{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_5704/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_5704","id":"gutenberg_5704","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5704","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: French Literature","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Marriage -- Humor"],"text":"Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers\n\n\n\n\n\n                      THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE\n\n                              FIRST PART\n\n                                  BY\n\n                           HONORE DE BALZAC\n\n\n\n                              DEDICATION\n\n  Notice the words: _The man of distinction to whom this book is\n  dedicated_. Need I say: \"You are that man.\"--THE AUTHOR.\n\n  The woman who may be induced by the title of this book to open it,\n  can save herself the trouble; she has already read the work\n  without knowing it. A man, however malicious he may possibly be,\n  can never say about a woman as much good or as much evil as they\n  themselves think. If, in spite of this notice, a woman will\n  persist in reading the volume, she ought to be prevented by\n  delicacy from despising the author, from the very moment that he,\n  forfeiting the praise which most artists welcome, has in a certain\n  way engraved on the title page of his book the prudent inscription\n  written on the portal of certain establishments: _Ladies must not\n  enter_.\n\n\n\n\n\n                     THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE;\n                                 OR,\n     THE MUSINGS OF AN ECLECTIC PHILOSOPHER ON THE HAPPINESS AND\n                     UNHAPPINESS OF MARRIED LIFE\n\n\n\n                               INTRODUCTION\n\n\"Marriage is not an institution of nature. The family in the east is\nentirely different from the family in the west. Man is the servant of\nnature, and the institutions of society are grafts, not spontaneous\ngrowths of nature. Laws are made to suit manners, and manners vary.\n\n\"Marriage must therefore undergo the gradual development towards\nperfection to which all human affairs submit.\"\n\nThese words, pronounced in the presence of the Conseil d'Etat by\nNapoleon during the discussion of the civil code, produced a profound\nimpression upon the author of this book; and perhaps unconsciously he\nreceived the suggestion of this work, which he now presents to the\npublic. And indeed at the period during which, while still in his\nyouth, he studied French law, the word ADULTERY made a singular\nimpression upon him. Taking, as it did, a prominent place in the code,\nthis word never occurred to his mind without conjuring up its mournful\ntrain of consequences. Tears, shame, hatred, terror, secret crime,\nbloody wars, families without a head, and social misery rose like a\nsudden line of phantoms before him when he read the solemn word\nADULTERY! Later on, when he became acquainted with the most cultivated\ncircles of society, the author perceived that the rigor of marriage\nlaws was very generally modified by adultery. He found that the number\nof unhappy homes was larger than that of happy marriages. In fact, he\nwas the first to notice that of all human sciences that which relates\nto marriage was the least progressive. But this was the observation of\na young man; and with him, as with so many others, this thought, like\na pebble flung into the bosom of a lake, was lost in the abyss of his\ntumultuous thoughts. Nevertheless, in spite of himself the author was\ncompelled to investigate, and eventually there was gathered within his\nmind, little by little, a swarm of conclusions, more or less just, on\nthe subject of married life. Works like the present one are formed in\nthe mind of the author with as much mystery as that with which\ntruffles grow on the scented plains of Perigord. Out of the primitive\nand holy horror which adultery caused him and the investigation which\nhe had thoughtlessly made, there was born one morning a trifling\nthought in which his ideas were formulated. This thought was really a\nsatire upon marriage. It was as follows: A husband and wife found\nthemselves in love with each other for the first time after\ntwenty-seven years of marriage.\n\nHe amused himself with this little axiom and passed a whole week in\ndelight, grouping around this harmless epigram the crowd of ideas\nwhich came to him unconsciously and which he was astonished to find\nthat he possessed. His humorous mood yielded at last to the claims of\nserious investigation. Willing as he was to take a hint, the author\nreturned to his habitual idleness. Nevertheless, this slight germ of\nscience and of joke grew to perfection, unfostered, in the fields of\nthought. Each phase of the work which had been condemned by others\ntook root and gathered strength, surviving like the slight branch of a\ntree which, flung upon the sand by a winter's storm, finds itself\ncovered at morning with white and fantastic icicles, produced by the\ncaprices of nightly frosts. So the sketch lived on and became the\nstarting point of myriad branching moralizations. It was like a\npolypus which multiplies itself by generation. The feelings of youth,\nthe observations which a favorable opportunity led him to make, were\nverified in the most trifling events of his after life. Soon this mass\nof ideas became harmonized, took life, seemed, as it were, to become a\nliving individual and moved in the midst of those domains of fancy,\nwhere the soul loves to give full rein to its wild creations. Amid all\nthe distractions of the world and of life, the author always heard a\nvoice ringing in his ears and mockingly revealing the secrets of\nthings at the very moment he was watching a woman as she danced,\nsmiled, or talked. Just as Mephistopheles pointed out to Faust in that\nterrific assemblage at the Brocken, faces full of frightful augury, so\nthe author was conscious in the midst of the ball of a demon who would\nstrike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him: \"Do you\nnotice that enchanting smile? It is a grin of hatred.\" And then the\ndemon would strut about like one of the captains in the old comedies\nof Hardy. He would twitch the folds of a lace mantle and endeavor to\nmake new the fretted tinsel and spangles of its former glory. And then\nlike Rabelais he would burst into loud and unrestrainable laughter,\nand would trace on the street-wall a word which might serve as a\npendant to the \"Drink!\" which was the only oracle obtainable from the\nheavenly bottle. This literary Trilby would often appear seated on\npiles of books, and with hooked fingers would point out with a grin of\nmalice two yellow volumes whose title dazzled the eyes. Then when he\nsaw he had attracted the author's attention he spelt out, in a voice\nalluring as the tones of an harmonica, _Physiology of Marriage_! But,\nalmost always he appeared at night during my dreams, gentle as some\nfairy guardian; he tried by words of sweetness to subdue the soul\nwhich he would appropriate to himself. While he attracted, he also\nscoffed at me; supple as a woman's mind, cruel as a tiger, his\nfriendliness was more formidable than his hatred, for he never yielded\na caress without also inflicting a wound. One night in particular he\nexhausted the resources of his sorceries, and crowned all by a last\neffort. He came, he sat on the edge of the bed like a young maiden\nfull of love, who at first keeps silence but whose eyes sparkle, until\nat last her secret escapes her.\n\n\"This,\" said he, \"is a prospectus of a new life-buoy, by means of\nwhich one can pass over the Seine dry-footed. This other pamphlet is\nthe report of the Institute on a garment by wearing which we can pass\nthrough flames without being burnt. Have you no scheme which can\npreserve marriage from the miseries of excessive cold and excessive\nheat? Listen to me! Here we have a book on the _Art_ of preserving\nfoods; on the _Art_ of curing smoky chimneys; on the _Art_ of making\ngood mortar; on the _Art_ of tying a cravat; on the _Art_ of carving\nmeat.\"\n\nIn a moment he had named such a prodigious number of books that the\nauthor felt his head go round.\n\n\"These myriads of books,\" says he, \"have been devoured by readers; and\nwhile everybody does not build a house, and some grow hungry, and\nothers have no cravat, or no fire to warm themselves at, yet everybody\nto some degree is married. But come look yonder.\"\n\nHe waved his hand, and appeared to bring before me a distant ocean\nwhere all the books of the world were tossing up and down like\nagitated waves. The octodecimos bounded over the surface of the water.\nThe octavos as they were flung on their way uttered a solemn sound,\nsank to the bottom, and only rose up again with great difficulty,\nhindered as they were by duodecimos and works of smaller bulk which\nfloated on the top and melted into light foam. The furious billows\nwere crowded with journalists, proof-readers, paper-makers,\napprentices, printers' agents, whose hands alone were seen mingled in\nthe confusion among the books. Millions of voices rang in the air,\nlike those of schoolboys bathing. Certain men were seen moving hither\nand thither in canoes, engaged in fishing out the books, and landing\nthem on the shore in the presence of a tall man, of a disdainful air,\ndressed in black, and of a cold, unsympathetic expression. The whole\nscene represented the libraries and the public. The demon pointed out\nwith his finger a skiff freshly decked out with all sails set and\ninstead of a flag bearing a placard. Then with a peal of sardonic\nlaughter, he read with a thundering voice: _Physiology of Marriage_.