine dictum,
+_that the figure is preserved by meagre diet_. Women on such a diet
+never grow fat, that is clear and positive; do you stick to that.
+
+Praise the skill with which some women, renowned for their beauty,
+have been able to preserve it by bathing themselves in milk, several
+times a day, or in water compounded of substances likely to render the
+skin softer and to lower the nervous tension.
+
+Advise her above all things to refrain from washing herself in cold
+water; because water warm or tepid is the proper thing for all kinds
+of ablutions.
+
+Let Broussais be your idol. At the least indisposition of your wife,
+and on the slightest pretext, order the application of leeches; do not
+even shrink from applying from time to time a few dozen on yourself,
+in order to establish the system of that celebrated doctor in your
+household. You will constantly be called upon from your position as
+husband to discover that your wife is too ruddy; try even sometimes to
+bring the blood to her head, in order to have the right to introduce
+into the house at certain intervals a squad of leeches.
+
+Your wife ought to drink water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wine
+agreeable to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; every
+other kind of wine would be bad for her. Never allow her to drink
+water alone; if you do, you are lost.
+
+"Impetuous fluid! As soon as you press against the floodgates of the
+brain, how quickly do they yield to your power! Then Curiosity comes
+swimming by, making signs to her companions to follow; they plunge
+into the current. Imagination sits dreaming on the bank. She follows
+the torrent with her eyes and transforms the fragments of straw and
+reed into masts and bowsprit. And scarcely has the transformation
+taken place, before Desire, holding in one hand her skirt drawn up
+even to her knees, appears, sees the vessel and takes possession of
+it. O ye drinkers of water, it is by means of that magic spring that
+you have so often turned and turned again the world at your will,
+throwing beneath your feet the weak, trampling on his neck, and
+sometimes changing even the form and aspect of nature!"
+
+If by this system of inaction, in combination with our system of diet,
+you fail to obtain satisfactory results, throw yourself with might and
+main into another system, which we will explain to you.
+
+Man has a certain degree of energy given to him. Such and such a man
+or woman stands to another as ten is to thirty, as one to five; and
+there is a certain degree of energy which no one of us ever exceeds.
+The quantity of energy, or willpower, which each of us possesses
+diffuses itself like sound; it is sometimes weak, sometimes strong; it
+modifies itself according to the octaves to which it mounts. This
+force is unique, and although it may be dissipated in desire, in
+passion, in toils of intellect or in bodily exertion, it turns towards
+the object to which man directs it. A boxer expends it in blows of the
+fist, the baker in kneading his bread, the poet in the enthusiasm
+which consumes and demands an enormous quantity of it; it passes to
+the feet of the dancer; in fact, every one diffuses it at will, and
+may I see the Minotaur tranquilly seated this very evening upon my
+bed, if you do not know as well as I do how he expends it. Almost all
+men spend in necessary toils, or in the anguish of direful passions,
+this fine sum of energy and of will, with which nature has endowed
+them; but our honest women are all the prey to the caprices and the
+struggles of this power which knows not what to do with itself. If, in
+the case of your wife, this energy has not been subdued by the
+prescribed dietary regimen, subject her to some form of activity which
+will constantly increase in violence. Find some means by which her sum
+of force which inconveniences you may be carried off, by some
+occupation which shall entirely absorb her strength. Without setting
+your wife to work the crank of a machine, there are a thousand ways of
+tiring her out under the load of constant work.
+
+In leaving it to you to find means for carrying out our design--and
+these means vary with circumstances--we would point out that dancing
+is one of the very best abysses in which love may bury itself. This
+point having been very well treated by a contemporary, we will give
+him here an opportunity of speaking his mind:
+
+
+ "The poor victim who is the admiration of an enchanted audience
+  pays dear for her success. What result can possibly follow on
+  exertions so ill-proportioned to the resources of the delicate
+  sex? The muscles of the body, disproportionately wearied, are
+  forced to their full power of exertion. The nervous forces,
+  intended to feed the fire of passions, and the labor of the brain,
+  are diverted from their course. The failure of desire, the wish
+  for rest, the exclusive craving for substantial food, all point to
+  a nature impoverished, more anxious to recruit than to enjoy.
+  Moreover, a denizen of the side scenes said to me one day,
+  'Whoever has lived with dancers has lived with sheep; for in their
+  exhaustion they can think of nothing but strong food.' Believe me,
+  then, the love which a ballet girl inspires is very delusive; in
+  her we find, under an appearance of an artificial springtime, a
+  soil which is cold as well as greedy, and senses which are utterly
+  dulled. The Calabrian doctors prescribed the dance as a remedy for
+  the hysteric affections which are common among the women of their
+  country; and the Arabs use a somewhat similar recipe for the
+  highbred mares, whose too lively temperament hinders their
+  fecundity. 'Dull as a dancer' is a familiar proverb at the
+  theatre. In fact, the best brains of Europe are convinced that
+  dancing brings with it a result eminently cooling.
+
+ "In support of this it may be necessary to add other observations.
+  The life of shepherds gives birth to irregular loves. The morals
+  of weavers were horribly decried in Greece. The Italians have
+  given birth to a proverb concerning the lubricity of lame women.
+  The Spanish, in whose veins are found many mixtures of African
+  incontinence, have expressed their sentiments in a maxim which is
+  familiar with them: _Muger y gallina pierna quebrantada_ [it is
+  good that a woman and a hen have one broken leg]. The profound
+  sagacity of the Orientals in the art of pleasure is altogether
+  expressed by this ordinance of the caliph Hakim, founder of the
+  Druses, who forbade, under pain of death, the making in his
+  kingdom of any shoes for women. It seems that over the whole
+  globe the tempests of the heart wait only to break out after the
+  limbs are at rest!"
+
+
+What an admirable manoeuvre it would be to make a wife dance, and to
+feed her on vegetables!
+
+Do not believe that these observations, which are as true as they are
+wittily stated, contradict in any way the system which we have
+previously prescribed; by the latter, as by the former, we succeed in
+producing in a woman that needed listlessness, which is the pledge of
+repose and tranquility. By the latter you leave a door open, that the
+enemy may flee; by the former, you slay him.
+
+Now at this point it seems to us that we hear timorous people and
+those of narrow views rising up against our idea of hygiene in the
+name of morality and sentiment.
+
+"Is not woman endowed with a soul? Has she not feelings as we have?
+What right has any one, without regard to her pain, her ideas, or her
+requirements, to hammer her out, as a cheap metal, out of which a
+workman fashions a candlestick or an extinguisher? Is it because the
+poor creatures are already so feeble and miserable that a brute claims
+the power to torture them, merely at the dictate of his own fancies,
+which may be more or less just? And, if by this weakening or heating
+system of yours, which draws out, softens, hardens the fibres, you
+cause frightful and cruel sickness, if you bring to the tomb a woman
+who is dear to you; if, if,--"
+
+This is our answer:
+
+Have you never noticed into how many different shapes harlequin and
+columbine change their little white hats? They turn and twist them so
+well that they become, one after another, a spinning-top, a boat, a
+wine-glass, a half-moon, a cap, a basket, a fish, a whip, a dagger, a
+baby, and a man's head.
+
+This is an exact image of the despotism with which you ought to shape
+and reshape your wife.
+
+The wife is a piece of property, acquired by contract; she is part of
+your furniture, for possession is nine-tenths of the law; in fact, the
+woman is not, to speak correctly, anything but an adjunct to the man;
+therefore abridge, cut, file this article as you choose; she is in
+every sense yours. Take no notice at all of her murmurs, of her cries,
+of her sufferings; nature has ordained her for your use, that she may
+bear everything--children, griefs, blows and pains from man.
+
+Don't accuse yourself of harshness. In the codes of all the nations
+which are called civilized, man has written the laws which govern the
+destiny of women in these cruel terms: _Vae victis!_ Woe to the
+conquered!
+
+Finally, think upon this last observation, the most weighty, perhaps,
+of all that we have made up to this time: if you, her husband, do not
+break under the scourge of your will this weak and charming reed,
+there will be a celibate, capricious and despotic, ready to bring her
+under a yoke more cruel still; and she will have to endure two
+tyrannies instead of one. Under all considerations, therefore,
+humanity demands that you should follow the system of our hygiene.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XIII.
+
+                        OF PERSONAL MEASURES.
+
+Perhaps the preceding Meditations will prove more likely to develop
+general principles of conduct, than to repel force by force. They
+furnish, however, the pharmacopoeia of medicine and not the practice
+of medicine. Now consider the personal means which nature has put into
+your hands for self-defence; for Providence has forgotten no one; if
+to the sepia (that fish of the Adriatic) has been given the black dye
+by which he produces a cloud in which he disappears from his enemy,
+you should believe that a husband has not been left without a weapon;
+and now the time has come for you to draw yours.
+
+You ought to have stipulated before you married that your wife should
+nurse her own children; in this case, as long as she is occupied in
+bearing children or in nursing them you will avoid the danger from one
+or two quarters. The wife who is engaged in bringing into the world
+and nursing a baby has not really the time to bother with a lover, not
+to speak of the fact that before and after her confinement she cannot
+show herself in the world. In short, how can the most bold of the
+distinguished women who are the subject of this work show herself
+under these circumstances in public? O Lord Byron, thou didst not wish
+to see women even eat!
+
+Six months after her confinement, and when the child is on the eve of
+being weaned, a woman just begins to feel that she can enjoy her
+restoration and her liberty.
+
+If your wife has not nursed her first child, you have too much sense
+not to notice this circumstance, and not to make her desire to nurse
+her next one. You will read to her the _Emile_ of Jean-Jacques; you
+will fill her imagination with a sense of motherly duties; you will
+excite her moral feelings, etc.: in a word, you are either a fool or a
+man of sense; and in the first case, even after reading this book, you
+will always be minotaurized; while in the second, you will understand
+how to take a hint.
+
+This first expedient is in reality your own personal business. It will
+give you a great advantage in carrying out all the other methods.
+
+Since Alcibiades cut the ears and the tail of his dog, in order to do
+a service to Pericles, who had on his hands a sort of Spanish war, as
+well as an Ouvrard contract affair, such as was then attracting the
+notice of the Athenians, there is not a single minister who has not
+endeavored to cut the ears of some dog or other.
+
+So in medicine, when inflammation takes place at some vital point of
+the system, counter-irritation is brought about at some other point,
+by means of blisters, scarifications and cupping.
+
+Another method consists in blistering your wife, or giving her, with a
+mental needle, a prod whose violence is such as to make a diversion in
+your favor.
+
+A man of considerable mental resources had made his honeymoon last for
+about four years; the moon began to wane, and he saw appearing the
+fatal hollow in its circle. His wife was exactly in that state of mind
+which we attributed at the close of our first part to every honest
+woman; she had taken a fancy to a worthless fellow who was both
+insignificant in appearance and ugly; the only thing in his favor was,
+he was not her own husband. At this juncture, her husband meditated
+the cutting of some dog's tail, in order to renew, if possible, his
+lease of happiness. His wife had conducted herself with such tact,
+that it would have been very embarrassing to forbid her lover the
+house, for she had discovered some slight tie of relationship between
+them. The danger became, day by day, more imminent. The scent of the
+Minotaur was all around. One evening the husband felt himself plunged
+into a mood of deep vexation so acute as to be apparent to his wife.
+His wife had begun to show him more kindness than she had ever
+exhibited, even during the honeymoon; and hence question after
+question racked his mind. On her part a dead silence reigned. The
+anxious questionings of his mind were redoubled; his suspicions burst
+forth, and he was seized with forebodings of future calamity! Now, on
+this occasion, he deftly applied a Japanese blister, which burned as
+fiercely as an _auto-da-fe_ of the year 1600. At first his wife
+employed a thousand stratagems to discover whether the annoyance of
+her husband was caused by the presence of her lover; it was her first
+intrigue and she displayed a thousand artifices in it. Her imagination
+was aroused; it was no longer taken up with her lover; had she not
+better, first of all, probe her husband's secret?
+
+One evening the husband, moved by the desire to confide in his loving
+helpmeet all his troubles, informed her that their whole fortune was
+lost. They would have to give up their carriage, their box at the
+theatre, balls, parties, even Paris itself; perhaps, by living on
+their estate in the country a year or two, they might retrieve all!
+Appealing to the imagination of his wife, he told her how he pitied
+her for her attachment to a man who was indeed deeply in love with
+her, but was now without fortune; he tore his hair, and his wife was
+compelled in honor to be deeply moved; then in this first excitement
+of their conjugal disturbance he took her off to his estate. Then
+followed scarifications, mustard plaster upon mustard plaster, and the
+tails of fresh dogs were cut: he caused a Gothic wing to be built to
+the chateau; madame altered the park ten time over in order to have
+fountains and lakes and variations in the grounds; finally, the
+husband in the midst of her labors did not forget his own, which
+consisted in providing her with interesting reading, and launching
+upon her delicate attentions, etc. Notice, he never informed his wife
+of the trick he had played on her; and if his fortune was recuperated,
+it was directly after the building of the wing, and the expenditure of
+enormous sums in making water-courses; but he assured her that the
+lake provided a water-power by which mills might be run, etc.
+
+Now, there was a conjugal blister well conceived, for this husband
+neither neglected to rear his family nor to invite to his house
+neighbors who were tiresome, stupid or old; and if he spent the winter
+in Paris, he flung his wife into the vortex of balls and races, so
+that she had not a minute to give to lovers, who are usually the fruit
+of a vacant life.
+
+Journeys to Italy, Switzerland or Greece, sudden complaints which
+require a visit to the waters, and the most distant waters, are pretty
+good blisters. In fact, a man of sense should know how to manufacture
+a thousand of them.
+
+Let us continue our examination of such personal methods.
+
+And here we would have you observe that we are reasoning upon a
+hypothesis, without which this book will be unintelligible to you;
+namely, we suppose that your honeymoon has lasted for a respectable
+time and that the lady that you married was not a widow, but a maid;
+on the opposite supposition, it is at least in accordance with French
+manners to think that your wife married you merely for the purpose of
+becoming inconsistent.
+
+From the moment when the struggle between virtue and inconsistency
+begins in your home, the whole question rests upon the constant and
+involuntary comparison which your wife is instituting between you and
+her lover.
+
+And here you may find still another mode of defence, entirely
+personal, seldom employed by husbands, but the men of superiority will
+not fear to attempt it. It is to belittle the lover without letting
+your wife suspect your intention. You ought to be able to bring it
+about so that she will say to herself some evening while she is
+putting her hair in curl-papers, "My husband is superior to him."
+
+In order to succeed, and you ought to be able to succeed, since you
+have the immense advantage over the lover in knowing the character of
+your wife, and how she is most easily wounded, you should, with all
+the tact of a diplomat, lead this lover to do silly things and cause
+him to annoy her, without his being aware of it.
+
+In the first place, this lover, as usual, will seek your friendship,
+or you will have friends in common; then, either through the
+instrumentality of these friends or by insinuations adroitly but
+treacherously made, you will lead him astray on essential points; and,
+with a little cleverness, you will succeed in finding your wife ready
+to deny herself to her lover when he calls, without either she or he
+being able to tell the reason. Thus you will have created in the bosom
+of your home a comedy in five acts, in which you play, to your profit,
+the brilliant role of Figaro or Almaviva; and for some months you will
+amuse yourself so much the more, because your _amour-propre_, your
+vanity, your all, were at stake.
+
+I had the good fortune in my youth to win the confidence of an old
+_emigre_ who gave me those rudiments of education which are generally
+obtained by young people from women. This friend, whose memory will
+always be dear to me, taught me by his example to put into practice
+those diplomatic stratagems which require tact as well as grace.
+
+The Comte de Noce had returned from Coblenz at a time when it was
+dangerous for the nobility to be found in France. No one had such
+courage and such kindness, such craft and such recklessness as this
+aristocrat. Although he was sixty years old he had married a woman of
+twenty-five, being compelled to this act of folly by soft-heartedness;
+for he thus delivered this poor child from the despotism of a
+capricious mother. "Would you like to be my widow?" this amiable old
+gentleman had said to Mademoiselle de Pontivy, but his heart was too
+affectionate not to become more attached to his wife than a sensible
+man ought to be. As in his youth he had been under the influence of
+several among the cleverest women in the court of Louis XV, he thought
+he would have no difficulty in keeping his wife from any entanglement.
+What man excepting him have I ever seen, who could put into successful
+practice the teachings which I am endeavoring to give to husbands!
+What charm could he impart to life by his delightful manners and
+fascinating conversation!--His wife never knew until after his death
+what she then learned from me, namely, that he had the gout. He had
+wisely retired to a home in the hollow of a valley, close to a forest.
+God only knows what rambles he used to take with his wife!--His good
+star decreed that Mademoiselle de Pontivy should possess an excellent
+heart and should manifest in a high degree that exquisite refinement,
+that sensitive modesty which renders beautiful the plainest girl in
+the world. All of a sudden, one of his nephews, a good-looking
+military man, who had escaped from the disasters of Moscow, returned
+to his uncle's house, as much for the sake of learning how far he had
+to fear his cousins, as heirs, as in the hope of laying siege to his
+aunt. His black hair, his moustache, the easy small-talk of the staff
+officer, a certain freedom which was elegant as well as trifling, his
+bright eyes, contrasted favorably with the faded graces of his uncle.
+I arrived at the precise moment when the young countess was teaching
+her newly found relation to play backgammon. The proverb says that
+"women never learn this game excepting from their lovers, and vice
+versa." Now, during a certain game, M. de Noce had surprised his wife
+and the viscount in the act of exchanging one of those looks which are
+full of mingled innocence, fear, and desire. In the evening he
+proposed to us a hunting-party, and we agreed. I never saw him so gay
+and so eager as he appeared on the following morning, in spite of the
+twinges of gout which heralded an approaching attack. The devil
+himself could not have been better able to keep up a conversation on
+trifling subjects than he was. He had formerly been a musketeer in the
+Grays and had known Sophie Arnoud. This explains all. The conversation
+after a time became so exceedingly free among us three, that I hope
+God may forgive me for it!
+
+"I would never have believed that my uncle was such a dashing blade?"
+said the nephew.
+
+We made a halt, and while we were sitting on the edge of a green
+forest clearing, the count led us on to discourse about women just as
+Brantome and Aloysia might have done.
+
+"You fellows are very happy under the present government!--the women
+of the time are well mannered" (in order to appreciate the exclamation
+of the old gentleman, the reader should have heard the atrocious
+stories which the captain had been relating). "And this," he went on,
+"is one of the advantages resulting from the Revolution. The present
+system gives very much more charm and mystery to passion. In former
+times women were easy; ah! indeed, you would not believe what skill it
+required, what daring, to wake up those worn-out hearts; we were
+always on the _qui vive_. But yet in those days a man became
+celebrated for a broad joke, well put, or for a lucky piece of
+insolence. That is what women love, and it will always be the best
+method of succeeding with them!"
+
+These last words were uttered in a tone of profound contempt; he
+stopped, and began to play with the hammer of his gun as if to
+disguise his deep feeling.
+
+"But nonsense," he went on, "my day is over! A man ought to have the
+body as well as the imagination young. Why did I marry? What is most
+treacherous in girls educated by mothers who lived in that brilliant
+era of gallantry, is that they put on an air of frankness, of reserve;
+they look as if butter would not melt in their mouths, and those who
+know them well feel that they would swallow anything!"
+
+He rose, lifted his gun with a gesture of rage, and dashing it to the
+ground thrust it far up the butt in the moist sod.
+
+"It would seem as if my dear aunt were fond of a little fun," said the
+officer to me in a low voice.
+
+"Or of denouements that do not come off!" I added.
+
+The nephew tightened his cravat, adjusted his collar and gave a jump
+like a Calabrian goat. We returned to the chateau at about two in the
+afternoon. The count kept me with him until dinner-time, under the
+pretext of looking for some medals, of which he had spoken during our
+return home. The dinner was dull. The countess treated her nephew with
+stiff and cold politeness. When we entered the drawing-room the count
+said to his wife:
+
+"Are you going to play backgammon?--We will leave you."
+
+The young countess made no reply. She gazed at the fire, as if she had
+not heard. Her husband took some steps towards the door, inviting me
+by the wave of his hand to follow him. At the sound of his footsteps,
+his wife quickly turned her head.
+
+"Why do you leave us?" said she, "you will have all tomorrow to show
+your friend the reverse of the medals."
+
+The count remained. Without paying any attention to the awkwardness
+which had succeeded the former military aplomb of his nephew, the
+count exercised during the whole evening his full powers as a charming
+conversationalist. I had never before seen him so brilliant or so
+gracious. We spoke a great deal about women. The witticisms of our
+host were marked by the most exquisite refinement. He made me forget
+that his hair was white, for he showed the brilliancy which belonged
+to a youthful heart, a gaiety which effaces the wrinkles from the
+cheek and melts the snow of wintry age.
+
+The next day the nephew went away. Even after the death of M. de Noce,
+I tried to profit by the intimacy of those familiar conversations in
+which women are sometimes caught off their guard to sound her, but I
+could never learn what impertinence the viscount had exhibited towards
+his aunt. His insolence must have been excessive, for since that time
+Madame de Noce has refused to see her nephew, and up to the present
+moment never hears him named without a slight movement of her
+eyebrows. I did not at once guess the end at which the Comte de Noce
+aimed, in inviting us to go shooting; but I discovered later that he
+had played a pretty bold game.
+
+Nevertheless, if you happen at last, like M. de Noce, to carry off a
+decisive victory, do not forget to put into practice at once the
+system of blisters; and do not for a moment imagine that such _tours
+de force_ are to be repeated with safety. If that is the way you use
+your talents, you will end by losing caste in your wife's estimation;
+for she will demand of you, reasonably enough, double what you would
+give her, and the time will come when you declare bankruptcy. The
+human soul in its desires follows a sort of arithmetical progression,
+the end and origin of which are equally unknown. Just as the
+opium-eater must constantly increase his doses in order to obtain the
+same result, so our mind, imperious as it is weak, desires that
+feeling, ideas and objects should go on ever increasing in size and in
+intensity. Hence the necessity of cleverly distributing the interest
+in a dramatic work, and of graduating doses in medicine. Thus you see,
+if you always resort to the employment of means like these, that you
+must accommodate such daring measures to many circumstances, and
+success will always depend upon the motives to which you appeal.
+
+And finally, have you influence, powerful friends, an important post?
+The last means I shall suggest cuts to the root of the evil. Would you
+have the power to send your wife's lover off by securing his
+promotion, or his change of residence by an exchange, if he is a
+military man? You cut off by this means all communication between
+them; later on we will show you how to do it; for _sublata causa
+tollitur effectus_,--Latin words which may be freely translated "there
+is no effect without a cause."
+
+Nevertheless, you feel that your wife may easily choose another lover;
+but in addition to these preliminary expedients, you will always have
+a blister ready, in order to gain time, and calculate how you may
+bring the affair to an end by fresh devices.
+
+Study how to combine the system of blisters with the mimic wiles of
+Carlin, the immortal Carlin of the _Comedie-Italienne_ who always held
+and amused an audience for whole hours, by uttering the same words,
+varied only by the art of pantomime and pronounced with a thousand
+inflections of different tone,--"The queen said to the king!" Imitate
+Carlin, discover some method of always keeping your wife in check, so
+as not to be checkmated yourself. Take a degree among constitutional
+ministers, a degree in the art of making promises. Habituate yourself
+to show at seasonable times the punchinello which makes children run
+after you without knowing the distance they run. We are all children,
+and women are all inclined through their curiosity to spend their time
+in pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp. The flame is brilliant and quickly
+vanishes, but is not the imagination at hand to act as your ally?
+Finally, study the happy art of being near her and yet not being near
+her; of seizing the opportunity which will yield you pre-eminence in
+her mind without ever crushing her with a sense of your superiority,
+or even of her own happiness. If the ignorance in which you have kept
+her does not altogether destroy her intellect, you must remain in such
+relations with her that each of you will still desire the company of
+the other.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XIV.
+
+                            OF APARTMENTS.
+
+The preceding methods and systems are in a way purely moral; they
+share the nobility of the soul, there is nothing repulsive in them;
+but now we must proceed to consider precautions _a la Bartholo_. Do
+not give way to timidity. There is a marital courage, as there is a
+civil and military courage, as there is the courage of the National
+Guard.
+
+What is the first course of a young girl after having purchased a
+parrot? Is it not to fasten it up in a pretty cage, from which it
+cannot get out without permission?
+
+You may learn your duty from this child.
+
+Everything that pertains to the arrangement of your house and of your
+apartments should be planned so as not to give your wife any
+advantage, in case she has decided to deliver you to the Minotaur;
+half of all actual mischances are brought about by the deplorable
+facilities which the apartments furnish.
+
+Before everything else determine to have for your porter a _single
+man_ entirely devoted to your person. This is a treasure easily to be
+found. What husband is there throughout the world who has not either a
+foster-father or some old servant, upon whose knees he has been
+dandled! There ought to exist by means of your management, a hatred
+like that of Artreus and Thyestes between your wife and this Nestor
+--guardian of your gate. This gate is the Alpha and Omega of an
+intrigue. May not all intrigues in love be confined in these words
+--entering and leaving?
+
+Your house will be of no use to you if it does not stand between a
+court and a garden, and so constructed as to be detached from all
+other buildings. You must abolish all recesses in your apartments. A
+cupboard, if it contain but six pots of preserves, should be walled
+in. You are preparing yourself for war, and the first thought of a
+general is to cut his enemy off from supplies. Moreover, all the walls
+must be smooth, in order to present to the eye lines which may be
+taken in at a glance, and permit the immediate recognition of the
+least strange object. If you consult the remains of antique monuments
+you will see that the beauty of Greek and Roman apartments sprang
+principally from the purity of their lines, the clear sweep of their
+walls and scantiness of furniture. The Greeks would have smiled in
+pity, if they had seen the gaps which our closets make in our
+drawing-rooms.
+
+This magnificent system of defence should above all be put in active
+operation in the apartment of your wife; never let her curtain her bed
+in such a way that one can walk round it amid a maze of hangings; be
+inexorable in the matter of connecting passages, and let her chamber
+be at the bottom of your reception-rooms, so as to show at a glance
+those who come and go.
+
+_The Marriage of Figaro_ will no doubt have taught you to put your
+wife's chamber at a great height from the ground. All celibates are
+Cherubins.
+
+Your means, doubtless, will permit your wife to have a dressing-room,
+a bath-room, and a room for her chambermaid. Think then on Susanne,
+and never commit the fault of arranging this little room below that of
+madame's, but place it always above, and do not shrink from
+disfiguring your mansion by hideous divisions in the windows.
+
+If, by ill luck, you see that this dangerous apartment communicates
+with that of your wife by a back staircase, earnestly consult your
+architect; let his genius exhaust itself in rendering this dangerous
+staircase as innocent as the primitive garret ladder; we conjure you
+let not this staircase have appended to it any treacherous
+lurking-place; its stiff and angular steps must not be arranged with
+that tempting curve which Faublas and Justine found so useful when
+they waited for the exit of the Marquis de B-----. Architects nowadays
+make such staircases as are absolutely preferable to ottomans. Restore
+rather the virtuous garret steps of our ancestors.
+
+Concerning the chimneys in the apartment of madame, you must take care
+to place in the flue, five feet from the ground, an iron grill, even
+though it be necessary to put up a fresh one every time the chimney is
+swept. If your wife laughs at this precaution, suggest to her the
+number of murders that have been committed by means of chimneys.
+Almost all women are afraid of robbers. The bed is one of those
+important pieces of furniture whose structure will demand long
+consideration. Everything concerning it is of vital importance. The
+following is the result of long experience in the construction of
+beds. Give to this piece of furniture a form so original that it may
+be looked upon without disgust, in the midst of changes of fashion
+which succeed so rapidly in rendering antiquated the creations of
+former decorators, for it is essential that your wife be unable to
+change, at pleasure, this theatre of married happiness. The base
+should be plain and massive and admit of no treacherous interval
+between it and the floor; and bear in mind always that the Donna Julia
+of Byron hid Don Juan under her pillow. But it would be ridiculous to
+treat lightly so delicate a subject.
+
+
+                                LXII.
+                  The bed is the whole of marriage.
+
+
+Moreover, we must not delay to direct your attention to this wonderful
+creation of human genius, an invention which claims our recognition
+much more than ships, firearms, matches, wheeled carriages, steam
+engines of all kinds, more than even barrels and bottles. In the first
+place, a little thought will convince us that this is all true of the
+bed; but when we begin to think that it is our second father, that the
+most tranquil and most agitated half of our existence is spent under
+its protecting canopy, words fail in eulogizing it. (See Meditation
+XVII, entitled "Theory of the Bed.")
+
+When the war, of which we shall speak in our third part, breaks out
+between you and madame, you will always have plenty of ingenious
+excuses for rummaging in the drawers and escritoires; for if your wife
+is trying to hide from you some statue of her adoration, it is your
+interest to know where she has hidden it. A gyneceum, constructed on
+the method described, will enable you to calculate at a glance,
+whether there is present in it two pounds of silk more than usual.
+Should a single closet be constructed there, you are a lost man! Above
+all, accustom your wife, during the honeymoon, to bestow especial
+pains in the neatness of her apartment; let nothing put off that. If
+you do not habituate her to be minutely particular in this respect, if
+the same objects are not always found in the same places, she will
+allow things to become so untidy, that you will not be able to see
+that there are two pounds of silk more or less in her room.
+
+The curtains of your apartments ought to be of a stuff which is quite
+transparent, and you ought to contract the habit in the evenings of
+walking outside so that madame may see you come right up to the window
+just out of absent-mindedness. In a word, with regard to windows, let
+the sills be so narrow that even a sack of flour cannot be set up on
+them.
+
+If the apartment of your wife can be arranged on these principles, you
+will be in perfect safety, even if there are niches enough there to
+contain all the saints of Paradise. You will be able, every evening,
+with the assistance of your porter, to strike the balance between the
+entrances and exits of visitors; and, in order to obtain accurate
+results, there is nothing to prevent your teaching him to keep a book
+of visitors, in double entry.
+
+If you have a garden, cultivate a taste for dogs, and always keep at
+large one of these incorruptible guardians under your windows; you
+will thus gain the respect of the Minotaur, especially if you accustom
+your four-footed friend to take nothing substantial excepting from the
+hand of your porter, so that hard-hearted celibates may not succeed in
+poisoning him.
+
+But all these precautions must be taken as a natural thing so that
+they may not arouse suspicions. If husbands are so imprudent as to
+neglect precautions from the moment they are married, they ought at
+once to sell their house and buy another one, or, under the pretext of
+repairs, alter their present house in the way prescribed.
+
+You will without scruple banish from your apartment all sofas,
+ottomans, lounges, sedan chairs and the like. In the first place, this
+is the kind of furniture that adorns the homes of grocers, where they
+are universally found, as they are in those of barbers; but they are
+essentially the furniture of perdition; I can never see them without
+alarm. It has always seemed to me that there the devil himself is
+lurking with his horns and cloven foot.
+
+After all, nothing is so dangerous as a chair, and it is extremely
+unfortunate that women cannot be shut up within the four walls of a
+bare room! What husband is there, who on sitting down on a rickety
+chair is not always forced to believe that this chair has received
+some of the lessons taught by the _Sofa_ of Crebillion junior? But
+happily we have arranged your apartment on such a system of prevention
+that nothing so fatal can happen, or, at any rate, not without your
+contributory negligence.
+
+One fault which you must contract, and which you must never correct,
+will consist in a sort of heedless curiosity, which will make you
+examine unceasingly all the boxes, and turn upside down the contents
+of all dressing-cases and work-baskets. You must proceed to this
+domiciliary visit in a humorous mood, and gracefully, so that each
+time you will obtain pardon by exciting the amusement of your wife.
+
+You must always manifest a most profound astonishment on noticing any
+piece of furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointed
+apartment. You must immediately make her explain to you the advantages
+of the change; and then you must ransack your mind to discover whether
+there be not some underhand motive in the transaction.
+
+This is by no means all. You have too much sense to forget that your
+pretty parrot will remain in her cage only so long as that cage is
+beautiful. The least accessory of her apartment ought, therefore, to
+breathe elegance and taste. The general appearance should always
+present a simple, at the same time a charming picture. You must
+constantly renew the hangings and muslin curtains. The freshness of
+the decorations is too essential to permit of economy on this point.
+It is the fresh chickweed each morning carefully put into the cage of
+their birds, that makes their pets believe it is the verdure of the
+meadows. An apartment of this character is then the _ultima ratio_ of
+husbands; a wife has nothing to say when everything is lavished on
+her.
+
+Husbands who are condemned to live in rented apartments find
+themselves in the most terrible situation possible. What happy or what
+fatal influence cannot the porter exercise upon their lot?
+
+Is not their home flanked on either side by other houses? It is true
+that by placing the apartment of their wives on one side of the house
+the danger is lessened by one-half; but are they not obliged to learn
+by heart and to ponder the age, the condition, the fortune, the
+character, the habits of the tenants of the next house and even to
+know their friends and relations?
+
+A husband will never take lodgings on the ground floor.
+
+Every man, however, can apply in his apartments the precautionary
+methods which we have suggested to the owner of a house, and thus the
+tenant will have this advantage over the owner, that the apartment,
+which is less spacious than the house, is more easily guarded.
+
+
+
+                            MEDITATION XV.
+
+                         OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE.
+
+"But no, madame, no--"
+
+"Yes, for there is such inconvenience in the arrangement."
+
+"Do you think, madame, that we wish, as at the frontier, to watch the
+visits of persons who cross the threshold of your apartments, or
+furtively leave them, in order to see whether they bring to you
+articles of contraband? That would not be proper; and there is nothing
+odious in our proceeding, any more than there is anything of a fiscal
+character; do not be alarmed."
+
+The Custom House of the marriage state is, of all the expedients
+prescribed in this second part, that which perhaps demands the most
+tact and the most skill as well as the most knowledge acquired _a
+priori_, that is to say before marriage. In order to carry it out, a
+husband ought to have made a profound study of Lavater's book, and to
+be imbued with all his principles; to have accustomed his eye to judge
+and to apprehend with the most astonishing promptitude, the slightest
+physical expressions by which a man reveals his thoughts.
+
+Lavater's _Physiognomy_ originated a veritable science, which has won
+a place in human investigation. If at first some doubts, some jokes
+greeted the appearance of this book, since then the celebrated Doctor
+Gall is come with his noble theory of the skull and has completed the
+system of the Swiss savant, and given stability to his fine and
+luminous observations. People of talent, diplomats, women, all those
+who are numbered among the choice and fervent disciples of these two
+celebrated men, have often had occasion to recognize many other
+evident signs, by which the course of human thought is indicated. The
+habits of the body, the handwriting, the sound of the voice, have
+often betrayed the woman who is in love, the diplomat who is
+attempting to deceive, the clever administrator, or the sovereign who
+is compelled to distinguish at a glance love, treason or merit
+hitherto unknown. The man whose soul operates with energy is like a
+poor glowworm, which without knowing it irradiates light from every
+pore. He moves in a brilliant sphere where each effort makes a burning
+light and outlines his actions with long streamers of fire.
+
+These, then, are all the elements of knowledge which you should
+possess, for the conjugal custom house insists simply in being able by
+a rapid but searching examination to know the moral and physical
+condition of all who enter or leave your house--all, that is, who have
+seen or intend to see your wife. A husband is, like a spider, set at
+the centre of an invisible net, and receives a shock from the least
+fool of a fly who touches it, and from a distance, hears, judges and
+sees what is either his prey or his enemy.
+
+Thus you must obtain means to examine the celibate who rings at your
+door under two circumstances which are quite distinct, namely, when he
+is about to enter and when he is inside.
+
+At the moment of entering how many things does he utter without even
+opening his mouth!
+
+It may be by a slight wave of his hand, or by his plunging his fingers
+many times into his hair, he sticks up or smoothes down his
+characteristic bang.
+
+Or he hums a French or an Italian air, merry or sad, in a voice which
+may be either tenor, contralto, soprano or baritone.
+
+Perhaps he takes care to see that the ends of his necktie are properly
+adjusted.
+
+Or he smoothes down the ruffles or front of his shirt or
+evening-dress.
+
+Or he tries to find out by a questioning and furtive glance whether
+his wig, blonde or brown, curled or plain, is in its natural position.
+
+Perhaps he looks at his nails to see whether they are clean and duly
+cut.
+
+Perhaps with a hand which is either white or untidy, well-gloved or
+otherwise, he twirls his moustache, or his whiskers, or picks his
+teeth with a little tortoise-shell toothpick.
+
+Or by slow and repeated movements he tries to place his chin exactly
+over the centre of his necktie.
+
+Or perhaps he crosses one foot over the other, putting his hands in
+his pockets.
+
+Or perhaps he gives a twist to his shoe, and looks at it as if he
+thought, "Now, there's a foot that is not badly formed."
+
+Or according as he has come on foot or in a carriage, he rubs off or
+he does not rub off the slight patches of mud which soil his shoes.
+
+Or perhaps he remains as motionless as a Dutchman smoking his pipe.
+
+Or perhaps he fixes his eyes on the door and looks like a soul escaped
+from Purgatory and waiting for Saint Peter with the keys.
+
+Perhaps he hesitates to pull the bell; perhaps he seizes it
+negligently, precipitately, familiarly, or like a man who is quite
+sure of himself.
+
+Perhaps he pulls it timidly, producing a faint tinkle which is lost in
+the silence of the apartments, as the first bell of matins in
+winter-time, in a convent of Minims; or perhaps after having rung with
+energy, he rings again impatient that the footman has not heard him.
+
+Perhaps he exhales a delicate scent, as he chews a pastille.
+
+Perhaps with a solemn air he takes a pinch of snuff, brushing off with
+care the grains that might mar the whiteness of his linen.
+
+Perhaps he looks around like a man estimating the value of the
+staircase lamp, the balustrade, the carpet, as if he were a furniture
+dealer or a contractor.
+
+Perhaps this celibate seems a young or an old man, is cold or hot,
+arrives slowly, with an expression of sadness or merriment, etc.
+
+You see that here, at the very foot of your staircase, you are met by
+an astonishing mass of things to observe.
+
+The light pencil-strokes, with which we have tried to outline this
+figure, will suggest to you what is in reality a moral kaleidoscope
+with millions of variations. And yet we have not even attempted to
+bring any woman on to the threshold which reveals so much; for in that
+case our remarks, already considerable in number, would have been
+countless and light as the grains of sand on the seashore.
+
+For as a matter of fact, when he stands before the shut door, a man
+believes that he is quite alone; and he would have no hesitation in
+beginning a silent monologue, a dreamy soliloquy, in which he revealed
+his desires, his intentions, his personal qualities, his faults, his
+virtues, etc.; for undoubtedly a man on a stoop is exactly like a
+young girl of fifteen at confession, the evening before her first
+communion.
+
+Do you want any proof of this? Notice the sudden change of face and
+manner in this celibate from the very moment he steps within the
+house. No machinist in the Opera, no change in the temperature in the
+clouds or in the sun can more suddenly transform the appearance of a
+theatre, the effect of the atmosphere, or the scenery of the heavens.
+
+On reaching the first plank of your antechamber, instead of betraying
+with so much innocence the myriad thoughts which were suggested to you
+on the steps, the celibate has not a single glance to which you could
+attach any significance. The mask of social convention wraps with its
+thick veil his whole bearing; but a clever husband must already have
+divined at a single look the object of his visit, and he reads the
+soul of the new arrival as if it were a printed book.
+
+The manner in which he approaches your wife, in which he addresses
+her, looks at her, greets her and retires--there are volumes of
+observations, more or less trifling, to be made on these subjects.
+
+The tone of his voice, his bearing, his awkwardness, it may be his
+smile, even his gloom, his avoidance of your eye,--all are
+significant, all ought to be studied, but without apparent attention.
+You ought to conceal the most disagreeable discovery you may make by
+an easy manner and remarks such as are ready at hand to a man of
+society. As we are unable to detail the minutiae of this subject we
+leave them entirely to the sagacity of the reader, who must by this
+time have perceived the drift of our investigation, as well as the
+extent of this science which begins at the analysis of glances and
+ends in the direction of such movements as contempt may inspire in a
+great toe hidden under the satin of a lady's slipper or the leather of
+a man's boot.
+
+But the exit!--for we must allow for occasions where you have omitted
+your rigid scrutiny at the threshold of the doorway, and in that case
+the exit becomes of vital importance, and all the more so because this
+fresh study of the celibate ought to be made on the same lines, but
+from an opposite point of view, from that which we have already
+outlined.