\n\nThe author fell in love, the devil left him in peace, for he would\nhave undertaken more than he could handle if he had entered an\napartment occupied by a woman. Several years passed without bringing\nother torments than those of love, and the author was inclined to\nbelieve that he had been healed of one infirmity by means of another\nwhich took its place. But one evening he found himself in a Parisian\ndrawing-room where one of the men among the circle who stood round the\nfireplace began the conversation by relating in a sepulchral voice the\nfollowing anecdote:\n\n\nA peculiar thing took place at Ghent while I was staying there. A lady\nten years a widow lay on her bed attacked by mortal sickness. The\nthree heirs of collateral lineage were waiting for her last sigh. They\ndid not leave her side for fear that she would make a will in favor of\nthe convent of Beguins belonging to the town. The sick woman kept\nsilent, she seemed dozing and death appeared to overspread very\ngradually her mute and livid face. Can't you imagine those three\nrelations seated in silence through that winter midnight beside her\nbed? An old nurse is with them and she shakes her head, and the doctor\nsees with anxiety that the sickness has reached its last stage, and\nholds his hat in one hand and with the other makes a sign to the\nrelations, as if to say to them: \"I have no more visits to make here.\"\nAmid the solemn silence of the room is heard the dull rustling of a\nsnow-storm which beats upon the shutters. For fear that the eyes of\nthe dying woman might be dazzled by the light, the youngest of the\nheirs had fitted a shade to the candle which stood near that bed so\nthat the circle of light scarcely reached the pillow of the deathbed,\nfrom which the sallow countenance of the sick woman stood out like a\nfigure of Christ imperfectly gilded and fixed upon a cross of\ntarnished silver. The flickering rays shed by the blue flames of a\ncrackling fire were therefore the sole light of this sombre chamber,\nwhere the denouement of a drama was just ending. A log suddenly rolled\nfrom the fire onto the floor, as if presaging some catastrophe. At the\nsound of it the sick woman quickly rose to a sitting posture. She\nopened two eyes, clear as those of a cat, and all present eyed her in\nastonishment. She saw the log advance, and before any one could check\nan unexpected movement which seemed prompted by a kind of delirium,\nshe bounded from her bed, seized the tongs and threw the coal back\ninto the fireplace. The nurse, the doctor, the relations rushed to her\nassistance; they took the dying woman in their arms. They put her back\nin bed; she laid her head upon her pillow and after a few minutes\ndied, keeping her eyes fixed even after her death upon that plank in\nthe floor which the burning brand had touched. Scarcely had the\nCountess Van Ostroem expired when the three co-heirs exchanged looks\nof suspicion, and thinking no more about their aunt, began to examine\nthe mysterious floor. As they were Belgians their calculations were as\nrapid as their glances. An agreement was made by three words uttered\nin a low voice that none of them should leave the chamber. A servant\nwas sent to fetch a carpenter. Their collateral hearts beat excitedly\nas they gathered round the treasured flooring, and watched their young\napprentice giving the first blow with his chisel. The plank was cut\nthrough.\n\n\"My aunt made a sign,\" said the youngest of the heirs.\n\n\"No; it was merely the quivering light that made it appear so,\"\nreplied the eldest, who kept one eye on the treasure and the other on\nthe corpse.\n\nThe afflicted relations discovered exactly on the spot where the brand\nhad fallen a certain object artistically enveloped in a mass of\nplaster.\n\n\"Proceed,\" said the eldest of the heirs.\n\nThe chisel of the apprentice then brought to light a human head and\nsome odds and ends of clothing, from which they recognized the count\nwhom all the town believed to have died at Java, and whose loss had\nbeen bitterly deplored by his wife.\n\n\nThe narrator of this old story was a tall spare man, with light eyes\nand brown hair, and the author thought he saw in him a vague\nresemblance to the demon who had before this tormented him; but the\nstranger did not show the cloven foot. Suddenly the word ADULTERY\nsounded in the ears of the author; and this word woke up in his\nimagination the most mournful countenances of that procession which\nbefore this had streamed by on the utterance of the magic syllables.\nFrom that evening he was haunted and persecuted by dreams of a work\nwhich did not yet exist; and at no period of his life was the author\nassailed with such delusive notions about the fatal subject of this\nbook. But he bravely resisted the fiend, although the latter referred\nthe most unimportant incidents of life to this unknown work, and like\na customhouse officer set his stamp of mockery upon every occurrence.\n\nSome days afterwards the author found himself in the company of two\nladies. The first of them had been one of the most refined and the\nmost intellectual women of Napoleon's court. In his day she occupied a\nlofty position, but the sudden appearance of the Restoration caused\nher downfall; she became a recluse. The second, who was young and\nbeautiful, was at that time living at Paris the life of a fashionable\nwoman. They were friends, because, the one being forty and the other\ntwenty-two years old, they were seldom rivals on the same field. The\nauthor was considered quite insignificant by the first of the two\nladies, and since the other soon discovered this, they carried on in\nhis presence the conversation which they had begun in a frank\ndiscussion of a woman's lot.\n\n\"Have you noticed, dear, that women in general bestow their love only\nupon a fool?\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that, duchess? And how can you make your remark\nfit in with the fact that they have an aversion for their husbands?\"\n\n\"These women are absolute tyrants!\" said the author to himself. \"Has\nthe devil again turned up in a mob cap?\"\n\n\"No, dear, I am not joking,\" replied the duchess, \"and I shudder with\nfear for myself when I coolly consider people whom I have known in\nother times. Wit always has a sparkle which wounds us, and the man who\nhas much of it makes us fear him perhaps, and if he is a proud man he\nwill be capable of jealousy, and is not therefore to our taste. In\nfact, we prefer to raise a man to our own height rather than to have\nto climb up to his. Talent has great successes for us to share in, but\nthe fool affords enjoyment to us; and we would sooner hear said 'that\nis a very handsome man' than to see our lover elected to the\nInstitute.\"\n\n\"That's enough, duchess! You have absolutely startled me.\"\n\nAnd the young coquette began to describe the lovers about whom all the\nwomen of her acquaintance raved; there was not a single man of\nintellect among them.\n\n\"But I swear by my virtue,\" she said, \"their husbands are worth more.\"\n\n\"But these are the sort of people they choose for husbands,\" the\nduchess answered gravely.\n\n\"Tell me,\" asked the author, \"is the disaster which threatens the\nhusband in France quite inevitable?\"\n\n\"It is,\" replied the duchess, with a smile; \"and the rage which\ncertain women breathe out against those of their sex, whose\nunfortunate happiness it is to entertain a passion, proves what a\nburden to them is their chastity. If it were not for fear of the\ndevil, one would be Lais; another owes her virtue to the dryness of\nher selfish heart; a third to the silly behaviour of her first lover;\nanother still--\"\n\nThe author checked this outpour of revelation by confiding to the two\nladies his design for the work with which he had been haunted; they\nsmiled and promised him their assistance. The youngest, with an air of\ngaiety suggested one of the first chapters of the undertaking, by\nsaying that she would take upon herself to prove mathematically that\nwomen who are entirely virtuous were creatures of reason.\n\nWhen the author got home he said at once to his demon:\n\n\"Come! I am ready; let us sign the compact.\"\n\nBut the demon never returned.\n\nIf the author has written here the biography of his book he has not\nacted on the prompting of fatuity. He relates facts which may furnish\nmaterial for the history of human thought, and will without doubt\nexplain the work itself. It may perhaps be important to certain\nanatomists of thought to be told that the soul is feminine. Thus\nalthough the author made a resolution not to think about the book\nwhich he was forced to write, the book, nevertheless, was completed.\nOne page of it was found on the bed of a sick man, another on the sofa\nof a boudoir. The glances of women when they turned in the mazes of a\nwaltz flung to him some thoughts; a gesture or a word filled his\ndisdainful brain with others. On the day when he said to himself,\n\"This work, which haunts me, shall be achieved,\" everything vanished;\nand like the three Belgians, he drew forth a skeleton from the place\nover which he had bent to seize a treasure.\n\nA mild, pale countenance took the place of the demon who had tempted\nme; it wore an engaging expression of kindliness; there were no sharp\npointed arrows of criticism in its lineaments. It seemed to deal more\nwith words than with ideas, and shrank from noise and clamor. It was\nperhaps the household genius of the honorable deputies who sit in the\ncentre of the Chamber.\n\n\"Wouldn't it be better,\" it said, \"to let things be as they are? Are\nthings so bad? We ought to believe in marriage as we believe in the\nimmortality of the soul; and you are certainly not making a book to\nadvertise the happiness of marriage. You will surely conclude that\namong a million of Parisian homes happiness is the exception. You will\nfind perhaps that there are many husbands disposed to abandon their\nwives to you; but there is not a single son who will abandon his\nmother. Certain people who are hit by the views which you put forth\nwill suspect your morals and will misrepresent your intentions. In a\nword, in order to handle social sores, one ought to be a king, or a\nfirst consul at least.\"\n\nReason, although it appeared under a form most pleasing to the author,\nwas not listened to; for in the distance Folly tossed the coxcomb of\nPanurge, and the author wished to seize it; but, when he tried to\ncatch it, he found that it was as heavy as the club of Hercules.\nMoreover, the cure of Meudon adorned it in such fashion that a young\nman who was less pleased with producing a good work than with wearing\nfine gloves could not even touch it.\n\n\"Is our work completed?\" asked the younger of the two feminine\nassistants of the author.\n\n\"Alas! madame,\" I said, \"will you ever requite me for all the hatreds\nwhich that work will array against me?\"\n\nShe waved her hand, and then the author replied to her doubt by a look\nof indifference.\n\n\"What do you mean? Would you hesitate? You must publish it without\nfear. In the present day we accept a book more because it is in\nfashion than because it has anything in it.\"\n\nAlthough the author does not here represent himself as anything more\nthan the secretary of two ladies, he has in compiling their\nobservations accomplished a double task. With regard to marriage he\nhas here arranged matters which represent what everybody thinks but no\none dares to say; but has he not also exposed himself to public\ndispleasure by expressing the mind of the public? Perhaps, however,\nthe eclecticism of the present essay will save it from condemnation.\nAll the while that he indulges in banter the author has attempted to\npopularize certain ideas which are particularly consoling. He has\nalmost always endeavored to lay bare the hidden springs which move the\nhuman soul. While undertaking to defend the most material interests of\nman, judging them or condemning them, he will perhaps bring to light\nmany sources of intellectual delight. But the author does not\nfoolishly claim always to put forth his pleasantries in the best of\ntaste; he has merely counted upon the diversity of intellectual\npursuits in expectation of receiving as much blame as approbation. The\nsubject of his work was so serious that he is constantly launched into\nanecdote; because at the present day anecdotes are the vehicle of all\nmoral teaching, and the anti-narcotic of every work of literature. In\nliterature, analysis and investigation prevail, and the wearying of\nthe reader increases in proportion with the egotism of the writer.\nThis is one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall a book, and\nthe present author has been quite aware of it. He has therefore so\narranged the topics of this long essay as to afford resting places for\nthe reader. This method has been successfully adopted by a writer, who\nproduced on the subject of Taste a work somewhat parallel to that\nwhich is here put forth on the subject of Marriage. From the former\nthe present writer may be permitted to borrow a few words in order to\nexpress a thought which he shares with the author of them. This\nquotation will serve as an expression of homage to his predecessor,\nwhose success has been so swiftly followed by his death:\n\n\"When I write and speak of myself in the singular, this implies a\nconfidential talk with the reader; he can examine the statement,\ndiscuss it, doubt and even ridicule it; but when I arm myself with the\nformidable WE, I become the professor and demand submission.\"--\nBrillat-Savarin, Preface to the _Physiology of Taste_.\n\nDECEMBER 5, 1829.\n\n\n\nFIRST PART.\n\nA GENERAL CONSIDERATION.\n\nWe will declaim against stupid laws until they are changed, and in the\nmeantime blindly submit to them.--Diderot, _Supplement to the Voyage\nof Bougainville_.\n\n\n\n                            MEDITATION I.\n\n                             THE SUBJECT.\n\nPhysiology, what must I consider your meaning?\n\nIs not your object to prove that marriage unites for life two beings\nwho do not know each other?\n\nThat life consists in passion, and that no passion survives marriage?\n\nThat marriage is an institution necessary for the preservation of\nsociety, but that it is contrary to the laws of nature?\n\nThat divorce, this admirable release from the misfortunes of marriage,\nshould with one voice be reinstated?\n\nThat, in spite of all its inconveniences, marriage is the foundation\non which property is based?\n\nThat it furnishes invaluable pledges for the security of government?\n\nThat there is something touching in the association of two human\nbeings for the purpose of supporting the pains of life?\n\nThat there is something ridiculous in the wish that one and the same\nthoughts should control two wills?\n\nThat the wife is treated as a slave?\n\nThat there has never been a marriage entirely happy?\n\nThat marriage is filled with crimes and that the known murders are not\nthe worst?\n\nThat fidelity is impossible, at least to the man?\n\nThat an investigation if it could be undertaken would prove that in\nthe transmission of patrimonial property there was more risk than\nsecurity?\n\nThat adultery does more harm than marriage does good?\n\nThat infidelity in a woman may be traced back to the earliest ages of\nsociety, and that marriage still survives this perpetuation of\ntreachery?\n\nThat the laws of love so strongly link together two human beings that\nno human law can put them asunder?\n\nThat while there are marriages recorded on the public registers, there\nare others over which nature herself has presided, and they have been\ndictated either by the mutual memory of thought, or by an utter\ndifference of mental disposition, or by corporeal affinity in the\nparties named; that it is thus that heaven and earth are constantly at\nvariance?\n\nThat there are many husbands fine in figure and of superior intellect\nwhose wives have lovers exceedingly ugly, insignificant in appearance\nor stupid in mind?\n\nAll these questions furnish material for books; but the books have\nbeen written and the questions are constantly reappearing.\n\nPhysiology, what must I take you to mean?\n\nDo you reveal new principles? Would you pretend that it is the right\nthing that woman should be made common? Lycurgus and certain Greek\npeoples as well as Tartars and savages have tried this.\n\nCan it possibly be right to confine women? The Ottomans once did so,\nand nowadays they give them their liberty.\n\nWould it be right to marry young women without providing a dowry and\nyet exclude them from the right of succeeding to property? Some\nEnglish authors and some moralists have proved that this with the\nadmission of divorce is the surest method of rendering marriage happy.\n\nShould there be a little Hagar in each marriage establishment? There\nis no need to pass a law for that. The provision of the code which\nmakes an unfaithful wife liable to a penalty in whatever place the\ncrime be committed, and that other article which does not punish the\nerring husband unless his concubine dwells beneath the conjugal roof,\nimplicitly admits the existence of mistresses in the city.\n\nSanchez has written a dissertation on the penal cases incident to\nmarriage; he has even argued on the illegitimacy and the opportuneness\nof each form of indulgence; he has outlined all the duties, moral,\nreligious and corporeal, of the married couple; in short his work\nwould form twelve volumes in octavo if the huge folio entitled _De\nMatrimonio_ were thus represented.\n\nClouds of lawyers have flung clouds of treatises over the legal\ndifficulties which are born of marriage. There exist several works on\nthe judicial investigation of impotency.\n\nLegions of doctors have marshaled their legions of books on the\nsubject of marriage in its relation to medicine and surgery.\n\nIn the nineteenth century the _Physiology of Marriage_ is either an\ninsignificant compilation or the work of a fool written for other\nfools; old priests have taken their balances of gold and have weighed\nthe most trifling scruples of the marriage consciences; old lawyers\nhave put on their spectacles and have distinguished between every kind\nof married transgression; old doctors have seized the scalpel and\ndrawn it over all the wounds of the subject; old judges have mounted\nto the bench and have decided all the cases of marriage dissolution;\nwhole generations have passed unuttered cries of joy or of grief on\nthe subject, each age has cast its vote into the urn; the Holy Spirit,\npoets and writers have recounted everything from the days of Eve to\nthe Trojan war, from Helen to Madame de Maintenon, from the mistress\nof Louis XIV to the woman of their own day.\n\nPhysiology, what must I consider your meaning?\n\nShall I say that you intend to publish pictures more or less\nskillfully drawn, for the purpose of convincing us that a man marries:\n\nFrom ambition--that is well known;\n\nFrom kindness, in order to deliver a girl from the tyranny of her\nmother;\n\nFrom rage, in order to disinherit his relations;\n\nFrom scorn of a faithless mistress;\n\nFrom weariness of a pleasant bachelor life;\n\nFrom folly, for each man always commits one;\n\nIn consequence of a wager, which was the case with Lord Byron;\n\nFrom interest, which is almost always the case;\n\nFrom youthfulness on leaving college, like a blockhead;\n\nFrom ugliness,--fear of some day failing to secure a wife;\n\nThrough Machiavelism, in order to be the heir of some old woman at an\nearly date;\n\nFrom necessity, in order to secure the standing to _our_ son;\n\nFrom obligation, the damsel having shown herself weak;\n\nFrom passion, in order to become more surely cured of it;\n\nOn account of a quarrel, in order to put an end to a lawsuit;\n\nFrom gratitude, by which he gives more than he has received;\n\nFrom goodness, which is the fate of doctrinaires;\n\nFrom the condition of a will when a dead uncle attaches his legacy to\nsome girl, marriage with whom is the condition of succession;\n\nFrom custom, in imitation of his ancestors;\n\nFrom old age, in order to make an end of life;\n\nFrom _yatidi_, that is the hour of going to bed and signifies amongst\nthe Turks all bodily needs;\n\nFrom religious zeal, like the Duke of Saint-Aignan, who did not wish\nto commit sin?[*]\n\n[*] The foregoing queries came in (untranslatable) alphabetic order in\n    the original.