+
+In the exit the situation assumes a special gravity; for then is the
+moment in which the enemy has crossed all the intrenchments within
+which he was subject to our examination and has escaped into the
+street! At this point a man of understanding when he sees a visitor
+passing under the _porte-cochere_ should be able to divine the import
+of the whole visit. The indications are indeed fewer in number, but
+how distinct is their character! The denouement has arrived and the
+man instantly betrays the importance of it by the frankest expression
+of happiness, pain or joy.
+
+These revelations are therefore easy to apprehend; they appear in the
+glance cast either at the building or at the windows of the apartment;
+in a slow or loitering gait, in the rubbing of hands, on the part of a
+fool, in the bounding gait of a coxcomb, or the involuntary arrest of
+his footsteps, which marks the man who is deeply moved; in a word, you
+see upon the stoop certain questions as clearly proposed to you as if
+a provincial academy had offered a hundred crowns for an essay; but in
+the exit you behold the solution of these questions clearly and
+precisely given to you. Our task would be far above the power of human
+intelligence if it consisted in enumerating the different ways by
+which men betray their feelings, the discernment of such things is
+purely a matter of tact and sentiment.
+
+If strangers are the subject of these principles of observation, you
+have a still stronger reason for submitting your wife to the formal
+safeguards which we have outlined.
+
+A married man should make a profound study of his wife's countenance.
+Such a study is easy, it is even involuntary and continuous. For him
+the pretty face of his wife must needs contain no mysteries, he knows
+how her feelings are depicted there and with what expression she shuns
+the fire of his glance.
+
+The slightest movement of the lips, the faintest contraction of the
+nostrils, scarcely perceptible changes in the expression of the eye,
+an altered voice, and those indescribable shades of feeling which pass
+over her features, or the light which sometimes bursts forth from
+them, are intelligible language to you.
+
+The whole woman nature stands before you; all look at her, but none
+can interpret her thoughts. But for you, the eye is more or less
+dimmed, wide-opened or closed; the lid twitches, the eyebrow moves; a
+wrinkle, which vanishes as quickly as a ripple on the ocean, furrows
+her brow for one moment; the lip tightens, it is slightly curved or it
+is wreathed with animation--for you the woman has spoken.
+
+If in those puzzling moments in which a woman tries dissimulation in
+presence of her husband, you have the spirit of a sphinx in seeing
+through her, you will plainly observe that your custom-house
+restrictions are mere child's play to her.
+
+When she comes home or goes out, when in a word she believes she is
+alone, your wife will exhibit all the imprudence of a jackdaw and will
+tell her secret aloud to herself; moreover, by her sudden change of
+expression the moment she notices you (and despite the rapidity of
+this change, you will not fail to have observed the expression she
+wore behind your back) you may read her soul as if you were reading a
+book of Plain Song. Moreover, your wife will often find herself just
+on the point of indulging in soliloquies, and on such occasions her
+husband may recognize the secret feelings of his wife.
+
+Is there a man as heedless of love's mysteries as not to have admired,
+over and over again, the light, mincing, even bewitching gait of a
+woman who flies on her way to keep an assignation? She glides through
+the crowd, like a snake through the grass. The costumes and stuffs of
+the latest fashion spread out their dazzling attractions in the shop
+windows without claiming her attention; on, on she goes like the
+faithful animal who follows the invisible tracks of his master; she is
+deaf to all compliments, blind to all glances, insensible even to the
+light touch of the crowd, which is inevitable amid the circulation of
+Parisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her
+gait, her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a
+thousand indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents
+to the idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to
+read, is the face of this woman when she returns from the secret place
+of rendezvous in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness is
+impressed even on the unmistakable disarray of her hair, the mass of
+whose wavy tresses has not received from the broken comb of the
+celibate that radiant lustre, that elegant and well-proportioned
+adjustment which only the practiced hand of her maid can give. And
+what charming ease appears in her gait! How is it possible to describe
+the emotion which adds such rich tints to her complexion!--which robs
+her eyes of all their assurance and gives to them an expression of
+mingled melancholy and delight, of shame which is yet blended with
+pride!
+
+These observations, stolen from our Meditation, _Of the Last
+Symptoms_, and which are really suggested by the situation of a woman
+who tries to conceal everything, may enable you to divine by analogy
+the rich crop of observation which is left for you to harvest when
+your wife arrives home, or when, without having committed the great
+crime she innocently lets out the secrets of her thoughts. For our own
+part we never see a landing without wishing to set up there a
+mariner's card and a weather-cock.
+
+As the means to be employed for constructing a sort of domestic
+observatory depend altogether on places and circumstances, we must
+leave to the address of a jealous husband the execution of the methods
+suggested in this Meditation.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XVI.
+
+                       THE CHARTER OF MARRIAGE.
+
+I acknowledge that I really know of but one house in Paris which is
+managed in accordance with the system unfolded in the two preceding
+Meditations. But I ought to add, also, that I have built up my system
+on the example of that house. The admirable fortress I allude to
+belonged to a young councillor of state, who was mad with love and
+jealousy.
+
+As soon as he learned that there existed a man who was exclusively
+occupied in bringing to perfection the institution of marriage in
+France, he had the generosity to open the doors of his mansion to me
+and to show me his gyneceum. I admired the profound genius which so
+cleverly disguised the precautions of almost oriental jealousy under
+the elegance of furniture, beauty of carpets and brightness of painted
+decorations. I agreed with him that it was impossible for his wife to
+render his home a scene of treachery.
+
+"Sir," said I, to this Othello of the council of state who did not
+seem to me peculiarly strong in the _haute politique_ of marriage, "I
+have no doubt that the viscountess is delighted to live in this little
+Paradise; she ought indeed to take prodigious pleasure in it,
+especially if you are here often. But the time will come when she will
+have had enough of it; for, my dear sir, we grow tired of everything,
+even of the sublime. What will you do then, when madame, failing to
+find in all your inventions their primitive charm, shall open her
+mouth in a yawn, and perhaps make a request with a view to the
+exercise of two rights, both of which are indispensable to her
+happiness: individual liberty, that is, the privilege of going and
+coming according to the caprice of her will; and the liberty of the
+press, that is, the privilege of writing and receiving letters without
+fear of your censure?"
+
+Scarcely had I said these words when the Vicomte de V----- grasped my
+arm tightly and cried:
+
+"Yes, such is the ingratitude of woman! If there is any thing more
+ungrateful than a king, it is a nation; but, sir, woman is more
+ungrateful than either of them. A married woman treats us as the
+citizens of a constitutional monarchy treat their king; every measure
+has been taken to give these citizens a life of prosperity in a
+prosperous country; the government has taken all the pains in the
+world with its gendarmes, its churches, its ministry and all the
+paraphernalia of its military forces, to prevent the people from dying
+of hunger, to light the cities by gas at the expense of the citizens,
+to give warmth to every one by means of the sun which shines at the
+forty-fifth degree of latitude, and to forbid every one, excepting the
+tax-gatherers, to ask for money; it has labored hard to give to all
+the main roads a more or less substantial pavement--but none of these
+advantages of our fair Utopia is appreciated! The citizens want
+something else. They are not ashamed to demand the right of traveling
+over the roads at their own will, and of being informed where that
+money given to the tax-gatherers goes. And, finally, the monarch will
+soon be obliged, if we pay any attention to the chatter of certain
+scribblers, to give to every individual a share in the throne or to
+adopt certain revolutionary ideas, which are mere Punch and Judy shows
+for the public, manipulated by a band of self-styled patriots,
+riff-raff, always ready to sell their conscience for a million francs,
+for an honest woman, or for a ducal coronet."
+
+"But, monsieur," I said, interrupting him, "while I perfectly agree
+with you on this last point, the question remains, how will you escape
+giving an answer to the just demands of your wife?"
+
+"Sir" he replied, "I shall do--I shall answer as the government
+answers, that is, those governments which are not so stupid as the
+opposition would make out to their constituents. I shall begin by
+solemnly interdicting any arrangement, by virtue of which my wife will
+be declared entirely free. I fully recognize her right to go wherever
+it seems good to her, to write to whom she chooses, and to receive
+letters, the contents of which I do not know. My wife shall have all
+the rights that belong to an English Parliament; I shall let her talk
+as much as she likes, discuss and propose strong and energetic
+measures, but without the power to put them into execution, and then
+after that--well, we shall see!"
+
+"By St. Joseph!" said I to myself, "Here is a man who understands the
+science of marriage as well as I myself do. And then, you will see,
+sir," I answered aloud, in order to obtain from him the fullest
+revelation of his experience; "you will see, some fine morning, that
+you are as big a fool as the next man."
+
+"Sir," he gravely replied, "allow me to finish what I was saying. Here
+is what the great politicians call a theory, but in practice they can
+make that theory vanish in smoke; and ministers possess in a greater
+degree than even the lawyers of Normandy, the art of making fact yield
+to fancy. M. de Metternich and M. de Pilat, men of the highest
+authority, have been for a long time asking each other whether Europe
+is in its right senses, whether it is dreaming, whether it knows
+whither it is going, whether it has ever exercised its reason, a thing
+impossible on the part of the masses, of nations and of women. M. de
+Metternich and M. de Pilat are terrified to see this age carried away
+by a passion for constitutions, as the preceding age was by the
+passion for philosophy, as that of Luther was for a reform of abuses
+in the Roman religion; for it truly seems as if different generations
+of men were like those conspirators whose actions are directed to the
+same end, as soon as the watchword has been given them. But their
+alarm is a mistake, and it is on this point alone that I condemn them,
+for they are right in their wish to enjoy power without permitting the
+middle class to come on a fixed day from the depth of each of their
+six kingdoms, to torment them. How could men of such remarkable talent
+fail to divine that the constitutional comedy has in it a moral of
+profound meaning, and to see that it is the very best policy to give
+the age a bone to exercise its teeth upon! I think exactly as they do
+on the subject of sovereignty. A power is a moral being as much
+interested as a man is in self-preservation. This sentiment of
+self-preservation is under the control of an essential principle which
+may be expressed in three words--_to lose nothing_. But in order to
+lose nothing, a power must grow or remain indefinite, for a power
+which
+remains stationary is nullified. If it retrogrades, it is under the
+control of something else, and loses its independent existence. I am
+quite as well aware, as are those gentlemen, in what a false position
+an unlimited power puts itself by making concessions; it allows to
+another power whose essence is to expand a place within its own sphere
+of activity. One of them will necessarily nullify the other, for every
+existing thing aims at the greatest possible development of its own
+forces. A power, therefore, never makes concessions which it does not
+afterwards seek to retract. This struggle between two powers is the
+basis on which stands the balance of government, whose elasticity so
+mistakenly alarmed the patriarch of Austrian diplomacy, for comparing
+comedy with comedy the least perilous and the most advantageous
+administration is found in the seesaw system of the English and of the
+French politics. These two countries have said to the people, 'You are
+free;' and the people have been satisfied; they enter the government
+like the zeros which give value to the unit. But if the people wish to
+take an active part in the government, immediately they are treated,
+like Sancho Panza, on that occasion when the squire, having become
+sovereign over an island on terra firma, made an attempt at dinner to
+eat the viands set before him.
+
+"Now we ought to parody this admirable scene in the management of our
+homes. Thus, my wife has a perfect right to go out, provided she tell
+me where she is going, how she is going, what is the business she is
+engaged in when she is out and at what hour she will return. Instead
+of demanding this information with the brutality of the police, who
+will doubtless some day become perfect, I take pains to speak to her
+in the most gracious terms. On my lips, in my eyes, in my whole
+countenance, an expression plays, which indicates both curiosity and
+indifference, seriousness and pleasantry, harshness and tenderness.
+These little conjugal scenes are so full of vivacity, of tact and
+address that it is a pleasure to take part in them. The very day on
+which I took from the head of my wife the wreath of orange blossoms
+which she wore, I understood that we were playing at a royal
+coronation--the first scene in a comic pantomime!--I have my
+gendarmes!--I have my guard royal!--I have my attorney general--that I
+do!" he continued enthusiastically. "Do you think that I would allow
+madame to go anywhere on foot unaccompanied by a lackey in livery? Is
+not that the best style? Not to count the pleasure she takes in saying
+to everybody, 'I have my people here.' It has always been a
+conservative principle of mine that my times of exercise should
+coincide with those of my wife, and for two years I have proved to her
+that I take an ever fresh pleasure in giving her my arm. If the
+weather is not suitable for walking, I try to teach her how to drive
+with success a frisky horse; but I swear to you that I undertake this
+in such a manner that she does not learn very quickly!--If either by
+chance, or prompted by a deliberate wish, she takes measures to escape
+without a passport, that is to say, alone in the carriage, have I not
+a driver, a footman, a groom? My wife, therefore, go where she will,
+takes with her a complete _Santa Hermandad_, and I am perfectly easy
+in mind--But, my dear sir, there is abundance of means by which to
+annul the charter of marriage by our manner of fulfilling it! I have
+remarked that the manners of high society induce a habit of idleness
+which absorbs half of the life of a woman without permitting her to
+feel that she is alive. For my part, I have formed the project of
+dexterously leading my wife along, up to her fortieth year, without
+letting her think of adultery, just as poor Musson used to amuse
+himself in leading some simple fellow from the Rue Saint-Denis to
+Pierrefitte without letting him think that he had left the shadows of
+St. Lew's tower."
+
+"How is it," I said, interrupting him, "that you have hit upon those
+admirable methods of deception which I was intending to describe in a
+Meditation entitled _The Act of Putting Death into Life!_ Alas! I
+thought I was the first man to discover that science. The epigrammatic
+title was suggested to me by an account which a young doctor gave me
+of an excellent composition of Crabbe, as yet unpublished. In this
+work, the English poet has introduced a fantastic being called _Life
+in Death_. This personage crosses the oceans of the world in pursuit
+of a living skeleton called _Death in Life_--I recollect at the time
+very few people, among the guests of a certain elegant translator of
+English poetry, understood the mystic meaning of a fable as true as it
+was fanciful. Myself alone, perhaps, as I sat buried in silence,
+thought of the whole generations which as they were hurried along by
+life, passed on their way without living. Before my eyes rose faces of
+women by the million, by the myriad, all dead, all disappointed and
+shedding tears of despair, as they looked back upon the lost moments
+of their ignorant youth. In the distance I saw a playful Meditation
+rise to birth, I heard the satanic laughter which ran through it, and
+now you doubtless are about to kill it.--But come, tell me in
+confidence what means you have discovered by which to assist a woman
+to squander the swift moments during which her beauty is at its full
+flower and her desires at their full strength.--Perhaps you have some
+stratagems, some clever devices, to describe to me--"
+
+The viscount began to laugh at this literary disappointment of mine,
+and he said to me, with a self-satisfied air:
+
+"My wife, like all the young people of our happy century, has been
+accustomed, for three or four consecutive years, to press her fingers
+on the keys of a piano, a long-suffering instrument. She has hammered
+out Beethoven, warbled the airs of Rossini and run through the
+exercises of Crammer. I had already taken pains to convince her of the
+excellence of music; to attain this end, I have applauded her, I have
+listened without yawning to the most tiresome sonatas in the world,
+and I have at last consented to give her a box at the Bouffons. I have
+thus gained three quiet evenings out of the seven which God has
+created in the week. I am the mainstay of the music shops. At Paris
+there are drawing-rooms which exactly resemble the musical snuff-boxes
+of Germany. They are a sort of continuous orchestra to which I
+regularly go in search of that surfeit of harmony which my wife calls
+a concert. But most part of the time my wife keeps herself buried in
+her music-books--"
+
+"But, my dear sir, do you not recognize the danger that lies in
+cultivating in a woman a taste for singing, and allowing her to yield
+to all the excitements of a sedentary life? It is only less dangerous
+to make her feed on mutton and drink cold water."
+
+"My wife never eats anything but the white meat of poultry, and I
+always take care that a ball shall come after a concert and a
+reception after an Opera! I have also succeeded in making her lie down
+between one and two in the day. Ah! my dear sir, the benefits of this
+nap are incalculable! In the first place each necessary pleasure is
+accorded as a favor, and I am considered to be constantly carrying out
+my wife's wishes. And then I lead her to imagine, without saying a
+single word, that she is being constantly amused every day from six
+o'clock in the evening, the time of our dinner and of her toilet,
+until eleven o'clock in the morning, the time when we get up."
+
+"Ah! sir, how grateful you ought to be for a life which is so
+completely filled up!"
+
+"I have scarcely more than three dangerous hours a day to pass; but
+she has, of course, sonatas to practice and airs to go over, and there
+are always rides in the Bois de Boulogne, carriages to try, visits to
+pay, etc. But this is not all. The fairest ornament of a woman is the
+most exquisite cleanliness. A woman cannot be too particular in this
+respect, and no pains she takes can be laughed at. Now her toilet has
+also suggested to me a method of thus consuming the best hours of the
+day in bathing."
+
+"How lucky I am in finding a listener like you!" I cried; "truly, sir,
+you could waste for her four hours a day, if only you were willing to
+teach her an art quite unknown to the most fastidious of our modern
+fine ladies. Why don't you enumerate to the viscountess the
+astonishing precautions manifest in the Oriental luxury of the Roman
+dames? Give her the names of the slaves merely employed for the bath
+in Poppea's palace: the _unctores_, the _fricatores_, the
+_alipilarili_, the _dropacistae_, the _paratiltriae_, the
+_picatrices_, the _tracatrices_, the swan whiteners, and all the rest.
+--Talk to her about this multitude of slaves whose names are given by
+Mirabeau in his _Erotika Biblion_. If she tries to secure the services
+of all these people you will have the fine times of quietness, not to
+speak of the personal satisfaction which will redound to you yourself
+from the introduction into your house of the system invented by these
+illustrious Romans, whose hair, artistically arranged, was deluged
+with perfumes, whose smallest vein seemed to have acquired fresh blood
+from the myrrh, the lint, the perfume, the douches, the flowers of the
+bath, all of which were enjoyed to the strains of voluptuous music."
+
+"Ah! sir," continued the husband, who was warming to his subject, "can
+I not find also admirable pretexts in my solicitude for her heath? Her
+health, so dear and precious to me, forces me to forbid her going out
+in bad weather, and thus I gain a quarter of the year. And I have also
+introduced the charming custom of kissing when either of us goes out,
+this parting kiss being accompanied with the words, 'My sweet angel, I
+am going out.' Finally, I have taken measures for the future to make
+my wife as truly a prisoner in the house as the conscript in his
+sentry box! For I have inspired her with an incredible enthusiasm for
+the sacred duties of maternity."
+
+"You do it by opposing her?" I asked.
+
+"You have guessed it," he answered, laughing. "I have maintained to
+her that it is impossible for a woman of the world to discharge her
+duties towards society, to manage her household, to devote herself to
+fashion, as well as to the wishes of her husband, whom she loves, and,
+at the same time, to rear children. She then avers that, after the
+example of Cato, who wished to see how the nurse changed the swaddling
+bands of the infant Pompey, she would never leave to others the least
+of the services required in shaping the susceptible minds and tender
+bodies of these little creatures whose education begins in the cradle.
+You understand, sir, that my conjugal diplomacy would not be of much
+service to me unless, after having put my wife in solitary
+confinement, I did not also employ a certain harmless machiavelism,
+which consists in begging her to do whatever she likes, and asking her
+advice in every circumstance and on every contingency. As this
+delusive liberty has entirely deceived a creature so high-minded as
+she is, I have taken pains to stop at no sacrifice which would
+convince Madame de V----- that she is the freest woman in Paris; and,
+in order to attain this end, I take care not to commit those gross
+political blunders into which our ministers so often fall."
+
+"I can see you," said I, "when you wish to cheat your wife out of some
+right granted her by the charter, I can see you putting on a mild and
+deliberate air, hiding your dagger under a bouquet of roses, and as
+you plunge it cautiously into her heart, saying to her with a friendly
+voice, 'My darling, does it hurt?' and she, like those on whose toes
+you tread in a crowd, will probably reply, 'Not in the least.'"
+
+He could not restrain a laugh and said:
+
+"Won't my wife be astonished at the Last Judgment?"
+
+"I scarcely know," I replied, "whether you or she will be most
+astonished."
+
+The jealous man frowned, but his face resumed its calmness as I added:
+
+"I am truly grateful, sir, to the chance which has given me the
+pleasure of your acquaintance. Without the assistance of your remarks
+I should have been less successful than you have been in developing
+certain ideas which we possess in common. I beg of you that you will
+give me leave to publish this conversation. Statements which you and I
+find pregnant with high political conceptions, others perhaps will
+think characterized by more or less cutting irony, and I shall pass
+for a clever fellow in the eyes of both parties."
+
+While I thus tried to express my thanks to the viscount (the first
+husband after my heart that I had met with), he took me once more
+through his apartments, where everything seemed to be beyond
+criticism.
+
+I was about to take leave of him, when opening the door of a little
+boudoir he showed me a room with an air which seemed to say, "Is there
+any way by which the least irregularity should occur without my seeing
+it?"
+
+I replied to this silent interrogation by an inclination of the head,
+such as guests make to their Amphytrion when they taste some
+exceptionally choice dish.
+
+"My whole system," he said to me in a whisper, "was suggested to me by
+three words which my father heard Napoleon pronounce at a crowded
+council of state, when divorce was the subject of conversation.
+'Adultery,' he exclaimed, 'is merely a matter of opportunity!' See,
+then, I have changed these accessories of crime, so that they become
+spies," added the councillor, pointing out to me a divan covered with
+tea-colored cashmere, the cushions of which were slightly pressed.
+"Notice that impression,--I learn from it that my wife has had a
+headache, and has been reclining there."
+
+We stepped toward the divan, and saw the word FOOL lightly traced upon
+the fatal cushion, by four
+
+
+  Things that I know not, plucked by lover's hand
+  From Cypris' orchard, where the fairy band
+  Are dancing, once by nobles thought to be
+  Worthy an order of new chivalry,
+  A brotherhood, wherein, with script of gold,
+  More mortal men than gods should be enrolled.
+
+
+"Nobody in my house has black hair!" said the husband, growing pale.
+
+I hurried away, for I was seized with an irresistible fit of laughter,
+which I could not easily overcome.
+
+"That man has met his judgment day!" I said to myself; "all the
+barriers by which he has surrounded her have only been instrumental in
+adding to the intensity of her pleasures!"
+
+This idea saddened me. The adventure destroyed from summit to
+foundation three of my most important Meditations, and the catholic
+infallibility of my book was assailed in its most essential point. I
+would gladly have paid to establish the fidelity of the Viscountess
+V----- a sum as great as very many people would have offered to secure
+her surrender. But alas! my money will now be kept by me.
+
+Three days afterwards I met the councillor in the foyer of the
+Italiens. As soon as he saw me he rushed up. Impelled by a sort of
+modesty I tried to avoid him, but grasping my arm: "Ah! I have just
+passed three cruel days," he whispered in my ear. "Fortunately my wife
+is as innocent as perhaps a new-born babe--"
+
+"You have already told me that the viscountess was extremely
+ingenious," I said, with unfeeling gaiety.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "I gladly take a joke this evening; for this morning I
+had irrefragable proofs of my wife's fidelity. I had risen very early
+to finish a piece of work for which I had been rushed, and in looking
+absently in my garden, I suddenly saw the _valet de chambre_ of a
+general, whose house is next to mine, climbing over the wall. My
+wife's maid, poking her head from the vestibule, was stroking my dog
+and covering the retreat of the gallant. I took my opera glass and
+examined the intruder--his hair was jet black!--Ah! never have I seen
+a Christian face that gave me more delight! And you may well believe
+that during the day all my perplexities vanished. So, my dear sir," he
+continued, "if you marry, let your dog loose and put broken bottles
+over the top of your walls."
+
+"And did the viscountess perceive your distress during these three
+days?
+
+"Do you take me for a child?" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I
+have never been so merry in all my life as I have been since we met."
+
+"You are a great man unrecognized," I cried, "and you are not--"
+
+He did not permit me to conclude; for he had disappeared on seeing one
+of his friends who approached as if to greet the viscountess.
+
+Now what can we add that would not be a tedious paraphrase of the
+lessons suggested by this conversation? All is included in it, either
+as seed or fruit. Nevertheless, you see, O husband! that your
+happiness hangs on a hair.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XVII.
+
+                        THE THEORY OF THE BED.
+
+It was about seven o'clock in the evening. They were seated upon the
+academic armchairs, which made a semi-circle round a huge hearth, on
+which a coal fire was burning fitfully--symbol of the burning subject
+of their important deliberations. It was easy to guess, on seeing the
+grave but earnest faces of all the members of this assembly, that they
+were called upon to pronounce sentence upon the life, the fortunes and
+the happiness of people like themselves. They had no commission
+excepting that of their conscience, and they gathered there as the
+assessors of an ancient and mysterious tribunal; but they represented
+interests much more important than those of kings or of peoples; they
+spoke in the name of the passions and on behalf of the happiness of
+the numberless generations which should succeed them.
+
+The grandson of the celebrated Boulle was seated before a round table
+on which were placed the criminal exhibits which had been collected
+with remarkable intelligence. I, the insignificant secretary of the
+meeting, occupied a place at this desk, where it was my office to take
+down a report of the meeting.
+
+"Gentlemen," said an old man, "the first question upon which we have
+to deliberate is found clearly stated in the following passage of a
+letter. The letter was written to the Princess of Wales, Caroline of
+Anspach, by the widow of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV,
+mother of the Regent: 'The Queen of Spain has a method of making her
+husband say exactly what she wishes. The king is a religious man; he
+believes that he will be damned if he touched any woman but his wife,
+and still this excellent prince is of a very amorous temperament. Thus
+the queen obtains her every wish. She has placed castors on her
+husband's bed. If he refuses her anything, she pushes the bed away. If
+he grants her request, the beds stand side by side, and she admits him
+into hers. And so the king is highly delighted, since he likes -----'
+I will not go any further, gentlemen, for the virtuous frankness of
+the German princess might in this assembly be charged with
+immorality."
+
+Should wise husbands adopt these beds on castors? This is the problem
+which we have to solve.
+
+The unanimity of the vote left no doubt about the opinion of the
+assembly. I was ordered to inscribe in the records, that if two
+married people slept on two separate beds in the same room the beds
+ought not to be set on castors.
+
+"With this proviso," put in one of the members, "that the present
+decision should have no bearing on any subsequent ruling upon the best
+arrangement of the beds of married people."
+
+The president passed to me a choicely bound volume, in which was
+contained the original edition, published in 1788, of the letters of
+Charlotte Elizabeth de Baviere, widow of the Duke of Orleans, the only
+brother of Louis XIV, and, while I was transcribing the passage
+already quoted, he said:
+
+"But, gentlemen, you must all have received at your houses the
+notification in which the second question is stated."
+
+"I rise to make an observation," exclaimed the youngest of the jealous
+husbands there assembled.
+
+The president took his seat with a gesture of assent.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the young husband, "are we quite prepared to
+deliberate upon so grave a question as that which is presented by the
+universally bad arrangement of the beds? Is there not here a much
+wider question than that of mere cabinet-making to decide? For my own
+part I see in it a question which concerns that of universal human
+intellect. The mysteries of conception, gentlemen, are still enveloped
+in a darkness which modern science has but partially dissipated. We do
+not know how far external circumstances influence the microscopic
+beings whose discovery is due to the unwearied patience of Hill,
+Baker, Joblot, Eichorn, Gleichen, Spallanzani, and especially of
+Muller, and last of all of M. Bory de Saint Vincent. The imperfections
+of the bed opens up a musical question of the highest importance, and
+for my part I declare I shall write to Italy to obtain clear
+information as to the manner in which beds are generally arranged. We
+do not know whether there are in the Italian bed numerous curtain
+rods, screws and castors, or whether the construction of beds is in
+this country more faulty than everywhere else, or whether the dryness
+of timber in Italy, due to the influence of the sun, does not _ab ovo_
+produce the harmony, the sense of which is to so large an extent
+innate in Italians. For these reasons I move that we adjourn."
+
+"What!" cried a gentleman from the West, impatiently rising to his
+feet, "are we here to dilate upon the advancement of music? What we
+have to consider first of all is manners, and the moral question is
+paramount in this discussion."
+
+"Nevertheless," remarked one of the most influential members of the
+council, "the suggestion of the former speaker is not in my opinion to
+be passed by. In the last century, gentlemen, Sterne, one of the
+writers most philosophically delightful and most delightfully
+philosophic, complained of the carelessness with which human beings
+were procreated; 'Shame!' he cried 'that he who copies the divine
+physiognomy of man receives crowns and applause, but he who achieves
+the masterpiece, the prototype of mimic art, feels that like virtue he
+must be his own reward.'
+
+"Ought we not to feel more interest in the improvement of the human
+race than in that of horses? Gentlemen, I passed through a little town
+of Orleanais where the whole population consisted of hunchbacks, of
+glum and gloomy people, veritable children of sorrow, and the remark
+of the former speaker caused me to recollect that all the beds were in
+a very bad condition and the bedchambers presented nothing to the eyes
+of the married couple but what was hideous and revolting. Ah!
+gentlemen, how is it possible that our minds should be in an ideal
+state, when instead of the music of angels flying here and there in
+the bosom of that heaven to which we have attained, our ears are
+assailed by the most detestable, the most angry, the most piercing of
+human cries and lamentations? We are perhaps indebted for the fine
+geniuses who have honored humanity to beds which are solidly
+constructed; and the turbulent population which caused the French
+Revolution were conceived perhaps upon a multitude of tottering
+couches, with twisted and unstable legs; while the Orientals, who are
+such a beautiful race, have a unique method of making their beds. I
+vote for the adjournment."
+
+And the gentleman sat down.
+
+A man belonging to the sect of Methodists arose. "Why should we change
+the subject of debate? We are not dealing here with the improvement of
+the race nor with the perfecting of the work. We must not lose sight
+of the interests of the jealous husband and the principles on which
+moral soundness is based. Don't you know that the noise of which you
+complain seems more terrible to the wife uncertain of her crime, than
+the trumpet of the Last Judgment? Can you forget that a suit for
+infidelity could never be won by a husband excepting through this
+conjugal noise? I will undertake, gentlemen, to refer to the divorces
+of Lord Abergavenny, of Viscount Bolingbroke, of the late Queen
+Caroline, of Eliza Draper, of Madame Harris, in fact, of all those who
+are mentioned in the twenty volumes published by--." (The secretary
+did not distinctly hear the name of the English publisher.)
+
+The motion to adjourn was carried. The youngest member proposed to
+make up a purse for the author producing the best dissertation
+addressed to the society upon a subject which Sterne considered of
+such importance; but at the end of the seance eighteen shillings was
+the total sum found in the hat of the president.
+
+The above debate of the society, which had recently been formed in
+London for the improvement of manners and of marriage and which Lord
+Byron scoffed at, was transmitted to us by the kindness of W. Hawkins,
+Esq., cousin-german of the famous Captain Clutterbuck. The extract may
+serve to solve any difficulties which may occur in the theory of bed
+construction.
+
+But the author of the book considers that the English society has
+given too much importance to this preliminary question. There exists
+in fact quite as many reasons for being a _Rossinist_ as for being a
+_Solidist_ in the matter of beds, and the author acknowledges that it
+is either beneath or above him to solve this difficulty. He thinks
+with Laurence Sterne that it is a disgrace to European civilization
+that there exist so few physiological observations on callipedy, and
+he refuses to state the results of his Meditations on this subject,
+because it would be difficult to formulate them in terms of prudery,
+and they would be but little understood, and misinterpreted. Such
+reserve produces an hiatus in this part of the book; but the author
+has the pleasant satisfaction of leaving a fourth work to be
+accomplished by the next century, to which he bequeaths the legacy of
+all that he has not accomplished, a negative munificence which may
+well be followed by all those who may be troubled by an overplus of
+ideas.
+
+The theory of the bed presents questions much more important than
+those put forth by our neighbors with regard to castors and the
+murmurs of criminal conversation.
+
+We know only three ways in which a bed (in the general sense of this
+term) may be arranged among civilized nations, and particularly among
+the privileged classes to whom this book is addressed. These three
+ways are as follows:
+
+
+  1. TWIN BEDS.
+  2. SEPARATE ROOMS.
+  3. ONE BED FOR BOTH.
+
+
+Before applying ourselves to the examination of these three methods of
+living together, which must necessarily have different influences upon
+the happiness of husbands and wives, we must take a rapid survey of
+the practical object served by the bed and the part it plays in the
+political economy of human existence.
+
+The most incontrovertible principle which can be laid down in this
+matter is, _that the bed was made to sleep upon_.
+
+It would be easy to prove that the practice of sleeping together was
+established between married people but recently, in comparison with
+the antiquity of marriage.
+
+By what reasonings has man arrived at that point in which he brought
+in vogue a practice so fatal to happiness, to health, even to
+_amour-propre_? Here we have a subject which it would be curious to
+investigate.
+
+If you knew one of your rivals who had discovered a method of placing
+you in a position of extreme absurdity before the eyes of those who
+were dearest to you--for instance, while you had your mouth crooked
+like that of a theatrical mask, or while your eloquent lips, like the
+copper faucet of a scanty fountain, dripped pure water--you would
+probably stab him. This rival is sleep. Is there a man in the world
+who knows how he appears to others, and what he does when he is
+asleep?
+
+In sleep we are living corpses, we are the prey of an unknown power
+which seizes us in spite of ourselves, and shows itself in the oddest
+shapes; some have a sleep which is intellectual, while the sleep of
+others is mere stupor.
+
+There are some people who slumber with their mouths open in the
+silliest fashion.
+
+There are others who snore loud enough to make the timbers shake.
+
+Most people look like the impish devils that Michael Angelo
+sculptured, putting out their tongues in silent mockery of the
+passers-by.
+
+The only person I know of in the world who sleeps with a noble air is
+Agamemnon, whom Guerin has represented lying on his bed at the moment
+when Clytemnestra, urged by Egisthus, advances to slay him. Moreover,
+I have always had an ambition to hold myself on my pillow as the king
+of kings Agamemnon holds himself, from the day that I was seized with
+dread of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those of
+Providence. In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse
+snorting in her sleep "like a whale," to use a slang expression, I
+have added a petition to the special litany which I address to
+Saint-Honore, my patron saint, to the effect that he would save me
+from indulging in this sort of eloquence.
+
+When a man wakes up in the morning, his drowsy face grotesquely
+surmounted by the folds of a silk handkerchief which falls over his
+left temple like a police cap, he is certainly a laughable object, and
+it is difficult to recognize in him the glorious spouse, celebrated in
+the strophes of Rousseau; but, nevertheless, there is a certain gleam
+of life to illume the stupidity of a countenance half dead--and if you
+artists wish to make fine sketches, you should travel on the
+stage-coach and, when the postilion wakes up the postmaster, just
+examine the physiognomies of the departmental clerks! But, were you a
+hundred times as pleasant to look upon as are these bureaucratic
+physiognomies, at least, while you have your mouth shut, your eyes are
+open, and you have some expression in your countenance. Do you know
+how you looked an hour before you awoke, or during the first hour of
+your sleep, when you were neither a man nor an animal, but merely a
+thing, subject to the dominion of those dreams which issue from the
+gate of horn? But this is a secret between your wife and God.
+
+Is it for the purpose of insinuating the imbecility of slumber that
+the Romans decorated the heads of their beds with the head of an ass?
+We leave to the gentlemen who form the academy of inscriptions the
+elucidation of this point.
+
+Assuredly, the first man who took it into his head, at the inspiration
+of the devil, not to leave his wife, even while she was asleep, should
+know how to sleep in the very best style; but do not forget to reckon
+among the sciences necessary to a man on setting up an establishment,
+the art of sleeping with elegance. Moreover, we will place here as a
+corollary to Axiom XXV of our Marriage Catechism the two following
+aphorisms:
+
+
+  A husband should sleep as lightly as a watch-dog, so as never to
+  be caught with his eyes shut.
+
+
+  A man should accustom himself from childhood to go to bed
+  bareheaded.
+
+
+Certain poets discern in modesty, in the alleged mysteries of love,
+some reason why the married couple should share the same bed; but the
+fact must be recognized that if primitive men sought the shade of
+caverns, the mossy couch of deep ravines, the flinty roof of grottoes
+to protect his pleasure, it was because the delight of love left him
+without defence against his enemies. No, it is not more natural to lay
+two heads upon the same pillow, than it is reasonable to tie a strip
+of muslin round the neck. Civilization is come. It has shut up a
+million of men within an area of four square leagues; it has stalled
+them in streets, houses, apartments, rooms, and chambers eight feet
+square; after a time it will make them shut up one upon another like
+the tubes of a telescope.
+
+From this cause and from many others, such as thrift, fear, and
+ill-concealed jealousy, has sprung the custom of the sleeping together
+of the married couple; and this custom has given rise to punctuality
+and simultaneity in rising and retiring.
+
+And here you find the most capricious thing in the world, the feeling
+most pre-eminently fickle, the thing which is worthless without its
+own spontaneous inspiration, which takes all its charm from the
+suddenness of its desires, which owes its attractions to the
+genuineness of its outbursts--this thing we call love, subjugated to a
+monastic rule, to that law of geometry which belongs to the Board of
+Longitude!
+
+If I were a father I should hate the child, who, punctual as the
+clock, had every morning and evening an explosion of tenderness and
+wished me good-day and good-evening, because he was ordered to do so.
+It is in this way that all that is generous and spontaneous in human
+sentiment becomes strangled at its birth. You may judge from this what
+love means when it is bound to a fixed hour!
+
+Only the Author of everything can make the sun rise and set, morn and
+eve, with a pomp invariably brilliant and always new, and no one here
+below, if we may be permitted to use the hyperbole of Jean-Baptiste
+Rousseau, can play the role of the sun.
+
+From these preliminary observations, we conclude that it is not
+natural for two to lie under the canopy in the same bed;
+
+That a man is almost always ridiculous when he is asleep;
+
+And that this constant living together threatens the husband with
+inevitable dangers.
+
+We are going to try, therefore, to find out a method which will bring
+our customs in harmony with the laws of nature, and to combine custom
+and nature in a way that will enable a husband to find in the mahogany
+of his bed a useful ally, and an aid in defending himself.
+
+
+                            1. TWIN BEDS.
+
+If the most brilliant, the best-looking, the cleverest of husbands
+wishes to find himself minotaurized just as the first year of his
+married life ends, he will infallibly attain that end if he is unwise
+enough to place two beds side by side, under the voluptuous dome of
+the same alcove.
+
+The argument in support of this may be briefly stated. The following
+are its main lines:
+
+The first husband who invented the twin beds was doubtless an
+obstetrician, who feared that in the involuntary struggles of some
+dream he might kick the child borne by his wife.
+
+But no, he was rather some predestined one who distrusted his power of
+checking a snore.
+
+Perhaps it was some young man who, fearing the excess of his own
+tenderness, found himself always lying at the edge of the bed and in
+danger of tumbling off, or so near to a charming wife that he
+disturbed her slumber.
+
+But may it not have been some Maintenon who received the suggestion
+from her confessor, or, more probably, some ambitious woman who wished
+to rule her husband? Or, more undoubtedly, some pretty little
+Pompadour overcome by that Parisian infirmity so pleasantly described
+by M. de Maurepas in that quatrain which cost him his protracted
+disgrace and certainly contributed to the disasters of Louis XVI's
+reign:
+
+
+ "Iris, we love those features sweet,
+  Your graces all are fresh and free;
+  And flowerets spring beneath your feet,
+  Where naught, alas! but flowers are seen."
+
+
+But why should it not have been a philosopher who dreaded the
+disenchantment which a woman would experience at the sight of a man
+asleep? And such a one would always roll himself up in a coverlet and
+keep his head bare.
+
+Unknown author of this Jesuitical method, whoever thou art, in the
+devil's name, we hail thee as a brother! Thou hast been the cause of
+many disasters. Thy work has the character of all half measures; it is
+satisfactory in no respect, and shares the bad points of the two other
+methods without yielding the advantages of either. How can the man of
+the nineteenth century, how can this creature so supremely
+intelligent, who has displayed a power well-nigh supernatural, who has
+employed the resources of his genius in concealing the machinery of
+his life, in deifying his necessary cravings in order that he might
+not despise them, going so far as to wrest from Chinese leaves, from
+Egyptian beans, from seeds of Mexico, their perfume, their treasure,
+their soul; going so far as to chisel the diamond, chase the silver,
+melt the gold ore, paint the clay and woo every art that may serve to
+decorate and to dignify the bowl from which he feeds!--how can this
+king, after having hidden under folds of muslin covered with diamonds,
+studded with rubies, and buried under linen, under folds of cotton,
+under the rich hues of silk, under the fairy patterns of lace, the
+partner of his wretchedness, how can he induce her to make shipwreck
+in the midst of all this luxury on the decks of two beds. What
+advantage is it that we have made the whole universe subserve our
+existence, our delusions, the poesy of our life? What good is it to
+have instituted law, morals and religion, if the invention of an
+upholsterer [for probably it was an upholsterer who invented the twin
+beds] robs our love of all its illusions, strips it bare of the
+majestic company of its delights and gives it in their stead nothing
+but what is ugliest and most odious? For this is the whole history of
+the two bed system.
+
+
+                                LXIII.
+That it shall appear either sublime or grotesque are the alternatives
+                  to which we have reduced a desire.
+
+
+If it be shared, our love is sublime; but should you sleep in twin
+beds, your love will always be grotesque. The absurdities which this
+half separation occasions may be comprised in either one of two
+situations, which will give us occasion to reveal the causes of very
+many marital misfortunes.
+
+Midnight is approaching as a young woman is putting on her curl papers
+and yawning as she did so. I do not know whether her melancholy
+proceeded from a headache, seated in the right or left lobe of her
+brain, or whether she was passing through one of those seasons of
+weariness during which all things appear black to us; but to see her
+negligently putting up her hair for the night, to see her languidly
+raising her leg to take off her garter, it seemed to me that she would
+prefer to be drowned rather than to be denied the relief of plunging
+her draggled life into the slumber that might restore it. At this
+instant, I know not to what degree from the North Pole she stands,
+whether at Spitzberg or in Greenland. Cold and indifferent she goes to
+bed thinking, as Mistress Walter Shandy might have thought, that the
+morrow would be a day of sickness, that her husband is coming home
+very late, that the beaten eggs which she has just eaten were not
+sufficiently sweetened, that she owes more than five hundred francs to
+her dressmaker; in fine, thinking about everything which you may
+suppose would occupy the mind of a tired woman. In the meanwhile
+arrives her great lout of a husband, who, after some business meeting,
+has drunk punch, with a consequent elation. He takes off his boots,
+leaves his stockings on a lounge, his bootjack lies before the
+fireplace; and wrapping his head up in a red silk handkerchief,
+without giving himself the trouble to tuck in the corners, he fires
+off at his wife certain interjectory phrases, those little marital
+endearments, which form almost the whole conversation at those
+twilight hours, where drowsy reason is no longer shining in this
+mechanism of ours. "What, in bed already! It was devilish cold this
+evening! Why don't you speak, my pet? You've already rolled yourself
+up in bed, then! Ah! you are in the dumps and pretend to be asleep!"
+These exclamations are mingled with yawns; and after numberless little
+incidents which according to the usage of each home vary this preface
+of the night, our friend flings himself into his own bed with a heavy
+thud.
+
+Alas! before a woman who is cold, how mad a man must appear when
+desire renders him alternately angry and tender, insolent and abject,
+biting as an epigram and soothing as a madrigal; when he enacts with
+more or less sprightliness the scene where, in _Venice Preserved_, the
+genius of Orway has represented the senator Antonio, repeating a
+hundred times over at the feet of Aquilina: "Aquilina, Quilina, Lina,
+Aqui, Nacki!" without winning from her aught save the stroke of her
+whip, inasmuch as he has undertaken to fawn upon her like a dog. In
+the eyes of every woman, even of a lawful wife, the more a man shows
+eager passion under these circumstances, the more silly he appears. He
+is odious when he commands, he is minotaurized if he abuses his power.
+On this point I would remind you of certain aphorisms in the marriage
+catechism from which you will see that you are violating its most
+sacred precepts. Whether a woman yields, or does not yield, this
+institution of twin beds gives to marriage such an element of
+roughness and nakedness that the most chaste wife and the most
+intelligent husband are led to immodesty.
+
+This scene, which is enacted in a thousand ways and which may
+originate in a thousand different incidents, has a sequel in that
+other situation which, while it is less pleasant, is far more
+terrible.
+
+One evening when I was talking about these serious matters with the
+late Comte de Noce, of whom I have already had occasion to speak, a
+tall white-haired old man, his intimate friend, whose name I will not
+give, because he is still alive, looked at us with a somewhat
+melancholy air. We guessed that he was about to relate some tale of
+scandal, and we accordingly watched him, somewhat as the stenographer
+of the _Moniteur_ might watch, as he mounted the tribune, a minister
+whose speech had already been written out for the reporter. The
+story-teller on this occasion was an old marquis, whose fortune,
+together with his wife and children, had perished in the disasters of
+the Revolution. The marchioness had been one of the most inconsistent
+women of the past generation; the marquis accordingly was not wanting
+in observations on feminine human nature. Having reached an age in
+which he saw nothing before him but the gulf of the grave, he spoke
+about himself as if the subject of his talk were Mark Antony or
+Cleopatra.
+
+"My young friend"--he did me the honor to address me, for it was I who
+made the last remark in this discussion--"your reflections make me
+think of a certain evening, in the course of which one of my friends
+conducted himself in such a manner as to lose forever the respect of
+his wife. Now, in those days a woman could take vengeance with
+marvelous facility--for it was always a word and a blow. The married
+couple I speak of were particular in sleeping on separate beds, with
+their head under the arch of the same alcove. They came home one night
+from a brilliant ball given by the Comte de Mercy, ambassador of the
+emperor. The husband had lost a considerable sum at play, so he was
+completely absorbed in thought. He had to pay a debt, the next day, of
+six thousand crowns!--and you will recollect, Noce, that a hundred
+crowns couldn't be made up from scraping together the resources of ten
+such musketeers. The young woman, as generally happens under such
+circumstances, was in a gale of high spirits. 'Give to the marquis,'
+she said to a _valet de chambre_, 'all that he requires for his
+toilet.' In those days people dressed for the night. These
+extraordinary words did not rouse the husband from his mood of
+abstraction, and then madame, assisted by her maid, began to indulge
+in a thousand coquetries. 'Was my appearance to your taste this
+evening?' 'You are always to my taste,' answered the marquis,
+continuing to stride up and down the room. 'You are very gloomy! Come
+and talk to me, you frowning lover,' said she, placing herself before
+him in the most seductive negligee. But you can have no idea of the
+enchantments of the marchioness unless you had known her. Ah! you have
+seen her, Noce!" he said with a mocking smile. "Finally, in spite of
+all her allurements and beauty, the marchioness was lost sight of amid
+thoughts of the six thousand crowns which this fool of a husband could
+not get out of his head, and she went to bed all alone. But women
+always have one resource left; so that the moment that the good
+husband made as though he would get into his bed, the marchioness
+cried, 'Oh, how cold I am!' 'So am I,' he replied. 'How is it that the
+servants have not warmed our beds?'--And then I rang."
+
+The Comte de Noce could not help laughing, and the old marquis, quite
+put out of countenance, stopped short.
+
+Not to divine the desire of a wife, to snore while she lies awake, to
+be in Siberia when she is in the tropics, these are the slighter
+disadvantages of twin beds. What risks will not a passionate woman run
+when she becomes aware that her husband is a heavy sleeper?
+
+I am indebted to Beyle for an Italian anecdote, to which his dry and
+sarcastic manner lent an infinite charm, as he told me this tale of
+feminine hardihood.
+
+Ludovico had his palace at one end of the town of Milan; at the other
+was that of the Countess of Pernetti. At midnight, on a certain
+occasion, Ludovico resolved, at the peril of his life, to make a rash
+expedition for the sake of gazing for one second on the face he
+adored, and accordingly appeared as if by magic in the palace of his
+well-beloved. He reached the nuptial chamber. Elisa Pernetti, whose
+heart most probably shared the desire of her lover, heard the sound of
+his footsteps and divined his intention. She saw through the walls of
+her chamber a countenance glowing with love. She rose from her
+marriage bed, light as a shadow she glided to the threshold of her
+door, with a look she embraced him, she seized his hand, she made a
+sign to him, she drew him in.
+
+"But he will kill you!" said he.
+
+"Perhaps so."
+
+But all this amounts to nothing. Let us grant that most husbands sleep
+lightly. Let us grant that they sleep without snoring, and that they
+always discern the degree of latitude at which their wives are to be
+found. Moreover, all the reasons which we have given why twin beds
+should be condemned, let us consider but dust in the balance. But,
+after all, a final consideration would make us also proscribe the use
+of beds ranged within the limits of the same alcove.
+
+To a man placed in the position of a husband, there are circumstances
+which have led us to consider the nuptial couch as an actual means of
+defence. For it is only in bed that a man can tell whether his wife's
+love is increasing or decreasing. It is the conjugal barometer. Now to
+sleep in twin beds is to wish for ignorance. You will understand, when
+we come to treat of _civil war_ (See Part Third) of what extreme
+usefulness a bed is and how many secrets a wife reveals in bed,
+without knowing it.
+
+Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good
+nature of such an institution as that of twin beds.
+
+It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the
+world. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it!
+
+But in proportion as this method is pernicious in the case of young
+married people, it is salutary and advantageous for those who have
+reached the twentieth year of married life. Husband and wife can then
+most conveniently indulge their duets of snoring. It will, moreover,
+be more convenient for their various maladies, whether rheumatism,
+obstinate gout, or even the taking of a pinch of snuff; and the cough
+or the snore will not in any respect prove a greater hindrance than it
+is found to be in any other arrangement.
+
+We have not thought it necessary to mention the exceptional cases
+which authorize a husband to resort to twin beds. However, the opinion
+of Bonaparte was that when once there had taken place an interchange
+of life and breath (such are his words), nothing, not even sickness,
+should separate married people. This point is so delicate that it is
+not possible here to treat it methodically.
+
+Certain narrow minds will object that there are certain patriarchal
+families whose legislation of love is inflexible in the matter of two
+beds and an alcove, and that, by this arrangement, they have been
+happy from generation to generation. But, the only answer that the
+author vouchsafes to this is that he knows a great many respectable
+people who pass their lives in watching games of billiards.
+
+
+                          2. SEPARATE ROOMS.
+
+There cannot be found in Europe a hundred husbands of each nation
+sufficiently versed in the science of marriage, or if you like, of
+life, to be able to dwell in an apartment separate from that of their
+wives.
+
+The power of putting this system into practice shows the highest
+degree of intellectual and masculine force.
+
+The married couple who dwell in separate apartments have become either
+divorced, or have attained to the discovery of happiness. They either
+abominate or adore each other. We will not undertake to detail here
+the admirable precepts which may be deduced from this theory whose end
+is to make constancy and fidelity easy and delightful. It may be
+sufficient to declare that by this system alone two married people can
+realize the dream of many noble souls. This will be understood by all
+the faithful.
+
+As for the profane, their curious questionings will be sufficiently
+answered by the remark that the object of this institution is to give
+happiness to one woman. Which among them will be willing to deprive
+general society of any share in the talents with which they think
+themselves endowed, to the advantage of one woman? Nevertheless, the
+rendering of his mistress happy gives any one the fairest title to
+glory which can be earned in this valley of Jehosaphat, since,
+according to Genesis, Eve was not satisfied even with a terrestrial
+Paradise. She desired to taste the forbidden fruit, the eternal emblem
+of adultery.
+
+But there is an insurmountable reason why we should refrain from
+developing this brilliant theory. It would cause a digression from the
+main theme of our work. In the situation which we have supposed to be
+that of a married establishment, a man who is sufficiently unwise to
+sleep apart from his wife deserves no pity for the disaster which he
+himself invites.
+
+Let us then resume our subject. Every man is not strong enough to
+undertake to occupy an apartment separate from that of his wife;
+although any man might derive as much good as evil from the
+difficulties which exist in using but one bed.
+
+We now proceed to solve the difficulties which superficial minds may
+detect in this method, for which our predilection is manifest.
+
+But this paragraph, which is in some sort a silent one, inasmuch as we
+leave it to the commentaries which will be made in more than one home,
+may serve as a pedestal for the imposing figure of Lycurgus, that
+ancient legislator, to whom the Greeks are indebted for their
+profoundest thoughts on the subject of marriage. May his system be
+understood by future generations! And if modern manners are too much
+given to softness to adopt his system in its entirety, they may at
+least be imbued with the robust spirit of this admirable code.
+
+
+                         3. ONE BED FOR BOTH.
+
+On a night in December, Frederick the Great looked up at the sky,
+whose stars were twinkling with that clear and living light which
+presages heavy frost, and he exclaimed, "This weather will result in a
+great many soldiers to Prussia."
+
+The king expressed here, by a single phrase, the principal
+disadvantage which results from the constant living together of
+married people. Although it may be permitted to Napoleon and to
+Frederick to estimate the value of a woman more or less according to
+the number of her children, yet a husband of talent ought, according
+to the maxims of the thirteenth Meditation, to consider
+child-begetting merely as a means of defence, and it is for him to
+know to what extent it may take place.
+
+The observation leads into mysteries from which the physiological Muse
+recoils. She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chambers
+while they are occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and there
+are occasions on which she retires. For, since it is at this passage
+in my book that the Muse is inclined to put her white hands before her
+eyes so as to see nothing, like the young girl looking through the
+interstices of her tapering fingers, she will take advantage of this
+attack of modesty, to administer a reprimand to our manners. In
+England the nuptial chamber is a sacred place. The married couple
+alone have the privilege of entering it, and more than one lady, we
+are told, makes her bed herself. Of all the crazes which reign beyond
+the sea, why should the only one which we despise be precisely that,
+whose grace and mystery ought undoubtedly to meet the approval of all
+tender souls on this continent? Refined women condemn the immodesty
+with which strangers are introduced into the sanctuary of marriage. As
+for us, who have energetically anathematized women who walk abroad at
+the time when they expect soon to be confined, our opinion cannot be
+doubted. If we wish the celibate to respect marriage, married people
+ought to have some regard for the inflammability of bachelors.
+
+To sleep every night with one's wife may seem, we confess, an act of
+the most insolent folly.
+
+Many husbands are inclined to ask how a man, who desires to bring
+marriage to perfection, dare prescribe to a husband a rule of conduct
+which would be fatal in a lover.
+
+Nevertheless, such is the decision of a doctor of arts and sciences
+conjugal.
+
+In the first place, without making a resolution never to sleep by
+himself, this is the only course left to a husband, since we have
+demonstrated the dangers of the preceding systems. We must now try to
+prove that this last method yields more advantage and less
+disadvantage than the two preceding methods, that is, so far as
+relates to the critical position in which a conjugal establishment
+stands.
+
+Our observations on the twin beds ought to have taught husbands that
+they should always be strung into the same degree of fervor as that
+which prevails in the harmonious organization of their wives. Now it
+seems to us that this perfect equality in feelings would naturally be
+created under the white Aegis, which spreads over both of them its
+protecting sheet; this at the outset is an immense advantage, and
+really nothing is easier to verify at any moment than the degree of
+love and expansion which a woman reaches when the same pillow receives
+the heads of both spouses.
+
+Man [we speak now of the species] walks about with a memorandum always
+totalized, which shows distinctly and without error the amount of
+passion which he carries within him. This mysterious gynometer is
+traced in the hollow of the hand, for the hand is really that one of
+our members which bears the impress most plainly of our characters.
+Chirology is a fifth work which I bequeath to my successors, for I am
+contented here to make known but the elements of this interesting
+science.
+
+The hand is the essential organ of touch. Touch is the sense which
+very nearly takes the place of all the others, and which alone is
+indispensable. Since the hand alone can carry out all that a man
+desires, it is to an extent action itself. The sum total of our
+vitality passes through it; and men of powerful intellects are usually
+remarkable for their shapely hands, perfection in that respect being a
+distinguishing trait of their high calling.
+
+Jesus Christ performed all His miracles by the imposition of hands.
+The hand is the channel through which life passes. It reveals to the
+physician all the mysteries of our organism. It exhales more than any
+other part of our bodies the nervous fluid, or that unknown substance,
+which for want of another term we style _will_. The eye can discover
+the mood of our soul but the hand betrays at the same time the secrets
+of the body and those of the soul. We can acquire the faculty of
+imposing silence on our eyes, on our lips, on our brows, and on our
+forehead; but the hand never dissembles and nothing in our features
+can be compared to the richness of its expression. The heat and cold
+which it feels in such delicate degrees often escape the notice of
+other senses in thoughtless people; but a man knows how to distinguish
+them, however little time he may have bestowed in studying the anatomy
+of sentiments and the affairs of human life. Thus the hand has a
+thousand ways of becoming dry, moist, hot, cold, soft, rough,
+unctuous. The hand palpitates, becomes supple, grows hard and again is
+softened. In fine it presents a phenomenon which is inexplicable so
+that one is tempted to call it the incarnation of thought. It causes
+the despair of the sculptor and the painter when they wish to express
+the changing labyrinth of its mysterious lineaments. To stretch out
+your hand to a man is to save him, it serves as a ratification of the
+sentiments we express. The sorcerers of every age have tried to read
+our future destines in those lines which have nothing fanciful in
+them, but absolutely correspond with the principles of each one's life
+and character. When she charges a man with want of tact, which is
+merely touch, a woman condemns him without hope. We use the
+expressions, the "Hand of Justice," the "Hand of God;" and a _coup de
+main_ means a bold undertaking.
+
+To understand and recognize the hidden feelings by the atmospheric
+variations of the hand, which a woman almost always yields without
+distrust, is a study less unfruitful and surer than that of
+physiognomy.
+
+In this way you will be able, if you acquire this science, to wield
+vast power, and to find a clue which will guide you through the
+labyrinth of the most impenetrable heart. This will render your living
+together free from very many mistakes, and, at the same time, rich in
+the acquisition of many a treasure.
+
+Buffon and certain physiologists affirm that our members are more
+completely exhausted by desire than by the most keen enjoyments. And
+really, does not desire constitute of itself a sort of intuitive
+possession? Does it not stand in the same relation to visible action,
+as those incidents in our mental life, in which we take part in a
+dream, stand to the incidents of our actual life? This energetic
+apprehension of things, does it not call into being an internal
+emotion more powerful than that of the external action? If our
+gestures are only the accomplishment of things already enacted by our
+thought, you may easily calculate how desire frequently entertained
+must necessarily consume the vital fluids. But the passions which are
+no more than the aggregation of desires, do they not furrow with the
+wrinkle of their lightning the faces of the ambitious, of gamblers,
+for instance, and do they not wear out their bodies with marvelous
+swiftness?
+
+These observations, therefore, necessarily contain the germs of a
+mysterious system equally favored by Plato and by Epicurus; we will
+leave it for you to meditate upon, enveloped as it is in the veil
+which enshrouds Egyptian statues.
+
+But the greatest mistake that a man commits is to believe that love
+can belong only to those fugitive moments which, according to the
+magnificent expression of Bossuet, are like to the nails scattered
+over a wall: to the eye they appear numerous; but when they are
+collected they make but a handful.
+
+Love consists almost always in conversation. There are few things
+inexhaustible in a lover: goodness, gracefulness and delicacy. To feel
+everything, to divine everything, to anticipate everything; to
+reproach without bringing affliction upon a tender heart; to make a
+present without pride; to double the value of a certain action by the
+way in which it is done; to flatter rather by actions than by words;
+to make oneself understood rather than to produce a vivid impression;
+to touch without striking; to make a look and the sound of the voice
+produce the effect of a caress; never to produce embarrassment; to
+amuse without offending good taste; always to touch the heart; to
+speak to the soul--this is all that women ask. They will abandon all
+the delights of all the nights of Messalina, if only they may live
+with a being who will yield them those caresses of the soul, for which
+they are so eager, and which cost nothing to men if only they have a
+little consideration.
+
+This outline comprises a great portion of such secrets as belong to
+the nuptial couch. There are perhaps some witty people who may take
+this long definition of politeness for a description of love, while in
+any case it is no more than a recommendation to treat your wife as you
+would treat the minister on whose good-will depends your promotion to
+the post you covet.
+
+I hear numberless voices crying out that this book is a special
+advocate for women and neglects the cause of men;
+
+That the majority of women are unworthy of these delicate attentions
+and would abuse them;
+
+That there are women given to licentiousness who would not lend
+themselves to very much of what they would call mystification;
+
+That women are nothing but vanity and think of nothing but dress;
+
+That they have notions which are truly unreasonable;
+
+That they are very often annoyed by an attention;
+
+That they are fools, they understand nothing, are worth nothing, etc.
+
+In answer to all these clamors we will write here the following
+phrases, which, placed between two spaces, will perhaps have the air
+of a thought, to quote an expression of Beaumarchais.
+
+
+                                LXIV.
+     A wife is to her husband just what her husband has made her.
+
+
+The reasons why the single bed must triumph over the other two methods
+of organizing the nuptial couch are as follows: In the single couch we
+have a faithful interpreter to translate with profound truthfulness
+the sentiments of a woman, to render her a spy over herself, to keep
+her at the height of her amorous temperature, never to leave her, to
+have the power of hearing her breathe in slumber, and thus to avoid
+all the nonsense which is the ruin of so many marriages.
+
+As it is impossible to receive benefits without paying for them, you
+are bound to learn how to sleep gracefully, to preserve your dignity
+under the silk handkerchief that wraps your head, to be polite, to see
+that your slumber is light, not to cough too much, and to imitate
+those modern authors who write more prefaces than books.
+
+
+
+                          MEDITATION XVIII.
+
+                       OF MARITAL REVOLUTIONS.
+
+The time always comes in which nations and women even the most stupid
+perceive that their innocence is being abused. The cleverest policy
+may for a long time proceed in a course of deceit; but it would be
+very happy for men if they could carry on their deceit to an infinite
+period; a vast amount of bloodshed would then be avoided, both in
+nations and in families.
+
+Nevertheless, we hope that the means of defence put forth in the
+preceding Meditations will be sufficient to deliver a certain number
+of husbands from the clutches of the Minotaur! You must agree with the
+doctor that many a love blindly entered upon perishes under the
+treatment of hygiene or dies away, thanks to marital policy. Yes [what
+a consoling mistake!] many a lover will be driven away by personal
+efforts, many a husband will learn how to conceal under an
+impenetrable veil the machinery of his machiavelism, and many a man
+will have better success than the old philosopher who cried: _Nolo
+coronari!_
+
+But we are here compelled to acknowledge a mournful truth. Despotism
+has its moments of secure tranquillity. Her reign seems like the hour
+which precedes the tempest, and whose silence enables the traveler,
+stretched upon the faded grass, to hear at a mile's distance, the song
+of the cicada. Some fine morning an honest woman, who will be imitated
+by a great portion of our own women, discerns with an eagle eye the
+clever manoeuvres which have rendered her the victim of an infernal
+policy. She is at first quite furious at having for so long a time
+preserved her virtue. At what age, in what day, does this terrible
+revolution occur? This question of chronology depends entirely upon
+the genius of each husband; for it is not the vocation of all to put
+in practice with the same talent the precepts of our conjugal gospel.
+
+"A man must have very little love," the mystified wife will exclaim,
+"to enter upon such calculations as these! What! From the first day I
+have been to him perpetually an object of suspicion! It is monstrous,
+even a woman would be incapable of such artful and cruel treachery!"
+
+This is the question. Each husband will be able to understand the
+variations of this complaint which will be made in accordance with the
+character of the young Fury, of whom he has made a companion.
+
+A woman by no means loses her head under these circumstances; she
+holds her tongue and dissembles. Her vengeance will be concealed. Only
+you will have some symptoms of hesitation to contend with on the
+arrival of the crisis, which we presume you to have reached on the
+expiration of the honeymoon; but you will also have to contend against
+a resolution. She has determined to revenge herself. From that day, so
+far as regards you, her mask, like her heart, has turned to bronze.
+Formerly you were an object of indifference to her; you are becoming
+by degrees absolutely insupportable. The Civil War commences only at
+the moment in which, like the drop of water which makes the full glass
+overflow, some incident, whose more or less importance we find
+difficulty in determining, has rendered you odious. The lapse of time
+which intervenes between this last hour, the limit of your good
+understanding, and the day when your wife becomes cognizant of your
+artifices, is nevertheless quite sufficient to permit you to institute
+a series of defensive operations, which we will now explain.
+
+Up to this time you have protected your honor solely by the exertion
+of a power entirely occult. Hereafter the wheels of your conjugal
+machinery must be set going in sight of every one. In this case, if
+you would prevent a crime you must strike a blow. You have begun by
+negotiating, you must end by mounting your horse, sabre in hand, like
+a Parisian gendarme. You must make your horse prance, you must
+brandish your sabre, you must shout strenuously, and you must endeavor
+to calm the revolt without wounding anybody.
+
+Just as the author has found a means of passing from occult methods to
+methods that are patent, so it is necessary for the husband to justify
+the sudden change in his tactics; for in marriage, as in literature,
+art consists entirely in the gracefulness of the transitions. This is
+of the highest importance for you. What a frightful position you will
+occupy if your wife has reason to complain of your conduct at the
+moment, which is, perhaps, the most critical of your whole married
+life!
+
+You must therefore find some means or other to justify the secret
+tyranny of your initial policy; some means which still prepare the
+mind of your wife for the severe measures which you are about to take;
+some means which so far from forfeiting her esteem will conciliate
+her; some means which will gain her pardon, which will restore some
+little of that charm of yours, by which you won her love before your
+marriage.
+
+"But what policy is it that demands this course of action? Is there
+such a policy?"
+
+Certainly there is.
+
+But what address, what tact, what histrionic art must a husband
+possess in order to display the mimic wealth of that treasure which we
+are about to reveal to him! In order to counterfeit the passion whose
+fire is to make you a new man in the presence of your wife, you will
+require all the cunning of Talma.
+
+This passion is JEALOUSY.
+
+"My husband is jealous. He has been so from the beginning of our
+marriage. He has concealed this feeling from me by his usual refined
+delicacy. Does he love me still? I am going to do as I like with him!"
+
+Such are the discoveries which a woman is bound to make, one after
+another, in accordance with the charming scenes of the comedy which
+you are enacting for your amusement; and a man of the world must be an
+actual fool, if he fails in making a woman believe that which flatters
+her.
+
+With what perfection of hypocrisy must you arrange, step by step, your
+hypocritical behavior so as to rouse the curiosity of your wife, to
+engage her in a new study, and to lead her astray among the labyrinths
+of your thought!
+
+Ye sublime actors! Do ye divine the diplomatic reticence, the gestures
+of artifice, the veiled words, the looks of doubtful meaning which
+some evening may induce your wife to attempt the capture of your
+secret thoughts?
+
+Ah! to laugh in your sleeve while you are exhibiting the fierceness of
+a tiger; neither to lie nor to tell the truth; to comprehend the
+capricious mood of a woman, and yet to make her believe that she
+controls you, while you intend to bind her with a collar of iron! O
+comedy that has no audience, which yet is played by one heart before
+another heart and where both of you applaud because both of you think
+that you have obtained success!
+
+She it is who will tell you that you are jealous, who will point out
+to you that she knows you better than you know yourself, who will
+prove to you the uselessness of your artifices and who perhaps will
+defy you. She triumphs in the excited consciousness of the superiority
+which she thinks she possesses over you; you of course are ennobled in
+her eyes; for she finds your conduct quite natural. The only thing she
+feels is that your want of confidence was useless; if she wished to
+betray, who could hinder her?
+
+Then, some evening, you will burst into a passion, and, as some trifle
+affords you a pretext, you will make a scene, in the course of which
+your anger will make you divulge the secret of your distress. And here
+comes in the promulgation of our new code.
+
+Have no fear that a woman is going to trouble herself about this. She
+needs your jealousy, she rather likes your severity. This comes from
+the fact that in the first place she finds there a justification for
+her own conduct; and then she finds immense satisfaction in playing
+before other people the part of a victim. What delightful expressions
+of sympathy will she receive! Afterwards she will use this as a weapon
+against you, in the expectation thereby of leading you into a pitfall.
+
+She sees in your conduct the source of a thousand more pleasures in
+her future treachery, and her imagination smiles at all the barricades
+with which you surround her, for will she not have the delight of
+surmounting them all?
+
+Women understand better than we do the art of analyzing the two human
+feelings, which alternately form their weapons of attack, or the
+weapons of which they are victims. They have the instinct of love,
+because it is their whole life, and of jealousy, because it is almost
+the only means by which they can control us. Within them jealousy is a
+genuine sentiment and springs from the instinct of self-preservation;
+it is vital to their life or death. But with men this feeling is
+absolutely absurd when it does not subserve some further end.
+
+To entertain feelings of jealousy towards the woman you love, is to
+start from a position founded on vicious reasoning. We are loved, or
+we are not loved; if a man entertains jealousy under either of these
+circumstances, it is a feeling absolutely unprofitable to him;
+jealousy may be explained as fear, fear in love. But to doubt one's
+wife is to doubt one's self.
+
+To be jealous is to exhibit, at once, the height of egotism, the error
+of _amour-propre_, the vexation of morbid vanity. Women rather
+encourage this ridiculous feeling, because by means of it they can
+obtain cashmere shawls, silver toilet sets, diamonds, which for them
+mark the high thermometer mark of their power. Moreover, unless you
+appear blinded by jealousy, your wife will not keep on her guard; for
+there is no pitfall which she does not distrust, excepting that which
+she makes for herself.
+
+Thus the wife becomes the easy dupe of a husband who is clever enough
+to give to the inevitable revolution, which comes sooner or later, the
+advantageous results we have indicated.
+
+You must import into your establishment that remarkable phenomenon
+whose existence is demonstrated in the asymptotes of geometry. Your
+wife will always try to minotaurize you without being successful. Like
+those knots which are never so tight as when one tries to loosen them,
+she will struggle to the advantage of your power over her, while she
+believes that she is struggling for her independence.
+
+The highest degree of good play on the part of a prince lies in
+persuading his people that he goes to war for them, while all the time
+he is causing them to be killed for his throne.
+
+But many husbands will find a preliminary difficulty in executing this
+plan of campaign. If your wife is a woman of profound dissimulation,
+the question is, what signs will indicate to her the motives of your
+long mystification?
+
+It will be seen that our Meditation on the Custom House, as well as
+that on the Bed, has already revealed certain means of discerning the
+thought of a woman; but we make no pretence in this book of
+exhaustively stating the resources of human wit, which are
+immeasurable. Now here is a proof of this. On the day of the
+Saturnalia the Romans discovered more features in the character of
+their slaves, in ten minutes, than they would have found out during
+the rest of the year! You ought therefore to ordain Saturnalia in your
+establishment, and to imitate Gessler, who, when he saw William Tell
+shoot the apple off his son's head, was forced to remark, "Here is a
+man whom I must get rid of, for he could not miss his aim if he wished
+to kill me."
+
+You understand, then, that if your wife wishes to drink Roussillon
+wine, to eat mutton chops, to go out at all hours and to read the
+encyclopaedia, you are bound to take her very seriously. In the first
+place, she will begin to distrust you against her own wish, on seeing
+that your behaviour towards her is quite contrary to your previous
+proceedings. She will suppose that you have some ulterior motive in
+this change of policy, and therefore all the liberty that you give her
+will make her so anxious that she cannot enjoy it. As regards the
+misfortunes that this change may bring, the future will provide for
+them. In a revolution the primary principle is to exercise a control
+over the evil which cannot be prevented and to attract the lightning
+by rods which shall lead it to the earth.
+
+And now the last act of the comedy is in preparation.
+
+The lover who, from the day when the feeblest of all first symptoms
+shows itself in your wife until the moment when the marital revolution
+takes place, has jumped upon the stage, either as a material creature
+or as a being of the imagination--the LOVER, summoned by a sign from
+her, now declares: "Here I am!"
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XIX.
+
+                            OF THE LOVER.
+
+We offer the following maxims for your consideration:
+
+We should despair of the human race if these maxims had been made
+before 1830; but they set forth in so clear a manner the agreements
+and difficulties which distinguish you, your wife and a lover; they so
+brilliantly describe what your policy should be, and demonstrate to
+you so accurately the strength of the enemy, that the teacher has put
+his _amour-propre_ aside, and if by chance you find here a single new
+thought, send it to the devil, who suggested this work.
+
+
+                                 LXV.
+                  To speak of love is to make love.
+
+
+                                LXVI.
+   In a lover the coarsest desire always shows itself as a burst of
+                          honest admiration.
+
+
+                                LXVII.
+   A lover has all the good points and all the bad points which are
+                        lacking in a husband.
+
+
+                               LXVIII.
+ A lover not only gives life to everything, he makes one forget life;
+             the husband does not give life to anything.
+
+
+                                LXIX.
+All the affected airs of sensibility which a woman puts on invariably
+deceive a lover; and on occasions when a husband shrugs his shoulders,
+a lover is in ecstasies.
+
+
+                                 LXX.
+A lover betrays by his manner alone the degree of intimacy in which he
+                      stands to a married woman.
+
+
+                                LXXI.
+A woman does not always know why she is in love. It is rarely that a
+man falls in love without some selfish purpose. A husband should
+discover this secret motive of egotism, for it will be to him the
+lever of Archimedes.
+
+
+                                LXXII.
+  A clever husband never betrays his supposition that his wife has a
+                                lover.
+
+
+                               LXXIII.
+The lover submits to all the caprices of a woman; and as a man is
+never vile while he lies in the arms of his mistress, he will take the
+means to please her that a husband would recoil from.
+
+
+                                LXXIV.
+ A lover teaches a wife all that her husband has concealed from her.
+
+
+                                LXXV.
+All the sensations which a woman yields to her lover, she gives in
+exchange; they return to her always intensified; they are as rich in
+what they give as in what they receive. This is the kind of commerce
+in which almost all husbands end by being bankrupt.
+
+
+                                LXXVI.
+A lover speaks of nothing to a woman but that which exalts her; while
+a husband, although he may be a loving one, can never refrain from
+giving advice which always has the appearance of reprimand.
+
+
+                               LXXVII.
+A lover always starts from his mistress to himself; with a husband the
+                        contrary is the case.
+
+
+                               LXXVIII.
+A lover always has a desire to appear amiable. There is in this
+sentiment an element of exaggeration which leads to ridicule; study
+how to take advantage of this.
+
+
+                                LXXIX.
+When a crime has been committed the magistrate who investigates the
+case knows [excepting in the case of a released convict who commits
+murder in jail] that there are not more than five persons to whom he
+can attribute the act. He starts from this premise a series of
+conjectures. The husband should reason like the judge; there are only
+three people in society whom he can suspect when seeking the lover of
+                              his wife.
+
+
+                                LXXX.
+                    A lover is never in the wrong.
+
+
+                                LXXXI.
+The lover of a married woman says to her: "Madame, you have need of
+rest. You have to give an example of virtue to your children. You have
+sworn to make your husband happy, and although he has some faults--he
+has fewer than I have--he is worthy of your esteem. Nevertheless you
+have sacrificed everything for me. Do not let a single murmur escape
+you; for regret is an offence which I think worthy of a severer
+penalty than the law decrees against infidelity. As a reward for these
+sacrifices, I will bring you as much pleasure as pain." And the
+incredible part about it is, that the lover triumphs. The form which
+his speech takes carries it. He says but one phrase: "I love you." A
+lover is a herald who proclaims either the merit, the beauty, or the
+wit of a woman. What does a husband proclaim?
+
+
+To sum up all, the love which a married woman inspires, or that which
+she gives back, is the least creditable sentiment in the world; in her
+it is boundless vanity; in her lover it is selfish egotism. The lover
+of a married woman contracts so many obligations, that scarcely three
+men in a century are met with who are capable of discharging them. He
+ought to dedicate his whole life to his mistress, but he always ends
+by deserting her; both parties are aware of this, and, from the
+beginning of social life, the one has always been sublime in
+self-sacrifice, the other an ingrate. The infatuation of love always
+rouses the pity of the judges who pass sentence on it. But where do
+you find such love genuine and constant? What power must a husband
+possess to struggle successfully against a man who casts over a woman
+a spell strong enough to make her submit to such misfortunes!
+
+
+
+We think, then, as a general rule, a husband, if he knows how to use
+the means of defence which we have outlined, can lead his wife up to
+her twenty-seventh year, not without her having chosen a lover, but
+without her having committed the great crime. Here and there we meet
+with men endowed with deep marital genius, who can keep their wives,
+body and soul to themselves alone up to their thirtieth or
+thirty-fifth year; but these exceptions cause a sort of scandal and
+alarm. The phenomenon scarcely ever is met with excepting in the
+country, where life is transparent and people live in glass houses and
+the husband wields immense power. The miraculous assistance which men
+and things thus give to a husband always vanishes in the midst of a
+city whose population reaches to two hundred and fifty thousand.
+
+It would therefore almost appear to be demonstrated that thirty is the
+age of virtue. At that critical period, a woman becomes so difficult
+to guard, that in order successfully to enchain her within the
+conjugal Paradise, resort must be had to those last means of defence
+which remain to be described, and which we will reveal in the _Essay
+on Police_, the _Art of Returning Home_, and _Catastrophes_.
+
+
+
+                            MEDITATION XX.
+
+                           ESSAY ON POLICE.
+
+The police of marriage consist of all those means which are given you
+by law, manners, force, and stratagem for preventing your wife in her
+attempt to accomplish those three acts which in some sort make up the
+life of love: writing, seeing and speaking.
+
+The police combine in greater or less proportion the means of defence
+put forth in the preceding Meditations. Instinct alone can teach in
+what proportions and on what occasions these compounded elements are
+to be employed. The whole system is elastic; a clever husband will
+easily discern how it must be bent, stretched or retrenched. By the
+aid of the police a man can guide his wife to her fortieth year pure
+from any fault.
+
+We will divide this treatise on Police into five captions:
+
+
+  1. OF MOUSE-TRAPS.
+  2. OF CORRESPONDENCE.
+  3. OF SPIES.
+  4. THE INDEX.
+  5. OF THE BUDGET.
+
+
+                          1. OF MOUSE-TRAPS.
+
+In spite of the grave crisis which the husband has reached, we do not
+suppose that the lover has completely acquired the freedom of the city
+in the marital establishment. Many husbands often suspect that their
+wives have a lover, and yet they do not know upon which of the five or
+six chosen ones of whom we have spoken their suspicions ought to fall.
+This hesitation doubtless springs from some moral infirmity, to whose
+assistance the professor must come.
+
+Fouche had in Paris three or four houses resorted to by people of the
+highest distinction; the mistresses of these dwellings were devoted to
+him. This devotion cost a great deal of money to the state. The
+minister used to call these gatherings, of which nobody at the time
+had any suspicion, his _mouse-traps_. More than one arrest was made at
+the end of the ball at which the most brilliant people of Paris had
+been made accomplices of this oratorian.
+
+The act of offering some fragments of roasted nuts, in order to see
+your wife put her white hand in the trap, is certainly exceedingly
+delicate, for a woman is certain to be on her guard; nevertheless, we
+reckon upon at least three kinds of mouse-traps: _The Irresistible_,
+_The Fallacious_, and that which is _Touch and Go_.
+
+
+                         _The Irresistible._
+
+Suppose two husbands, we will call them A and B, wish to discover who
+are the lovers of their wives. We will put the husband A at the centre
+of a table loaded with the finest pyramids of fruit, of crystals, of
+candies and of liqueurs, and the husband B shall be at whatever point
+of this brilliant circle you may please to suppose. The champagne has
+gone round, every eye is sparkling and every tongue is wagging.
+
+HUSBAND A. (peeling a chestnut)--Well, as for me, I admire literary
+people, but from a distance. I find them intolerable; in conversation
+they are despotic; I do not know what displeases me more, their faults
+or their good qualities. In short (he swallows his chestnut), people
+of genius are like tonics--you like, but you must use them
+temperately.
+
+WIFE B. (who has listened attentively)--But, M. A., you are very
+exacting (with an arch smile); it seems to me that dull people have as
+many faults as people of talent, with this difference perhaps, that
+the former have nothing to atone for them!
+
+HUSBAND A. (irritably)--You will agree at least, madame, that they are
+not very amiable to you.
+
+WIFE B. (with vivacity)--Who told you so?
+
+HUSBAND A. (smiling)--Don't they overwhelm you all the time with their
+superiority? Vanity so dominates their souls that between you and them
+the effort is reciprocal--
+
+THE MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE. (aside to Wife A)--You well deserved it, my
+dear. (Wife A shrugs her shoulders.)