--Editor\n\nBut these incidents of marriage have furnished matter for thirty\nthousand comedies and a hundred thousand romances.\n\nPhysiology, for the third and last time I ask you--What is your\nmeaning?\n\nSo far everything is commonplace as the pavement of the street,\nfamiliar as a crossway. Marriage is better known than the Barabbas of\nthe Passion. All the ancient ideas which it calls to light permeate\nliterature since the world is the world, and there is not a single\nopinion which might serve to the advantage of the world, nor a\nridiculous project which could not find an author to write it up, a\nprinter to print it, a bookseller to sell it and a reader to read it.\n\nAllow me to say to you like Rabelais, who is in every sense our\nmaster:\n\n\"Gentlemen, God save and guard you! Where are you? I cannot see you;\nwait until I put on my spectacles. Ah! I see you now; you, your wives,\nyour children. Are you in good health? I am glad to hear it.\"\n\nBut it is not for you that I am writing. Since you have grown-up\nchildren that ends the matter.\n\nAh! it is you, illustrious tipplers, pampered and gouty, and you,\ntireless pie-cutters, favorites who come dear; day-long\npantagruellists who keep your private birds, gay and gallant, and who\ngo to tierce, to sexts, to nones, and also to vespers and compline and\nnever tire of going.\n\nIt is not for you that the _Physiology of Marriage_ is addressed, for\nyou are not married and may you never be married. You herd of bigots,\nsnails, hypocrites, dotards, lechers, booted for pilgrimage to Rome,\ndisguised and marked, as it were, to deceive the world. Go back, you\nscoundrels, out of my sight! Gallows birds are ye all--now in the\ndevil's name will you not begone? There are none left now but the good\nsouls who love to laugh; not the snivelers who burst into tears in\nprose or verse, whatever their subject be, who make people sick with\ntheir odes, their sonnets, their meditation; none of these dreamers,\nbut certain old-fashioned pantagruellists who don't think twice about\nit when they are invited to join a banquet or provoked to make a\nrepartee, who can take pleasure in a book like _Pease and the Lard_\nwith commentary of Rabelais, or in the one entitled _The Dignity of\nBreeches_, and who esteem highly the fair books of high degree, a\nquarry hard to run down and redoubtable to wrestle with.\n\nIt no longer does to laugh at a government, my friend, since it has\ninvented means to raise fifteen hundred millions by taxation. High\necclesiastics, monks and nuns are no longer so rich that we can drink\nwith them; but let St. Michael come, he who chased the devil from\nheaven, and we shall perhaps see the good time come back again! There\nis only one thing in France at the present moment which remains a\nlaughing matter, and that is marriage. Disciples of Panurge, ye are\nthe only readers I desire. You know how seasonably to take up and lay\ndown a book, how to get the most pleasure out of it, to understand the\nhint in a half word--how to suck nourishment from a marrow-bone.\n\nThe men of the microscope who see nothing but a speck, the\ncensus-mongers--have they reviewed the whole matter? Have they\npronounced without appeal that it is as impossible to write a book on\nmarriage as to make new again a broken pot?\n\nYes, master fool. If you begin to squeeze the marriage question you\nsquirt out nothing but fun for the bachelors and weariness for the\nmarried men. It is everlasting morality. A million printed pages would\nhave no other matter in them.\n\nIn spite of this, here is my first proposition: marriage is a fight to\nthe death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven,\nbecause it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love;\nthe fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty,\nremains in the hands of the cleverer of the two.\n\nUndoubtedly. But do you see in this a fresh idea?\n\nWell, I address myself to the married men of yesterday and of to-day;\nto those who on leaving the Church or the registration office indulge\nthe hope of keeping their wives for themselves alone; to those whom\nsome form or other of egotism or some indefinable sentiment induces to\nsay when they see the marital troubles of another, \"This will never\nhappen to me.\"\n\nI address myself to those sailors who after witnessing the foundering\nof other ships still put to sea; to those bachelors who after\nwitnessing the shipwreck of virtue in a marriage of another venture\nupon wedlock. And this is my subject, eternally now, yet eternally\nold!\n\nA young man, or it may be an old one, in love or not in love, has\nobtained possession by a contract duly recorded at the registration\noffice in heaven and on the rolls of the nation, of a young girl with\nlong hair, with black liquid eyes, with small feet, with dainty\ntapering fingers, with red lips, with teeth of ivory, finely formed,\ntrembling with life, tempting and plump, white as a lily, loaded with\nthe most charming wealth of beauty. Her drooping eyelashes seem like\nthe points of the iron crown; her skin, which is as fresh as the calyx\nof a white camelia, is streaked with the purple of the red camelia;\nover her virginal complexion one seems to see the bloom of young fruit\nand the delicate down of a young peach; the azure veins spread a\nkindling warmth over this transparent surface; she asks for life and\nshe gives it; she is all joy and love, all tenderness and candor; she\nloves her husband, or at least believes she loves him.\n\nThe husband who is in love says in the bottom of his heart: \"Those\neyes will see no one but me, that mouth will tremble with love for me\nalone, that gentle hand will lavish the caressing treasures of delight\non me alone, that bosom will heave at no voice but mine, that\nslumbering soul will awake at my will alone; I only will entangle my\nfingers in those shining tresses; I alone will indulge myself in\ndreamily caressing that sensitive head. I will make death the guardian\nof my pillow if only I may ward off from the nuptial couch the\nstranger who would violate it; that throne of love shall swim in the\nblood of the rash or of my own. Tranquillity, honor, happiness, the\nties of home, the fortune of my children, all are at stake there; I\nwould defend them as a lioness defends her cubs. Woe unto him who\nshall set foot in my lair!\"\n\nWell now, courageous athlete, we applaud your intention. Up to the\npresent moment no geographer has ventured to trace the lines of\nlongitude and latitude in the ocean of marriage. Old husbands have\nbeen ashamed to point out the sand banks, the reefs, the shallows, the\nbreakers, the monsoons, the coasts and currents which have wrecked\ntheir ships, for their shipwrecks brought them shame. There was no\npilot, no compass for those pilgrims of marriage. This work is\nintended to supply the desideratum.\n\nWithout mentioning grocers and drapers, there are so many people\noccupied in discovering the secret motives of women, that it is really\na work of charity to classify for them, by chapter and verse, all the\nsecret situations of marriage; a good table of contents will enable\nthem to put their finger on each movement of their wives' heart, as a\ntable of logarithms tells them the product of a given multiplication.\n\nAnd now what do you think about that? Is not this a novel undertaking,\nand one which no philosopher has as yet approached, I mean this\nattempt to show how a woman may be prevented from deceiving her\nhusband? Is not this the comedy of comedies? Is it not a second\n_speculum vitae humanae_. We are not now dealing with the abstract\nquestions which we have done justice to already in this Meditation. At\nthe present day in ethics as in exact science, the world asks for\nfacts for the results of observation. These we shall furnish.\n\nLet us begin then by examining the true condition of things, by\nanalyzing the forces which exist on either side. Before arming our\nimaginary champion let us reckon up the number of his enemies. Let us\ncount the Cossacks who intend to invade his little domain.\n\nAll who wish may embark with us on this voyage, all who can may laugh.\nWeigh anchor; hoist sail! You know exactly the point from which you\nstart. You have this advantage over a great many books that are\nwritten.\n\nAs for our fancy of laughing while we weep, and of weeping while we\nlaugh, as the divine Rabelais drank while he ate and ate while he\ndrank; as for our humor, to put Heraclitus and Democritus on the same\npage and to discard style or premeditated phrase--if any of the crew\nmutiny, overboard with the doting cranks, the infamous classicists,\nthe dead and buried romanticists, and steer for the blue water!\n\nEverybody perhaps will jeeringly remark that we are like those who say\nwith smiling faces, \"I am going to tell you a story that will make you\nlaugh!\" But it is the proper thing to joke when speaking of marriage!\nIn short, can you not understand that we consider marriage as a\ntrifling ailment to which all of us are subject and upon which this\nvolume is a monograph?\n\n\"But you, your bark or your work starts off like those postilions who\ncrack their whips because their passengers are English. You will not\nhave galloped at full speed for half a league before you dismount to\nmend a trace or to breathe your horses. What is the good of blowing\nthe trumpet before victory?\"\n\nAh! my dear pantagruellists, nowadays to claim success is to obtain\nit, and since, after all, great works are only due to the expansion of\nlittle ideas, I do not see why I should not pluck the laurels, if only\nfor the purpose of crowning those dirty bacon faces who join us in\nswallowing a dram. One moment, pilot, let us not start without making\none little definition.\n\nReader, if from time to time you meet in this work the terms virtue or\nvirtuous, let us understand that virtue means a certain labored\nfacility by which a wife keeps her heart for her husband; at any rate,\nthat the word is not used in a general sense, and I leave this\ndistinction to the natural sagacity of all.