+
+HUSBAND A. (still continuing)--Then the habit they have of combining
+ideas which reveal to them the mechanism of feeling! For them love is
+purely physical and every one knows that they do not shine.
+
+WIFE B. (biting her lips, interrupting him)--It seems to me, sir, that
+we are the sole judges in this matter. I can well understand why men
+of the world do not like men of letters! But it is easier to criticise
+than to imitate them.
+
+HUSBAND A. (disdainfully)--Oh, madame, men of the world can assail the
+authors of the present time without being accused of envy. There is
+many a gentleman of the drawing-room, who if he undertook to write--
+
+WIFE B. (with warmth)--Unfortunately for you, sir, certain friends of
+yours in the Chamber have written romances; have you been able to read
+them?--But really, in these days, in order to attain the least
+originality, you must undertake historic research, you must--
+
+HUSBAND B. (making no answer to the lady next him and speaking aside)
+--Oh! Oh! Can it be that it is M. de L-----, author of the _Dreams of
+a Young Girl_, whom my wife is in love with?--That is singular; I
+thought that it was Doctor M-----. But stay! (Aloud.) Do you know, my
+dear, that you are right in what you say? (All laugh.) Really, I
+should prefer to have always artists and men of letters in my
+drawing-room--(aside) when we begin to receive!--rather than to see
+there other professional men. In any case artists speak of things
+about
+which every one is enthusiastic, for who is there who does not believe
+in good taste? But judges, lawyers, and, above all, doctors--Heavens!
+I confess that to hear them constantly speaking about lawsuits and
+diseases, those two human ills--
+
+WIFE A. (sitting next to Husband B, speaking at the same time)--What
+is that you are saying, my friend? You are quite mistaken. In these
+days nobody wishes to wear a professional manner; doctors, since you
+have mentioned doctors, try to avoid speaking of professional matters.
+They talk politics, discuss the fashions and the theatres, they tell
+anecdotes, they write books better than professional authors do; there
+is a vast difference between the doctors of to-day and those of
+Moliere--
+
+HUSBAND A. (aside)--Whew! Is it possible my wife is in love with Dr.
+M-----? That would be odd. (Aloud.) That is quite possible, my dear,
+but I would not give a sick dog in charge of a physician who writes.
+
+WIFE A. (interrupting her husband)--I know people who have five or six
+offices, yet the government has the greatest confidence in them;
+anyway, it is odd that you should speak in this way, you who were one
+of Dr. M-----'s great cases--
+
+HUSBAND A. (aside)--There can be no doubt of it!
+
+
+                          _The Fallacious._
+
+A HUSBAND. (as he reaches home)--My dear, we are invited by Madame de
+Fischtaminel to a concert which she is giving next Tuesday. I reckoned
+on going there, as I wanted to speak with a young cousin of the
+minister who was among the singers; but he is gone to Frouville to see
+his aunt. What do you propose doing?
+
+HIS WIFE.--These concerts tire me to death!--You have to sit nailed to
+your chair whole hours without saying a word.--Besides, you know quite
+well that we dine with my mother on that day, and it is impossible to
+miss paying her a visit.
+
+HER HUSBAND. (carelessly)--Ah! that is true.
+
+_(Three days afterwards.)_
+
+THE HUSBAND. (as he goes to bed)--What do you think, my darling?
+To-morrow I will leave you at your mother's, for the count has
+returned from Frouville and will be at Madame de Fischtaminel's
+concert.
+
+HIS WIFE. (vivaciously)--But why should you go alone? You know how I
+adore music!
+
+
+                    _The Touch and Go Mouse-Trap._
+
+THE WIFE.--Why did you go away so early this evening?
+
+THE HUSBAND. (mysteriously)--Ah! It is a sad business, and all the
+more so because I don't know how I can settle it.
+
+THE WIFE.--What is it all about, Adolph? You are a wretch if you do
+not tell me what you are going to do!
+
+THE HUSBAND.--My dear, that ass of a Prosper Magnan is fighting a duel
+with M. de Fontanges, on account of an Opera singer.--But what is the
+matter with you?
+
+THE WIFE.--Nothing.--It is very warm in this room and I don't know
+what ails me, for the whole day I have been suffering from sudden
+flushing of the face.
+
+THE HUSBAND. (aside)--She is in love with M. de Fontanges. (Aloud.)
+Celestine! (He shouts out still louder.) Celestine! Come quick, madame
+is ill!
+
+You will understand that a clever husband will discover a thousand
+ways of setting these three kinds of traps.
+
+
+                        2. OF CORRESPONDENCE.
+
+To write a letter, and to have it posted; to get an answer, to read it
+and burn it; there we have correspondence stated in the simplest
+terms.
+
+Yet consider what immense resources are given by civilization, by our
+manners and by our love to the women who wish to conceal these
+material actions from the scrutiny of a husband.
+
+The inexorable box which keeps its mouth open to all comers receives
+its epistolary provender from all hands.
+
+There is also the fatal invention of the General Delivery. A lover
+finds in the world a hundred charitable persons, male and female, who,
+for a slight consideration, will slip the billets-doux into the
+amorous and intelligent hand of his fair mistress.
+
+A correspondence is a variable as Proteus. There are sympathetic inks.
+A young celibate has told us in confidence that he has written a
+letter on the fly-leaf of a new book, which, when the husband asked
+for it of the bookseller, reached the hands of his mistress, who had
+been prepared the evening before for this charming article.
+
+A woman in love, who fears her husband's jealousy, will write and read
+billets-doux during the time consecrated to those mysterious
+occupations during which the most tyrannical husband must leave her
+alone.
+
+Moreover, all lovers have the art of arranging a special code of
+signals, whose arbitrary import it is difficult to understand. At a
+ball, a flower placed in some odd way in the hair; at the theatre, a
+pocket handkerchief unfolded on the front of the box; rubbing the
+nose, wearing a belt of a particular color, putting the hat on one
+side, wearing one dress oftener than another, singing a certain song
+in a concert or touching certain notes on the piano; fixing the eyes
+on a point agreed; everything, in fact, from the hurdy-gurdy which
+passes your windows and goes away if you open the shutter, to the
+newspaper announcement of a horse for sale--all may be reckoned as
+correspondence.
+
+How many times, in short, will a wife craftily ask her husband to do
+such and such commission for her, to go to such and such a shop or
+house, having previously informed her lover that your presence at such
+or such a place means yes or no?
+
+On this point the professor acknowledges with shame that there is no
+possible means of preventing correspondence between lovers. But a
+little machiavelism on the part of the husband will be much more
+likely to remedy the difficulty than any coercive measures.
+
+An agreement, which should be kept sacred between married people, is
+their solemn oath that they will respect each other's sealed letters.
+Clever is the husband who makes this pledge on his wedding-day and is
+able to keep it conscientiously.
+
+In giving your wife unrestrained liberty to write and to receive
+letters, you will be enabled to discern the moment she begins to
+correspond with a lover.
+
+But suppose your wife distrusts you and covers with impenetrable
+clouds the means she takes to conceal from you her correspondence. Is
+it not then time to display that intellectual power with which we
+armed you in our Meditation entitled _Of the Custom House_? The man
+who does not see when his wife writes to her lover, and when she
+receives an answer, is a failure as a husband.
+
+The proposed study which you ought to bestow upon the movements, the
+actions, the gestures, the looks of your wife, will be perhaps
+troublesome and wearying, but it will not last long; the only point is
+to discover when your wife and her lover correspond and in what way.
+
+We cannot believe that a husband, even of moderate intelligence, will
+fail to see through this feminine manoeuvre, when once he suspects its
+existence.
+
+Meanwhile, you can judge from a single incident what means of police
+and of restraint remain to you in the event of such a correspondence.
+
+A young lawyer, whose ardent passion exemplified certain of the
+principles dwelt upon in this important part of our work, had married
+a young person whose love for him was but slight; yet this
+circumstance he looked upon as an exceedingly happy one; but at the
+end of his first year of marriage he perceived that his dear Anna [for
+Anna was her name] had fallen in love with the head clerk of a
+stock-broker.
+
+Adolph was a young man of about twenty-five, handsome in face and as
+fond of amusement as any other celibate. He was frugal, discreet,
+possessed of an excellent heart, rode well, talked well, had fine
+black hair always curled, and dressed with taste. In short, he would
+have done honor and credit to a duchess. The advocate was ugly, short,
+stumpy, square-shouldered, mean-looking, and, moreover, a husband.
+Anna, tall and pretty, had almond eyes, white skin and refined
+features. She was all love; and passion lighted up her glance with a
+bewitching expression. While her family was poor, Maitre Lebrun had an
+income of twelve thousand francs. That explains all.
+
+One evening Lebrun got home looking extremely chop-fallen. He went
+into his study to work; but he soon came back shivering to his wife,
+for he had caught a fever and hurriedly went to bed. There he lay
+groaning and lamenting for his clients and especially for a poor widow
+whose fortune he was to save the very next day by effecting a
+compromise. An appointment had been made with certain business men and
+he was quite incapable of keeping it. After having slept for a quarter
+of an hour, he begged his wife in a feeble voice to write to one of
+his intimate friends, asking him to take his (Lebrun's) place next day
+at the conference. He dictated a long letter and followed with his eye
+the space taken up on the paper by his phrases. When he came to begin
+the second page of the last sheet, the advocate set out to describe to
+his confrere the joy which his client would feel on the signing of the
+compromise, and the fatal page began with these words:
+
+
+ "My good friend, go for Heaven's sake to Madame Vernon's at once;
+  you are expected with impatience there; she lives at No. 7 Rue de
+  Sentier. Pardon my brevity; but I count on your admirable good
+  sense to guess what I am unable to explain.
+
+                                               "Tout a vous,"
+
+
+"Give me the letter," said the lawyer, "that I may see whether it is
+correct before signing it."
+
+The unfortunate wife, who had been taken off her guard by this letter,
+which bristled with the most barbarous terms of legal science, gave up
+the letter. As soon as Lebrun got possession of the wily script he
+began to complain, to twist himself about, as if in pain, and to
+demand one little attention after another of his wife. Madame left the
+room for two minutes during which the advocate leaped from his bed,
+folded a piece of paper in the form of a letter and hid the missive
+written by his wife. When Anna returned, the clever husband seized the
+blank paper, made her address it to the friend of his, to whom the
+letter which he had taken out was written, and the poor creature
+handed the blank letter to his servant. Lebrun seemed to grow
+gradually calmer; he slept or pretended to do so, and the next morning
+he still affected to feel strange pains. Two days afterwards he tore
+off the first leaf of the letter and put an "e" to the word _tout_ in
+the phrase "tout a vous."[*] He folded mysteriously the paper which
+contained the innocent forgery, sealed it, left his bedroom and called
+the maid, saying to her:
+
+[*] Thus giving a feminine ending to the signature, and lending the
+    impression that the note emanated from the wife personally--J.W.M.
+
+"Madame begs that you will take this to the house of M. Adolph; now,
+be quick about it."
+
+He saw the chambermaid leave the house and soon afterwards he, on a
+plea of business, went out, hurried to Rue de Sentier, to the address
+indicated, and awaited the arrival of his rival at the house of a
+friend who was in the secret of his stratagem. The lover, intoxicated
+with happiness, rushed to the place and inquired for Madame de Vernon;
+he was admitted and found himself face to face with Maitre Lebrun, who
+showed a countenance pale but chill, and gazed at him with tranquil
+but implacable glance.
+
+"Sir," he said in a tone of emotion to the young clerk, whose heart
+palpitated with terror, "you are in love with my wife, and you are
+trying to please her; I scarcely know how to treat you in return for
+this, because in your place and at your age I should have done exactly
+the same. But Anna is in despair; you have disturbed her happiness,
+and her heart is filled with the torments of hell. Moreover, she has
+told me all, a quarrel soon followed by a reconciliation forced her to
+write the letter which you have received, and she has sent me here in
+her place. I will not tell you, sir, that by persisting in your plan
+of seduction you will cause the misery of her you love, that you will
+forfeit her my esteem, and eventually your own; that your crime will
+be stamped on the future by causing perhaps sorrow to my children. I
+will not even speak to you of the bitterness you will infuse into my
+life;--unfortunately these are commonplaces! But I declare to you,
+sir, that the first step you take in this direction will be the signal
+for a crime; for I will not trust the risk of a duel in order to stab
+you to the heart!"
+
+And the eyes of the lawyer flashed ominously.
+
+"Now, sir," he went on in a gentler voice, "you are young, you have a
+generous heart. Make a sacrifice for the future happiness of her you
+love; leave her and never see her again. And if you must needs be a
+member of my family, I have a young aunt who is yet unsettled in life;
+she is charming, clever and rich. Make her acquaintance, and leave a
+virtuous woman undisturbed."
+
+This mixture of raillery and intimidation, together with the
+unwavering glance and deep voice of the husband, produced a remarkable
+impression on the lover. He remained for a moment utterly confused,
+like people overcome with passion and deprived of all presence of mind
+by a sudden shock. If Anna has since then had any lovers [which is a
+pure hypothesis] Adolph certainly is not one of them.
+
+This occurrence may help you to understand that correspondence is a
+double-edged weapon which is of as much advantage for the defence of
+the husband as for the inconsistency of the wife. You should therefore
+encourage correspondence for the same reason that the prefect of
+police takes special care that the street lamps of Paris are kept
+lighted.
+
+
+                             3. OF SPIES.
+
+To come so low as to beg servants to reveal secrets to you, and to
+fall lower still by paying for a revelation, is not a crime; it is
+perhaps not even a dastardly act, but it is certainly a piece of
+folly; for nothing will ever guarantee to you the honesty of a servant
+who betrays her mistress, and you can never feel certain whether she
+is operating in your interest or in that of your wife. This point
+therefore may be looked upon as beyond controversy.
+
+Nature, that good and tender parent, has set round about the mother of
+a family the most reliable and the most sagacious of spies, the most
+truthful and at the same time the most discreet in the world. They are
+silent and yet they speak, they see everything and appear to see
+nothing.
+
+One day I met a friend of mine on the boulevard. He invited me to
+dinner, and we went to his house. Dinner had been already served, and
+the mistress of the house was helping her two daughters to plates of
+soup.
+
+"I see here my first symptoms," I said to myself.
+
+We sat down. The first word of the husband, who spoke without
+thinking, and for the sake of talking, was the question:
+
+"Has any one been here to-day?"
+
+"Not a soul," replied his wife, without lifting her eyes.
+
+I shall never forget the quickness with which the two daughters looked
+up to their mother. The elder girl, aged eight, had something
+especially peculiar in her glance. There was at the same time
+revelation and mystery, curiosity and silence, astonishment and apathy
+in that look. If there was anything that could be compared to the
+speed with which the light of candor flashed from their eyes, it was
+the prudent reserve with which both of them closed down, like
+shutters, the folds of their white eyelids.
+
+Ye sweet and charming creatures, who from the age of nine even to the
+age of marriage too often are the torment of a mother even when she is
+not a coquette, is it by the privilege of your years or the instinct
+of your nature that your young ears catch the faint sound of a man's
+voice through walls and doors, that your eyes are awake to everything,
+and that your young spirit busies itself in divining all, even the
+meaning of a word spoken in the air, even the meaning of your mother's
+slightest gesture?
+
+There is something of gratitude, something in fact instinctive, in the
+predilection of fathers for their daughters and mothers for their
+sons.
+
+But the act of setting spies which are in some way inanimate is mere
+dotage, and nothing is easier than to find a better plan than that of
+the beadle, who took it into his head to put egg-shells in his bed,
+and who obtained no other sympathy from his confederate than the
+words, "You are not very successful in breaking them."
+
+The Marshal de Saxe did not give much consolation to his Popeliniere
+when they discovered in company that famous revolving chimney,
+invented by the Duc de Richelieu.
+
+"That is the finest piece of horn work that I have ever seen!" cried
+the victor of Fontenoy.
+
+Let us hope that your espionage will not give you so troublesome a
+lesson. Such misfortunes are the fruits of the civil war and we do not
+live in that age.
+
+
+                            4. THE INDEX.
+
+The Pope puts books only on the Index; you will mark with a stigma of
+reprobation men and things.
+
+It is forbidden to madame to go into a bath except in her own house.
+
+It is forbidden to madame to receive into her house him whom you
+suspect of being her lover, and all those who are the accomplices of
+their love.
+
+It is forbidden to madame to take a walk without you.
+
+But the peculiarities which in each household originate from the
+diversity of characters, the numberless incidents of passion, and the
+habits of the married people give to this black book so many
+variations, the lines in it are multiplied or erased with such
+rapidity that a friend of the author has called this Index _The
+History of Changes in the Marital Church_.
+
+There are only two things which can be controlled or prescribed in
+accordance with definite rules; the first is the country, the second
+is the promenade.
+
+A husband ought never to take his wife to the country nor permit her
+to go there. Have a country home if you like, live there, entertain
+there nobody excepting ladies or old men, but never leave your wife
+alone there. But to take her, for even half a day, to the house of
+another man is to show yourself as stupid as an ostrich.
+
+To keep guard over a wife in the country is a task most difficult of
+accomplishment. Do you think that you will be able to be in the
+thickets, to climb the trees, to follow the tracks of a lover over the
+grass trodden down at night, but straightened by the dew in the
+morning and refreshed by the rays of the sun? Can you keep your eye on
+every opening in the fence of the park? Oh! the country and the
+Spring! These are the two right arms of the celibate.
+
+When a woman reaches the crisis at which we suppose her to be, a
+husband ought to remain in town till the declaration of war, or to
+resolve on devoting himself to all the delights of a cruel espionage.
+
+With regard to the promenade: Does madame wish to go to parties, to
+the theatre, to the Bois de Boulogne, to purchase her dresses, to find
+out what is the fashion? Madame shall go, shall see everything in the
+respectable company of her lord and master.
+
+If she take advantage of the moment when a business appointment, which
+you cannot fail to keep, detains you, in order to obtain your tacit
+permission to some meditated expedition; if in order to obtain that
+permission she displays all the witcheries of those cajoleries in
+which women excel and whose powerful influence you ought already to
+have known, well, well, the professor implores you to allow her to win
+you over, while at the same time you sell dear the boon she asks; and
+above all convince this creature, whose soul is at once as changeable
+as water and as firm as steel, that it is impossible for you from the
+importance of your work to leave your study.
+
+But as soon as your wife has set foot upon the street, if she goes on
+foot, don't give her time to make fifty steps; follow and track her in
+such a way that you will not be noticed.
+
+It is possible that there exist certain Werthers whose refined and
+delicate souls recoil from this inquisition. But this is not more
+blamable than that of a landed proprietor who rises at night and looks
+through the windows for the purpose of keeping watch over the peaches
+on his _espaliers_. You will probably by this course of action obtain,
+before the crime is committed, exact information with regard to the
+apartments which so many lovers rent in the city under fictitious
+names. If it happens [which God forbid!] that your wife enters a house
+suspected by you, try to find out if the place has several exits.
+
+Should your wife take a hack, what have you to fear? Is there not a
+prefect of police, to whom all husbands ought to decree a crown of
+solid gold, and has he not set up a little shed or bench where there
+is a register, an incorruptible guardian of public morality? And does
+he not know all the comings and goings of these Parisian gondolas?
+
+One of the vital principles of our police will consist in always
+following your wife to the furnishers of your house, if she is
+accustomed to visit them. You will carefully find out whether there is
+any intimacy between her and her draper, her dressmaker or her
+milliner, etc. In this case you will apply the rules of the conjugal
+Custom House, and draw your own conclusions.
+
+If in your absence your wife, having gone out against your will, tells
+you that she had been to such a place, to such a shop, go there
+yourself the next day and try to find out whether she has spoken the
+truth.
+
+But passion will dictate to you, even better than the Meditation, the
+various resources of conjugal tyranny, and we will here cut short
+these tiresome instructions.
+
+
+                          5. OF THE BUDGET.
+
+In outlining the portrait of a sane and sound husband (See _Meditation
+on the Predestined_), we urgently advise that he should conceal from
+his wife the real amount of his income.
+
+In relying upon this as the foundation stone of our financial system
+we hope to do something towards discounting the opinion, so very
+generally held, that a man ought not to give the handling of his
+income to his wife. This principle is one of the many popular errors
+and is one of the chief causes of misunderstanding in the domestic
+establishment.
+
+But let us, in the first place, deal with the question of heart,
+before we proceed to that of money.
+
+To draw up a little civil list for your wife and for the requirements
+of the house and to pay her money as if it were a contribution, in
+twelve equal portions month by month, has something in it that is a
+little mean and close, and cannot be agreeable to any but sordid and
+mistrustful souls. By acting in this way you prepare for yourself
+innumerable annoyances.
+
+I could wish that during the first year of your mellifluous union,
+scenes more or less delightful, pleasantries uttered in good taste,
+pretty purses and caresses might accompany and might decorate the
+handing over of this monthly gift; but the time will come when the
+self-will of your wife or some unforeseen expenditure will compel her
+to ask a loan of the Chamber; I presume that you will always grant her
+the bill of indemnity, as our unfaithful deputies never fail to do.
+They pay, but they grumble; you must pay and at the same time
+compliment her. I hope it will be so.
+
+But in the crisis which we have reached, the provisions of the annual
+budget can never prove sufficient. There must be an increase of
+fichus, of bonnets, of frocks; there is an expense which cannot be
+calculated beforehand demanded by the meetings, by the diplomatic
+messengers, by the ways and means of love, even while the receipts
+remain the same as usual. Then must commence in your establishment a
+course of education the most odious, and the most dreadful which a
+woman can undergo. I know but few noble and generous souls who value,
+more than millions, purity of heart, frankness of soul, and who would
+a thousand times more readily pardon a passion than a lie, whose
+instinctive delicacy has divined the existence of this plague of the
+soul, the lowest step in human degradation.
+
+Under these circumstances there occur in the domestic establishment
+the most delightful scenes of love. It is then that a woman becomes
+utterly pliant and like to the most brilliant of all the strings of a
+harp, when thrown before the fire; she rolls round you, she clasps
+you, she holds you tight; she defers to all your caprices; never was
+her conversation so full of tenderness; she lavishes her endearments
+upon you, or rather she sells them to you; she at last becomes lower
+than a chorus girl, for she prostitutes herself to her husband. In her
+sweetest kisses there is money; in all her words there is money. In
+playing this part her heart becomes like lead towards you. The most
+polished, the most treacherous usurer never weighs so completely with
+a single glance the future value in bullion of a son of a family who
+may sign a note to him, than your wife appraises one of your desires
+as she leaps from branch to branch like an escaping squirrel, in order
+to increase the sum of money she may demand by increasing the appetite
+which she rouses in you. You must not expect to get scot-free from
+such seductions. Nature has given boundless gifts of coquetry to a
+woman, the usages of society have increased them tenfold by its
+fashions, its dresses, its embroideries and its tippets.
+
+"If I ever marry," one of the most honorable generals of our ancient
+army used to say, "I won't put a sou among the wedding presents--"
+
+"What will you put there then, general?" asked a young girl.
+
+"The key of my safe."
+
+The young girl made a curtsey of approbation. She moved her little
+head with a quiver like that of the magnetic needle; raised her chin
+slightly as if she would have said:
+
+"I would gladly marry the general in spite of his forty-five years."
+
+But with regard to money, what interest can you expect your wife to
+take in a machine in which she is looked upon as a mere bookkeeper?
+
+Now look at the other system.
+
+In surrendering to your wife, with an avowal of absolute confidence in
+her, two-thirds of your fortune and letting her as mistress control
+the conjugal administration, you win from her an esteem which nothing
+can destroy, for confidence and high-mindedness find powerful echoes
+in the heart of a woman. Madame will be loaded with a responsibility
+which will often raise a barrier against extravagances, all the
+stronger because it is she herself who has created it in her heart.
+You yourself have made a portion of the work, and you may be sure that
+from henceforth your wife will never perhaps dishonor herself.
+
+Moreover, by seeking in this way a method of defence, consider what
+admirable aids are offered to you by this plan of finances.
+
+You will have in your house an exact estimate of the morality of your
+wife, just as the quotations of the Bourse give you a just estimate of
+the degree of confidence possessed by the government.
+
+And doubtless, during the first years of your married life, your wife
+will take pride in giving you every luxury and satisfaction which your
+money can afford.
+
+She will keep a good table, she will renew the furniture, and the
+carriages; she will always keep in her drawer a sum of money sacred to
+her well-beloved and ready for his needs. But of course, in the actual
+circumstances of life, the drawer will be very often empty and
+monsieur will spend a great deal too much. The economies ordered by
+the Chamber never weigh heavily upon the clerks whose income is twelve
+hundred francs; and you will be the clerk at twelve hundred francs in
+your own house. You will laugh in your sleeve, because you will have
+saved, capitalized, invested one-third of your income during a long
+time, like Louis XV, who kept for himself a little separate treasury,
+"against a rainy day," he used to say.
+
+Thus, if your wife speaks of economy, her discourse will be equal to
+the varying quotations of the money-market. You will be able to divine
+the whole progress of the lover by these financial fluctuations, and
+you will have avoided all difficulties. _E sempre bene._
+
+If your wife fails to appreciate the excessive confidence, and
+dissipates in one day a large proportion of your fortune, in the first
+place it is not probable that this prodigality will amount to
+one-third of the revenue which you have been saving for ten years;
+moreover you will learn, from the Meditation on _Catastrophes_, that
+in the very crisis produced by the follies of your wife, you will have
+brilliant opportunities of slaying the Minotaur.
+
+But the secret of the treasure which has been amassed by your
+thoughtfulness need never be known till after your death; and if you
+have found it necessary to draw upon it, in order to assist your wife,
+you must always let it be thought that you have won at play, or made a
+loan from a friend.
+
+These are the true principles which should govern the conjugal budget.
+
+
+
+The police of marriage has its martyrology. We will cite but one
+instance which will make plain how necessary it is for husbands who
+resort to severe measures to keep watch over themselves as well as
+over their wives.
+
+An old miser who lived at T-----, a pleasure resort if there ever was
+one, had married a young and pretty woman, and he was so wrapped up in
+her and so jealous that love triumphed over avarice; he actually gave
+up trade in order to guard his wife more closely, but his only real
+change was that his covetousness took another form. I acknowledge that
+I owe the greater portion of the observations contained in this essay,
+which still is doubtless incomplete, to the person who made a study of
+this remarkable marital phenomenon, to portray which, one single
+detail will be amply sufficient. When he used to go to the country,
+this husband never went to bed without secretly raking over the
+pathways of his park, and he had a special rake for the sand of his
+terraces. He had made a close study of the footprints made by the
+different members of his household; and early in the morning he used
+to go and identify the tracks that had been made there.
+
+"All this is old forest land," he used to say to the person I have
+referred to, as he showed him over the park; "for nothing can be seen
+through the brushwood."
+
+His wife fell in love with one of the most charming young men of the
+town. This passion had continued for nine years bright and fresh in
+the hearts of the two lovers, whose sole avowal had been a look
+exchanged in a crowded ball-room; and while they danced together their
+trembling hands revealed through the scented gloves the depth of their
+love. From that day they had both of them taken great delight on those
+trifles which happy lovers never disdain. One day the young man led
+his only confidant, with a mysterious air, into a chamber where he
+kept under glass globes upon his table, with more care than he would
+have bestowed upon the finest jewels in the world, the flowers that,
+in the excitement of the dance, had fallen from the hair of his
+mistress, and the finery which had been caught in the trees which she
+had brushed through in the park. He also preserved there the narrow
+footprint left upon the clay soil by the lady's step.
+
+"I could hear," said this confidant to me afterwards, "the violent and
+repressed palpitations of his heart sounding in the silence which we
+preserved before the treasures of this museum of love. I raised my
+eyes to the ceiling, as if to breathe to heaven the sentiment which I
+dared not utter. 'Poor humanity!' I thought. 'Madame de ----- told me
+that one evening at a ball you had been found nearly fainting in her
+card-room?' I remarked to him.
+
+"'I can well believe it,' said he casting down his flashing glance, 'I
+had kissed her arm!--But,' he added as he pressed my hand and shot at
+me a glance that pierced my heart, 'her husband at that time had the
+gout which threatened to attack his stomach.'"
+
+Some time afterwards, the old man recovered and seemed to take a new
+lease of life; but in the midst of his convalescence he took to his
+bed one morning and died suddenly. There were such evident symptoms of
+poisoning in the condition of the dead man that the officers of
+justice were appealed to, and the two lovers were arrested. Then was
+enacted at the court of assizes the most heartrending scene that ever
+stirred the emotions of the jury. At the preliminary examination, each
+of the two lovers without hesitation confessed to the crime, and with
+one thought each of them was solely bent on saving, the one her lover,
+the other his mistress. There were two found guilty, where justice was
+looking for but a single culprit. The trial was entirely taken up with
+the flat contradictions which each of them, carried away by the fury
+of devoted love, gave to the admissions of the other. There they were
+united for the first time, but on the criminals' bench with a gendarme
+seated between them. They were found guilty by the unanimous verdict
+of a weeping jury. No one among those who had the barbarous courage to
+witness their conveyance to the scaffold can mention them to-day
+without a shudder. Religion had won for them a repentance for their
+crime, but could not induce them to abjure their love. The scaffold
+was their nuptial bed, and there they slept together in the long night
+of death.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XXI.
+
+                      THE ART OF RETURNING HOME.
+
+Finding himself incapable of controlling the boiling transports of his
+anxiety, many a husband makes the mistake of coming home and rushing
+into the presence of his wife, with the object of triumphing over her
+weakness, like those bulls of Spain, which, stung by the red
+_banderillo_, disembowel with furious horns horses, matadors,
+picadors, toreadors and their attendants.
+
+But oh! to enter with a tender gentle mien, like Mascarillo, who
+expects a beating and becomes merry as a lark when he finds his master
+in a good humor! Well--that is the mark of a wise man!--
+
+"Yes, my darling, I know that in my absence you could have behaved
+badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy,
+but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your
+considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will earn my eternal
+gratitude."
+
+Such are the ideas which ought to be expressed by your face and
+bearing, but perhaps all the while you say to yourself:
+
+"Probably he has been here!"
+
+Always to bring home a pleasant face, is a rule which admits of no
+exception.
+
+But the art of never leaving your house without returning when the
+police have revealed to you a conspiracy--to know how to return at the
+right time--this is the lesson which is hard to learn. In this matter
+everything depends upon tact and penetration. The actual events of
+life always transcend anything that is imaginable.
+
+The manner of coming home is to be regulated in accordance with a
+number of circumstances. For example:
+
+Lord Catesby was a man of remarkable strength. It happened one day
+that he was returning from a fox hunt, to which he had doubtless
+promised to go, with some ulterior view, for he rode towards the fence
+of his park at a point where, he said, he saw an extremely fine horse.
+As he had a passion for horses, he drew near to examine this one close
+at hand, There he caught sight of Lady Catesby, to whose rescue it was
+certainly time to go, if he were in the slightest degree jealous for
+his own honor. He rushed upon the gentleman he saw there, and seizing
+him by the belt he hurled him over the fence on to the road side.
+
+"Remember, sir," he said calmly, "it rests with me to decide whether
+it well be necessary to address you hereafter and ask for satisfaction
+on this spot."
+
+"Very well, my lord; but would you have the goodness to throw over my
+horse also?"
+
+But the phlegmatic nobleman had already taken the arm of his wife as
+he gravely said:
+
+"I blame you very much, my dear creature, for not having told me that
+I was to love you for two. Hereafter every other day I shall love you
+for the gentleman yonder, and all other days for myself."
+
+This adventure is regarded in England as one of the best returns home
+that were ever known. It is true it consisted in uniting, with
+singular felicity, eloquence of deed to that of word.
+
+But the art of re-entering your home, principles of which are nothing
+else but natural deductions from the system of politeness and
+dissimulation which have been commended in preceding Meditations, is
+after all merely to be studied in preparation for the conjugal
+catastrophes which we will now consider.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XXII.
+
+                           OF CATASTROPHES.
+
+The word _Catastrophe_ is a term of literature which signifies the
+final climax of a play.
+
+To bring about a catastrophe in the drama which you are playing is a
+method of defence which is as easy to undertake as it is certain to
+succeed. In advising to employ it, we would not conceal from you its
+perils.
+
+The conjugal catastrophe may be compared to one of those high fevers
+which either carry off a predisposed subject or completely restore his
+health. Thus, when the catastrophe succeeds, it keeps a woman for
+years in the prudent realms of virtue.
+
+Moreover, this method is the last of all those which science has been
+able to discover up to this present moment.
+
+The massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Sicilian Vespers, the death of
+Lucretia, the two embarkations of Napoleon at Frejus are examples of
+political catastrophe. It will not be in your power to act on such a
+large scale; nevertheless, within their own area, your dramatic
+climaxes in conjugal life will not be less effective than these.
+
+But since the art of creating a situation and of transforming it, by
+the introduction of natural incidents, constitutes genius; since the
+return to virtue of a woman, whose foot has already left some tracks
+upon the sweet and gilded sand which mark the pathway of vice, is the
+most difficult to bring about of all denouements, and since genius
+neither knows it nor teaches it, the practitioner in conjugal laws
+feels compelled to confess at the outset that he is incapable of
+reducing to definite principles a science which is as changeable as
+circumstances, as delusive as opportunity, and as indefinable as
+instinct.
+
+If we may use an expression which neither Diderot, d'Alembert nor
+Voltaire, in spite of every effort, have been able to engraft on our
+language, a conjugal catastrophe _se subodore_ is scented from afar;
+so that our only course will be to sketch out imperfectly certain
+conjugal situations of an analogous kind, thus imitating the
+philosopher of ancient time who, seeking in vain to explain motion,
+walked forward in his attempt to comprehend laws which were
+incomprehensible.
+
+A husband, in accordance with the principles comprised in our
+Meditation on _Police_, will expressly forbid his wife to receive the
+visits of a celibate whom he suspects of being her lover, and whom she
+has promised never again to see. Some minor scenes of the domestic
+interior we leave for matrimonial imaginations to conjure up; a
+husband can delineate them much better than we can; he will betake
+himself in thought back to those days when delightful longings invited
+sincere confidences and when the workings of his policy put into
+motion certain adroitly handled machinery.
+
+Let us suppose, in order to make more interesting the natural scene to
+which I refer, that you who read are a husband, whose carefully
+organized police has made the discovery that your wife, profiting by
+the hours devoted by you to a ministerial banquet, to which she
+probably procured you an invitation, received at your house M. A----z.
+
+Here we find all the conditions necessary to bring about the finest
+possible of conjugal catastrophes.
+
+You return home just in time to find your arrival has coincided with
+that of M. A----z, for we would not advise you to have the interval
+between acts too long. But in what mood should you enter? Certainly
+not in accordance with the rules of the previous Meditation. In a rage
+then? Still less should you do that. You should come in with
+good-natured carelessness, like an absent-minded man who has forgotten
+his purse, the statement which he has drawn up for the minister, his
+pocket-handkerchief or his snuff-box.
+
+In that case you will either catch two lovers together, or your wife,
+forewarned by the maid, will have hidden the celibate.
+
+Now let us consider these two unique situations.
+
+But first of all we will observe that husbands ought always to be in a
+position to strike terror in their homes and ought long before to make
+preparations for the matrimonial second of September.
+
+Thus a husband, from the moment that his wife has caused him to
+perceive certain _first symptoms_, should never fail to give, time
+after time, his personal opinion on the course of conduct to be
+pursued by a husband in a great matrimonial crisis.
+
+"As for me," you should say, "I should have no hesitation in killing
+the man I caught at my wife's feet."
+
+With regard to the discussion that you will thus give rise to, you
+will be led on to aver that the law ought to have given to the
+husband, as it did in ancient Rome, the right of life and death over
+his children, so that he could slay those who were spurious.
+
+These ferocious opinions, which really do not bind you to anything,
+will impress your wife with salutary terror; you will enumerate them
+lightly, even laughingly--and say to her, "Certainly, my dear, I would
+kill you right gladly. Would you like to be murdered by me?"
+
+A woman cannot help fearing that this pleasantry may some day become a
+very serious matter, for in these crimes of impulse there is a certain
+proof of love; and then women who know better than any one else how to
+say true things laughingly at times suspect their husbands of this
+feminine trick.
+
+When a husband surprises his wife engaged in even innocent
+conversation with her lover, his face still calm, should produce the
+effect mythologically attributed to the celebrated Gorgon.
+
+In order to produce a favorable catastrophe at this juncture, you must
+act in accordance with the character of your wife, either play a
+pathetic scene a la Diderot, or resort to irony like Cicero, or rush
+to your pistols loaded with a blank charge, or even fire them off, if
+you think that a serious row is indispensable.
+
+A skillful husband may often gain a great advantage from a scene of
+unexaggerated sentimentality. He enters, he sees the lover and
+transfixes him with a glance. As soon as the celibate retires, he
+falls at the feet of his wife, he declaims a long speech, in which
+among other phrases there occurs this:
+
+"Why, my dear Caroline, I have never been able to love you as I
+should!"
+
+He weeps, and she weeps, and this tearful catastrophe leaves nothing
+to be desired.
+
+We would explain, apropos of the second method by which the
+catastrophe may be brought about, what should be the motives which
+lead a husband to vary this scene, in accordance with the greater or
+less degree of strength which his wife's character possesses.
+
+Let us pursue this subject.
+
+If by good luck it happens that your wife has put her lover in a place
+of concealment, the catastrophe will be very much more successful.
+
+Even if the apartment is not arranged according to the principles
+prescribed in the Meditation, you will easily discern the place into
+which the celibate has vanished, although he be not, like Lord Byron's
+Don Juan, bundled up under the cushion of a divan. If by chance your
+apartment is in disorder, you ought to have sufficient discernment to
+know that there is only one place in which a man could bestow himself.
+Finally, if by some devilish inspiration he has made himself so small
+that he has squeezed into some unimaginable lurking-place (for we may
+expect anything from a celibate), well, either your wife cannot help
+casting a glance towards this mysterious spot, or she will pretend to
+look in an exactly opposite direction, and then nothing is easier for
+a husband than to set a mouse-trap for his wife.
+
+The hiding-place being discovered, you must walk straight up to the
+lover. You must meet him face to face!
+
+And now you must endeavor to produce a fine effect. With your face
+turned three-quarters towards him, you must raise your head with an
+air of superiority. This attitude will enhance immensely the effect
+which you aim at producing.
+
+The most essential thing to do at this moment, is to overwhelm the
+celibate by some crushing phrase which you have been manufacturing all
+the time; when you have thus floored him, you will coldly show him the
+door. You will be very polite, but as relentless as the executioner's
+axe, and as impassive as the law. This freezing contempt will already
+probably have produced a revolution in the mind of your wife. There
+must be no shouts, no gesticulations, no excitement. "Men of high
+social rank," says a young English author, "never behave like their
+inferiors, who cannot lose a fork without sounding the alarm
+throughout the whole neighborhood."
+
+When the celibate has gone, you will find yourself alone with your
+wife, and then is the time when you must subjugate her forever.
+
+You should therefore stand before her, putting on an air whose
+affected calmness betrays the profoundest emotion; then you must
+choose from among the following topics, which we have rhetorically
+amplified, and which are most congenial to your feelings: "Madame,"
+you must say, "I will speak to you neither of your vows, nor of my
+love; for you have too much sense and I have too much pride to make it
+possible that I should overwhelm you with those execrations, which all
+husbands have a right to utter under these circumstances; for the
+least of the mistakes that I should make, if I did so, is that I would
+be fully justified. I will not now, even if I could, indulge either in
+wrath or resentment. It is not I who have been outraged; for I have
+too much heart to be frightened by that public opinion which almost
+always treats with ridicule and condemnation a husband whose wife has
+misbehaved. When I examine my life, I see nothing there that makes
+this treachery deserved by me, as it is deserved by many others. I
+still love you. I have never been false, I will not say to my duty,
+for I have found nothing onerous in adoring you, but not even to those
+welcome obligations which sincere feeling imposes upon us both. You
+have had all my confidence and you have also had the administration of
+my fortune. I have refused you nothing. And now this is the first time
+that I have turned to you a face, I will not say stern, but which is
+yet reproachful. But let us drop this subject, for it is of no use for
+me to defend myself at a moment when you have proved to me with such
+energy that there is something lacking in me, and that I am not
+intended by nature to accomplish the difficult task of rendering you
+happy. But I would ask you, as a friend speaking to a friend, how
+could you have the heart to imperil at the same time the lives of
+three human creatures: that of the mother of my children, who will
+always be sacred to me; that of the head of the family; and finally of
+him--who loves--[she perhaps at these words will throw herself at your
+feet; you must not permit her to do so; she is unworthy of kneeling
+there]. For you no longer love me, Eliza. Well, my poor child [you
+must not call her _my poor child_ excepting when the crime has not
+been committed]--why deceive ourselves? Why do you not answer me? If
+love is extinguished between a married couple, cannot friendship and
+confidence still survive? Are we not two companions united in making
+the same journey? Can it be said that during the journey the one must
+never hold out his hand to the other to raise up a comrade or to
+prevent a comrade's fall? But I have perhaps said too much and I am
+wounding your pride--Eliza! Eliza!"
+
+Now what the deuce would you expect a woman to answer? Why a
+catastrophe naturally follows, without a single word.
+
+In a hundred women there may be found at least a good half dozen of
+feeble creatures who under this violent shock return to their husbands
+never perhaps again to leave them, like scorched cats that dread the
+fire. But this scene is a veritable alexipharmaca, the doses of which
+should be measured out by prudent hands.
+
+For certain women of delicate nerves, whose souls are soft and timid,
+it would be sufficient to point out the lurking-place where the lover
+lies, and say: "M. A----z is there!" [at this point shrug your
+shoulders]. "How can you thus run the risk of causing the death of two
+worthy people? I am going out; let him escape and do not let this
+happen again."
+
+But there are women whose hearts, too violently strained in these
+terrible catastrophes, fail them and they die; others whose blood
+undergoes a change, and they fall a prey to serious maladies; others
+actually go out of their minds. These are examples of women who take
+poison or die suddenly--and we do not suppose that you wish the death
+of the sinner.
+
+Nevertheless, the most beautiful and impressionable of all the queens
+of France, the charming and unfortunate Mary Stuart, after having seen
+Rizzio murdered almost in her arms, fell in love, nevertheless, with
+the Earl of Bothwell; but she was a queen and queens are abnormal in
+disposition.
+
+We will suppose, then, that the woman whose portrait adorns our first
+Meditation is a little Mary Stuart, and we will hasten to raise the
+curtain for the fifth act in this grand drama entitled _Marriage_.
+
+A conjugal catastrophe may burst out anywhere, and a thousand
+incidents which we cannot describe may give it birth. Sometimes it is
+a handkerchief, as in _Othello_; or a pair of slippers, as in _Don
+Juan_; sometimes it is the mistake of your wife, who cries out--"Dear
+Alphonse!" instead of "Dear Adolph!" Sometimes a husband, finding out
+that his wife is in debt, will go and call on her chief creditor, and
+will take her some morning to his house, as if by chance, in order to
+bring about a catastrophe. "Monsieur Josse, you are a jeweler and you
+sell your jewels with a readiness which is not equaled by the
+readiness of your debtors to pay for them. The countess owes you
+thirty thousand francs. If you wish to be paid to-morrow [tradesmen
+should always be visited at the end of the month] come to her at noon;
+her husband will be in the chamber. Do not attend to any sign which
+she may make to impose silence upon you--speak out boldly. I will pay
+all."
+
+So that the catastrophe in the science of marriage is what figures are
+in arithmetic.
+
+
+
+All the principles of higher conjugal philosophy, on which are based
+the means of defence outlined in this second part of our book, are
+derived from the nature of human sentiments, and we have found them in
+different places in the great book of the world. Just as persons of
+intellect instinctively apply the laws of taste whose principles they
+would find difficulty in formulating, so we have seen numberless
+people of deep feeling employing with singular felicity the precepts
+which we are about to unfold, yet none of them consciously acted on a
+definite system. The sentiments which this situation inspired only
+revealed to them incomplete fragments of a vast system; just as the
+scientific men of the sixteenth century found that their imperfect
+microscopes did not enable them to see all the living organisms, whose
+existence had yet been proved to them by the logic of their patient
+genius.
+
+We hope that the observations already made in this book, and in those
+which follow, will be of a nature to destroy the opinion which
+frivolous men maintain, namely that marriage is a sinecure. According
+to our view, a husband who gives way to ennui is a heretic, and more
+than that, he is a man who lives quite out of sympathy with the
+marriage state, of whose importance he has no conception. In this
+connection, these Meditations perhaps will reveal to very many
+ignorant men the mysteries of a world before which they stand with
+open eyes, yet without seeing it.
+
+We hope, moreover, that these principles when well applied will
+produce many conversions, and that among the pages that separate this
+second part from that entitled _Civil War_ many tears will be shed and
+many vows of repentance breathed.
+
+Yes, among the four hundred thousand honest women whom we have so
+carefully sifted out from all the European nations, we indulge the
+belief that there are a certain number, say three hundred thousand,
+who will be sufficiently self-willed, charming, adorable, and
+bellicose to raise the standard of _Civil War_.
+
+To arms then, to arms!
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THIRD PART
+
+
+
+                        RELATING TO CIVIL WAR.
+
+                "Lovely as the seraphs of Klopstock,
+                 Terrible as the devils of Milton."
+                                               --DIDEROT.
+
+
+
+                          MEDITATION XXIII.
+
+                           OF MANIFESTOES.
+
+The Preliminary precepts, by which science has been enabled at this
+point to put weapons into the hand of a husband, are few in number; it
+is not of so much importance to know whether he will be vanquished, as
+to examine whether he can offer any resistance in the conflict.
+
+Meanwhile, we will set up here certain beacons to light up the arena
+where a husband is soon to find himself, in alliance with religion and
+law, engaged single-handed in a contest with his wife, who is
+supported by her native craft and the whole usages of society as her
+allies.
+
+
+                               LXXXII.
+ Anything may be expected and anything may be supposed of a woman who
+                             is in love.
+
+
+                               LXXXIII.
+ The actions of a woman who intends to deceive her husband are almost
+      always the result of study, but never dictated by reason.
+
+
+                               LXXXIV.
+The greater number of women advance like the fleas, by erratic leaps
+and bounds, They owe their escape to the height or depth of their
+first ideas, and any interruption of their plans rather favors their
+execution. But they operate only within a narrow area which it is easy
+for the husband to make still narrower; and if he keeps cool he will
+end by extinguishing this piece of living saltpetre.
+
+
+                                LXXXV.
+ A husband should never allow himself to address a single disparaging
+          remark to his wife, in presence of a third party.
+
+
+                               LXXXVI.
+The moment a wife decides to break her marriage vow she reckons her
+husband as everything or nothing. All defensive operations must start
+from this proposition.
+
+
+                               LXXXVII.
+The life of a woman is either of the head, of the heart, or of
+passion. When a woman reaches the age to form an estimate of life, her
+husband ought to find out whether the primary cause of her intended
+infidelity proceeds from vanity, from sentiment or from temperament.
+Temperament may be remedied like disease; sentiment is something in
+which the husband may find great opportunities of success; but vanity
+is incurable. A woman whose life is of the head may be a terrible
+scourge. She combines the faults of a passionate woman with those of
+the tender-hearted woman, without having their palliations. She is
+destitute alike of pity, love, virtue or sex.
+
+
+                              LXXXVIII.
+A woman whose life is of the head will strive to inspire her husband
+with indifference; the woman whose life is of the heart, with hatred;
+the passionate woman, with disgust.
+
+
+                               LXXXIX.
+A husband never loses anything by appearing to believe in the fidelity
+of his wife, by preserving an air of patience and by keeping silence.
+Silence especially troubles a woman amazingly.
+
+
+                                 XC.
+To show himself aware of the passion of his wife is the mark of a
+fool; but to affect ignorance of all proves that a man has sense, and
+this is in fact the only attitude to take. We are taught, moreover,
+that everybody in France is sensible.
+
+
+                                 XCI.
+The rock most to be avoided is ridicule.--"At least, let us be
+affectionate in public," ought to be the maxim of a married
+establishment. For both the married couple to lose honor, esteem,
+consideration, respect and all that is worth living for in society, is
+                        to become a nonentity.
+
+
+These axioms relate to the contest alone. As for the catastrophe,
+others will be needed for that.
+
+
+
+We have called this crisis _Civil War_ for two reasons; never was a
+war more really intestine and at the same time so polite as this war.
+But in what point and in what manner does this fatal war break out?
+You do not believe that your wife will call out regiments and sound
+the trumpet, do you? She will, perhaps, have a commanding officer, but
+that is all. And this feeble army corps will be sufficient to destroy
+the peace of your establishment.
+
+"You forbid me to see the people that I like!" is an exordium which
+has served for a manifesto in most homes. This phrase, with all the
+ideas that are concomitant, is oftenest employed by vain and
+artificial women.
+
+The most usual manifesto is that which is proclaimed in the conjugal
+bed, the principal theatre of war. This subject will be treated in
+detail in the Meditation entitled: _Of Various Weapons_, in the
+paragraph, _Of Modesty in its Connection with Marriage_.
+
+Certain women of a lymphatic temperament will pretend to have the
+spleen and will even feign death, if they can only gain thereby the
+benefit of a secret divorce.
+
+But most of them owe their independence to the execution of a plan,
+whose effect upon the majority of husbands is unfailing and whose
+perfidies we will now reveal.
+
+One of the greatest of human errors springs from the belief that our
+honor and our reputation are founded upon our actions, or result from
+the approbation which the general conscience bestows upon on conduct.
+A man who lives in the world is born to be a slave to public opinion.
+Now a private man in France has less opportunity of influencing the
+world than his wife, although he has ample occasion for ridiculing it.
+Women possess to a marvelous degree the art of giving color by
+specious arguments to the recriminations in which they indulge. They
+never set up any defence, excepting when they are in the wrong, and in
+this proceeding they are pre-eminent, knowing how to oppose arguments
+by precedents, proofs by assertions, and thus they very often obtain
+victory in minor matters of detail. They see and know with admirable
+penetration, when one of them presents to another a weapon which she
+herself is forbidden to whet. It is thus that they sometimes lose a
+husband without intending it. They apply the match and long afterwards
+are terror-stricken at the conflagration.
+
+As a general thing, all women league themselves against a married man
+who is accused of tyranny; for a secret tie unites them all, as it
+unites all priests of the same religion. They hate each other, yet
+shield each other. You can never gain over more than one of them; and
+yet this act of seduction would be a triumph for your wife.
+
+You are, therefore, outlawed from the feminine kingdom. You see
+ironical smiles on every lip, you meet an epigram in every answer.
+These clever creatures force their daggers and amuse themselves by
+sculpturing the handle before dealing you a graceful blow.
+
+The treacherous art of reservation, the tricks of silence, the malice
+of suppositions, the pretended good nature of an inquiry, all these
+arts are employed against you. A man who undertakes to subjugate his
+wife is an example too dangerous to escape destruction from them, for
+will not his conduct call up against them the satire of every husband?
+Moreover, all of them will attack you, either by bitter witticisms, or
+by serious arguments, or by the hackneyed maxims of gallantry. A swarm
+of celibates will support all their sallies and you will be assailed
+and persecuted as an original, a tyrant, a bad bed-fellow, an
+eccentric man, a man not to be trusted.
+
+Your wife will defend you like the bear in the fable of La Fontaine;
+she will throw paving stones at your head to drive away the flies that
+alight on it. She will tell you in the evening all the things that
+have been said about you, and will ask an explanation of acts which
+you never committed, and of words which you never said. She professes
+to have justified you for faults of which you are innocent; she has
+boasted of a liberty which she does not possess, in order to clear you
+of the wrong which you have done in denying that liberty. The
+deafening rattle which your wife shakes will follow you everywhere
+with its obtrusive din. Your darling will stun you, will torture you,
+meanwhile arming herself by making you feel only the thorns of married
+life. She will greet you with a radiant smile in public, and will be
+sullen at home. She will be dull when you are merry, and will make you
+detest her merriment when you are moody. Your two faces will present a
+perpetual contrast.
+
+Very few men have sufficient force of mind not to succumb to this
+preliminary comedy, which is always cleverly played, and resembles the
+_hourra_ raised by the Cossacks, as they advance to battle. Many
+husbands become irritated and fall into irreparable mistakes. Others
+abandon their wives. And, indeed, even those of superior intelligence
+do not know how to get hold of the enchanted ring, by which to dispel
+this feminine phantasmagoria.
+
+Two-thirds of such women are enabled to win their independence by this
+single manoeuvre, which is no more than a review of their forces. In
+this case the war is soon ended.
+
+But a strong man who courageously keeps cool throughout this first
+assault will find much amusement in laying bare to his wife, in a
+light and bantering way, the secret feelings which make her thus
+behave, in following her step by step through the labyrinth which she
+treads, and telling her in answer to her every remark, that she is
+false to herself, while he preserves throughout a tone of pleasantry
+and never becomes excited.
+
+Meanwhile war is declared, and if her husband has not been dazzled by
+these first fireworks, a woman has yet many other resources for
+securing her triumph; and these it is the purpose of the following
+Meditations to discover.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XXIV.
+
+                       PRINCIPLES OF STRATEGY.
+
+The Archduke Charles published a very fine treatise on military under
+the title _Principles of Strategy in Relation to the Campaigns of
+1796_. These principles seem somewhat to resemble poetic canons
+prepared for poems already published. In these days we are become very
+much more energetic, we invent rules to suit works and works to suit
+rules. But of what use were ancient principles of military art in
+presence of the impetuous genius of Napoleon? If, to-day, however, we
+reduce to a system the lessons taught by this great captain whose new
+tactics have destroyed the ancient ones, what future guarantee do we
+possess that another Napoleon will not yet be born? Books on military
+art meet, with few exceptions, the fate of ancient works on Chemistry
+and Physics. Everything is subject to change, either constant or
+periodic.
+
+This, in a few words, is the history of our work.
+
+So long as we have been dealing with a woman who is inert or lapped in
+slumber, nothing has been easier than to weave the meshes with which
+we have bound her; but the moment she wakes up and begins to struggle,
+all is confusion and complication. If a husband would make an effort
+to recall the principles of the system which we have just described in
+order to involve his wife in the nets which our second part has set
+for her, he would resemble Wurmser, Mack and Beaulieu arranging their
+halts and their marches while Napoleon nimbly turns their flank, and
+makes use of their own tactics to destroy them.
+
+This is just what your wife will do.
+
+How is it possible to get at the truth when each of you conceals it
+under the same lie, each setting the same trap for the other? And
+whose will be the victory when each of you is caught in a similar
+snare?
+
+"My dear, I have to go out; I have to pay a visit to Madame So and So.
+I have ordered the carriage. Would you like to come with me? Come, be
+good, and go with your wife."
+
+You say to yourself:
+
+"She would be nicely caught if I consented! She asks me only to be
+refused."
+
+Then you reply to her:
+
+"Just at the moment I have some business with Monsieur Blank, for he
+has to give a report in a business matter which deeply concerns us
+both, and I must absolutely see him. Then I must go to the Minister of
+Finance. So your arrangement will suit us both."
+
+"Very well, dearest, go and dress yourself, while Celine finishes
+dressing me; but don't keep me waiting."
+
+"I am ready now, love," you cry out, at the end of ten minutes, as you
+stand shaved and dressed.
+
+But all is changed. A letter has arrived; madame is not well; her
+dress fits badly; the dressmaker has come; if it is not the dressmaker
+it is your mother. Ninety-nine out of a hundred husbands will leave
+the house satisfied, believing that their wives are well guarded,
+when, as a matter of fact, the wives have gotten rid of them.
+
+A lawful wife who from her husband cannot escape, who is not
+distressed by pecuniary anxiety, and who in order to give employment
+to a vacant mind, examines night and day the changing tableaux of each
+day's experience, soon discovers the mistake she has made in falling
+into a trap or allowing herself to be surprised by a catastrophe; she
+will then endeavor to turn all these weapons against you.
+
+There is a man in society, the sight of whom is strangely annoying to
+your wife; she can tolerate neither his tone, his manners nor his way
+of regarding things. Everything connected with him is revolting to
+her; she is persecuted by him, he is odious to her; she hopes that no
+one will tell him this. It seems almost as if she were attempting to
+oppose you; for this man is one for whom you have the highest esteem.
+You like his disposition because he flatters you; and thus your wife
+presumes that your esteem for him results from flattered vanity. When
+you give a ball, an evening party or a concert, there is almost a
+discussion on this subject, and madame picks a quarrel with you,
+because you are compelling her to see people who are not agreeable to
+her.
+
+"At least, sir, I shall never have to reproach myself with omitting to
+warn you. That man will yet cause you trouble. You should put some
+confidence in women when they pass sentence on the character of a man.
+And permit me to tell you that this baron, for whom you have such a
+predilection, is a very dangerous person, and you are doing very wrong
+to bring him to your house. And this is the way you behave; you
+absolutely force me to see one whom I cannot tolerate, and if I ask
+you to invite Monsieur A-----, you refuse to do so, because you think
+that I like to have him with me! I admit that he talks well, that he
+is kind and amiable; but you are more to me than he can ever be."
+
+These rude outlines of feminine tactics, which are emphasized by
+insincere gestures, by looks of feigned ingenuousness, by artful
+intonations of the voice and even by the snare of cunning silence, are
+characteristic to some degree of their whole conduct.
+
+There are few husbands who in such circumstances as these do not form
+the idea of setting a mouse-trap; they welcome as their guests both
+Monsieur A----- and the imaginary baron who represents the person whom
+their wives abhor, and they do so in the hope of discovering a lover
+in the celibate who is apparently beloved.
+
+Oh yes, I have often met in the world young men who were absolutely
+starlings in love and complete dupes of a friendship which women
+pretended to show them, women who felt themselves obliged to make a
+diversion and to apply a blister to their husbands as their husbands
+had previously done to them! These poor innocents pass their time in
+running errands, in engaging boxes at the theatre, in riding in the
+Bois de Boulogne by the carriages of their pretended mistresses; they
+are publicly credited with possessing women whose hands they have not
+even kissed. Vanity prevents them from contradicting these flattering
+rumors, and like the young priests who celebrate masses without a
+Host, they enjoy a mere show passion, and are veritable
+supernumeraries of love.
+
+Under these circumstances sometimes a husband on returning home asks
+the porter: "Has no one been here?"--"M. le Baron came past at two
+o'clock to see monsieur; but as he found no one was in but madame he
+went away; but Monsieur A----- is with her now."
+
+You reach the drawing-room, you see there a young celibate, sprightly,
+scented, wearing a fine necktie, in short a perfect dandy. He is a man
+who holds you in high esteem; when he comes to your house your wife
+listens furtively for his footsteps; at a ball she always dances with
+him. If you forbid her to see him, she makes a great outcry and it is
+not till many years afterwards [see Meditation on _Las Symptoms_] that
+you see the innocence of Monsieur A----- and the culpability of the
+baron.
+
+We have observed and noted as one of the cleverest manoeuvres, that of
+a young woman who, carried away by an irresistible passion, exhibited
+a bitter hatred to the man she did not love, but lavished upon her
+lover secret intimations of her love. The moment that her husband was
+persuaded that she loved the _Cicisbeo_ and hated the _Patito_, she
+arranged that she and the _Patito_ should be found in a situation
+whose compromising character she had calculated in advance, and her
+husband and the execrated celibate were thus induced to believe that
+her love and her aversion were equally insincere. When she had brought
+her husband into the condition of perplexity, she managed that a
+passionate letter should fall into his hands. One evening in the midst
+of the admirable catastrophe which she had thus brought to a climax,
+madame threw herself at her husband's feet, wet them with her tears,
+and thus concluded the climax to her own satisfaction.
+
+"I esteem and honor you profoundly," she cried, "for keeping your own
+counsel as you have done. I am in love! Is this a sentiment which is
+easy for me to repress? But what I can do is to confess the fact to
+you; to implore you to protect me from myself, to save me from my own
+folly. Be my master and be a stern master to me; take me away from
+this place, remove me from what has caused all this trouble, console
+me; I will forget him, I desire to do so. I do not wish to betray you.
+I humbly ask your pardon for the treachery love has suggested to me.
+Yes, I confess to you that the love which I pretended to have for my
+cousin was a snare set to deceive you. I love him with the love of
+friendship and no more.--Oh! forgive me! I can love no one but"--her
+voice was choked in passionate sobs--"Oh! let us go away, let us leave
+Paris!"
+
+She began to weep; her hair was disheveled, her dress in disarray; it
+was midnight, and her husband forgave her. From henceforth, the cousin
+made his appearance without risk, and the Minotaur devoured one victim
+more.
+
+What instructions can we give for contending with such adversaries as
+these? Their heads contain all the diplomacy of the congress of
+Vienna; they have as much power when they are caught as when they
+escape. What man has a mind supple enough to lay aside brute force and
+strength and follow his wife through such mazes as these?
+
+To make a false plea every moment, in order to elicit the truth, a
+true plea in order to unmask falsehood; to charge the battery when
+least expected, and to spike your gun at the very moment of firing it;
+to scale the mountain with the enemy, in order to descend to the plain
+again five minutes later; to accompany the foe in windings as rapid,
+as obscure as those of a plover on the breezes; to obey when obedience
+is necessary, and to oppose when resistance is inertial; to traverse
+the whole scale of hypotheses as a young artist with one stroke runs
+from the lowest to the highest note of his piano; to divine at last
+the secret purpose on which a woman is bent; to fear her caresses and
+to seek rather to find out what are the thoughts that suggested them
+and the pleasure which she derived from them--this is mere child's pay
+for the man of intellect and for those lucid and searching
+imaginations which possess the gift of doing and thinking at the same
+time. But there are a vast number of husbands who are terrified at the
+mere idea of putting in practice these principles in their dealings
+with a woman.
+
+Such men as these prefer passing their lives in making huge efforts to
+become second-class chess-players, or to pocket adroitly a ball in
+billiards.
+
+Some of them will tell you that they are incapable of keeping their
+minds on such a constant strain and breaking up the habits of their
+life. In that case the woman triumphs. She recognizes that in mind and
+energy she is her husband's superior, although the superiority may be
+but temporary; and yet there rises in her a feeling of contempt for
+the head of the house.
+
+If many man fail to be masters in their own house this is not from
+lack of willingness, but of talent. As for those who are ready to
+undergo the toils of this terrible duel, it is quite true that they
+must needs possess great moral force.
+
+And really, as soon as it is necessary to display all the resources of
+this secret strategy, it is often useless to attempt setting any traps
+for these satanic creatures. Once women arrive at a point when they
+willfully deceive, their countenances become as inscrutable as
+vacancy. Here is an example which came within my own experience.
+
+A very young, very pretty, and very clever coquette of Paris had not
+yet risen. Seated by her bed was one of her dearest friends. A letter
+arrived from another, a very impetuous fellow, to whom she had allowed
+the right of speaking to her like a master. The letter was in pencil
+and ran as follows:
+
+"I understand that Monsieur C----- is with you at this moment. I am
+waiting for him to blow his brains out."
+
+Madame D----- calmly continued the conversation with Monsieur C-----.
+She asked him to hand her a little writing desk of red leather which
+stood on the table, and he brought it to her.
+
+"Thanks, my dear," she said to him; "go on talking, I am listening to
+you."
+
+C----- talked away and she replied, all the while writing the
+following note:
+
+"As soon as you become jealous of C----- you two can blow out each
+other's brains at your pleasure. As for you, you may die; but brains
+--you haven't any brains to blow out."
+
+"My dear friend," she said to C-----, "I beg you will light this
+candle. Good, you are charming. And now be kind enough to leave me and
+let me get up, and give this letter to Monsieur d'H-----, who is
+waiting at the door."
+
+All this was said with admirable coolness. The tones and intonations
+of her voice, the expression of her face showed no emotion. Her
+audacity was crowned with complete success. On receiving the answer
+from the hand of Monsieur C-----, Monsieur d'H----- felt his wrath
+subside. He was troubled with only one thing and that was how to
+disguise his inclination to laugh.
+
+The more torch-light one flings into the immense cavern which we are
+now trying to illuminate, the more profound it appears. It is a
+bottomless abyss. It appears to us that our task will be accomplished
+more agreeably and more instructively if we show the principles of
+strategy put into practice in the case of a woman, when she has
+reached a high degree of vicious accomplishment. An example suggests
+more maxims and reveals the existence of more methods than all
+possible theories.
+
+One day at the end of a dinner given to certain intimate friends by
+Prince Lebrun, the guests, heated by champagne, were discussing the
+inexhaustible subject of feminine artifice. The recent adventure which
+was credited to the Countess R. D. S. J. D. A-----, apropos of a
+necklace, was the subject first broached. A highly esteemed artist, a
+gifted friend of the emperor, was vigorously maintaining the opinion,
+which seemed somewhat unmanly, that it was forbidden to a man to
+resist successfully the webs woven by a woman.
+
+"It is my happy experience," he said, "that to them nothing is
+sacred."
+
+The ladies protested.
+
+"But I can cite an instance in point."
+
+"It is an exception!"
+
+"Let us hear the story," said a young lady.
+
+"Yes, tell it to us," cried all the guests.
+
+The prudent old gentleman cast his eyes around, and, after having
+formed his conclusions as to the age of the ladies, smiled and said:
+
+"Since we are all experienced in life, I consent to relate the
+adventure."
+
+Dead silence followed, and the narrator read the following from a
+little book which he had taken from his pocket:
+
+
+I was head over ears in love with the Comtesse de -----. I was twenty
+and I was ingenuous. She deceived me. I was angry; she threw me over.
+I was ingenuous, I repeat, and I was grieved to lose her. I was
+twenty; she forgave me. And as I was twenty, as I was always
+ingenuous, always deceived, but never again thrown over by her, I
+believed myself to have been the best beloved of lovers, consequently
+the happiest of men. The countess had a friend, Madame de T-----, who
+seemed to have some designs on me, but without compromising her
+dignity; for she was scrupulous and respected the proprieties. One day
+while I was waiting for the countess in her Opera box, I heard my name
+called from a contiguous box. It was Madame de T-----.
+
+"What," she said, "already here? Is this fidelity or merely a want of
+something to do? Won't you come to me?"
+
+Her voice and her manner had a meaning in them, but I was far from
+inclined at that moment to indulge in a romance.
+
+"Have you any plans for this evening?" she said to me. "Don't make
+any! If I cheer your tedious solitude you ought to be devoted to me.
+Don't ask any questions, but obey. Call my servants."
+
+I answered with a bow and on being requested to leave the Opera box, I
+obeyed.
+
+"Go to this gentleman's house," she said to the lackey. "Say he will
+not be home till to-morrow."
+
+She made a sign to him, he went to her, she whispered in his ear, and
+he left us. The Opera began. I tried to venture on a few words, but
+she silenced me; some one might be listening. The first act ended, the
+lackey brought back a note, and told her that everything was ready.
+Then she smiled, asked for my hand, took me off, put me in her
+carriage, and I started on my journey quite ignorant of my
+destination. Every inquiry I made was answered by a peal of laughter.
+If I had not been aware that this was a woman of great passion, that
+she had long loved the Marquis de V-----, that she must have known I
+was aware of it, I should have believed myself in good luck; but she
+knew the condition of my heart, and the Comtesse de -----. I therefore
+rejected all presumptuous ideas and bided my time. At the first stop,
+a change of horses was supplied with the swiftness of lightning and we
+started afresh. The matter was becoming serious. I asked with some
+insistency, where this joke was to end.
+
+"Where?" she said, laughing. "In the pleasantest place in the world,
+but can't you guess? I'll give you a thousand chances. Give it up, for
+you will never guess. We are going to my husband's house. Do you know
+him?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"So much the better, I thought you didn't. But I hope you will like
+him. We have lately become reconciled. Negotiations went on for six
+months; and we have been writing to one another for a month. I think
+it is very kind of me to go and look him up."
+
+"It certainly is, but what am I going to do there? What good will I be
+in this reconciliation?"
+
+"Ah, that is my business. You are young, amiable, unconventional; you
+suit me and will save me from the tediousness of a tete-a-tete."
+
+"But it seems odd to me, to choose the day or the night of a
+reconciliation to make us acquainted; the awkwardness of the first
+interview, the figure all three of us will cut,--I don't see anything
+particularly pleasant in that."
+
+"I have taken possession of you for my own amusement!" she said with
+an imperious air, "so please don't preach."
+
+I saw she was decided, so surrendered myself to circumstances. I began
+to laugh at my predicament and we became exceedingly merry. We again
+changed horses. The mysterious torch of night lit up a sky of extreme
+clearness and shed around a delightful twilight. We were approaching
+the spot where our tete-a-tete must end. She pointed out to me at
+intervals the beauty of the landscape, the tranquillity of the night,
+the all-pervading silence of nature. In order to admire these things
+in company as it was natural we should, we turned to the same window
+and our faces touched for a moment. In a sudden shock she seized my
+hand, and by a chance which seemed to me extraordinary, for the stone
+over which our carriage had bounded could not have been very large, I
+found Madame de T----- in my arms. I do not know what we were trying
+to see; what I am sure of is that the objects before our eyes began in
+spite of the full moon to grow misty, when suddenly I was released
+from her weight, and she sank into the back cushions of the carriage.
+
+"Your object," she said, rousing herself from a deep reverie, "is
+possibly to convince me of the imprudence of this proceeding. Judge,
+therefore, of my embarrassment!"
+
+"My object!" I replied, "what object can I have with regard to you?
+What a delusion! You look very far ahead; but of course the sudden
+surprise or turn of chance may excuse anything."
+
+"You have counted, then, upon that chance, it seems to me?"
+
+We had reached our destination, and before we were aware of it, we had
+entered the court of the chateau. The whole place was brightly lit up.
+Everything wore a festal air, excepting the face of its master, who at
+the sight of me seemed anything but delighted. He came forward and
+expressed in somewhat hesitating terms the tenderness proper to the
+occasion of a reconciliation. I understood later on that this
+reconciliation was absolutely necessary from family reasons. I was
+presented to him and was coldly greeted. He extended his hand to his
+wife, and I followed the two, thinking of my part in the past, in the
+present and in the future. I passed through apartments decorated with
+exquisite taste. The master in this respect had gone beyond all the
+ordinary refinement of luxury, in the hope of reanimating, by the
+influence of voluptuous imagery, a physical nature that was dead. Not
+knowing what to say, I took refuge in expressions of admiration. The
+goddess of the temple, who was quite ready to do the honors, accepted
+my compliments.
+
+"You have not seen anything," she said. "I must take you to the
+apartments of my husband."
+
+"Madame, five years ago I caused them to be pulled down."
+
+"Oh! Indeed!" said she.
+
+At the dinner, what must she do but offer the master some fish, on
+which he said to her:
+
+"Madame, I have been living on milk for the last three years."
+
+"Oh! Indeed!" she said again.
+
+Can any one imagine three human beings as astonished as we were to
+find ourselves gathered together? The husband looked at me with a
+supercilious air, and I paid him back with a look of audacity.
+
+Madame de T----- smiled at me and was charming to me; Monsieur de
+T----- accepted me as a necessary evil. Never in all my life have I
+taken part in a dinner which was so odd as that. The dinner ended, I
+thought that we would go to bed early--that is, I thought that
+Monsieur de T----- would. As we entered the drawing-room:
+
+"I appreciate, madame," said he, "your precaution in bringing this
+gentleman with you. You judged rightly that I should be but poor
+company for the evening, and you have done well, for I am going to
+retire."
+
+Then turning to me, he added in a tone of profound sarcasm:
+
+"You will please to pardon me, and obtain also pardon from madame."
+
+He left us. My reflections? Well, the reflections of a twelvemonth
+were then comprised in those of a minute. When we were left alone,
+Madame de T----- and I, we looked at each other so curiously that, in
+order to break through the awkwardness, she proposed that we should
+take a turn on the terrace while we waited, as she said, until the
+servants had supped.
+
+It was a superb night. It was scarcely possible to discern surrounding
+objects, they seemed to be covered with a veil, that imagination might
+be permitted to take a loftier flight. The gardens, terraced on the
+side of a mountain, sloped down, platform after platform, to the banks
+of the Seine, and the eye took in the many windings of the stream
+covered with islets green and picturesque. These variations in the
+landscape made up a thousand pictures which gave to the spot,
+naturally charming, a thousand novel features. We walked along the
+most extensive of these terraces, which was covered with a thick
+umbrage of trees. She had recovered from the effects of her husband's
+persiflage, and as we walked along she gave me her confidence.
+Confidence begets confidence, and as I told her mine, all she said to
+me became more intimate and more interesting. Madame de T----- at
+first gave me her arm; but soon this arm became interlaced in mine, I
+know not how, but in some way almost lifted her up and prevented her
+from touching the ground. The position was agreeable, but became at
+last fatiguing. We had been walking for a long time and we still had
+much to say to each other. A bank of turf appeared and she sat down
+without withdrawing her arm. And in this position we began to sound
+the praises of mutual confidence, its charms and its delights.
+
+"Ah!" she said to me, "who can enjoy it more than we and with less
+cause of fear? I know well the tie that binds you to another, and
+therefore have nothing to fear."
+
+Perhaps she wished to be contradicted. But I answered not a word. We
+were then mutually persuaded that it was possible for us to be friends
+without fear of going further.
+
+"But I was afraid, however," I said, "that that sudden jolt in the
+carriage and the surprising consequences may have frightened you."
+
+"Oh, I am not so easily alarmed!"
+
+"I fear it has left a little cloud on your mind?"
+
+"What must I do to reassure you?"
+
+"Give me the kiss here which chance--"
+
+"I will gladly do so; for if I do not, your vanity will lead you to
+think that I fear you."
+
+I took the kiss.
+
+It is with kisses as with confidences, the first leads to another.
+They are multiplied, they interrupt conversation, they take its place;
+they scarce leave time for a sigh to escape. Silence followed. We
+could hear it, for silence may be heard. We rose without a word and
+began to walk again.
+
+"We must go in," said she, "for the air of the river is icy, and it is
+not worth while--"
+
+"I think to go in would be more dangerous," I answered.
+
+"Perhaps so! Never mind, we will go in."
+
+"Why, is this out of consideration for me? You wish doubtless to save
+me from the impressions which I may receive from such a walk as this
+--the consequences which may result. Is it for me--for me only--?"
+
+"You are modest," she said smiling, "and you credit me with singular
+consideration."
+
+"Do you think so? Well, since you take it in this way, we will go in;
+I demand it."
+
+A stupid proposition, when made by two people who are forcing
+themselves to say something utterly different from what they think.
+
+Then she compelled me to take the path that led back to the chateau. I
+do not know, at least I did not then know, whether this course was one
+which she forced upon herself, whether it was the result of a vigorous
+resolution, or whether she shared my disappointment in seeing an
+incident which had begun so well thus suddenly brought to a close but
+by a mutual instinct our steps slackened and we pursued our way
+gloomily dissatisfied the one with the other and with ourselves. We
+knew not the why and the wherefore of what we were doing. Neither of
+us had the right to demand or even to ask anything. We had neither of
+us any ground for uttering a reproach. O that we had got up a quarrel!
+But how could I pick one with her? Meanwhile we drew nearer and
+nearer, thinking how we might evade the duty which we had so awkwardly
+imposed upon ourselves. We reached the door, when Madame de T-----
+said to me:
+
+"I am angry with you! After the confidences I have given you, not to
+give me a single one! You have not said a word about the countess. And
+yet it is so delightful to speak of the one we love! I should have
+listened with such interest! It was the very best I could do after I
+had taken you away from her!"
+
+"Cannot I reproach you with the same thing?" I said, interrupting her,
+"and if instead of making me a witness to this singular reconciliation
+in which I play so odd a part, you had spoken to me of the marquis--"
+
+"Stop," she said, "little as you know of women, you are aware that
+their confidences must be waited for, not asked. But to return to
+yourself. Are you very happy with my friend? Ah! I fear the
+contrary--"
+
+"Why, madame, should everything that the public amuses itself by
+saying claim our belief?"
+
+"You need not dissemble. The countess makes less a mystery of things
+than you do. Women of her stamp do not keep the secrets of their loves
+and of their lovers, especially when you are prompted by discretion to
+conceal her triumph. I am far from accusing her of coquetry; but a
+prude has as much vanity as a coquette.--Come, tell me frankly, have
+you not cause of complaint against her?"
+
+"But, madame, the air is really too icy for us to stay here. Would you
+like to go in?" said I with a smile.
+
+"Do you find it so?--That is singular. The air is quite warm."
+
+She had taken my arm again, and we continued to walk, although I did
+not know the direction which we took. All that she had hinted at
+concerning the lover of the countess, concerning my mistress, together
+with this journey, the incident which took place in the carriage, our
+conversation on the grassy bank, the time of night, the moonlight--all
+made me feel anxious. I was at the same time carried along by vanity,
+by desire, and so distracted by thought, that I was too excited
+perhaps to take notice of all that I was experiencing. And, while I
+was overwhelmed with these mingled feelings, she continued talking to
+me of the countess, and my silence confirmed the truth of all that she
+chose to say about her. Nevertheless, certain passages in her talk
+recalled me to myself.
+
+"What an exquisite creature she is!" she was saying. "How graceful! On
+her lips the utterances of treachery sound like witticism; an act of
+infidelity seems the prompting of reason, a sacrifice to propriety;
+while she is never reckless, she is always lovable; she is seldom
+tender and never sincere; amorous by nature, prudish on principle;
+sprightly, prudent, dexterous though utterly thoughtless, varied as
+Proteus in her moods, but charming as the Graces in her manner; she
+attracts but she eludes. What a number of parts I have seen her play!
+_Entre nous_, what a number of dupes hang round her! What fun she has
+made of the baron, what a life she has led the marquis! When she took
+you, it was merely for the purpose of throwing the two rivals off the
+scent; they were on the point of a rupture; for she had played with
+them too long, and they had had time to see through her. But she
+brought you on the scene. Their attention was called to you, she led
+them to redouble their pursuit, she was in despair over you, she
+pitied you, she consoled you-- Ah! how happy is a clever woman when in
+such a game as this she professes to stake nothing of her own! But
+yet, is this true happiness?"
+
+This last phrase, accompanied by a significant sigh, was a
+master-stroke. I felt as if a bandage had fallen from my eyes, without
+seeing who had put it there. My mistress appeared to me the falsest of
+women, and I believed that I held now the only sensible creature in
+the
+world. Then I sighed without knowing why. She seemed grieved at having
+given me pain and at having in her excitement drawn a picture, the
+truth of which might be open to suspicion, since it was the work of a
+woman. I do not know how I answered; for without realizing the drift
+of all I heard, I set out with her on the high road of sentiment, and
+we mounted to such lofty heights of feeling that it was impossible to
+guess what would be the end of our journey. It was fortunate that we
+also took the path towards a pavilion which she pointed out to me at
+the end of the terrace, a pavilion, the witness of many sweet moments.
+She described to me the furnishing of it. What a pity that she had not
+the key! As she spoke we reached the pavilion and found that it was
+open. The clearness of the moonlight outside did not penetrate, but
+darkness has many charms. We trembled as we went in. It was a
+sanctuary. Might it not be the sanctuary of love? We drew near a sofa
+and sat down, and there we remained a moment listening to our
+heart-beats. The last ray of the moon carried away the last scruple.
+The hand which repelled me felt my heart beat. She struggled to get
+away, but fell back overcome with tenderness. We talked together
+through that silence in the language of thought. Nothing is more
+rapturous than these mute conversations. Madame de T----- took refuge
+in my arms, hid her head in my bosom, sighed and then grew calm under
+my caresses. She grew melancholy, she was consoled, and she asked of
+love all that love had robbed her of. The sound of the river broke the
+silence of night with a gentle murmur, which seemed in harmony with
+the beating of our hearts. Such was the darkness of the place it was
+scarcely possible to discern objects; but through the transparent
+crepe of a fair summer's night, the queen of that lovely place seemed
+to me adorable.
+
+"Oh!" she said to me with an angelic voice, "let us leave this
+dangerous spot. Resistance here is beyond our strength."
+
+She drew me away and we left the pavilion with regret.
+
+"Ah! how happy is she!" cried Madame de T-----.
+
+"Whom do you mean?" I asked.
+
+"Did I speak?" said she with a look of alarm.
+
+And then we reached the grassy bank, and stopped there involuntarily.
+"What a distance there is," she said to me, "between this place and
+the pavilion!"
+
+"Yes indeed," said I. "But must this bank be always ominous? Is there
+a regret? Is there--?"