\n\n\n\n                            MEDITATION II.\n\n                         MARRIAGE STATISTICS.\n\nThe administration has been occupied for nearly twenty years in\nreckoning how many acres of woodland, meadow, vineyard and fallow are\ncomprised in the area of France. It has not stopped there, but has\nalso tried to learn the number and species of the animals to be found\nthere. Scientific men have gone still further; they have reckoned up\nthe cords of wood, the pounds of beef, the apples and eggs consumed in\nParis. But no one has yet undertaken either in the name of marital\nhonor or in the interest of marriageable people, or for the advantage\nof morality and the progress of human institutions, to investigate the\nnumber of honest wives. What! the French government, if inquiry is\nmade of it, is able to say how many men it has under arms, how many\nspies, how many employees, how many scholars; but, when it is asked\nhow many virtuous women, it can answer nothing! If the King of France\ntook into his head to choose his august partner from among his\nsubjects, the administration could not even tell him the number of\nwhite lambs from whom he could make his choice. It would be obliged to\nresort to some competition which awards the rose of good conduct, and\nthat would be a laughable event.\n\nWere the ancients then our masters in political institutions as in\nmorality? History teaches us that Ahasuerus, when he wished to take a\nwife from among the damsels of Persia, chose Esther, the most virtuous\nand the most beautiful. His ministers therefore must necessarily have\ndiscovered some method of obtaining the cream of the population.\nUnfortunately the Bible, which is so clear on all matrimonial\nquestions, has omitted to give us a rule for matrimonial choice.\n\nLet us try to supply this gap in the work of the administration by\ncalculating the sum of the female sex in France. Here we call the\nattention of all friends to public morality, and we appoint them\njudges of our method of procedure. We shall attempt to be particularly\nliberal in our estimations, particularly exact in our reasoning, in\norder that every one may accept the result of this analysis.\n\nThe inhabitants of France are generally reckoned at thirty millions.\n\nCertain naturalists think that the number of women exceeds that of\nmen; but as many statisticians are of the opposite opinion, we will\nmake the most probable calculation by allowing fifteen millions for\nthe women.\n\nWe will begin by cutting down this sum by nine millions, which stands\nfor those who seem to have some resemblance to women, but whom we are\ncompelled to reject upon serious considerations.\n\nLet us explain:\n\nNaturalists consider man to be no more than a unique species of the\norder bimana, established by Dumeril in his _Analytic Zoology_, page\n16; and Bory de Saint Vincent thinks that the ourang-outang ought to\nbe included in the same order if we would make the species complete.\n\nIf these zoologists see in us nothing more than a mammal with\nthirty-two vertebrae possessing the hyoid bone and more folds in the\nhemispheres of the brain than any other animal; if in their opinion no\nother differences exist in this order than those produced by the\ninfluence of climate, on which are founded the nomenclature of fifteen\nspecies whose scientific names it is needless to cite, the\nphysiologists ought also to have the right of making species and\nsub-species in accordance with definite degrees of intelligence and\ndefinite conditions of existence, oral and pecuniary.\n\nNow the nine millions of human creatures which we here refer to\npresent at first sight all the attributes of the human race; they have\nthe hyoid bone, the coracoid process, the acromion, the zygomatic\narch. It is therefore permitted for the gentlemen of the Jardin des\nPlantes to classify them with the bimana; but our Physiology will\nnever admit that women are to be found among them. In our view, and in\nthe view of those for whom this book is intended, a woman is a rare\nvariety of the human race, and her principal characteristics are due\nto the special care men have bestowed upon its cultivation,--thanks to\nthe power of money and the moral fervor of civilization! She is\ngenerally recognized by the whiteness, the fineness and softness of\nher skin. Her taste inclines to the most spotless cleanliness. Her\nfingers shrink from encountering anything but objects which are soft,\nyielding and scented. Like the ermine she sometimes dies for grief on\nseeing her white tunic soiled. She loves to twine her tresses and to\nmake them exhale the most attractive scents; to brush her rosy nails,\nto trim them to an almond shape, and frequently to bathe her delicate\nlimbs. She is not satisfied to spend the night excepting on the\nsoftest down, and excepting on hair-cushioned lounges, she loves best\nto take a horizontal position. Her voice is of penetrating sweetness;\nher movements are full of grace. She speaks with marvelous fluency.\nShe does not apply herself to any hard work; and, nevertheless, in\nspite of her apparent weakness, there are burdens which she can bear\nand move with miraculous ease. She avoids the open sunlight and wards\nit off by ingenious appliances. For her to walk is exhausting. Does\nshe eat? This is a mystery. Has she the needs of other species? It is\na problem. Although she is curious to excess she allows herself easily\nto be caught by any one who can conceal from her the slightest thing,\nand her intellect leads her to seek incessantly after the unknown.\nLove is her religion; she thinks how to please the one she loves. To\nbe beloved is the end of all her actions; to excite desire is the\nmotive of every gesture. She dreams of nothing excepting how she may\nshine, and moves only in a circle filled with grace and elegance. It\nis for her the Indian girl has spun the soft fleece of Thibet goats,\nTarare weaves its airy veils, Brussels sets in motion those shuttles\nwhich speed the flaxen thread that is purest and most fine, Bidjapour\nwrenches from the bowels of the earth its sparkling pebbles, and the\nSevres gilds its snow-white clay. Night and day she reflects upon new\ncostumes and spends her life in considering dress and in plaiting her\napparel. She moves about exhibiting her brightness and freshness to\npeople she does not know, but whose homage flatters her, while the\ndesire she excites charms her, though she is indifferent to those who\nfeel it. During the hours which she spends in private, in pleasure,\nand in the care of her person, she amuses herself by caroling the\nsweetest strains. For her France and Italy ordain delightful concerts\nand Naples imparts to the strings of the violin an harmonious soul.\nThis species is in fine at once the queen of the world and the slave\nof passion. She dreads marriage because it ends by spoiling her\nfigure, but she surrenders herself to it because it promises\nhappiness. If she bears children it is by pure chance, and when they\nare grown up she tries to conceal them.\n\nThese characteristics taken at random from among a thousand others are\nnot found amongst those beings whose hands are as black as those of\napes and their skin tanned like the ancient parchments of an _olim_;\nwhose complexion is burnt brown by the sun and whose neck is wrinkled\nlike that of a turkey; who are covered with rags; whose voice is\nhoarse; whose intelligence is nil; who think of nothing but the bread\nbox, and who are incessantly bowed in toil towards the ground; who\ndig; who harrow; who make hay, glean, gather in the harvest, knead the\nbread and strip hemp; who, huddled among domestic beasts, infants and\nmen, dwell in holes and dens scarcely covered with thatch; to whom it\nis of little importance from what source children rain down into their\nhomes. Their work it is to produce many and to deliver them to misery\nand toil, and if their love is not like their labor in the fields it\nis at least as much a work of chance.\n\nAlas! if there are throughout the world multitudes of trades-women who\nsit all day long between the cradle and the sugar-cask, farmers' wives\nand daughters who milk the cows, unfortunate women who are employed\nlike beasts of burden in the manufactories, who all day long carry the\nloaded basket, the hoe and the fish-crate, if unfortunately there\nexist these common human beings to whom the life of the soul, the\nbenefits of education, the delicious tempests of the heart are an\nunattainable heaven; and if Nature has decreed that they should have\ncoracoid processes and hyoid bones and thirty-two vertebrae, let them\nremain for the physiologist classed with the ourang-outang. And here\nwe make no stipulations for the leisure class; for those who have the\ntime and the sense to fall in love; for the rich who have purchased\nthe right of indulging their passions; for the intellectual who have\nconquered a monopoly of fads. Anathema on all those who do not live by\nthought. We say Raca and fool to all those who are not ardent, young,\nbeautiful and passionate. This is the public expression of that secret\nsentiment entertained by philanthropists who have learned to read and\ncan keep their own carriage. Among the nine millions of the\nproscribed, the tax-gatherer, the magistrate, the law-maker and the\npriest doubtless see living souls who are to be ruled and made subject\nto the administration of justice. But the man of sentiment, the\nphilosopher of the boudoir, while he eats his fine bread, made of\ncorn, sown and harvested by these creatures, will reject them and\nrelegate them, as we do, to a place outside the genus Woman. For them,\nthere are no women excepting those who can inspire love; and there is\nno living being but the creature invested with the priesthood of\nthought by means of a privileged education, and with whom leisure has\ndeveloped the power of imagination; in other words that only is a\nhuman being whose soul dreams, in love, either of intellectual\nenjoyments or of physical delights.\n\nWe would, however, make the remark that these nine million female\npariahs produce here and there a thousand peasant girls who from\npeculiar circumstances are as fair as Cupids; they come to Paris or to\nthe great cities and end up by attaining the rank of _femmes comme il\nfaut_; but to set off against these two or three thousand favored\ncreatures, there are one hundred thousand others who remain servants\nor abandon themselves to frightful irregularities. Nevertheless, we\nare obliged to count these Pompadours of the village among the\nfeminine population.\n\nOur first calculation is based upon the statistical discovery that in\nFrance there are eighteen millions of the poor, ten millions of people\nin easy circumstances and two millions of the rich.\n\nThere exist, therefore, in France only six millions of women in whom\nmen of sentiment are now interested, have been interested, or will be\ninterested.\n\nLet us subject this social elite to a philosophic examination.\n\nWe think, without fear of being deceived, that married people who have\nlived twenty years together may sleep in peace without fear of having\ntheir love trespassed upon or of incurring the scandal of a lawsuit\nfor criminal conversation.\n\nFrom these six millions of individuals we must subtract about two\nmillions of women who are extremely attractive, because for the last\nforty years they have seen the world; but since they have not the\npower to make any one fall in love with them, they are on the outside\nof the discussion now before us. If they are unhappy enough to receive\nno attention for the sake of amiability, they are soon seized with\nennui; they fall back upon religion, upon the cultivation of pets,\ncats, lap-dogs, and other fancies which are no more offensive than\ntheir devoutness.\n\nThe calculations made at the Bureau of Longitudes concerning\npopulation authorize us again to subtract from the total mentioned two\nmillions of young girls, pretty enough to kill; they are at present in\nthe A B C of life and innocently play with other children, without\ndreading that these little hobbledehoys, who now make them laugh, will\none day make them weep.\n\nAgain, of the two millions of the remaining women, what reasonable man\nwould not throw out a hundred thousand poor girls, humpbacked, plain,\ncross-grained, rickety, sickly, blind, crippled in some way, well\neducated but penniless, all bound to be spinsters, and by no means\ntempted to violate the sacred laws of marriage?\n\nNor must we retain the one hundred thousand other girls who become\nsisters of St. Camille, Sisters of Charity, monastics, teachers,\nladies' companions, etc. And we must put into this blessed company a\nnumber of young people difficult to estimate, who are too grown up to\nplay with little boys and yet too young to sport their wreath of\norange blossoms.\n\nFinally, of the fifteen million subjects which remain at the bottom of\nour crucible we must eliminate five hundred thousand other\nindividuals, to be reckoned as daughters of Baal, who subserve the\nappetites of the base. We must even comprise among those, without fear\nthat they will be corrupted by their company, the kept women, the\nmilliners, the shop girls, saleswomen, actresses, singers, the girls\nof the opera, the ballet-dancers, upper servants, chambermaids, etc.\nMost of these creatures excite the passions of many people, but they\nwould consider it immodest to inform a lawyer, a mayor, an\necclesiastic or a laughing world of the day and hour when they\nsurrendered to a lover. Their system, justly blamed by an inquisitive\nworld, has the advantage of laying upon them no obligations towards\nmen in general, towards the mayor or the magistracy. As these women do\nnot violate any oath made in public, they have no connection whatever\nwith a work which treats exclusively of lawful marriage.\n\nSome one will say that the claims made by this essay are very slight,\nbut its limitations make just compensation for those which amateurs\nconsider excessively padded. If any one, through love for a wealthy\ndowager, wishes to obtain admittance for her into the remaining\nmillion, he must classify her under the head of Sisters of Charity,\nballet-dancers, or hunchbacks; in fact we have not taken more than\nfive hundred thousand individuals in forming this last class, because\nit often happens, as we have seen above, that the nine millions of\npeasant girls make a large accession to it. We have for the same\nreason omitted the working-girl class and the hucksters; the women of\nthese two sections are the product of efforts made by nine millions of\nfemale bimana to rise to the higher civilization. But for its\nscrupulous exactitude many persons might regard this statistical\nmeditation as a mere joke.\n\nWe have felt very much inclined to form a small class of a hundred\nthousand individuals as a crowning cabinet of the species, to serve as\na place of shelter for women who have fallen into a middle estate,\nlike widows, for instance; but we have preferred to estimate in round\nfigures.\n\nIt would be easy to prove the fairness of our analysis: let one\nreflection be sufficient.\n\nThe life of a woman is divided into three periods, very distinct from\neach other: the first begins in the cradle and ends on the attainment\nof a marriageable age; the second embraces the time during which a\nwoman belongs to marriage; the third opens with the critical period,\nthe ending with which nature closes the passions of life. These three\nspheres of existence, being almost equal in duration, might be\nemployed for the classification into equal groups of a given number of\nwomen. Thus in a mass of six millions, omitting fractions, there are\nabout two million girls between one and eighteen, two millions women\nbetween eighteen and forty and two millions of old women. The caprices\nof society have divided the two millions of marriageable women into\nthree main classes, namely: those who remain spinsters for reasons\nwhich we have defined; those whose virtue does not reckon in the\nobtaining of husbands, and the million of women lawfully married, with\nwhom we have to deal.\n\nYou see then, by the exact sifting out of the feminine population,\nthat there exists in France a little flock of barely a million white\nlambs, a privileged fold into which every wolf is anxious to enter.\n\nLet us put this million of women, already winnowed by our fan, through\nanother examination.\n\nTo arrive at the true idea of the degree of confidence which a man\nought to have in his wife, let us suppose for a moment that all wives\nwill deceive their husbands.\n\nOn this hypothesis, it will be proper to cut out about one-twentieth,\nviz., young people who are newly married and who will be faithful to\ntheir vows for a certain time.\n\nAnother twentieth will be in ill-health. This will be to make a very\nmodest allowance for human infirmities.\n\nCertain passions, which we are told destroy the dominion of the man\nover the heart of his wife, namely, aversion, grief, the bearing of\nchildren, will account for another twentieth.\n\nAdultery does not establish itself in the heart of a married woman\nwith the promptness of a pistol-shot. Even when sympathy with another\nrouses feelings on first sight, a struggle always takes place, whose\nduration discounts the total sum of conjugal infidelities. It would be\nan insult to French modesty not to admit the duration of this struggle\nin a country so naturally combative, without referring to at least a\ntwentieth in the total of married women; but then we will suppose that\nthere are certain sickly women who preserve their lovers while they\nare using soothing draughts, and that there are certain wives whose\nconfinement makes sarcastic celibates smile. In this way we shall\nvindicate the modesty of those who enter upon the struggle from\nmotives of virtue. For the same reason we should not venture to\nbelieve that a woman forsaken by her lover will find a new one on the\nspot; but this discount being much more uncertain than the preceding\none, we will estimate it at one-fortieth.\n\nThese several rebates will reduce our sum total to eight hundred\nthousand women, when we come to calculate the number of those who are\nlikely to violate married faith. Who would not at the present moment\nwish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not\nthe supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming\ncreatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their\nlife and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of social\nreligion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chief\nglory of France.\n\nIt is in the midst of this million we are bound to investigate:\n\nThe number of honest women;\n\nThe number of virtuous women.\n\nThe work of investigating this and of arranging the results under two\ncategories requires whole meditations, which may serve as an appendix\nto the present one.\n\n\n\n                           MEDITATION III.\n\n                         OF THE HONEST WOMAN.\n\nThe preceding meditation has proved that we possess in France a\nfloating population of one million women reveling in the privilege of\ninspiring those passions which a gallant man avows without shame, or\ndissembles with delight. It is then among this million of women that\nwe must carry our lantern of Diogenes in order to discover the honest\nwomen of the land.\n\nThis inquiry suggests certain digressions.\n\nTwo young people, well dressed, whose slender figures and rounded arms\nsuggest a paver's tool, and whose boots are elegantly made, meet one\nmorning on the boulevard, at the end of the Passage des Panoramas.\n\n\"What, is this you?\"\n\n\"Yes, dear boy; it looks like me, doesn't it?\"\n\nThen they laugh, with more or less intelligence, according to the\nnature of the joke which opens the conversation.