+
+I do not know by what magic it took place; but at this point the
+conversation changed and became less serious. She ventured even to
+speak playfully of the pleasures of love, to eliminate from them all
+moral considerations, to reduce them to their simplest elements, and
+to prove that the favors of lovers were mere pleasure, that there were
+no pledges--philosophically speaking--excepting those which were given
+to the world, when we allowed it to penetrate our secrets and joined
+it in the acts of indiscretion.
+
+"How mild is the night," she said, "which we have by chance picked
+out! Well, if there are reasons, as I suppose there are, which compel
+us to part to-morrow, our happiness, ignored as it is by all nature,
+will not leave us any ties to dissolve. There will, perhaps, be some
+regrets, the pleasant memory of which will give us reparation; and
+then there will be a mutual understanding, without all the delays, the
+fuss and the tyranny of legal proceedings. We are such machines--and I
+blush to avow it--that in place of all the shrinkings that tormented
+me before this scene took place, I was half inclined to embrace the
+boldness of these principles, and I felt already disposed to indulge
+in the love of liberty.
+
+"This beautiful night," she continued, "this lovely scenery at this
+moment have taken on fresh charms. O let us never forget this
+pavilion! The chateau," she added smilingly, "contains a still more
+charming place, but I dare not show you anything; you are like a
+child, who wishes to touch everything and breaks everything that he
+touches."
+
+Moved by a sentiment of curiosity I protested that I was a very good
+child. She changed the subject.
+
+"This night," she said, "would be for me without a regret if I were
+not vexed with myself for what I said to you about the countess. Not
+that I wish to find fault with you. Novelty attracts me. You have
+found me amiable, I should like to believe in your good faith. But the
+dominion of habit takes a long time to break through and I have not
+learned the secret of doing this--By the bye, what do you think of my
+husband?"
+
+"Well, he is rather cross, but I suppose he could not be otherwise to
+me."
+
+"Oh, that is true, but his way of life isn't pleasant, and he could
+not see you here with indifference. He might be suspicious even of our
+friendship."
+
+"Oh! he is so already."
+
+"Confess that he has cause. Therefore you must not prolong this visit;
+he might take it amiss. As soon as any one arrives--" and she added
+with a smile, "some one is going to arrive--you must go. You have to
+keep up appearance, you know. Remember his manner when he left us
+to-night."
+
+I was tempted to interpret this adventure as a trap, but as she
+noticed the impression made by her words, she added:
+
+"Oh, he was very much gayer when he was superintending the arrangement
+of the cabinet I told you about. That was before my marriage. This
+passage leads to my apartment. Alas! it testifies to the cunning
+artifices to which Monsieur de T----- has resorted in protecting his
+love for me."
+
+"How pleasant it would be," I said to her, keenly excited by the
+curiosity she had roused in me, "to take vengeance in this spot for
+the insults which your charms have suffered, and to seek to make
+restitution for the pleasures of which you have been robbed."
+
+She doubtless thought this remark in good taste, but she said: "You
+promised to be good!"
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+I threw a veil over the follies which every age will pardon to youth,
+on the ground of so many balked desires and bitter memories. In the
+morning, scarcely raising her liquid eyes, Madame de T-----, fairer
+than ever, said to me:
+
+"Now will you ever love the countess as much as you do me?"
+
+I was about to answer when her maid, her confidante, appeared saying:
+
+"You must go. It is broad daylight, eleven o'clock, and the chateau is
+already awake."
+
+All had vanished like a dream! I found myself wandering through the
+corridors before I had recovered my senses. How could I regain my
+apartment, not knowing where it was? Any mistake might bring about an
+exposure. I resolved on a morning walk. The coolness of the fresh air
+gradually tranquilized my imagination and brought me back to the world
+of reality; and now instead of a world of enchantment I saw myself in
+my soul, and my thoughts were no longer disturbed but followed each
+other in connected order; in fact, I breathed once more. I was, above
+all things, anxious to learn what I was to her so lately left--I who
+knew that she had been desperately in love with the Marquis de V-----.
+Could she have broken with him? Had she taken me to be his successor,
+or only to punish him? What a night! What an adventure! Yes, and what
+a delightful woman! While I floated on the waves of these thoughts, I
+heard a sound near at hand. I raised my eyes, I rubbed them, I could
+not believe my senses. Can you guess who it was? The Marquis de
+V-----!
+
+"You did not expect to see me so early, did you?" he said. "How has it
+all gone off?"
+
+"Did you know that I was here?" I asked in utter amazement.
+
+"Oh, yes, I received word just as you left Paris. Have you played your
+part well? Did not the husband think your visit ridiculous? Was he put
+out? When are you going to take leave? You had better go, I have made
+every provision for you. I have brought you a good carriage. It is at
+your service. This is the way I requite you, my dear friend. You may
+rely on me in the future, for a man is grateful for such services as
+yours."
+
+These last words gave me the key to the whole mystery, and I saw how I
+stood.
+
+"But why should you have come so soon?" I asked him; "it would have
+been more prudent to have waited a few days."
+
+"I foresaw that; and it is only chance that has brought me here. I am
+supposed to be on my way back from a neighboring country house. But
+has not Madame de T----- taken you into her secret? I am surprised at
+her want of confidence, after all you have done for us."
+
+"My dear friend," I replied, "she doubtless had her reasons. Perhaps I
+did not play my part very well."
+
+"Has everything been very pleasant? Tell me the particulars; come,
+tell me."
+
+"Now wait a moment. I did not know that this was to be a comedy; and
+although Madame de T----- gave me a part in the play--"
+
+"It wasn't a very nice one."
+
+"Do not worry yourself; there are no bad parts for good actors."
+
+"I understand, you acquitted yourself well."
+
+"Admirably."
+
+"And Madame de T-----?"
+
+"Is adorable."
+
+"To think of being able to win such a woman!" said he, stopping short
+in our walk, and looking triumphantly at me. "Oh, what pains I have
+taken with her! And I have at last brought her to a point where she is
+perhaps the only woman in Paris on whose fidelity a man may infallibly
+count!"
+
+"You have succeeded--?"
+
+"Yes; in that lies my special talent. Her inconstancy was mere
+frivolity, unrestrained imagination. It was necessary to change that
+disposition of hers, but you have no idea of her attachment to me. But
+really, is she not charming?"
+
+"I quite agree with you."
+
+"And yet _entre nous_ I recognize one fault in her. Nature in giving
+her everything, has denied her that flame divine which puts the crown
+on all other endowments; while she rouses in others the ardor of
+passion, she feels none herself, she is a thing of marble."
+
+"I am compelled to believe you, for I have had no opportunity of
+judging, but do you think that you know that woman as well as if you
+were her husband? It is possible to be deceived. If I had not dined
+yesterday with the veritable--I should take you--"
+
+"By the way, has he been good?"
+
+"Oh, I was received like a dog!"
+
+"I understand. Let us go in, let us look for Madame de T-----. She
+must be up by this time."
+
+"But should we not out of decency begin with the husband?" I said to
+him.
+
+"You are right. Let us go to your room, I wish to put on a little
+powder. But tell me, did he really take you for her lover?"
+
+"You may judge by the way he receives me; but let us go at once to his
+apartment."
+
+I wished to avoid having to lead him to an apartment whose whereabouts
+I did not know; but by chance we found it. The door was open and there
+I saw my _valet de chambre_ asleep on an armchair. A candle was going
+out on a table beside him. He drowsily offered a night robe to the
+marquis. I was on pins and needles; but the marquis was in a mood to
+be easily deceived, took the man for a mere sleepy-head, and made a
+joke of the matter. We passed on to the apartment of Monsieur de
+T-----. There was no misunderstanding the reception which he accorded
+me, and the welcome, the compliments which he addressed to the
+marquis, whom he almost forced to stay. He wished to take him to
+madame in order that she might insist on his staying. As for me, I
+received no such invitation. I was reminded that my health was
+delicate, the country was damp, fever was in the air, and I seemed so
+depressed that the chateau would prove too gloomy for me. The marquis
+offered me his chaise and I accepted it. The husband seemed delighted
+and we were all satisfied. But I could not refuse myself the pleasure
+of seeing Madame de T----- once more. My impatience was wonderful. My
+friend conceived no suspicions from the late sleep of his mistress.
+
+"Isn't this fine?" he said to me as we followed Monsieur de T-----.
+"He couldn't have spoken more kindly if she had dictated his words. He
+is a fine fellow. I am not in the least annoyed by this
+reconciliation; they will make a good home together, and you will
+agree with me, that he could not have chosen a wife better able to do
+the honors."
+
+"Certainly," I replied.
+
+"However pleasant the adventure has been," he went on with an air of
+mystery, "you must be off! I will let Madame de T----- understand that
+her secret will be well kept."
+
+"On that point, my friend, she perhaps counts more on me than on you;
+for you see her sleep is not disturbed by the matter."
+
+"Oh! I quite agree that there is no one like you for putting a woman
+to sleep."
+
+"Yes, and a husband too, and if necessary a lover, my dear friend."
+
+At last Monsieur de T----- was admitted to his wife's apartment, and
+there we were all summoned.
+
+"I trembled," said Madame de T----- to me, "for fear you would go
+before I awoke, and I thank you for saving me the annoyance which that
+would have caused me."
+
+"Madame," I said, and she must have perceived the feeling that was in
+my tones--"I come to say good-bye."
+
+She looked at me and at the marquis with an air of disquietude; but
+the self-satisfied, knowing look of her lover reassured her. She
+laughed in her sleeve with me as if she would console me as well as
+she could, without lowering herself in my eyes.
+
+"He has played his part well," the marquis said to her in a low voice,
+pointing to me, "and my gratitude--"
+
+"Let us drop the subject," interrupted Madame de T-----; "you may be
+sure that I am well aware of all I owe him."
+
+At last Monsieur de T-----, with a sarcastic remark, dismissed me; my
+friend threw the dust in his eyes by making fun of me; and I paid back
+both of them by expressing my admiration for Madame de T-----, who
+made fools of us all without forfeiting her dignity. I took myself
+off; but Madame de T----- followed me, pretending to have a commission
+to give me.
+
+"Adieu, monsieur!" she said, "I am indebted to you for the very great
+pleasure you have given me; but I have paid you back with a beautiful
+dream," and she looked at me with an expression of subtle meaning.
+"But adieu, and forever! You have plucked a solitary flower,
+blossoming in its loveliness, which no man--"
+
+She stopped and her thought evaporated in a sigh; but she checked the
+rising flood of sensibility and smiled significantly.
+
+"The countess loves you," she said. "If I have robbed her of some
+transports, I give you back to her less ignorant than before. Adieu!
+Do not make mischief between my friend and me."
+
+She wrung my hand and left me.
+
+
+
+More than once the ladies who had mislaid their fans blushed as they
+listened to the old gentleman, whose brilliant elocution won their
+indulgence for certain details which we have suppressed, as too erotic
+for the present age; nevertheless, we may believe that each lady
+complimented him in private; for some time afterwards he gave to each
+of them, as also to the masculine guests, a copy of this charming
+story, twenty-five copies of which were printed by Pierre Didot. It is
+from copy No. 24 that the author has transcribed this tale, hitherto
+unpublished, and, strange to say, attributed to Dorat. It has the
+merit of yielding important lessons for husbands, while at the same
+time it gives the celibates a delightful picture of morals in the last
+century.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XXV.
+
+                              OF ALLIES.
+
+Of all the miseries that civil war can bring upon a country the
+greatest lies in the appeal which one of the contestants always ends
+by making to some foreign government.
+
+Unhappily we are compelled to confess that all women make this great
+mistake, for the lover is only the first of their soldiers. It may be
+a member of their family or at least a distant cousin. This
+Meditation, then, is intended to answer the inquiry, what assistance
+can each of the different powers which influence human life give to
+your wife? or better than that, what artifices will she resort to to
+arm them against you?
+
+Two beings united by marriage are subject to the laws of religion and
+society; to those of private life, and, from considerations of health,
+to those of medicine. We will therefore divide this important
+Meditation into six paragraphs:
+
+
+  1. OF RELIGIONS AND OF CONFESSION; CONSIDERED IN THEIR CONNECTION
+     WITH MARRIAGE.
+  2. OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW.
+  3. OF BOARDING SCHOOL FRIENDS AND INTIMATE FRIENDS.
+  4. OF THE LOVER'S ALLIES.
+  5. OF THE MAID.
+  6. OF THE DOCTOR.
+
+
+        1. OF RELIGIONS AND OF CONFESSION; CONSIDERED IN THEIR
+                      CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE.
+
+La Bruyere has very wittily said, "It is too much for a husband to
+have ranged against him both devotion and gallantry; a woman ought to
+choose but one of them for her ally."
+
+The author thinks that La Bruyere is mistaken.
+
+
+                       2. OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW.
+
+Up to the age of thirty the face of a woman is a book written in a
+foreign tongue, which one may still translate in spite of all the
+_feminisms_ of the idiom; but on passing her fortieth year a woman
+becomes an insoluble riddle; and if any one can see through an old
+woman, it is another old woman.
+
+Some diplomats have attempted on more than one occasion the diabolical
+task of gaining over the dowagers who opposed their machinations; but
+if they have ever succeeded it was only after making enormous
+concessions to them; for diplomats are practiced people and we do not
+think that you can employ their recipe in dealing with your
+mother-in-law. She will be the first aid-de-camp of her daughter, for
+if the mother did not take her daughter's side, it would be one of
+those monstrous and unnatural exceptions, which unhappily for husbands
+are extremely rare.
+
+When a man is so happy as to possess a mother-in-law who is
+well-preserved, he may easily keep her in check for a certain time,
+although he may not know any young celibate brave enough to assail
+her. But generally husbands who have the slightest conjugal genius
+will find a way of pitting their own mother against that of their
+wife, and in that case they will naturally neutralize each other's
+power.
+
+To be able to keep a mother-in-law in the country while he lives in
+Paris, and vice versa, is a piece of good fortune which a husband too
+rarely meets with.
+
+What of making mischief between the mother and the daughter?--That may
+be possible; but in order to accomplish such an enterprise he must
+have the metallic heart of Richelieu, who made a son and a mother
+deadly enemies to each other. However, the jealousy of a husband who
+forbids his wife to pray to male saints and wishes her to address only
+female saints, would allow her liberty to see her mother.
+
+Many sons-in-law take an extreme course which settles everything,
+which consists in living on bad terms with their mothers-in-law. This
+unfriendliness would be very adroit policy, if it did not inevitably
+result in drawing tighter the ties that unite mother and daughter.
+These are about all the means which you have for resisting maternal
+influence in your home. As for the services which your wife can claim
+from her mother, they are immense; and the assistance which she may
+derive from the neutrality of her mother is not less powerful. But on
+this point everything passes out of the domain of science, for all is
+veiled in secrecy. The reinforcements which a mother brings up in
+support of a daughter are so varied in nature, they depend so much on
+circumstances, that it would be folly to attempt even a nomenclature
+for them. Yet you may write out among the most valuable precepts of
+this conjugal gospel, the following maxims.
+
+A husband should never let his wife visit her mother unattended.
+
+A husband ought to study all the reasons why all the celibates under
+forty who form her habitual society are so closely united by ties of
+friendship to his mother-in-law; for, if a daughter rarely falls in
+love with the lover of her mother, her mother has always a weak spot
+for her daughter's lover.
+
+
+         3. OF BOARDING SCHOOL FRIENDS AND INTIMATE FRIENDS.
+
+Louise de L-----, daughter of an officer killed at Wagram, had been
+the object of Napoleon's special protection. She left Ecouen to marry
+a commissary general, the Baron de V-----, who is very rich.
+
+Louise was eighteen and the baron forty. She was ordinary in face and
+her complexion could not be called white, but she had a charming
+figure, good eyes, a small foot, a pretty hand, good taste and
+abundant intelligence. The baron, worn out by the fatigues of war and
+still more by the excesses of a stormy youth, had one of those faces
+upon which the Republic, the Directory, the Consulate and the Empire
+seemed to have set their impress.
+
+He became so deeply in love with his wife, that he asked and obtained
+from the Emperor a post at Paris, in order that he might be enabled to
+watch over his treasure. He was as jealous as Count Almaviva, still
+more from vanity than from love. The young orphan had married her
+husband from necessity, and, flattered by the ascendancy she wielded
+over a man much older than herself, waited upon his wishes and his
+needs; but her delicacy was offended from the first days of their
+marriage by the habits and ideas of a man whose manners were tinged
+with republican license. He was a predestined.
+
+I do not know exactly how long the baron made his honeymoon last, nor
+when war was declared in his household; but I believe it happened in
+1816, at a very brilliant ball given by Monsieur D-----, a
+commissariat officer, that the commissary general, who had been
+promoted head of the department, admired the beautiful Madame B-----,
+the wife of a banker, and looked at her much more amorously than a
+married man should have allowed himself to do.
+
+At two o'clock in the morning it happened that the banker, tired of
+waiting any longer, went home leaving his wife at the ball.
+
+"We are going to take you home to your house," said the baroness to
+Madame B-----. "Monsieur de V-----, offer your arm to Emilie!"
+
+And now the baron is seated in his carriage next to a woman who,
+during the whole evening, had been offered and had refused a thousand
+attentions, and from whom he had hoped in vain to win a single look.
+There she was, in all the lustre of her youth and beauty, displaying
+the whitest shoulders and the most ravishing lines of beauty. Her
+face, which still reflected the pleasures of the evening, seemed to
+vie with the brilliancy of her satin gown; her eyes to rival the blaze
+of her diamonds; and her skin to cope with the soft whiteness of the
+marabouts which tied in her hair, set off the ebon tresses and the
+ringlets dangling from her headdress. Her tender voice would stir the
+chords of the most insensible hearts; in a word, so powerfully did she
+wake up love in the human breast that Robert d'Abrissel himself would
+perhaps have yielded to her.
+
+The baron glanced at his wife, who, overcome with fatigue, had sunk to
+sleep in a corner of the carriage. He compared, in spite of himself,
+the toilette of Louise and that of Emilie. Now on occasions of this
+kind the presence of a wife is singularly calculated to sharpen the
+unquenchable desires of a forbidden love. Moreover, the glances of the
+baron, directed alternately to his wife and to her friend, were easy
+to interpret, and Madame B----- interpreted them.
+
+"Poor Louise," she said, "she is overtired. Going out does not suit
+her, her tastes are so simple. At Ecouen she was always reading--"
+
+"And you, what used you to do?"
+
+"I, sir? Oh, I thought about nothing but acting comely. It was my
+passion!"
+
+"But why do you so rarely visit Madame de V-----? We have a country
+house at Saint-Prix, where we could have a comedy acted, in a little
+theatre which I have built there."
+
+"If I have not visited Madame de V-----, whose fault is it?" she
+replied. "You are so jealous that you will not allow her either to
+visit her friends or to receive them."
+
+"I jealous!" cried Monsieur de V-----, "after four years of marriage,
+and after having had three children!"
+
+"Hush," said Emilie, striking the fingers of the baron with her fan,
+"Louise is not asleep!"
+
+The carriage stopped, and the baron offered his hand to his wife's
+fair friend and helped her to get out.
+
+"I hope," said Madame B-----, "that you will not prevent Louise from
+coming to the ball which I am giving this week."
+
+The baron made her a respectful bow.
+
+This ball was a triumph of Madame B-----'s and the ruin of the husband
+of Louise; for he became desperately enamored of Emilie, to whom he
+would have sacrificed a hundred lawful wives.
+
+Some months after that evening on which the baron gained some hopes of
+succeeding with his wife's friend, he found himself one morning at the
+house of Madame B-----, when the maid came to announce the Baroness de
+V-----.
+
+"Ah!" cried Emilie, "if Louise were to see you with me at such an hour
+as this, she would be capable of compromising me. Go into that closet
+and don't make the least noise."
+
+The husband, caught like a mouse in a trap, concealed himself in the
+closet.
+
+"Good-day, my dear!" said the two women, kissing each other.
+
+"Why are you come so early?" asked Emilie.
+
+"Oh! my dear, cannot you guess? I came to have an understanding with
+you!"
+
+"What, a duel?"
+
+"Precisely, my dear. I am not like you, not I! I love my husband and
+am jealous of him. You! you are beautiful, charming, you have the
+right to be a coquette, you can very well make fun of B-----, to whom
+your virtue seems to be of little importance. But as you have plenty
+of lovers in society, I beg you that you will leave me my husband. He
+is always at your house, and he certainly would not come unless you
+were the attraction."
+
+"What a very pretty jacket you have on."
+
+"Do you think so? My maid made it."
+
+"Then I shall get Anastasia to take a lesson from Flore--"
+
+"So, then, my dear, I count on your friendship to refrain from
+bringing trouble in my house."
+
+"But, my child, I do not know how you can conceive that I should fall
+in love with your husband; he is coarse and fat as a deputy of the
+centre. He is short and ugly--Ah! I will allow that he is generous,
+but that is all you can say for him, and this is a quality which is
+all in all only to opera girls; so that you can understand, my dear,
+that if I were choosing a lover, as you seem to suppose I am, I
+wouldn't choose an old man like your baron. If I have given him any
+hopes, if I have received him, it was certainly for the purpose of
+amusing myself, and of giving you liberty; for I believed you had a
+weakness for young Rostanges."
+
+"I?" exclaimed Louise, "God preserve me from it, my dear; he is the
+most intolerable coxcomb in the world. No, I assure you, I love my
+husband! You may laugh as you choose; it is true. I know it may seem
+ridiculous, but consider, he has made my fortune, he is no miser, and
+he is everything to me, for it has been my unhappy lot to be left an
+orphan. Now even if I did not love him, I ought to try to preserve his
+esteem. Have I a family who will some day give me shelter?"
+
+"Come, my darling, let us speak no more about it," said Emilie,
+interrupting her friend, "for it tires me to death."
+
+After a few trifling remarks the baroness left.
+
+"How is this, monsieur?" cried Madame B-----, opening the door of the
+closet where the baron was frozen with cold, for this incident took
+place in winter; "how is this? Aren't you ashamed of yourself for not
+adoring a little wife who is so interesting? Don't speak to me of
+love; you may idolize me, as you say you do, for a certain time, but
+you will never love me as you love Louise. I can see that in your
+heart I shall never outweigh the interest inspired by a virtuous wife,
+children, and a family circle. I should one day be deserted and become
+the object of your bitter reflections. You would coldly say of me 'I
+have had that woman!' That phrase I have heard pronounced by men with
+the most insulting indifference. You see, monsieur, that I reason in
+cold blood, and that I do not love you, because you never would be
+able to love me."
+
+"What must I do then to convince you of my love?" cried the baron,
+fixing his gaze on the young woman.
+
+She had never appeared to him so ravishingly beautiful as at that
+moment, when her soft voice poured forth a torrent of words whose
+sternness was belied by the grace of her gestures, by the pose of her
+head and by her coquettish attitude.
+
+"Oh, when I see Louise in possession of a lover," she replied, "when I
+know that I am taking nothing away from her, and that she has nothing
+to regret in losing your affection; when I am quite sure that you love
+her no longer, and have obtained certain proof of your indifference
+towards her--Oh, then I may listen to you!--These words must seem
+odious to you," she continued in an earnest voice; "and so indeed they
+are, but do not think that they have been pronounced by me. I am the
+rigorous mathematician who makes his deductions from a preliminary
+proposition. You are married, and do you deliberately set about making
+love to some one else? I should be mad to give any encouragement to a
+man who cannot be mine eternally."
+
+"Demon!" exclaimed the husband. "Yes, you are a demon, and not a
+woman!"
+
+"Come now, you are really amusing!" said the young woman as she seized
+the bell-rope.
+
+"Oh! no, Emilie," continued the lover of forty, in a calmer voice. "Do
+not ring; stop, forgive me! I will sacrifice everything for you."
+
+"But I do not promise you anything!" she answered quickly with a
+laugh.
+
+"My God! How you make me suffer!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Well, and have not you in your life caused the unhappiness of more
+than one person?" she asked. "Remember all the tears which have been
+shed through you and for you! Oh, your passion does not inspire me
+with the least pity. If you do not wish to make me laugh, make me
+share your feelings."
+
+"Adieu, madame, there is a certain clemency in your sternness. I
+appreciate the lesson you have taught me. Yes, I have many faults to
+expiate."
+
+"Well then, go and repent of them," she said with a mocking smile; "in
+making Louise happy you will perform the rudest penance in your
+power."
+
+They parted. But the love of the baron was too violent to allow of
+Madame B-----'s harshness failing to accomplish her end, namely, the
+separation of the married couple.
+
+At the end of some months the Baron de V----- and his wife lived
+apart, though they lived in the same mansion. The baroness was the
+object of universal pity, for in public she always did justice to her
+husband and her resignation seemed wonderful. The most prudish women
+of society found nothing to blame in the friendship which united
+Louise to the young Rostanges. And all was laid to the charge of
+Monsieur de V-----'s folly.
+
+When this last had made all the sacrifices that a man could make for
+Madame B-----, his perfidious mistress started for the waters of Mount
+Dore, for Switzerland and for Italy, on the pretext of seeking the
+restoration of her health.
+
+The baron died of inflammation of the liver, being attended during his
+sickness by the most touching ministrations which his wife could
+lavish upon him; and judging from the grief which he manifested at
+having deserted her, he seemed never to have suspected her
+participation in the plan which had been his ruin.
+
+This anecdote, which we have chosen from a thousand others,
+exemplifies the services which two women can render each other.
+
+From the words--"Let me have the pleasure of bringing my husband" up
+to the conception of the drama, whose denouement was inflammation of
+the liver, every female perfidy was assembled to work out the end.
+Certain incidents will, of course, be met with which diversify more or
+less the typical example which we have given, but the march of the
+drama is almost always the same. Moreover a husband ought always to
+distrust the woman friends of his wife. The subtle artifices of these
+lying creatures rarely fail of their effect, for they are seconded by
+two enemies, who always keep close to a man--and these are vanity and
+desire.
+
+
+                      4. OF THE LOVER'S ALLIES.
+
+The man who hastens to tell another man that he has dropped a thousand
+franc bill from his pocket-book, or even that the handkerchief is
+coming out of his pocket, would think it a mean thing to warn him that
+some one was carrying off his wife. There is certainly something
+extremely odd in this moral inconsistency, but after all it admits of
+explanation. Since the law cannot exercise any interference with
+matrimonial rights, the citizens have even less right to constitute
+themselves a conjugal police; and when one restores a thousand franc
+bill to him who has lost it, he acts under a certain kind of
+obligation, founded on the principle which says, "Do unto others as ye
+would they should do unto you!"
+
+But by what reasoning can justification be found for the help which
+one celibate never asks in vain, but always receives from another
+celibate in deceiving a husband, and how shall we qualify the
+rendering of such help? A man who is incapable of assisting a gendarme
+in discovering an assassin, has no scruple in taking a husband to a
+theatre, to a concert or even to a questionable house, in order to
+help a comrade, whom he would not hesitate to kill in a duel
+to-morrow, in keeping an assignation, the result of which is to
+introduce into a family a spurious child, and to rob two brothers of a
+portion of their fortune by giving them a co-heir whom they never
+perhaps would otherwise have had; or to effect the misery of three
+human beings. We must confess that integrity is a very rare virtue,
+and, very often, the man that thinks he has most actually has least.
+Families have been divided by feuds, and brothers have been murdered,
+which events would never have taken place if some friend had refused
+to perform what passes to the world as a harmless trick.
+
+It is impossible for a man to be without some hobby or other, and all
+of us are devoted either to hunting, fishing, gambling, music, money,
+or good eating. Well, your ruling passion will always be an accomplice
+in the snare which a lover sets for you, the invisible hand of this
+passion will direct your friends, or his, whether they consent or not,
+to play a part in the little drama when they want to take you away
+from home, or to induce you to leave your wife to the mercy of
+another. A lover will spend two whole months, if necessary, in
+planning the construction of the mouse-trap.
+
+I have seen the most cunning men on earth thus taken in.
+
+There was a certain retired lawyer of Normandy. He lived in the little
+town of B-----, where a regiment of the chasseurs of Cantal were
+garrisoned. A fascinating officer of this regiment had fallen in love
+with the wife of this pettifogger, and the regiment was leaving before
+the two lovers had been able to enjoy the least privacy. It was the
+fourth military man over whom the lawyer had triumphed. As he left the
+dinner-table one evening, about six o'clock, the husband took a walk
+on the terrace of his garden from which he could see the whole country
+side. The officers arrived at this moment to take leave of him.
+Suddenly the flame of a conflagration burst forth on the horizon.
+"Heavens! La Daudiniere is on fire!" exclaimed the major. He was an
+old simple-minded soldier, who had dined at home. Every one mounted
+horse. The young wife smiled as she found herself alone, for her
+lover, hidden in the coppice, had said to her, "It is a straw stack on
+fire!" The flank of the husband was turned with all the more facility
+in that a fine courser was provided for him by the captain, and with a
+delicacy very rare in the cavalry, the lover actually sacrificed a few
+moments of his happiness in order to catch up with the cavalcade, and
+return in company with the husband.
+
+Marriage is a veritable duel, in which persistent watchfulness is
+required in order to triumph over an adversary; for, if you are
+unlucky enough to turn your head, the sword of the celibate will
+pierce you through and through.
+
+
+                           5. OF THE MAID.
+
+The prettiest waiting-maid I have ever seen is that of Madame V----y,
+a lady who to-day plays at Paris a brilliant part among the most
+fashionable women, and passes for a wife who keeps on excellent terms
+with her husband. Mademoiselle Celestine is a person whose points of
+beauty are so numerous that, in order to describe her, it would be
+necessary to translate the thirty verses which we are told form an
+inscription in the seraglio of the Grand Turk and contain each of them
+an excellent description of one of the thirty beauties of women.
+
+"You show a great deal of vanity in keeping near you such an
+accomplished creature," said a lady to the mistress of the house.
+
+"Ah! my dear, some day perhaps you will find yourself jealous of me in
+possessing Celestine."
+
+"She must be endowed with very rare qualities, I suppose? She perhaps
+dresses you well?"
+
+"Oh, no, very badly!"
+
+"She sews well?"
+
+"She never touches her needle."
+
+"She is faithful?"
+
+"She is one of those whose fidelity costs more than the most cunning
+dishonesty."
+
+"You astonish me, my dear; she is then your foster-sister?"
+
+"Not at all; she is positively good for nothing, but she is more
+useful to me than any other member of my household. If she remains
+with me ten years, I have promised her twenty thousand francs. It will
+be money well earned, and I shall not forget to give it!" said the
+young woman, nodding her head with a meaning gesture.
+
+At last the questioner of Madame V----y understood.
+
+When a woman has no friend of her own sex intimate enough to assist
+her in proving false to marital love, her maid is a last resource
+which seldom fails in bringing about the desired result.
+
+Oh! after ten years of marriage to find under his roof, and to see all
+the time, a young girl of from sixteen to eighteen, fresh, dressed
+with taste, the treasures of whose beauty seem to breathe defiance,
+whose frank bearing is irresistibly attractive, whose downcast eyes
+seem to fear you, whose timid glance tempts you, and for whom the
+conjugal bed has no secrets, for she is at once a virgin and an
+experienced woman! How can a man remain cold, like St. Anthony, before
+such powerful sorcery, and have the courage to remain faithful to the
+good principles represented by a scornful wife, whose face is always
+stern, whose manners are always snappish, and who frequently refuses
+to be caressed? What husband is stoical enough to resist such fires,
+such frosts? There, where you see a new harvest of pleasure, the young
+innocent sees an income, and your wife her liberty. It is a little
+family compact, which is signed in the interest of good will.
+
+In this case, your wife acts with regard to marriage as young
+fashionables do with regard to their country. If they are drawn for
+the army, they buy a man to carry the musket, to die in their place
+and to spare them the hardships of military life.
+
+In compromises of this sort there is not a single woman who does not
+know how to put her husband in the wrong. I have noticed that, by a
+supreme stroke of diplomacy, the majority of wives do not admit their
+maids into the secret of the part which they give them to play. They
+trust to nature, and assume an affected superiority over the lover and
+his mistress.
+
+These secret perfidies of women explain to a great degree the odd
+features of married life which are to be observed in the world; and I
+have heard women discuss, with profound sagacity, the dangers which
+are inherent in this terrible method of attack, and it is necessary to
+know thoroughly both the husband and the creature to whom he is to be
+abandoned, in order to make successful use of her. Many a woman, in
+this connection, has been the victim of her own calculations.
+
+Moreover, the more impetuous and passionate a husband shows himself,
+the less will a woman dare to employ this expedient; but a husband
+caught in this snare will never have anything to say to his stern
+better-half, when the maid, giving evidence of the fault she has
+committed, is sent into the country with an infant and a dowry.
+
+
+                          6. OF THE DOCTOR.
+
+The doctor is one of the most potent auxiliaries of an honest woman,
+when she wishes to acquire a friendly divorce from her husband. The
+services that the doctor renders, most of the time without knowing it,
+to a woman, are of such importance that there does not exist a single
+house in France where the doctor is chosen by any one but the wife.
+
+All doctors know what great influence women have on their reputation;
+thus we meet with few doctors who do not study to please the ladies.
+When a man of talent has become celebrated it is true that he does not
+lend himself to the crafty conspiracies which women hatch; but without
+knowing it he becomes involved in them.
+
+I suppose that a husband taught by the adventures of his own youth
+makes up his mind to pick out a doctor for his wife, from the first
+days of his marriage. So long as his feminine adversary fails to
+conceive the assistance that she may derive from this ally, she will
+submit in silence; but later on, if all her allurements fail to win
+over the man chosen by her husband, she will take a more favorable
+opportunity to give her husband her confidence, in the following
+remarkable manner.
+
+"I don't like the way in which the doctor feels my pulse!"
+
+And of course the doctor is dropped.
+
+Thus it happens that either a woman chooses her doctor, wins over the
+man who has been imposed upon her, or procures his dismissal. But this
+contest is very rare; the majority of young men who marry are
+acquainted with none but beardless doctors whom they have no anxiety
+to procure for their wives, and almost always the Esculapius of the
+household is chosen by the feminine power. Thus it happens that some
+fine morning the doctor, when he leaves the chamber of madame, who has
+been in bed for a fortnight, is induced by her to say to you:
+
+"I do not say that the condition of madame presents any serious
+symptoms; but this constant drowsiness, this general listlessness, and
+her natural tendency to a spinal affection demand great care. Her
+lymph is inspissated. She wants a change of air. She ought to be sent
+either to the waters of Bareges or to the waters of Plombieres."
+
+"All right, doctor."
+
+You allow your wife to go to Plombieres; but she goes there because
+Captain Charles is quartered in the Vosges. She returns in capital
+health and the waters of Plombieres have done wonders for her. She has
+written to you every day, she has lavished upon you from a distance
+every possible caress. The danger of a spinal affection has utterly
+disappeared.
+
+There is extant a little pamphlet, whose publication was prompted
+doubtless by hate. It was published in Holland, and it contains some
+very curious details of the manner in which Madame de Maintenon
+entered into an understanding with Fagon, for the purposes of
+controlling Louis XIV. Well, some morning your doctor will threaten
+you, as Fagon threatened his master, with a fit of apoplexy, if you do
+not diet yourself. This witty work of satire, doubtless the production
+of some courtier, entitled "Madame de Saint Tron," has been
+interpreted by the modern author who has become proverbial as "the
+young doctor." But his delightful sketch is very much superior to the
+work whose title I cite for the benefit of the book-lovers, and we
+have great pleasure in acknowledging that the work of our clever
+contemporary has prevented us, out of regard for the glory of the
+seventeenth century, from publishing the fragment of the old pamphlet.
+
+Very frequently a doctor becomes duped by the judicious manoeuvres of
+a young and delicate wife, and comes to you with the announcement:
+
+"Sir, I would not wish to alarm madame with regard to her condition;
+but I will advise you, if you value her health, to keep her in perfect
+tranquillity. The irritation at this moment seems to threaten the
+chest, and we must gain control of it; there is need of rest for her,
+perfect rest; the least agitation might change the seat of the malady.
+At this crisis, the prospect of bearing a child would be fatal to
+her."
+
+"But, doctor--"
+
+"Ah, yes! I know that!"
+
+He laughs and leaves the house.
+
+Like the rod of Moses, the doctor's mandate makes and unmakes
+generations. The doctor will restore you to your marriage bed with the
+same arguments that he used in debarring you. He treats your wife for
+complaints which she has not, in order to cure her of those which she
+has, and all the while you have no idea of it; for the scientific
+jargon of doctors can only be compared to the layers in which they
+envelop their pills.
+
+An honest woman in her chamber with the doctor is like a minister sure
+of a majority; she has it in her power to make a horse, or a carriage,
+according to her good pleasure and her taste; she will send you away
+or receive you, as she likes. Sometimes she will pretend to be ill in
+order to have a chamber separate from yours; sometimes she will
+surround herself with all the paraphernalia of an invalid; she will
+have an old woman for a nurse, regiments of vials and of bottles, and,
+environed by these ramparts, will defy you by her invalid airs. She
+will talk to you in such a depressing way of the electuaries and of
+the soothing draughts which she has taken, of the agues which she has
+had, of her plasters and cataplasms, that she will fill you with
+disgust at these sickly details, if all the time these sham sufferings
+are not intended to serve as engines by means of which, eventually, a
+successful attack may be made on that singular abstraction known as
+_your honor_.
+
+In this way your wife will be able to fortify herself at every point
+of contact which you possess with the world, with society and with
+life. Thus everything will take arms against you, and you will be
+alone among all these enemies. But suppose that it is your
+unprecedented privilege to possess a wife who is without religious
+connections, without parents or intimate friends; that you have
+penetration enough to see through all the tricks by which your wife's
+lover tries to entrap you; that you still have sufficient love for
+your fair enemy to resist all the Martons of the earth; that, in fact,
+you have for your doctor a man who is so celebrated that he has no
+time to listen to the maunderings of your wife; or that if your
+Esculapius is madame's vassal, you demand a consultation, and an
+incorruptible doctor intervenes every time the favorite doctor
+prescribes a remedy that disquiets you; even in that case, your
+prospects will scarcely be more brilliant. In fact, even if you do not
+succumb to this invasion of allies, you must not forget that, so far,
+your adversary has not, so to speak, struck the decisive blow. If you
+hold out still longer, your wife, having flung round you thread upon
+thread, as a spider spins his web, an invisible net, will resort to
+the arms which nature has given her, which civilization has perfected,
+and which will be treated of in the next Meditation.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XXVI.
+
+                        OF DIFFERENT WEAPONS.
+
+A weapon is anything which is used for the purpose of wounding. From
+this point of view, some sentiments prove to be the most cruel weapons
+which man can employ against his fellow man. The genius of Schiller,
+lucid as it was comprehensive, seems to have revealed all the
+phenomena which certain ideas bring to light in the human organization
+by their keen and penetrating action. A man may be put to death by a
+thought. Such is the moral of those heartrending scenes, when in _The
+Brigands_ the poet shows a young man, with the aid of certain ideas,
+making such powerful assaults on the heart of an old man, that he ends
+by causing the latter's death. The time is not far distant when
+science will be able to observe the complicated mechanism of our
+thoughts and to apprehend the transmission of our feelings. Some
+developer of the occult sciences will prove that our intellectual
+organization constitutes nothing more than a kind of interior man, who
+projects himself with less violence than the exterior man, and that
+the struggle which may take place between two such powers as these,
+although invisible to our feeble eyes, is not a less mortal struggle
+than that in which our external man compels us to engage.
+
+But these considerations belong to a different department of study
+from that in which we are now engaged; these subjects we intend to
+deal with in a future publication; some of our friends are already
+acquainted with one of the most important,--that, namely, entitled
+"THE PATHOLOGY OF SOCIAL LIFE, _or Meditations mathematical, physical,
+chemical and transcendental on the manifestations of thought, taken
+under all the forms which are produced by the state of society,
+whether by living, marriage, conduct, veterinary medicine, or by
+speech and action, etc._," in which all these great questions are
+fully discussed. The aim of this brief metaphysical observation is
+only to remind you that the higher classes of society reason too well
+to admit of their being attacked by any other than intellectual arms.
+
+Although it is true that tender and delicate souls are found enveloped
+in a body of metallic hardness, at the same time there are souls of
+bronze enveloped in bodies so supple and capricious that their grace
+attracts the friendship of others, and their beauty calls for a
+caress. But if you flatter the exterior man with your hand, the _Homo
+duplex_, the interior man, to use an expression of Buffon, immediately
+rouses himself and rends you with his keen points of contact.