\n\nWhen they have examined each other with the sly curiosity of a police\nofficer on the lookout for a clew, when they are quite convinced of\nthe newness of each other's gloves, of each other's waistcoat and of\nthe taste with which their cravats are tied; when they are pretty\ncertain that neither of them is down in the world, they link arms and\nif they start from the Theater des Varietes, they have not reached\nFrascati's before they have asked each other a roundabout question\nwhose free translation may be this:\n\n\"Whom are you living with now?\"\n\nAs a general rule she is a charming woman.\n\nWho is the infantryman of Paris into whose ear there have not dropped,\nlike bullets in the day of battle, thousands of words uttered by the\npasser-by, and who has not caught one of those numberless sayings\nwhich, according to Rabelais, hang frozen in the air? But the majority\nof men take their way through Paris in the same manner as they live\nand eat, that is, without thinking about it. There are very few\nskillful musicians, very few practiced physiognomists who can\nrecognize the key in which these vagrant notes are set, the passion\nthat prompts these floating words. Ah! to wander over Paris! What an\nadorable and delightful existence is that! To saunter is a science; it\nis the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to\nsaunter is to live. The young and pretty women, long contemplated with\nardent eyes, would be much more admissible in claiming a salary than\nthe cook who asks for twenty sous from the Limousin whose nose with\ninflated nostrils took in the perfumes of beauty. To saunter is to\nenjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the\nsublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque\nphysiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand\nexistences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for\nthe old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their\npassions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard\nto the categorical question which is always with us?\n\n\"She is thirty-five years old, but you would not think she was more\nthan twenty!\" said an enthusiastic youth with sparkling eyes, who,\nfreshly liberated from college, would, like Cherubin, embrace all.\n\n\"Zounds! Mine has dressing-gowns of batiste and diamond rings for the\nevening!\" said a lawyer's clerk.\n\n\"But she has a box at the Francais!\" said an army officer.\n\n\"At any rate,\" cried another one, an elderly man who spoke as if he\nwere standing on the defence, \"she does not cost me a sou! In our case\n--wouldn't you like to have the same chance, my respected friend?\"\n\nAnd he patted his companion lightly on the shoulder.\n\n\"Oh! she loves me!\" said another. \"It seems too good to be true; but\nshe has the most stupid of husbands! Ah!--Buffon has admirably\ndescribed the animals, but the biped called husband--\"\n\nWhat a pleasant thing for a married man to hear!\n\n\"Oh! what an angel you are, my dear!\" is the answer to a request\ndiscreetly whispered into the ear.\n\n\"Can you tell me her name or point her out to me?\"\n\n\"Oh! no; she is an honest woman.\"\n\nWhen a student is loved by a waitress, he mentions her name with pride\nand takes his friends to lunch at her house. If a young man loves a\nwoman whose husband is engaged in some trade dealing with articles of\nnecessity, he will answer, blushingly, \"She is the wife of a\nhaberdasher, of a stationer, of a hatter, of a linen-draper, of a\nclerk, etc.\"\n\nBut this confession of love for an inferior which buds and blows in\nthe midst of packages, loaves of sugar, or flannel waistcoats is\nalways accompanied with an exaggerated praise of the lady's fortune.\nThe husband alone is engaged in the business; he is rich; he has fine\nfurniture. The loved one comes to her lover's house; she wears a\ncashmere shawl; she owns a country house, etc.\n\nIn short, a young man is never wanting in excellent arguments to prove\nthat his mistress is very nearly, if not quite, an honest woman. This\ndistinction originates in the refinement of our manners and has become\nas indefinite as the line which separates _bon ton_ from vulgarity.\nWhat then is meant by an honest woman?\n\nOn this point the vanity of women, of their lovers, and even that of\ntheir husbands, is so sensitive that we had better here settle upon\nsome general rules, which are the result of long observation.\n\nOur one million of privileged women represent a multitude who are\neligible for the glorious title of honest women, but by no means all\nare elected to it. The principles on which these elections are based\nmay be found in the following axioms:\n\n\n                              APHORISMS.\n\n                                  I.\n           An honest woman is necessarily a married woman.\n\n                                 II.\n              An honest woman is under forty years old.\n\n                                 III.\n   A married woman whose favors are to be paid for is not an honest\n   woman.\n\n                                 IV.\n   A married woman who keeps a private carriage is an honest woman.\n\n                                  V.\n       A woman who does her own cooking is not an honest woman.\n\n                                 VI.\nWhen a man has made enough to yield an income of twenty thousand\nfrancs, his wife is an honest woman, whatever the business in which\nhis fortune was made.\n\n                                 VII.\nA woman who says \"letter of change\" for letter of exchange, who says\nof a man, \"He is an elegant gentleman,\" can never be an honest woman,\nwhatever fortune she possesses.\n\n                                VIII.\n An honest woman ought to be in a financial condition such as forbids\n her lover to think she will ever cost him anything.\n\n                                 IX.\n A woman who lives on the third story of any street excepting the Rue\n de Rivoli and the Rue de Castiglione is not an honest woman.\n\n                                  X.\nThe wife of a banker is always an honest woman, but the woman who sits\nat the cashier's desk cannot be one, unless her husband has a very\nlarge business and she does not live over his shop.\n\n                                 XI.\nThe unmarried niece of a bishop when she lives with him can pass for\nan honest woman, because if she has an intrigue she has to deceive her\nuncle.\n\n                                 XII.\n      An honest woman is one whom her lover fears to compromise.\n\n                                XIII.\n           The wife of an artist is always an honest woman.\n\n\nBy the application of these principles even a man from Ardeche can\nresolve all the difficulties which our subject presents.\n\nIn order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely\neducated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to\npass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life\nof soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she\nlives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris. These\ntwo financial limits will suggest to you how many honest women are to\nbe reckoned on in the million, for they are really a mere product of\nour statistical calculations.\n\nNow three hundred thousand independent people, with an income of\nfifteen thousand francs, represent the sum total of those who live on\npensions, on annuities and the interest of treasury bonds and\nmortgages.\n\nThree hundred thousand landed proprietors enjoy an income of three\nthousand five hundred francs and represent all territorial wealth.\n\nTwo hundred thousand payees, at the rate of fifteen hundred francs\neach, represent the distribution of public funds by the state budget,\nby the budgets of the cities and departments, less the national debt,\nchurch funds and soldier's pay, (i.e. five sous a day with allowances\nfor washing, weapons, victuals, clothes, etc.).\n\nTwo hundred thousand fortunes amassed in commerce, reckoning the\ncapital at twenty thousand francs in each case, represent all the\ncommercial establishments possible in France.\n\nHere we have a million husbands represented.\n\nBut at what figure shall we count those who have an income of fifty,\nof a hundred, of two, three, four, five, and six hundred francs only,\nfrom consols or some other investment?\n\nHow many landed proprietors are there who pay taxes amounting to no\nmore than a hundred sous, twenty francs, one hundred francs, two\nhundred, or two hundred and eighty?\n\nAt what number shall we reckon those of the governmental leeches, who\nare merely quill-drivers with a salary of six hundred francs a year?\n\nHow many merchants who have nothing but a fictitious capital shall we\nadmit? These men are rich in credit and have not a single actual sou,\nand resemble the sieves through which Pactolus flows. And how many\nbrokers whose real capital does not amount to more than a thousand,\ntwo thousand, four thousand, five thousand francs? Business!--my\nrespects to you!\n\nLet us suppose more people to be fortunate than actually are so. Let\nus divide this million into parts; five hundred thousand domestic\nestablishments will have an income ranging from a hundred to three\nthousand francs, and five thousand women will fulfill the conditions\nwhich entitle them to be called honest women.\n\nAfter these observations, which close our meditation on statistics, we\nare entitled to cut out of this number one hundred thousand\nindividuals; consequently we can consider it to be proven\nmathematically that there exist in France no more than four hundred\nthousand women who can furnish to men of refinement the exquisite and\nexalted enjoyments which they look for in love.\n\nAnd here it is fitting to make a remark to the adepts for whom we\nwrite, that love does not consist in a series of eager conversations,\nof nights of pleasure, of an occasional caress more or less well-timed\nand a spark of _amour-propre_ baptized by the name of jealousy. Our\nfour hundred thousand women are not of those concerning whom it may be\nsaid, \"The most beautiful girl in the world can give only what she\nhas.