+
+This description of a special class of human creatures, which we hope
+you will not run up against during your earthly journey, presents a
+picture of what your wife may be to you. Every one of the sentiments
+which nature has endowed your heart with, in their gentlest form, will
+become a dagger in the hand of your wife. You will be stabbed every
+moment, and you will necessarily succumb; for your love will flow like
+blood from every wound.
+
+This is the last struggle, but for her it also means victory.
+
+In order to carry out the distinction which we think we have
+established among three sorts of feminine temperament, we will divide
+this Meditation into three parts, under the following titles:
+
+
+  1. OF HEADACHES.
+  2. OF NERVOUS AFFECTATIONS.
+  3. OF MODESTY, IN ITS CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE.
+
+
+                           1. OF HEADACHES.
+
+Women are constantly the dupes or the victims of excessive
+sensibility; but we have already demonstrated that with the greater
+number of them this delicacy of soul must needs, almost without their
+knowing it, receive many rude blows, from the very fact of their
+marriage. (See Meditations entitled _The Predestined_ and _Of the
+Honeymoon_.) Most of the means of defence instinctively employed by
+husbands are nothing but traps set for the liveliness of feminine
+affections.
+
+Now the moment comes when the wife, during the Civil War, traces by a
+single act of thought the history of her moral life, and is irritated
+on perceiving the prodigious way in which you have taken advantage of
+her sensibility. It is very rarely that women, moved either by an
+innate feeling for revenge, which they themselves can never explain,
+or by their instinct of domination, fail to discover that this quality
+in their natural machinery, when brought into play against the man, is
+inferior to no other instrument for obtaining ascendancy over him.
+
+With admirable cleverness, they proceed to find out what chords in the
+hearts of their husbands are most easily touched; and when once they
+discover this secret, they eagerly proceed to put it into practice;
+then, like a child with a mechanical toy, whose spring excites their
+curiosity, they go on employing it, carelessly calling into play the
+movements of the instrument, and satisfied simply with their success
+in doing so. If they kill you, they will mourn over you with the best
+grace in the world, as the most virtuous, the most excellent, the most
+sensible of men.
+
+In this way your wife will first arm herself with that generous
+sentiment which leads us to respect those who are in pain. The man
+most disposed to quarrel with a woman full of life and health becomes
+helpless before a woman who is weak and feeble. If your wife has not
+attained the end of her secret designs, by means of those various
+methods already described, she will quickly seize this all-powerful
+weapon. In virtue of this new strategic method, you will see the young
+girl, so strong in life and beauty, whom you had wedded in her flower,
+metamorphosing herself into a pale and sickly woman.
+
+Now headache is an affection which affords infinite resources to a
+woman. This malady, which is the easiest of all to feign, for it is
+destitute of any apparent symptom, merely obliges her to say: "I have
+a headache." A woman trifles with you and there is no one in the world
+who can contradict her skull, whose impenetrable bones defy touch or
+ocular test. Moreover, headache is, in our opinion, the queen of
+maladies, the pleasantest and the most terrible weapon employed by
+wives against their husbands. There are some coarse and violent men
+who have been taught the tricks of women by their mistresses, in the
+happy hours of their celibacy, and so flatter themselves that they are
+never to be caught by this vulgar trap. But all their efforts, all
+their arguments end by being vanquished before the magic of these
+words: "I have a headache." If a husband complains, or ventures on a
+reproach, if he tries to resist the power of this _Il buondo cani_ of
+marriage, he is lost.
+
+Imagine a young woman, voluptuously lying on a divan, her head softly
+supported by a cushion, one hand hanging down; on a small table close
+at hand is her glass of lime-water. Now place by her side a burly
+husband. He has made five or six turns round the room; but each time
+he has turned on his heels to begin his walk all over again, the
+little invalid has made a slight movement of her eyebrows in a vain
+attempt to remind him that the slightest noise fatigues her. At last
+he musters all his courage and utters a protest against her pretended
+malady, in the bold phrase:
+
+"And have you really a headache?"
+
+At these words the young woman slightly raises her languid head, lifts
+an arm, which feebly falls back again upon her divan, raises her eyes
+to the ceiling, raises all that she has power to raise; then darting
+at you a leaden glance, she says in a voice of remarkable feebleness:
+
+"Oh! What can be the matter with me? I suffer the agonies of death!
+And this is all the comfort you give me! Ah! you men, it is plainly
+seen that nature has not given you the task of bringing children into
+the world. What egoists and tyrants you are! You take us in all the
+beauty of our youth, fresh, rosy, with tapering waist, and then all is
+well! When your pleasures have ruined the blooming gifts which we
+received from nature, you never forgive us for having forfeited them
+to you! That was all understood. You will allow us to have neither the
+virtues nor the sufferings of our condition. You must needs have
+children, and we pass many nights in taking care of them. But
+child-bearing has ruined our health, and left behind the germs of
+serious maladies.--Oh, what pain I suffer! There are few women who are
+not subject to headaches; but your wife must be an exception. You even
+laugh at our sufferings; that is generosity!--please don't walk about
+--I should not have expected this of you!--Stop the clock; the click
+of the pendulum rings in my head. Thanks! Oh, what an unfortunate
+creature I am! Have you a scent-bottle with you? Yes, oh! for pity's
+sake, allow me to suffer in peace, and go away; for this scent splits
+my head!"
+
+What can you say in reply? Do you not hear within you a voice which
+cries, "And what if she is actually suffering?" Moreover, almost all
+husbands evacuate the field of battle very quietly, while their wives
+watch them from the corner of their eyes, marching off on tip-toe and
+closing the door quietly on the chamber henceforth to be considered
+sacred by them.
+
+Such is the headache, true or false, which is patronized at your home.
+Then the headache begins to play a regular role in the bosom of your
+family. It is a theme on which a woman can play many admirable
+variations. She sets it forth in every key. With the aid of the
+headache alone a wife can make a husband desperate. A headache seizes
+madame when she chooses, where she chooses, and as much as she
+chooses. There are headaches of five days, of ten minutes, periodic or
+intermittent headaches.
+
+You sometimes find your wife in bed, in pain, helpless, and the blinds
+of her room are closed. The headache has imposed silence on every one,
+from the regions of the porter's lodge, where he is cutting wood, even
+to the garret of your groom, from which he is throwing down innocent
+bundles of straw. Believing in this headache, you leave the house, but
+on your return you find that madame has decamped! Soon madame returns,
+fresh and ruddy:
+
+"The doctor came," she says, "and advised me to take exercise, and I
+find myself much better!"
+
+Another day you wish to enter madame's room.
+
+"Oh, sir," says the maid, showing the most profound astonishment,
+"madame has her usual headache, and I have never seen her in such
+pain! The doctor has been sent for."
+
+"You are a happy man," said Marshal Augereau to General R-----, "to
+have such a pretty wife!"
+
+"To have!" replied the other. "If I have my wife ten days in the year,
+that is about all. These confounded women have always either the
+headache or some other thing!"
+
+The headache in France takes the place of the sandals, which, in
+Spain, the Confessor leaves at the door of the chamber in which he is
+with his penitent.
+
+If your wife, foreseeing some hostile intentions on your part, wishes
+to make herself as inviolable as the charter, she immediately gets up
+a little headache performance. She goes to bed in a most deliberate
+fashion, she utters shrieks which rend the heart of the hearer. She
+goes gracefully through a series of gesticulations so cleverly
+executed that you might think her a professional contortionist. Now
+what man is there so inconsiderate as to dare to speak to a suffering
+woman about desires which, in him, prove the most perfect health?
+Politeness alone demands of him perfect silence. A woman knows under
+these circumstances that by means of this all-powerful headache, she
+can at her will paste on her bed the placard which sends back home the
+amateurs who have been allured by the announcement of the Comedie
+Francaise, when they read the words: "Closed through the sudden
+indisposition of Mademoiselle Mars."
+
+O headache, protectress of love, tariff of married life, buckler
+against which all married desires expire! O mighty headache! Can it be
+possible that lovers have never sung thy praises, personified thee, or
+raised thee to the skies? O magic headache, O delusive headache, blest
+be the brain that first invented thee! Shame on the doctor who shall
+find out thy preventive! Yes, thou art the only ill that women bless,
+doubtless through gratitude for the good things thou dispensest to
+them, O deceitful headache! O magic headache!
+
+
+                     2. OF NERVOUS AFFECTATIONS.
+
+There is, however, a power which is superior even to that of the
+headache; and we must avow to the glory of France, that this power is
+one of the most recent which has been won by Parisian genius. As in
+the case with all the most useful discoveries of art and science, no
+one knows to whose intellect it is due. Only, it is certain that it
+was towards the middle of the last century that "Vapors" made their
+first appearance in France. Thus while Papin was applying the force of
+vaporized water in mechanical problems, a French woman, whose name
+unhappily is unknown, had the glory of endowing her sex with the
+faculty of vaporizing their fluids. Very soon the prodigious influence
+obtained by vapors was extended to the nerves; it was thus in passing
+from fibre to fibre that the science of neurology was born. This
+admirable science has since then led such men as Philips and other
+clever physiologists to the discovery of the nervous fluid in its
+circulation; they are now perhaps on the eve of identifying its
+organs, and the secret of its origin and of its evaporation. And thus,
+thanks to certain quackeries of this kind, we may be enabled some day
+to penetrate the mysteries of that unknown power which we have already
+called more than once in the present book, the _Will_. But do not let
+us trespass on the territory of medical philosophy. Let us consider
+the nerves and the vapors solely in their connection with marriage.
+
+Victims of Neurosis (a pathological term under which are comprised all
+affections of the nervous system) suffer in two ways, as far as
+married women are concerned; for our physiology has the loftiest
+disdain for medical classifications. Thus we recognize only:
+
+
+  1. CLASSIC NEUROSIS.
+  2. ROMANTIC NEUROSIS.
+
+
+The classic affection has something bellicose and excitable on it.
+Those who thus suffer are as violent in their antics as pythonesses,
+as frantic as _monads_, as excited as _bacchantes_; it is a revival of
+antiquity, pure and simple.
+
+The romantic sufferers are mild and plaintive as the ballads sung amid
+the mists of Scotland. They are pallid as young girls carried to their
+bier by the dance or by love; they are eminently elegiac and they
+breathe all the melancholy of the North.
+
+That woman with black hair, with piercing eye, with high color, with
+dry lips and a powerful hand, will become excited and convulsive; she
+represents the genius of classic neurosis; while a young blonde woman,
+with white skin, is the genius of romantic neurosis; to one belongs
+the empire gained by nerves, to the other the empire gained by vapors.
+
+Very frequently a husband, when he comes home, finds his wife in
+tears.
+
+"What is the matter, my darling?"
+
+"It is nothing."
+
+"But you are in tears!"
+
+"I weep without knowing why. I am quite sad! I saw faces in the
+clouds, and those faces never appear to me except on the eve of some
+disaster--I think I must be going to die."
+
+Then she talks to you in a low voice of her dead father, of her dead
+uncle, of her dead grandfather, of her dead cousin. She invokes all
+these mournful shades, she feels as if she had all their sicknesses,
+she is attacked with all the pains they felt, she feels her heart
+palpitate with excessive violence, she feels her spleen swelling. You
+say to yourself, with a self-satisfied air:
+
+"I know exactly what this is all about!"
+
+And then you try to soothe her; but you find her a woman who yawns
+like an open box, who complains of her chest, who begins to weep anew,
+who implores you to leave her to her melancholy and her mournful
+memories. She talks to you about her last wishes, follows her own
+funeral, is buried, plants over her tomb the green canopy of a weeping
+willow, and at the very time when you would like to raise a joyful
+epithalamium, you find an epitaph to greet you all in black. Your wish
+to console her melts away in the cloud of Ixion.
+
+There are women of undoubted fidelity who in this way extort from
+their feeling husbands cashmere shawls, diamonds, the payment of their
+debts, or the rent of a box at the theatre; but almost always vapors
+are employed as decisive weapons in Civil War.
+
+On the plea of her spinal affection or of her weak chest, a woman
+takes pains to seek out some distraction or other; you see her
+dressing herself in soft fabrics like an invalid with all the symptoms
+of spleen; she never goes out because an intimate friend, her mother
+or her sister, has tried to tear her away from that divan which
+monopolizes her and on which she spends her life in improvising
+elegies. Madame is going to spend a fortnight in the country because
+the doctor orders it. In short, she goes where she likes and does what
+she likes. Is it possible that there can be a husband so brutal as to
+oppose such desires, by hindering a wife from going to seek a cure for
+her cruel sufferings? For it has been established after many long
+discussions that in the nerves originate the most fearful torture.
+
+But it is especially in bed that vapors play their part. There when a
+woman has not a headache she has her vapors; and when she has neither
+vapors nor headache, she is under the protection of the girdle of
+Venus, which, as you know, is a myth.
+
+Among the women who fight with you the battle of vapors, are some more
+blonde, more delicate, more full of feeling than others, and who
+possess the gift of tears. How admirably do they know how to weep!
+They weep when they like, as they like and as much as they like. They
+organize a system of offensive warfare which consists of manifesting
+sublime resignation, and they gain victories which are all the more
+brilliant, inasmuch as they remain all the time in excellent health.
+
+Does a husband, irritated beyond all measure, at last express his
+wishes to them? They regard him with an air of submission, bow their
+heads and keep silence. This pantomime almost always puts a husband to
+rout. In conjugal struggles of this kind, a man prefers a woman should
+speak and defend herself, for then he may show elation or annoyance;
+but as for these women, not a word. Their silence distresses you and
+you experience a sort of remorse, like the murderer who, when he finds
+his victim offers no resistance, trembles with redoubled fear. He
+would prefer to slay him in self-defence. You return to the subject.
+As you draw near, your wife wipes away her tears and hides her
+handkerchief, so as to let you see that she has been weeping. You are
+melted, you implore your little Caroline to speak, your sensibility
+has been touched and you forget everything; then she sobs while she
+speaks, and speaks while she sobs. This is a sort of machine
+eloquence; she deafens you with her tears, with her words which come
+jerked out in confusion; it is the clapper and torrent of a mill.
+
+French women and especially Parisians possess in a marvelous degree
+the secret by which such scenes are enacted, and to these scenes their
+voices, their sex, their toilet, their manner give a wonderful charm.
+How often do the tears upon the cheeks of these adorable actresses
+give way to a piquant smile, when they see their husbands hasten to
+break the silk lace, the weak fastening of their corsets, or to
+restore the comb which holds together the tresses of their hair and
+the bunch of golden ringlets always on the point of falling down?
+
+But how all these tricks of modernity pale before the genius of
+antiquity, before nervous attacks which are violent, before the
+Pyrrhic dance of married life! Oh! how many hopes for a lover are
+there in the vivacity of those convulsive movements, in the fire of
+those glances, in the strength of those limbs, beautiful even in
+contortion! It is then that a woman is carried away like an impetuous
+wind, darts forth like the flames of a conflagration, exhibits a
+movement like a billow which glides over the white pebbles. She is
+overcome with excess of love, she sees the future, she is the seer who
+prophesies, but above all, she sees the present moment and tramples on
+her husband, and impresses him with a sort of terror.
+
+The sight of his wife flinging off vigorous men as if they were so
+many feathers, is often enough to deter a man from ever striving to
+wrong her. He will be like the child who, having pulled the trigger of
+some terrific engine, has ever afterwards an incredible respect for
+the smallest spring. I have known a man, gentle and amiable in his
+ways, whose eyes were fixed upon those of his wife, exactly as if he
+had been put into a lion's cage, and some one had said to him that he
+must not irritate the beast, if he would escape with his life.
+
+Nervous attacks of this kind are very fatiguing and become every day
+more rare. Romanticism, however, has maintained its ground.
+
+Sometimes, we meet with phlegmatic husbands, those men whose love is
+long enduring, because they store up their emotions, whose genius gets
+the upper hand of these headaches and nervous attacks; but these
+sublime creatures are rare. Faithful disciples of the blessed St.
+Thomas, who wished to put his finger into the wound, they are endowed
+with an incredulity worthy of an atheist. Imperturbable in the midst
+of all these fraudulent headaches and all these traps set by neurosis,
+they concentrate their attention on the comedy which is being played
+before them, they examine the actress, they search for one of the
+springs that sets her going; and when they have discovered the
+mechanism of this display, they arm themselves by giving a slight
+impulse to the puppet-valve, and thus easily assure themselves either
+of the reality of the disease or the artifices of these conjugal
+mummeries.
+
+But if by study which is almost superhuman in its intensity a husband
+escapes all the artifices which lawless and untamable love suggests to
+women, he will beyond doubt be overcome by the employment of a
+terrible weapon, the last which a woman would resort to, for she never
+destroys with her own hands her empire over her husband without some
+sort of repugnance. But this is a poisoned weapon as powerful as the
+fatal knife of the executioner. This reflection brings us to the last
+paragraph of the present Meditation.
+
+
+           3. OF MODESTY, IN ITS CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE.
+
+Before taking up the subject of modesty, it may perhaps be necessary
+to inquire whether there is such a thing. Is it anything in a woman
+but well understood coquetry? Is it anything but a sentiment that
+claims the right, on a woman's part, to dispose of her own body as she
+chooses, as one may well believe, when we consider that half the women
+in the world go almost naked? Is it anything but a social chimera, as
+Diderot supposed, reminding us that this sentiment always gives way
+before sickness and before misery?
+
+Justice may be done to all these questions.
+
+An ingenious author has recently put forth the view that men are much
+more modest than women. He supports this contention by a great mass of
+surgical experiences; but, in order that his conclusions merit our
+attention, it would be necessary that for a certain time men were
+subjected to treatment by women surgeons.
+
+The opinion of Diderot is of still less weight.
+
+To deny the existence of modesty, because it disappears during those
+crises in which almost all human sentiments are annihilated, is as
+unreasonable as to deny that life exists because death sooner or later
+comes.
+
+Let us grant, then, that one sex has as much modesty as the other, and
+let us inquire in what modesty consists.
+
+Rousseau makes modesty the outcome of all those coquetries which
+females display before males. This opinion appears to us equally
+mistaken.
+
+The writers of the eighteenth century have doubtless rendered immense
+services to society; but their philosophy, based as it is upon
+sensualism, has never penetrated any deeper than the human epidermis.
+They have only considered the exterior universe; and so they have
+retarded, for some time, the moral development of man and the progress
+of science which will always draw its first principles from the
+Gospel, principles hereafter to be best understood by the fervent
+disciples of the Son of Man.
+
+The study of thought's mysteries, the discovery of those organs which
+belong to the human soul, the geometry of its forces, the phenomena of
+its active power, the appreciation of the faculty by which we seem to
+have an independent power of bodily movement, so as to transport
+ourselves whither we will and to see without the aid of bodily organs,
+--in a word the laws of thought's dynamic and those of its physical
+influence,--these things will fall to the lot of the next century, as
+their portion in the treasury of human sciences. And perhaps we, of
+the present time, are merely occupied in quarrying the enormous blocks
+which later on some mighty genius will employ in the building of a
+glorious edifice.
+
+Thus the error of Rousseau is simply the error of his age. He explains
+modesty by the relations of different human beings to each other
+instead of explaining it by the moral relations of each one with
+himself. Modesty is no more susceptible of analysis than conscience;
+and this perhaps is another way of saying that modesty is the
+conscience of the body; for while conscience directs our sentiments
+and the least movement of our thoughts towards the good, modesty
+presides over external movements. The actions which clash with our
+interests and thus disobey the laws of conscience wound us more than
+any other; and if they are repeated call forth our hatred. It is the
+same with acts which violate modesty in their relations to love, which
+is nothing but the expression of our whole sensibility. If extreme
+modesty is one of the conditions on which the reality of marriage is
+based, as we have tried to prove [See _Conjugal Catechism, Meditation
+IV._], it is evident that immodesty will destroy it. But this
+position, which would require long deductions for the acceptance of
+the physiologist, women generally apply, as it were, mechanically; for
+society, which exaggerates everything for the benefit of the exterior
+man, develops this sentiment of women from childhood, and around it
+are grouped almost every other sentiment. Moreover, the moment that
+this boundless veil, which takes away the natural brutality from the
+least gesture, is dragged down, woman disappears. Heart, mind, love,
+grace, all are in ruins. In a situation where the virginal innocence
+of a daughter of Tahiti is most brilliant, the European becomes
+detestable. In this lies the last weapon which a wife seizes, in order
+to escape from the sentiment which her husband still fosters towards
+her. She is powerful because she had made herself loathsome; and this
+woman, who would count it as the greatest misfortune that her lover
+should be permitted to see the slightest mystery of her toilette,
+is delighted to exhibit herself to her husband in the most
+disadvantageous situation that can possibly be imagined.
+
+It is by means of this rigorous system that she will try to banish you
+from the conjugal bed. Mrs. Shandy may be taken to mean us harm in
+bidding the father of Tristram wind up the clock; so long as your wife
+is not blamed for the pleasure she takes in interrupting you by the
+most imperative questions. Where there formerly was movement and life
+is now lethargy and death. An act of love becomes a transaction long
+discussed and almost, as it were, settled by notarial seal. But we
+have in another place shown that we never refuse to seize upon the
+comic element in a matrimonial crisis, although here we may be
+permitted to disdain the diversion which the muse of Verville and of
+Marshall have found in the treachery of feminine manoeuvres, the
+insulting audacity of their talk, amid the cold-blooded cynicism which
+they exhibit in certain situations. It is too sad to laugh at, and too
+funny to mourn over. When a woman resorts to such extreme measures,
+worlds at once separate her from her husband. Nevertheless, there are
+some women to whom Heaven has given the gift of being charming under
+all circumstances, who know how to put a certain witty and comic grace
+into these performances, and who have such smooth tongues, to use the
+expression of Sully, that they obtain forgiveness for their caprices
+and their mockeries, and never estrange the hearts of their husbands.
+
+What soul is so robust, what man so violently in love as to persist in
+his passion, after ten years of marriage, in presence of a wife who
+loves him no longer, who gives him proofs of this every moment, who
+repulses him, who deliberately shows herself bitter, caustic, sickly
+and capricious, and who will abjure her vows of elegance and
+cleanliness, rather than not see her husband turn away from her; in
+presence of a wife who will stake the success of her schemes upon the
+horror caused by her indecency?
+
+All this, my dear sir, is so much more horrible because--
+
+
+                                XCII.
+                        LOVERS IGNORE MODESTY.
+
+
+We have now arrived at the last infernal circle in the Divine Comedy
+of Marriage. We are at the very bottom of Hell. There is something
+inexpressibly terrible in the situation of a married woman at the
+moment when unlawful love turns her away from her duties as mother and
+wife. As Diderot has very well put it, "infidelity in a woman is like
+unbelief in a priest, the last extreme of human failure; for her it is
+the greatest of social crimes, since it implies in her every other
+crime besides, and indeed either a wife profanes her lawless love by
+continuing to belong to her husband, or she breaks all the ties which
+attach her to her family, by giving herself over altogether to her
+lover. She ought to choose between the two courses, for her sole
+possible excuse lies in the intensity of her love."
+
+She lives then between the claims of two obligations. It is a dilemma;
+she will work either the unhappiness of her lover, if he is sincere in
+his passion, or that of her husband, if she is still beloved by him.
+
+It is to this frightful dilemma of feminine life that all the strange
+inconsistencies of women's conduct is to be attributed. In this lies
+the origin of all their lies, all their perfidies; here is the secret
+of all their mysteries. It is something to make one shudder. Moreover,
+even as simply based upon cold-blooded calculations, the conduct of a
+woman who accepts the unhappiness which attends virtue and scorns the
+bliss which is bought by crime, is a hundred times more reasonable.
+Nevertheless, almost all women will risk suffering in the future and
+ages of anguish for the ecstasy of one half hour. If the human feeling
+of self-preservation, if the fear of death does not check them, how
+fruitless must be the laws which send them for two years to the
+Madelonnettes? O sublime infamy! And when one comes to think that he
+for whom these sacrifices are to be made is one of our brethren, a
+gentleman to whom we would not trust our fortune, if we had one, a man
+who buttons his coat just as all of us do, it is enough to make one
+burst into a roar of laughter so loud, that starting from the
+Luxembourg it would pass over the whole of Paris and startle an ass
+browsing in the pasture at Montmartre.
+
+It will perhaps appear extraordinary that in speaking of marriage we
+have touched upon so many subjects; but marriage is not only the whole
+of human life, it is the whole of two human lives. Now just as the
+addition of a figure to the drawing of a lottery multiplies the
+chances a hundredfold, so one single life united to another life
+multiplies by a startling progression the risks of human life, which
+are in any case so manifold.
+
+
+
+                          MEDITATION XXVII.
+
+                        OF THE LAST SYMPTOMS.
+
+The author of this book has met in the world so many people possessed
+by a fanatic passion for a knowledge of the mean time, for watches
+with a second hand, and for exactness in the details of their
+existence, that he has considered this Meditation too necessary for
+the tranquillity of a great number of husbands, to be omitted. It
+would have been cruel to leave men, who are possessed with the passion
+for learning the hour of the day, without a compass whereby to
+estimate the last variations in the matrimonial zodiac, and to
+calculate the precise moment when the sign of the Minotaur appears on
+the horizon. The knowledge of conjugal time would require a whole book
+for its exposition, so fine and delicate are the observations required
+by the task. The master admits that his extreme youth has not
+permitted him as yet to note and verify more than a few symptoms; but
+he feels a just pride, on his arrival at the end of his difficult
+enterprise, from the consciousness that he is leaving to his
+successors a new field of research; and that in a matter apparently so
+trite, not only was there much to be said, but also very many points
+are found remaining which may yet be brought into the clear light of
+observation. He therefore presents here without order or connection
+the rough outlines which he has so far been able to execute, in the
+hope that later he may have leisure to co-ordinate them and to arrange
+them in a complete system. If he has been so far kept back in the
+accomplishment of a task of supreme national importance, he believes,
+he may say, without incurring the charge of vanity, that he has here
+indicated the natural division of those symptoms. They are necessarily
+of two kinds: the unicorns and the bicorns. The unicorn Minotaur is
+the least mischievous. The two culprits confine themselves to a
+platonic love, in which their passion, at least, leaves no visible
+traces among posterity; while the bicorn Minotaur is unhappiness with
+all its fruits.
+
+We have marked with an asterisk the symptoms which seem to concern the
+latter kind.
+
+
+                       MINOTAURIC OBSERVATIONS.
+
+
+                                  I.
+
+*When, after remaining a long time aloof from her husband, a woman
+makes overtures of a very marked character in order to attract his
+love, she acts in accordance with the axiom of maritime law, which
+says: _The flag protects the cargo_.
+
+
+                                 II.
+
+A woman is at a ball, one of her friends comes up to her and says:
+
+"Your husband has much wit."
+
+"You find it so?"
+
+
+                                 III.
+
+Your wife discovers that it is time to send your boy to a boarding
+school, with whom, a little time ago, she was never going to part.
+
+
+                                 IV.
+
+*In Lord Abergavenny's suit for divorce, the _valet de chambre_
+deposed that "the countess had such a detestation of all that belonged
+to my lord that he had very often seen her burning the scraps of paper
+which he had touched in her room."
+
+
+                                  V.
+
+If an indolent woman becomes energetic, if a woman who formerly hated
+study learns a foreign language; in short, every appearance of a
+complete change in character is a decisive symptom.
+
+
+                                 VI.
+
+The woman who is happy in her affections does not go much into the
+world.
+
+
+                                 VII.
+
+The woman who has a lover becomes very indulgent in judging others.
+
+
+                                VIII.
+
+*A husband gives to his wife a hundred crowns a month for dress; and,
+taking everything into account, she spends at least five hundred
+francs without being a sou in debt; the husband is robbed every night
+with a high hand by escalade, but without burglarious breaking in.
+
+
+                                 IX.
+
+*A married couple slept in the same bed; madame was always sick. Now
+they sleep apart, she has no more headache, and her health becomes
+more brilliant than ever; an alarming symptom!
+
+
+                                  X.
+
+A woman who was a sloven suddenly develops extreme nicety in her
+attire. There is a Minotaur at hand!
+
+
+                                 XI.
+
+"Ah! my dear, I know no greater torment than not to be understood."
+
+"Yes, my dear, but when one is--"
+
+"Oh, that scarcely ever happens."
+
+"I agree with you that it very seldom does. Ah! it is great happiness,
+but there are not two people in the world who are able to understand
+you."
+
+
+                                 XII.
+
+*The day when a wife behaves nicely to her husband--all is over.
+
+
+                                XIII.
+
+I asked her: "Where have you been, Jeanne?"
+
+"I have been to your friend's to get your plate that you left there."
+
+"Ah, indeed! everything is still mine," I said. The following year I
+repeated the question under similar circumstances.
+
+"I have been to bring back our plate."
+
+"Well, well, part of the things are still mine," I said. But after
+that, when I questioned her, she spoke very differently.
+
+"You wish to know everything, like great people, and you have only
+three shirts. I went to get my plate from my friend's house, where I
+had stopped."
+
+"I see," I said, "nothing is left me."
+
+
+                                 XIV.
+
+Do not trust a woman who talks of her virtue.
+
+
+                                 XV.
+
+Some one said to the Duchess of Chaulnes, whose life was despaired of:
+
+"The Duke of Chaulnes would like to see you once more."
+
+"Is he there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Let him wait; he shall come in with the sacraments." This minotauric
+anecdote has been published by Chamfort, but we quote it here as
+typical.
+
+
+                                 XVI.
+
+*Some women try to persuade their husbands that they have duties to
+perform towards certain persons.
+
+"I am sure that you ought to pay a visit to such and such a man. . . .
+We cannot avoid asking such and such a man to dinner."
+
+
+                                XVII.
+
+"Come, my son, hold yourself straight: try to acquire good manners!
+Watch such and such a man! See how he walks! Notice the way in which
+he dresses."
+
+
+                                XVIII.
+
+When a woman utters the name of a man but twice a day, there is
+perhaps some uncertainty about her feelings toward him--but if thrice?
+--Oh! oh!
+
+
+                                 XIX.
+
+When a woman goes home with a man who is neither a lawyer nor a
+minister, to the door of his apartment, she is very imprudent.
+
+
+                                 XX.
+
+It is a terrible day when a husband fails to explain to himself the
+motive of some action of his wife.
+
+
+                                 XXI.
+
+*The woman who allows herself to be found out deserves her fate.
+
+
+
+What should be the conduct of a husband, when he recognizes a last
+symptom which leaves no doubt as to the infidelity of his wife? There
+are only two courses open; that of resignation or that of vengeance;
+there is no third course. If vengeance is decided upon, it should be
+complete.
+
+The husband who does not separate himself forever from his wife is a
+veritable simpleton. If a wife and husband think themselves fit for
+that union of friendship which exists between men, it is odious in the
+husband to make his wife feel his superiority over her.
+
+Here are some anecdotes, most of them as yet unpublished, which
+indicate pretty plainly, in my opinion, the different shades of
+conduct to be observed by a husband in like case.
+
+M. de Roquemont slept once a month in the chamber of his wife, and he
+used to say, as he went away:
+
+"I wash my hands of anything that may happen."
+
+There is something disgusting in that remark, and perhaps something
+profound in its suggestion of conjugal policy.
+
+A diplomat, when he saw his wife's lover enter, left his study and,
+going to his wife's chamber, said to the two:
+
+"I hope you will at least refrain from fighting."
+
+This was good humor.
+
+M. de Boufflers was asked what he would do if on returning after a
+long absence he found his wife with child?
+
+"I would order my night dress and slippers to be taken to her room."
+
+This was magnanimity.
+
+"Madame, if this man ill treats you when you are alone, it is your own
+fault; but I will not permit him to behave ill towards you in my
+presence, for this is to fail in politeness in me."
+
+This was nobility.
+
+The sublime is reached in this connection when the square cap of the
+judge is placed by the magistrate at the foot of the bed wherein the
+two culprits are asleep.
+
+There are some fine ways of taking vengeance. Mirabeau has admirably
+described in one of the books he wrote to make a living the mournful
+resignation of that Italian lady who was condemned by her husband to
+perish with him in the Maremma.
+
+
+                             LAST AXIOMS.
+
+
+                                XCIII.
+It is no act of vengeance to surprise a wife and her lover and to kill
+ them locked in each other's arms; it is a great favor to them both.
+
+
+                                XCIV.
+         A husband will be best avenged by his wife's lover.
+
+
+
+                          MEDITATION XXVIII.
+
+                          OF COMPENSATIONS.
+
+The marital catastrophe which a certain number of husbands cannot
+avoid, almost always forms the closing scene of the drama. At that
+point all around you is tranquil. Your resignation, if you are
+resigned, has the power of awakening keen remorse in the soul of your
+wife and of her lover; for their happiness teaches them the depth of
+the wound they have inflicted upon you. You are, you may be sure, a
+third element in all their pleasures. The principle of kindliness and
+goodness which lies at the foundation of the human soul, is not so
+easily repressed as people think; moreover the two people who are
+causing you tortures are precisely those for whom you wish the most
+good.
+
+In the conversations so sweetly familiar which link together the
+pleasures of love, and form in some way to lovers the caresses of
+thought, your wife often says to your rival:
+
+"Well, I assure you, Auguste, that in any case I should like to see my
+poor husband happy; for at bottom he is good; if he were not my
+husband, but were only my brother, there are so many things I would do
+to please him! He loves me, and--his friendship is irksome to me."
+
+"Yes, he is a fine fellow!"
+
+Then you become an object of respect to the celibate, who would yield
+to you all the indemnity possible for the wrong he has done you; but
+he is repelled by the disdainful pride which gives a tone to your
+whole conversation, and is stamped upon your face.
+
+So that actually, during the first moments of the Minotaur's arrival,
+a man is like an actor who feels awkward in a theatre where he is not
+accustomed to appear. It is very difficult to bear the affront with
+dignity; but though generosity is rare, a model husband is sometimes
+found to possess it.
+
+Eventually you are little by little won over by the charming way in
+which your wife makes herself agreeable to you. Madame assumes a tone
+of friendship which she never henceforth abandons. The pleasant
+atmosphere of your home is one of the chief compensations which
+renders the Minotaur less odious to a husband. But as it is natural to
+man to habituate himself to the hardest conditions, in spite of the
+sentiment of outraged nobility which nothing can change, you are
+gradually induced by a fascination whose power is constantly around
+you, to accept the little amenities of your position.
+
+Suppose that conjugal misfortune has fallen upon an epicure. He
+naturally demands the consolations which suit his taste. His sense of
+pleasure takes refuge in other gratifications, and forms other habits.
+You shape your life in accordance with the enjoyment of other
+sensations.
+
+One day, returning from your government office, after lingering for a
+long time before the rich and tasteful book shop of Chevet, hovering
+in suspense between the hundred francs of expense, and the joys of a
+Strasbourg _pate de fois gras_, you are struck dumb on finding this
+_pate_ proudly installed on the sideboard of your dining-room. Is this
+the vision offered by some gastronomic mirage? In this doubting mood
+you approach with firm step, for a _pate_ is a living creature, and
+seem to neigh as you scent afar off the truffles whose perfumes escape
+through the gilded enclosure. You stoop over it two distinct times;
+all the nerve centres of your palate have a soul; you taste the
+delights of a genuine feast, etc.; and during this ecstasy a feeling
+of remorse seizes upon you, and you go to your wife's room.
+
+"Really, my dear girl, we have not means which warrant our buying
+_pates_."
+
+"But it costs us nothing!"
+
+"Oh! ho!"
+
+"Yes, it is M. Achille's brother who sent it to him."
+
+You catch sight of M. Achille in a corner. The celibate greets you, he
+is radiant on seeing that you have accepted the _pate_. You look at
+your wife, who blushes; you stroke your beard a few times; and, as you
+express no thanks, the two lovers divine your acceptance of the
+compensation.
+
+A sudden change in the ministry takes place. A husband, who is
+Councillor of State, trembles for fear of being wiped from the roll,
+when the night before he had been made director-general; all the
+ministers are opposed to him and he has turned Constitutionalist.
+Foreseeing his disgrace he has betaken himself to Auteuil, in search
+of consolation from an old friend who quotes Horace and Tibullus to
+him. On returning home he sees the table laid as if to receive the
+most influential men of the assembly.
+
+"In truth, madame," he says with acrimony as he enters his wife's
+room, where she is finishing her toilette, "you seem to have lost your
+habitual tact. This is a nice time to be giving dinner parties! Twenty
+persons will soon learn--"
+
+"That you are director-general!" she cries, showing him a royal
+despatch.
+
+He is thunderstruck. He takes the letter, he turns it now one way, now
+another; he opens it. He sits down and spreads it out.
+
+"I well know," he says, "that justice would be rendered me under
+whatever ministers I served."
+
+"Yes, my dear! But M. Villeplaine has answered for you with his life,
+and his eminence the Cardinal de ----- of whom he is the--"
+
+"M. de Villeplaine?"
+
+This is such a munificent recompense, that the husband adds with the
+smile of a director-general:
+
+"Why, deuce take it, my dear, this is your doing!"
+
+"Ah! don't thank me for it; Adolphe did it from personal attachment to
+you."
+
+On a certain evening a poor husband was kept at home by a pouring
+rain, or tired, perhaps, of going to spend his evening in play, at the
+cafe, or in the world, and sick of all this he felt himself carried
+away by an impulse to follow his wife to the conjugal chamber. There
+he sank into an arm-chair and like any sultan awaited his coffee, as
+if he would say:
+
+"Well, after all, she is my wife!"
+
+The fair siren herself prepares the favorite draught; she strains it
+with special care, sweetens it, tastes it, and hands it to him; then,
+with a smile, she ventures like a submissive odalisque to make a joke,
+with a view to smoothing the wrinkles on the brow of her lord and
+master. Up to that moment he had thought his wife stupid; but on
+hearing a sally as witty as that which even you would cajole with,
+madame, he raises his head in the way peculiar to dogs who are hunting
+the hare.
+
+"Where the devil did she get that--but it's a random shot!" he says to
+himself.
+
+From the pinnacle of his own greatness he makes a piquant repartee.
+Madame retorts, the conversation becomes as lively as it is
+interesting, and this husband, a very superior man, is quite
+astonished to discover the wit of his wife, in other respects, an
+accomplished woman; the right word occurs to her with wonderful
+readiness; her tact and keenness enable her to meet an innuendo with
+charming originality. She is no longer the same woman. She notices the
+effect she produces upon her husband, and both to avenge herself for
+his neglect and to win his admiration for the lover from whom she has
+received, so to speak, the treasures of her intellect, she exerts
+herself, and becomes actually dazzling. The husband, better able than
+any one else to appreciate a species of compensation which may have
+some influence on his future, is led to think that the passions of
+women are really necessary to their mental culture.
+
+But how shall we treat those compensations which are most pleasing to
+husbands?
+
+Between the moment when the last symptoms appear, and the epoch of
+conjugal peace, which we will not stop to discuss, almost a dozen
+years have elapsed. During this interval and before the married couple
+sign the treaty which, by means of a sincere reconciliation of the
+feminine subject with her lawful lord, consecrates their little
+matrimonial restoration, in order to close in, as Louis XVIII said,
+the gulf of revolutions, it is seldom that the honest woman has but
+one lover. Anarchy has its inevitable phases. The stormy domination of
+tribunes is supplanted by that of the sword and the pen, for few loves
+are met with whose constancy outlives ten years. Therefore, since our
+calculations prove that an honest woman has merely paid strictly her
+physiological or diabolical dues by rendering but three men happy, it
+is probable that she has set foot in more than one region of love.
+Sometimes it may happen that in an interregnum of love too long
+protracted, the wife, whether from whim, temptation or the desire of
+novelty, undertakes to seduce her own husband.
+
+Imagine charming Mme. de T-----, the heroine of our Meditation of
+_Strategy_, saying with a fascinating smile:
+
+"I never before found you so agreeable!"
+
+By flattery after flattery, she tempts, she rouses curiosity, she
+soothes, she rouses in you the faintest spark of desire, she carries
+you away with her, and makes you proud of yourself. Then the right of
+indemnifications for her husband comes. On this occasion the wife
+confounds the imagination of her husband. Like cosmopolitan travelers
+she tells tales of all the countries which she had traversed. She
+intersperses her conversation with words borrowed from several
+languages. The passionate imagery of the Orient, the unique emphasis
+of Spanish phraseology, all meet and jostle one another. She opens out
+the treasures of her notebook with all the mysteries of coquetry, she
+is delightful, you never saw her thus before! With that remarkable art
+which women alone possess of making their own everything that has been
+told them, she blends all shades and variations of character so as to
+create a manner peculiarly her own. You received from the hands of
+Hymen only one woman, awkward and innocent; the celibate returns you a
+dozen of them. A joyful and rapturous husband sees his bed invaded by
+the giddy and wanton courtesans, of whom we spoke in the Meditation on
+_The First Symptoms_. These goddesses come in groups, they smile and
+sport under the graceful muslin curtains of the nuptial bed. The
+Phoenician girl flings to you her garlands, gently sways herself to
+and fro; the Chalcidian woman overcomes you by the witchery of her
+fine and snowy feet; the Unelmane comes and speaking the dialect of
+fair Ionia reveals the treasures of happiness unknown before, and in
+the study of which she makes you experience but a single sensation.
+
+Filled with regret at having disdained so many charms, and frequently
+tired of finding too often as much perfidiousness in priestesses of
+Venus as in honest women, the husband sometimes hurries on by his
+gallantry the hour of reconciliation desired of worthy people. The
+aftermath of bliss is gathered even with greater pleasure, perhaps,
+than the first crop. The Minotaur took your gold, he makes restoration
+in diamonds. And really now seems the time to state a fact of the
+utmost importance. A man may have a wife without possessing her. Like
+most husbands you had hitherto received nothing from yours, and the
+powerful intervention of the celibate was needed to make your union
+complete. How shall we give a name to this miracle, perhaps the only
+one wrought upon a patient during his absence? Alas, my brothers, we
+did not make Nature!
+
+But how many other compensations, not less precious, are there, by
+which the noble and generous soul of the young celibate may many a
+time purchase his pardon! I recollect witnessing one of the most
+magnificent acts of reparation which a lover should perform toward the
+husband he is minotaurizing.
+
+One warm evening in the summer of 1817, I saw entering one of the
+rooms of Tortoni one of the two hundred young men whom we confidently
+style our friends; he was in the full bloom of his modesty. A lovely
+woman, dressed in perfect taste, and who had consented to enter one of
+the cool parlors devoted to people of fashion, had stepped from an
+elegant carriage which had stopped on the boulevard, and was
+approaching on foot along the sidewalk. My young friend, the celibate,
+then appeared and offered his arm to his queen, while the husband
+followed holding by the hand two little boys, beautiful as cupids. The
+two lovers, more nimble than the father of the family, reached in
+advance of him one of the small rooms pointed out by the attendant. In
+crossing the vestibule the husband knocked up against some dandy, who
+claimed that he had been jostled. Then arose a quarrel, whose
+seriousness was betrayed by the sharp tones of the altercation. The
+moment the dandy was about to make a gesture unworthy of a
+self-respecting man, the celibate intervened, seized the dandy by the
+arm, caught him off his guard, overcame and threw him to the ground;
+it
+was magnificent. He had done the very thing the aggressor was
+meditating, as he exclaimed:
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+This "Monsieur" was one of the finest things I have ever heard. It was
+as if the young celibate had said: "This father of a family belongs to
+me; as I have carried off his honor, it is mine to defend him. I know
+my duty, I am his substitute and will fight for him." The young woman
+behaved superbly! Pale, and bewildered, she took the arm of her
+husband, who continued his objurgations; without a word she led him
+away to the carriage, together with her children. She was one of those
+women of the aristocracy, who also know how to retain their dignity
+and self-control in the midst of violent emotions.
+
+"O Monsieur Adolphe!" cried the young lady as she saw her friend with
+an air of gayety take his seat in the carriage.
+
+"It is nothing, madame, he is one of my friends; we have shaken
+hands."
+
+Nevertheless, the next morning, the courageous celibate received a
+sword thrust which nearly proved fatal, and confined him six months to
+his bed. The attentions of the married couple were lavished upon him.
+What numerous compensations do we see here! Some years afterwards, an
+old uncle of the husband, whose opinions did not fit in with those of
+the young friend of the house, and who nursed a grudge against him on
+account of some political discussion, undertook to have him driven
+from the house. The old fellow went so far as to tell his nephew to
+choose between being his heir and sending away the presumptuous
+celibate. It was then that the worthy stockbroker said to his uncle:
+
+"Ah, you must never think, uncle, that you will succeed in making me
+ungrateful! But if I tell him to do so this young man will let himself
+be killed for you. He has saved my credit, he would go through fire
+and water for me, he has relieved me of my wife, he has brought me
+clients, he has procured for me almost all the business in the Villele
+loans--I owe my life to him, he is the father of my children; I can
+never forget all this."
+
+In this case the compensations may be looked upon as complete; but
+unfortunately there are compensations of all kinds. There are those
+which must be considered negative, deluding, and those which are both
+in one.
+
+I knew a husband of advanced years who was possessed by the demon of
+gambling. Almost every evening his wife's lover came and played with
+him. The celibate gave him a liberal share of the pleasures which come
+from games of hazard, and knew how to lose to him a certain number of
+francs every month; but madame used to give them to him, and the
+compensation was a deluding one.
+
+You are a peer of France, and you have no offspring but daughters.
+Your wife is brought to bed of a boy! The compensation is negative.
+
+The child who is to save your name from oblivion is like his mother.
+The duchess persuades you that the child is yours. The negative
+compensation becomes deluding.
+
+Here is one of the most charming compensations known. One morning the
+Prince de Ligne meets his wife's lover and rushes up to him, laughing
+wildly:
+
+"My friend," he says to him, "I cuckolded you, last night!"
+
+If some husbands attain to conjugal peace by quiet methods, and carry
+so gracefully the imaginary ensigns of matrimonial pre-eminence, their
+philosophy is doubtless based on the _comfortabilisme_ of accepting
+certain compensations, a _comfortabilisme_ which indifferent men
+cannot imagine. As years roll by the married couple reach the last
+stage in that artificial existence to which their union has condemned
+them.
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XXIX.
+
+                          OF CONJUGAL PEACE.
+
+My imagination has followed marriage through all the phases of its
+fantastic life in so fraternal a spirit, that I seem to have grown old
+with the house I made my home so early in life at the commencement of
+this work.
+
+After experiencing in thought the ardor of man's first passion; and
+outlining, in however imperfect a way, the principal incidents of
+married life; after struggling against so many wives that did not
+belong to me, exhausting myself in conflict with so many personages
+called up from nothingness, and joining so many battles, I feel an
+intellectual lassitude, which makes me see everything in life hang, as
+it were, in mournful crape. I seem to have a catarrh, to look at
+everything through green spectacles, I feel as if my hands trembled,
+as if I must needs employ the second half of my existence and of my
+book in apologizing for the follies of the first half.
+
+I see myself surrounded by tall children of whom I am not the father,
+and seated beside a wife I never married. I think I can feel wrinkles
+furrowing my brow. The fire before which I am placed crackles, as if
+in derision, the room is ancient in its furniture; I shudder with
+sudden fright as I lay my hand upon my heart, and ask myself: "Is
+that, too, withered?"
+
+I am like an old attorney, unswayed by any sentiment whatever. I never
+accept any statement unless it be confirmed, according to the poetic
+maxim of Lord Byron, by the testimony of at least two false witnesses.
+No face can delude me. I am melancholy and overcast with gloom. I know
+the world and it has no more illusions for me. My closest friends have
+proved traitors. My wife and myself exchange glances of profound
+meaning and the slightest word either of us utters is a dagger which
+pierces the heart of the other through and through. I stagnate in a
+dreary calm. This then is the tranquillity of old age! The old man
+possesses in himself the cemetery which shall soon possess him. He is
+growing accustomed to the chill of the tomb. Man, according to
+philosophers, dies in detail; at the same time he may be said even to
+cheat death; for that which his withered hand has laid hold upon, can
+it be called life?
+
+Oh, to die young and throbbing with life! 'Tis a destiny enviable
+indeed! For is not this, as a delightful poet has said, "to take away
+with one all one's illusions, to be buried like an Eastern king, with
+all one's jewels and treasures, with all that makes the fortune of
+humanity!"
+
+How many thank-offerings ought we to make to the kind and beneficent
+spirit that breathes in all things here below! Indeed, the care which
+nature takes to strip us piece by piece of our raiment, to unclothe
+the soul by enfeebling gradually our hearing, sight, and sense of
+touch, in making slower the circulation of our blood, and congealing
+our humors so as to make us as insensible to the approach of death as
+we were to the beginnings of life, this maternal care which she
+lavishes on our frail tabernacle of clay, she also exhibits in regard
+to the emotions of man, and to the double existence which is created
+by conjugal love. She first sends us Confidence, which with extended
+hand and open heart says to us: "Behold, I am thine forever!"
+Lukewarmness follows, walking with languid tread, turning aside her
+blonde face with a yawn, like a young widow obliged to listen to the
+minister of state who is ready to sign for her a pension warrant. Then
+Indifference comes; she stretches herself on the divan, taking no care
+to draw down the skirts of her robe which Desire but now lifted so
+chastely and so eagerly. She casts a glance upon the nuptial bed, with
+modesty and without shamelessness; and, if she longs for anything, it
+is for the green fruit that calls up again to life the dulled papillae
+with which her blase palate is bestrewn. Finally the philosophical
+Experience of Life presents herself, with careworn and disdainful
+brow, pointing with her finger to the results, and not the causes of
+life's incidents; to the tranquil victory, not to the tempestuous
+combat. She reckons up the arrearages, with farmers, and calculates
+the dowry of a child. She materializes everything. By a touch of her
+wand, life becomes solid and springless; of yore, all was fluid, now
+it is crystallized into rock. Delight no longer exists for our hearts,
+it has received its sentence, 'twas but mere sensation, a passing
+paroxysm. What the soul desires to-day is a condition of fixity; and
+happiness alone is permanent, and consists in absolute tranquillity,
+in the regularity with which eating and sleeping succeed each other,
+and the sluggish organs perform their functions.
+
+"This is horrible!" I cried; "I am young and full of life! Perish all
+the books in the world rather than my illusions should perish!"
+
+I left my laboratory and plunged into the whirl of Paris. As I saw the
+fairest faces glide by before me, I felt that I was not old. The first
+young woman who appeared before me, lovely in face and form and
+dressed to perfection, with one glance of fire made all the sorcery
+whose spells I had voluntarily submitted to vanish into thin air.
+Scarcely had I walked three steps in the Tuileries gardens, the place
+which I had chosen as my destination, before I saw the prototype of
+the matrimonial situation which has last been described in this book.
+Had I desired to characterize, to idealize, to personify marriage, as
+I conceived it to be, it would have been impossible for the Creator
+himself to have produced so complete a symbol of it as I then saw
+before me.
+
+Imagine a woman of fifty, dressed in a jacket of reddish brown merino,
+holding in her left hand a green cord, which was tied to the collar of
+an English terrier, and with her right arm linked with that of a man
+in knee-breeches and silk stockings, whose hat had its brim
+whimsically turned up, while snow-white tufts of hair like pigeon
+plumes rose at its sides. A slender queue, thin as a quill, tossed
+about on the back of his sallow neck, which was thick, as far as it
+could be seen above the turned down collar of a threadbare coat. This
+couple assumed the stately tread of an ambassador; and the husband,
+who was at least seventy, stopped complaisantly every time the terrier
+began to gambol. I hastened to pass this living impersonation of my
+Meditation, and was surprised to the last degree to recognize the
+Marquis de T-----, friend of the Comte de Noce, who had owed me for a
+long time the end of the interrupted story which I related in the
+_Theory of the Bed_. [See Meditation XVII.]
+
+"I have the honor to present to you the Marquise de T-----," he said
+to me.
+
+I made a low bow to a lady whose face was pale and wrinkled; her
+forehead was surmounted by a toupee, whose flattened ringlets, ranged
+around it, deceived no one, but only emphasized, instead of
+concealing, the wrinkles by which it was deeply furrowed. The lady was
+slightly roughed, and had the appearance of an old country actress.
+
+"I do not see, sir, what you can say against a marriage such as ours,"
+said the old man to me.
+
+"The laws of Rome forefend!" I cried, laughing.
+
+The marchioness gave me a look filled with inquietude as well as
+disapprobation, which seemed to say, "Is it possible that at my age I
+have become but a concubine?"
+
+We sat down upon a bench, in the gloomy clump of trees planted at the
+corner of the high terrace which commands La Place Louis XV, on the
+side of the Garde-Meuble. Autumn had already begun to strip the trees
+of their foliage, and was scattering before our eyes the yellow leaves
+of his garland; but the sun nevertheless filled the air with grateful
+warmth.
+
+"Well, is your work finished?" asked the old man, in the unctuous
+tones peculiar to men of the ancient aristocracy.
+
+And with these words he gave a sardonic smile, as if for commentary.
+
+"Very nearly, sir," I replied. "I have come to the philosophic
+situation, which you appear to have reached, but I confess that I--"
+
+"You are searching for ideas?" he added--finishing for me a sentence,
+which I confess I did not know how to end.
+
+"Well," he continued, "you may boldly assume, that on arriving at the
+winter of his life, a man--a man who thinks, I mean--ends by denying
+that love has any existence, in the wild form with which our illusions
+invested it!"
+
+"What! would you deny the existence of love on the day after that of
+marriage?"
+
+"In the first place, the day after would be the very reason; but my
+marriage was a commercial speculation," replied he, stooping to speak
+into my ear. "I have thereby purchased the care, the attention, the
+services which I need; and I am certain to obtain all the
+consideration my age demands; for I have willed all my property to my
+nephew, and as my wife will be rich only during my life, you can
+imagine how--"
+
+I turned on the old marquis a look so piercing that he wrung my hand
+and said: "You seem to have a good heart, for nothing is certain in
+this life--"
+
+"Well, you may be sure that I have arranged a pleasant surprise for
+her in my will," he replied, gayly.
+
+"Come here, Joseph," cried the marchioness, approaching a servant who
+carried an overcoat lined with silk. "The marquis is probably feeling
+the cold."
+
+The old marquis put on his overcoat, buttoned it up, and taking my
+arm, led me to the sunny side of the terrace.
+
+"In your work," he continued, "you have doubtless spoken of the love
+of a young man. Well, if you wish to act up to the scope which you
+give to your work--in the word ec--elec--"
+
+"Eclectic," I said, smiling, seeing he could not remember this
+philosophic term.
+
+"I know the word well!" he replied. "If then you wish to keep your vow
+of eclecticism, you should be willing to express certain virile ideas
+on the subject of love which I will communicate to you, and I will not
+grudge you the benefit of them, if benefit there be; I wish to
+bequeath my property to you, but this will be all that you will get of
+it."
+
+"There is no money fortune which is worth as much as a fortune of
+ideas if they be valuable ideas! I shall, therefore, listen to you
+with a grateful mind."
+
+"There is no such thing as love," pursued the old man, fixing his gaze
+upon me. "It is not even a sentiment, it is an unhappy necessity,
+which is midway between the needs of the body and those of the soul.
+But siding for a moment with your youthful thoughts, let us try to
+reason upon this social malady. I suppose that you can only conceive
+of love as either a need or a sentiment."
+
+I made a sign of assent.
+
+"Considered as a need," said the old man, "love makes itself felt last
+of all our needs, and is the first to cease. We are inclined to love
+in our twentieth year, to speak in round numbers, and we cease to do
+so at fifty. During these thirty years, how often would the need be
+felt, if it were not for the provocation of city manners, and the
+modern custom of living in the presence of not one woman, but of women
+in general? What is our debt to the perpetuation of the race? It
+probably consists in producing as many children as we have breasts--so
+that if one dies the other may live. If these two children were always
+faithfully produced, what would become of nations? Thirty millions of
+people would constitute a population too great for France, for the
+soil is not sufficient to guarantee more than ten millions against
+misery and hunger. Remember that China is reduced to the expedient of
+throwing its children into the water, according to the accounts of
+travelers. Now this production of two children is really the whole of
+marriage. The superfluous pleasures of marriage are not only
+profligate, but involve an immense loss to the man, as I will now
+demonstrate. Compare then with this poverty of result, and shortness
+of duration, the daily and perpetual urgency of other needs of our
+existence. Nature reminds us every hour of our real needs; and, on the
+other hand, refuses absolutely to grant the excess which our
+imagination sometimes craves in love. It is, therefore, the last of
+our needs, and the only one which may be forgotten without causing any
+disturbance in the economy of the body. Love is a social luxury like
+lace and diamonds. But if we analyze it as a sentiment, we find two
+distinct elements in it; namely, pleasure and passion. Now analyze
+pleasure. Human affections rest upon two foundations, attraction and
+repulsion. Attraction is a universal feeling for those things which
+flatter our instinct of self-preservation; repulsion is the exercise
+of the same instinct when it tells us that something is near which
+threatens it with injury. Everything which profoundly moves our
+organization gives us a deeper sense of our existence; such a thing is
+pleasure. It is contracted of desire, of effort, and the joy of
+possessing something or other. Pleasure is a unique element in life,
+and our passions are nothing but modifications, more or less keen, of
+pleasure; moreover, familiarity with one pleasure almost always
+precludes the enjoyment of all others. Now, love is the least keen and
+the least durable of our pleasures. In what would you say the pleasure
+of love consists? Does it lie in the beauty of the beloved? In one
+evening you may obtain for money the loveliest odalisques; but at the
+end of a month you will in this way have burnt out all your sentiment
+for all time. Would you love a women because she is well dressed,
+elegant, rich, keeps a carriage, has commercial credit? Do not call
+this love, for it is vanity, avarice, egotism. Do you love her because
+she is intellectual? You are in that case merely obeying the dictates
+of literary sentiment."
+
+"But," I said, "love only reveals its pleasures to those who mingle in
+one their thoughts, their fortunes, their sentiments, their souls,
+their lives--"
+
+"Oh dear, dear!" cried the old man, in a jeering tone. "Can you show
+me five men in any nation who have sacrificed anything for a woman? I
+do not say their life, for that is a slight thing,--the price of a
+human life under Napoleon was never more than twenty thousand francs;
+and there are in France to-day two hundred and fifty thousand brave
+men who would give theirs for two inches of red ribbon; while seven
+men have sacrificed for a woman ten millions on which they might have
+slept in solitude for a whole night. Dubreuil and Phmeja are still
+rarer than is the love of Dupris and Bolingbroke. These sentiments
+proceed from an unknown cause. But you have brought me thus to
+consider love as a passion. Yes, indeed, it is the last of them all
+and the most contemptible. It promises everything, and fulfils
+nothing. It comes, like love, as a need, the last, and dies away the
+first. Ah, talk to me of revenge, hatred, avarice, of gaming, of
+ambition, of fanaticism. These passions have something virile in them;
+these sentiments are imperishable; they make sacrifices every day,
+such as love only makes by fits and starts. But," he went on, "suppose
+you abjure love. At first there will be no disquietudes, no anxieties,
+no worry, none of those little vexations that waste human life. A man
+lives happy and tranquil; in his social relations he becomes
+infinitely more powerful and influential. This divorce from the thing
+called love is the primary secret of power in all men who control
+large bodies of men; but this is a mere trifle. Ah! if you knew with
+what magic influence a man is endowed, what wealth of intellectual
+force, what longevity in physical strength he enjoys, when detaching
+himself from every species of human passion he spends all his energy
+to the profit of his soul! If you could enjoy for two minutes the
+riches which God dispenses to the enlightened men who consider love as
+merely a passing need which it is sufficient to satisfy for six months
+in their twentieth year; to the men who, scorning the luxurious and
+surfeiting beefsteaks of Normandy, feed on the roots which God has
+given in abundance, and take their repose on a bed of withered leaves,
+like the recluses of the Thebaid!--ah! you would not keep on three
+seconds the wool of fifteen merinos which covers you; you would fling
+away your childish switch, and go to live in the heaven of heavens!
+There you would find the love you sought in vain amid the swine of
+earth; there you would hear a concert of somewhat different melody
+from that of M. Rossini, voices more faultless than that of Malibran.
+But I am speaking as a blind man might, and repeating hearsays. If I
+had not visited Germany about the year 1791, I should know nothing of
+all this. Yes!--man has a vocation for the infinite. There dwells
+within him an instinct that calls him to God. God is all, gives all,
+brings oblivion on all, and thought is the thread which he has given
+us as a clue to communication with himself!"
+
+He suddenly stopped, and fixed his eyes upon the heavens.
+
+"The poor fellow has lost his wits!" I thought to myself.
+
+"Sir," I said to him, "it would be pushing my devotion to eclectic
+philosophy too far to insert your ideas in my book; they would destroy
+it. Everything in it is based on love, platonic and sensual. God
+forbid that I should end my book by such social blasphemies! I would
+rather try to return by some pantagruelian subtlety to my herd of
+celibates and honest women, with many an attempt to discover some
+social utility in their passions and follies. Oh! if conjugal peace
+leads us to arguments so disillusionizing and so gloomy as these, I
+know a great many husbands who would prefer war to peace."
+
+"At any rate, young man," the old marquis cried, "I shall never have
+to reproach myself with refusing to give true directions to a traveler
+who had lost his way."
+
+"Adieu, thou old carcase!" I said to myself; "adieu, thou walking
+marriage! Adieu, thou stick of a burnt-out fire-work! Adieu, thou
+machine! Although I have given thee from time to time some glimpses of
+people dear to me, old family portraits,--back with you to the picture
+dealer's shop, to Madame de T-----, and all the rest of them; take
+your place round the bier with undertaker's mutes, for all I care!"
+
+
+
+                           MEDITATION XXX.
+
+                             CONCLUSION.
+
+A recluse, who was credited with the gift of second sight, having
+commanded the children of Israel to follow him to a mountain top in
+order to hear the revelation of certain mysteries, saw that he was
+accompanied by a crowd which took up so much room on the road that,
+prophet as he was, his _amour-propre_ was vastly tickled.
+
+But as the mountain was a considerable distance off, it happened that
+at the first halt, an artisan remembered that he had to deliver a new
+pair of slippers to a duke and peer, a publican fell to thinking how
+he had some specie to negotiate, and off they went.
+
+A little further on two lovers lingered under the olive trees and
+forgot the discourse of the prophet; for they thought that the
+promised land was the spot where they stood, and the divine word was
+heard when they talked to one another.
+
+The fat people, loaded with punches a la Sancho, had been wiping their
+foreheads with their handkerchiefs, for the last quarter of an hour,
+and began to grow thirsty, and therefore halted beside a clear spring.
+
+Certain retired soldiers complained of the corns which tortured them,
+and spoke of Austerlitz, and of their tight boots.
+
+At the second halt, certain men of the world whispered together:
+
+"But this prophet is a fool."
+
+"Have you ever heard him?"
+
+"I? I came from sheer curiosity."
+
+"And I because I saw the fellow had a large following." (The last man
+who spoke was a fashionable.)
+
+"He is a mere charlatan."
+
+The prophet kept marching on. But when he reached the plateau, from
+which a wide horizon spread before him, he turned back, and saw no one
+but a poor Israelite, to whom he might have said as the Prince de
+Ligne to the wretched little bandy-legged drummer boy, whom he found
+on the spot where he expected to see a whole garrison awaiting him:
+"Well, my readers, it seems that you have dwindled down to one."
+
+Thou man of God who has followed me so far--I hope that a short
+recapitulation will not terrify thee, and I have traveled on under the
+impression that thou, like me, hast kept saying to thyself, "Where the
+deuce are we going?"
+
+Well, well, this is the place and the time to ask you, respected
+reader, what your opinion is with regard to the renewal of the tobacco
+monopoly, and what you think of the exorbitant taxes on wines, on the
+right to carry firearms, on gaming, on lotteries, on playing cards, on
+brandy, on soap, cotton, silks, etc.
+
+"I think that since all these duties make up one-third of the public
+revenues, we should be seriously embarrassed if--"
+
+So that, my excellent model husband, if no one got drunk, or gambled,
+or smoked, or hunted, in a word if we had neither vices, passions, nor
+maladies in France, the State would be within an ace of bankruptcy;
+for it seems that the capital of our national income consists of
+popular corruptions, as our commerce is kept alive by national luxury.
+If you cared to look a little closer into the matter you would see
+that all taxes are based upon some moral malady. As a matter of fact,
+if we continue this philosophical scrutiny it will appear that the
+gendarmes would want horses and leather breeches, if every one kept
+the peace, and if there were neither foes nor idle people in the
+world. Therefore impose virtue on mankind! Well, I consider that there
+are more parallels than people think between my honest woman and the
+budget, and I will undertake to prove this by a short essay on
+statistics, if you will permit me to finish my book on the same lines
+as those on which I have begun it. Will you grant that a lover must
+put on more clean shirts than are worn by either a husband, or a
+celibate unattached? This to me seems beyond doubt. The difference
+between a husband and a lover is seen even in the appearance of their
+toilette. The one is careless, he is unshaved, and the other never
+appears excepting in full dress. Sterne has pleasantly remarked that
+the account book of the laundress was the most authentic record he
+knew, as to the life of Tristram Shandy; and that it was easy to guess
+from the number of shirts he wore what passages of his book had cost
+him most. Well, with regard to lovers the account book of their
+laundresses is the most faithful historic record as well as the most
+impartial account of their various amours. And really a prodigious
+quantity of tippets, cravats, dresses, which are absolutely necessary
+to coquetry, is consumed in the course of an amour. A wonderful
+prestige is gained by white stockings, the lustre of a collar, or a
+shirt-waist, the artistically arranged folds of a man's shirt, or the
+taste of his necktie or his collar. This will explain the passages in
+which I said of the honest woman [Meditation II], "She spends her life
+in having her dresses starched." I have sought information on this
+point from a lady in order to learn accurately at what sum was to be
+estimated the tax thus imposed by love, and after fixing it at one
+hundred francs per annum for a woman, I recollect what she said with
+great good humor: "It depends on the character of the man, for some
+are so much more particular than others." Nevertheless, after a very
+profound discussion, in which I settled upon the sum for the
+celibates, and she for her sex, it was agreed that, one thing with
+another, since the two lovers belong to the social sphere which this
+work concerns, they ought to spend between them, in the matter
+referred to, one hundred and fifty francs more than in time of peace.
+
+By a like treaty, friendly in character and long discussed, we
+arranged that there should be a collective difference of four hundred
+francs between the expenditure for all parts of the dress on a war
+footing, and for that on a peace footing. This provision was
+considered very paltry by all the powers, masculine or feminine, whom
+we consulted. The light thrown upon these delicate matters by the
+contributions of certain persons suggested to us the idea of gathering
+together certain savants at a dinner party, and taking their wise
+counsels for our guidance in these important investigations. The
+gathering took place. It was with glass in hand and after listening to
+many brilliant speeches that I received for the following chapters on
+the budget of love, a sort of legislative sanction. The sum of one
+hundred francs was allowed for porters and carriages. Fifty crowns
+seemed very reasonable for the little patties that people eat on a
+walk, for bouquets of violets and theatre tickets. The sum of two
+hundred francs was considered necessary for the extra expense of
+dainties and dinners at restaurants. It was during this discussion
+that a young cavalryman, who had been made almost tipsy by the
+champagne, was called to order for comparing lovers to distilling
+machines. But the chapter that gave occasion for the most violent
+discussion, and the consideration of which was adjourned for several
+weeks, when a report was made, was that concerning presents. At the
+last session, the refined Madame de D----- was the first speaker; and
+in a graceful address, which testified to the nobility of her
+sentiments, she set out to demonstrate that most of the time the gifts
+of love had no intrinsic value. The author replied that all lovers had
+their portraits taken. A lady objected that a portrait was invested
+capital, and care should always be taken to recover it for a second
+investment. But suddenly a gentleman of Provence rose to deliver a
+philippic against women. He spoke of the greediness which most women
+in love exhibited for furs, satins, silks, jewels and furniture; but a
+lady interrupted him by asking if Madame d'O-----y, his intimate
+friend, had not already paid his debts twice over.
+
+"You are mistaken, madame," said the Provencal, "it was her husband."
+
+"The speaker is called to order," cried the president, "and condemned
+to dine the whole party, for having used the word _husband_."
+
+The Provencal was completely refuted by a lady who undertook to prove
+that women show much more self-sacrifice in love than men; that lovers
+cost very dear, and that the honest woman may consider herself very
+fortunate if she gets off with spending on them two thousand francs
+for a single year. The discussion was in danger of degenerating into
+an exchange of personalities, when a division was called for. The
+conclusions of the committee were adopted by vote. The conclusions
+were, in substance, that the amount for presents between lovers during
+the year should be reckoned at five hundred francs, but that in this
+computation should be included: (1) the expense of expeditions into
+the country; (2) the pharmaceutical expenses, occasioned by the colds
+caught from walking in the damp pathways of parks, and in leaving the
+theatre, which expenses are veritable presents; (3) the carrying of
+letters, and law expenses; (4) journeys, and expenses whose items are
+forgotten, without counting the follies committed by the spenders;
+inasmuch as, according to the investigations of the committee, it had
+been proved that most of a man's extravagant expenditure profited the
+opera girls, rather than the married women. The conclusion arrived at
+from this pecuniary calculation was that, in one way or another, a
+passion costs nearly fifteen hundred francs a year, which were
+required to meet the expense borne more unequally by lovers, but which
+would not have occurred, but for their attachment. There was also a
+sort of unanimity in the opinion of the council that this was the
+lowest annual figure which would cover the cost of a passion. Now, my
+dear sir, since we have proved, by the statistics of our conjugal
+calculations [See Meditations I, II, and III.] and proved
+irrefragably, that there exists a floating total of at least fifteen
+hundred thousand unlawful passions, it follows:
+
+That the criminal conversations of a third among the French population
+contribute a sum of nearly three thousand millions to that vast
+circulation of money, the true blood of society, of which the budget
+is the heart;
+
+That the honest woman not only gives life to the children of the
+peerage, but also to its financial funds;
+
+That manufacturers owe their prosperity to this _systolic_ movement;
+
+That the honest woman is a being essentially _budgetative_, and active
+as a consumer;
+
+That the least decline in public love would involve incalculable
+miseries to the treasury, and to men of invested fortunes;
+
+That a husband has at least a third of his fortune invested in the
+inconstancy of his wife, etc.
+
+I am well aware that you are going to open your mouth and talk to me
+about manners, politics, good and evil. But, my dear victim of the
+Minotaur, is not happiness the object which all societies should set
+before them? Is it not this axiom that makes these wretched kings give
+themselves so much trouble about their people? Well, the honest woman
+has not, like them, thrones, gendarmes and tribunals; she has only a
+bed to offer; but if our four hundred thousand women can, by this
+ingenious machine, make a million celibates happy, do not they attain
+in a mysterious manner, and without making any fuss, the end aimed at
+by a government, namely, the end of giving the largest possible amount
+of happiness to the mass of mankind?
+
+"Yes, but the annoyances, the children, the troubles--"
+
+Ah, you must permit me to proffer the consolatory thought with which
+one of our wittiest caricaturists closes his satiric observations:
+"Man is not perfect!" It is sufficient, therefore, that our
+institutions have no more disadvantages than advantages in order to be
+reckoned excellent; for the human race is not placed, socially
+speaking, between the good and the bad, but between the bad and the
+worse. Now if the work, which we are at present on the point of
+concluding, has had for its object the diminution of the worse, as it
+is found in matrimonial institutions, in laying bare the errors and
+absurdities due to our manners and our prejudices, we shall certainly
+have won one of the fairest titles that can be put forth by a man to a
+place among the benefactors of humanity. Has not the author made it
+his aim, by advising husbands, to make women more self-restrained and
+consequently to impart more violence to passions, more money to the
+treasury, more life to commerce and agriculture? Thanks to this last
+Meditation he can flatter himself that he has strictly kept the vow of
+eclecticism, which he made in projecting the work, and he hopes he has
+marshaled all details of the case, and yet like an attorney-general
+refrained from expressing his personal opinion. And really what do you
+want with an axiom in the present matter? Do you wish that this book
+should be a mere development of the last opinion held by Tronchet, who
+in his closing days thought that the law of marriage had been drawn up
+less in the interest of husbands than of children? I also wish it very
+much. Would you rather desire that this book should serve as proof to
+the peroration of the Capuchin, who preached before Anne of Austria,
+and when he saw the queen and her ladies overwhelmed by his triumphant
+arguments against their frailty, said as he came down from the pulpit
+of truth, "Now you are all honorable women, and it is we who
+unfortunately are sons of Samaritan women"? I have no objection to
+that either. You may draw what conclusion you please; for I think it
+is very difficult to put forth two contrary opinions, without both of
+them containing some grains of truth. But the book has not been
+written either for or against marriage; all I have thought you needed
+was an exact description of it. If an examination of the machine shall
+lead us to make one wheel of it more perfect; if by scouring away some
+rust we have given more elastic movement to its mechanism; then give
+his wage to the workman. If the author has had the impertinence to
+utter truths too harsh for you, if he has too often spoken of rare and
+exceptional facts as universal, if he has omitted the commonplaces
+which have been employed from time immemorial to offer women the
+incense of flattery, oh, let him be crucified! But do not impute to
+him any motive of hostility to the institution itself; he is concerned
+merely for men and women. He knows that from the moment marriage
+ceases to defeat the purpose of marriage, it is unassailable; and,
+after all, if there do arise serious complaints against this
+institution, it is perhaps because man has no memory excepting for his
+disasters, that he accuses his wife, as he accuses his life, for
+marriage is but a life within a life. Yet people whose habit it is to
+take their opinions from newspapers would perhaps despise a book in
+which they see the mania of eclecticism pushed too far; for then they
+absolutely demand something in the shape of a peroration, it is not
+hard to find one for them. And since the words of Napoleon served to
+start this book, why should it not end as it began? Before the whole
+Council of State the First Consul pronounced the following startling
+phrase, in which he at the same time eulogized and satirized marriage,
+and summed up the contents of this book:
+
+"If a man never grew old, I would never wish him to have a wife!"
+
+
+
+                             POSTSCRIPT.
+
+"And so you are going to be married?" asked the duchess of the author
+who had read his manuscript to her.
+
+She was one of those ladies to whom the author has already paid his
+respects in the introduction of this work.
+
+"Certainly, madame," I replied. "To meet a woman who has courage
+enough to become mine, would satisfy the wildest of my hopes."
+
+"Is this resignation or infatuation?"
+
+"That is my affair."
+
+"Well, sir, as you are doctor of conjugal arts and sciences, allow me
+to tell you a little Oriental fable, that I read in a certain sheet,
+which is published annually in the form of an almanac. At the
+beginning of the Empire ladies used to play at a game in which no one
+accepted a present from his or her partner in the game, without saying
+the word, _Diadeste_. A game lasted, as you may well suppose, during a
+week, and the point was to catch some one receiving some trifle or
+other without pronouncing the sacramental word."
+
+"Even a kiss?"
+
+"Oh, I have won the _Diadeste_ twenty times in that way," she
+laughingly replied.
+
+"It was, I believe, from the playing of this game, whose origin is
+Arabian or Chinese, that my apologue takes its point. But if I tell
+you," she went on, putting her finger to her nose, with a charming air
+of coquetry, "let me contribute it as a finale to your work."
+
+"This would indeed enrich me. You have done me so many favors already,
+that I cannot repay--"
+
+She smiled slyly, and replied as follows:
+
+
+
+A philosopher had compiled a full account of all the tricks that women
+could possibly play, and in order to verify it, he always carried it
+about with him. One day he found himself in the course of his travels
+near an encampment of Arabs. A young woman, who had seated herself
+under the shade of a palm tree, rose on his approach. She kindly asked
+him to rest himself in her tent, and he could not refuse. Her husband
+was then absent. Scarcely had the traveler seated himself on a soft
+rug, when the graceful hostess offered him fresh dates, and a cup of
+milk; he could not help observing the rare beauty of her hands as she
+did so. But, in order to distract his mind from the sensations roused
+in him by the fair young Arabian girl, whose charms were most
+formidable, the sage took his book, and began to read.
+
+The seductive creature piqued by this slight said to him in a
+melodious voice:
+
+"That book must be very interesting since it seems to be the sole
+object worthy of your attention. Would it be taking a liberty to ask
+what science it treats of?"
+
+The philosopher kept his eyes lowered as he replied:
+
+"The subject of this book is beyond the comprehension of ladies."
+
+This rebuff excited more than ever the curiosity of the young Arabian
+woman. She put out the prettiest little foot that had ever left its
+fleeting imprint on the shifting sands of the desert. The philosopher
+was perturbed, and his eyes were too powerfully tempted to resist
+wandering from these feet, which betokened so much, up to the bosom,
+which was still more ravishingly fair; and soon the flame of his
+admiring glance was mingled with the fire that sparkled in the pupils
+of the young Asiatic. She asked again the name of the book in tones so
+sweet that the philosopher yielded to the fascination, and replied:
+
+"I am the author of the book; but the substance of it is not mine: it
+contains an account of all the ruses and stratagems of women."
+
+"What! Absolutely all?" said the daughter of the desert.
+
+"Yes, all! And it has been only by a constant study of womankind that
+I have come to regard them without fear."
+
+"Ah!" said the young Arabian girl, lowering the long lashes of her
+white eyelids.
+
+Then, suddenly darting the keenest of her glances at the pretended
+sage, she made him in one instant forget the book and all its
+contents. And now our philosopher was changed to the most passionate
+of men. Thinking he saw in the bearing of the young woman a faint
+trace of coquetry, the stranger was emboldened to make an avowal. How
+could he resist doing so? The sky was blue, the sand blazed in the
+distance like a scimitar of gold, the wind of the desert breathed
+love, and the woman of Arabia seemed to reflect all the fire with
+which she was surrounded; her piercing eyes were suffused with a mist;
+and by a slight nod of the head she seemed to make the luminous
+atmosphere undulate, as she consented to listen to the stranger's
+words of love. The sage was intoxicated with delirious hopes, when the
+young woman, hearing in the distance the gallop of a horse which
+seemed to fly, exclaimed:
+
+"We are lost! My husband is sure to catch us. He is jealous as a
+tiger, and more pitiless than one. In the name of the prophet, if you
+love your life, conceal yourself in this chest!"
+
+The author, frightened out of his wits, seeing no other way of getting
+out of a terrible fix, jumped into the box, and crouched down there.
+The woman closed down the lid, locked it, and took the key. She ran to
+meet her husband, and after some caresses which put him into a good
+humor, she said:
+
+"I must relate to you a very singular adventure I have just had."
+
+"I am listening, my gazelle," replied the Arab, who sat down on a rug
+and crossed his feet after the Oriental manner.
+
+"There arrived here to-day a kind of philosopher," she began, "he
+professes to have compiled a book which describes all the wiles of
+which my sex is capable; and then this sham sage made love to me."
+
+"Well, go on!" cried the Arab.
+
+"I listened to his avowal. He was young, ardent--and you came just in
+time to save my tottering virtue."
+
+The Arab leaped to his feet like a lion, and drew his scimitar with a
+shout of fury. The philosopher heard all from the depths of the chest
+and consigned to Hades his book, and all the men and women of Arabia
+Petraea.
+
+"Fatima!" cried the husband, "if you would save your life, answer me
+--Where is the traitor?"
+
+Terrified at the tempest which she had roused, Fatima threw herself at
+her husband's feet, and trembling beneath the point of his sword, she
+pointed out the chest with a prompt though timid glance of her eye.
+Then she rose to her feet, as if in shame, and taking the key from her
+girdle presented it to the jealous Arab; but, just as he was about to
+open the chest, the sly creature burst into a peal of laughter. Faroun
+stopped with a puzzled expression, and looked at his wife in
+amazement.
+
+"So I shall have my fine chain of gold, after all!" she cried, dancing
+for joy. "You have lost the _Diadeste_. Be more mindful next time."
+
+The husband, thunderstruck, let fall the key, and offered her the
+longed-for chain on bended knee, and promised to bring to his darling
+Fatima all the jewels brought by the caravan in a year, if she would
+refrain from winning the _Diadeste_ by such cruel stratagems. Then, as
+he was an Arab, and did not like forfeiting a chain of gold, although
+his wife had fairly won it, he mounted his horse again, and galloped
+off, to complain at his will, in the desert, for he loved Fatima too
+well to let her see his annoyance. The young woman then drew forth the
+philosopher from the chest, and gravely said to him, "Do not forget,
+Master Doctor, to put this feminine trick into your collection."
+
+
+
+"Madame," said I to the duchess, "I understand! If I marry, I am bound
+to be unexpectedly outwitted by some infernal trick or other; but I
+shall in that case, you may be quite sure, furnish a model household
+for the admiration of my contemporaries."
+
+
+
+PARIS, 1824-29.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Physiology of Marriage, Complete
+by Honore de Balzac
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