\" No, they are richly endowed with treasures which appeal to our\nardent imaginations, they know how to sell dear that which they do not\npossess, in order to compensate for the vulgarity of that which they\ngive.\n\nDo we feel more pleasure in kissing the glove of a grisette than in\ndraining the five minutes of pleasure which all women offer to us?\n\nIs it the conversation of a shop-girl which makes you expect boundless\ndelights?\n\nIn your intercourse with a woman who is beneath you, the delight of\nflattered _amour-propre_ is on her side. You are not in the secret of\nthe happiness which you give.\n\nIn a case of a woman above you, either in fortune or social position,\nthe ticklings of vanity are not only intense, but are equally shared.\nA man can never raise his mistress to his own level; but a woman\nalways puts her lover in the position that she herself occupies. \"I\ncan make princes and you can make nothing but bastards,\" is an answer\nsparkling with truth.\n\nIf love is the first of passions, it is because it flatters all the\nrest of them at the same time. We love with more or less intensity in\nproportion to the number of chords which are touched by the fingers of\na beautiful mistress.\n\nBiren, the jeweler's son, climbing into the bed of the Duchesse de\nCourlande and helping her to sign an agreement that he should be\nproclaimed sovereign of the country, as he was already of the young\nand beautiful queen, is an example of the happiness which ought to be\ngiven to their lovers by our four hundred thousand women.\n\nIf a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the heads\nwhich crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artistic\nwoman of fashion. Now we all love more or less to be at the top.\n\nIt is on this brilliant section of the nation that the attack is made\nby men whose education, talent or wit gives them the right to be\nconsidered persons of importance with regard to that success of which\npeople of every country are so proud; and only among this class of\nwomen is the wife to be found whose heart has to be defended at all\nhazard by our husband.\n\nWhat does it matter whether the considerations which arise from the\nexistence of a feminine aristocracy are or are not equally applicable\nto other social classes? That which is true of all women exquisite in\nmanners, language and thought, in whom exceptional educational\nfacilities have developed a taste for art and a capacity for feeling,\ncomparing and thinking, who have a high sense of propriety and\npoliteness and who actually set the fashion in French manners, ought\nto be true also in the case of women whatever their nation and\nwhatever their condition. The man of distinction to whom this book is\ndedicated must of necessity possess a certain mental vision, which\nmakes him perceive the various degrees of light that fill each class\nand comprehend the exact point in the scale of civilization to which\neach of our remarks is severally applicable.\n\nWould it not be then in the highest interests of morality, that we\nshould in the meantime try to find out the number of virtuous women\nwho are to be found among these adorable creatures? Is not this a\nquestion of marito-national importance?\n\n\n\n                            MEDITATION IV.\n\n                        OF THE VIRTUOUS WOMAN.\n\nThe question, perhaps, is not so much how many virtuous women there\nare, as what possibility there is of an honest woman remaining\nvirtuous.\n\nIn order to throw light upon a point so important, let us cast a rapid\nglance over the male population.\n\nFrom among our fifteen millions of men we must cut off, in the first\nplace, the nine millions of bimana of thirty-two vertebrae and exclude\nfrom our physiological analysis all but six millions of people. The\nMarceaus, the Massenas, the Rousseaus, the Diderots and the Rollins\noften sprout forth suddenly from the social swamp, when it is in a\ncondition of fermentation; but, here we plead guilty of deliberate\ninaccuracy. These errors in calculation are likely, however, to give\nall their weight to our conclusion and to corroborate what we are\nforced to deduce in unveiling the mechanism of passion.\n\nFrom the six millions of privileged men, we must exclude three\nmillions of old men and children.\n\nIt will be affirmed by some one that this subtraction leaves a\nremainder of four millions in the case of women.\n\nThis difference at first sight seems singular, but is easily accounted\nfor.\n\nThe average age at which women are married is twenty years and at\nforty they cease to belong to the world of love.\n\nNow a young bachelor of seventeen is apt to make deep cuts with his\npenknife in the parchment of contracts, as the chronicles of scandal\nwill tell you.\n\nOn the other hand, a man at fifty-two is more formidable than at any\nother age. It is at this fair epoch of life that he enjoys an\nexperience dearly bought, and probably all the fortune that he will\never require. The passions by which his course is directed being the\nlast under whose scourge he will move, he is unpitying and determined,\nlike the man carried away by a current who snatches at a green and\npliant branch of willow, the young nursling of the year.\n\n\n                                 XIV.\n    Physically a man is a man much longer than a woman is a woman.\n\n\nWith regard to marriage, the difference in duration of the life of\nlove with a man and with a woman is fifteen years. This period is\nequal to three-fourths of the time during which the infidelities of\nthe woman can bring unhappiness to her husband. Nevertheless, the\nremainder in our subtraction from the sum of men only differs by a\nsixth or so from that which results in our subtraction from the sum of\nwomen.\n\nGreat is the modest caution of our estimates. As to our arguments,\nthey are founded on evidence so widely known, that we have only\nexpounded them for the sake of being exact and in order to anticipate\nall criticism.\n\nIt has, therefore, been proved to the mind of every philosopher,\nhowever little disposed he may be to forming numerical estimates, that\nthere exists in France a floating mass of three million men between\nseventeen and fifty-two, all perfectly alive, well provided with\nteeth, quite resolved on biting, in fact, biting and asking nothing\nbetter than the opportunity of walking strong and upright along the\nway to Paradise.\n\nThe above observations entitle us to separate from this mass of men a\nmillion husbands. Suppose for an instant that these, being satisfied\nand always happy, like our model husband, confine themselves to\nconjugal love.\n\nOur remainder of two millions do not require five sous to make love.\n\nIt is quite sufficient for a man to have a fine foot and a clear eye\nin order to dismantle the portrait of a husband.\n\nIt is not necessary that he should have a handsome face nor even a\ngood figure;\n\nProvided that a man appears to be intellectual and has a distinguished\nexpression of face, women never look where he comes from but where he\nis going to;\n\nThe charms of youth are the unique equipage of love;\n\nA coat made by Brisson, a pair of gloves bought from Boivin, elegant\nshoes, for whose payment the dealer trembles, a well-tied cravat are\nsufficient to make a man king of the drawing-room;\n\nAnd soldiers--although the passion for gold lace and aiguillettes has\ndied away--do not soldiers form of themselves a redoubtable legion of\ncelibates? Not to mention Eginhard--for he was a private secretary\n--has not a newspaper recently recorded how a German princess\nbequeathed her fortune to a simple lieutenant of cuirassiers in the\nimperial guard?\n\nBut the notary of the village, who in the wilds of Gascony does not\ndraw more than thirty-six deeds a year, sends his son to study law at\nParis; the hatter wishes his son to be a notary, the lawyer destines\nhis to be a judge, the judge wishes to become a minister in order that\nhis sons may be peers. At no epoch in the world's history has there\nbeen so eager a thirst for education. To-day it is not intellect but\ncleverness that promenades the streets. From every crevice in the\nrocky surface of society brilliant flowers burst forth as the spring\nbrings them on the walls of a ruin; even in the caverns there droop\nfrom the vaulted roof faintly colored tufts of green vegetation. The\nsun of education permeates all. Since this vast development of\nthought, this even and fruitful diffusion of light, we have scarcely\nany men of superiority, because every single man represents the whole\neducation of his age. We are surrounded by living encyclopaedias who\nwalk about, think, act and wish to be immortalized. Hence the\nfrightful catastrophes of climbing ambitions and insensate passions.\nWe feel the want of other worlds; there are more hives needed to\nreceive the swarms, and especially are we in need of more pretty\nwomen.\n\nBut the maladies by which a man is afflicted do not nullify the sum\ntotal of human passion. To our shame be it spoken, a woman is never so\nmuch attached to us as when we are sick.\n\nWith this thought, all the epigrams written against the little sex\n--for it is antiquated nowadays to say the fair sex--ought to be\ndisarmed of their point and changed into madrigals of eulogy! All men\nought to consider that the sole virtue of a woman is to love and that\nall women are prodigiously virtuous, and at that point to close the\nbook and end their meditation.\n\nAh! do you not remember that black and gloomy hour when lonely and\nsuffering, making accusations against men and especially against your\nfriends, weak, discouraged, and filled with thoughts of death, your\nhead supported by a fevered pillow and stretched upon a sheet whose\nwhite trellis-work of linen was stamped upon your skin, you traced\nwith your eyes the green paper which covered the walls of your silent\nchamber? Do you recollect, I say, seeing some one noiselessly open\nyour door, exhibiting her fair young face, framed with rolls of gold,\nand a bonnet which you had never seen before? She seemed like a star\nin a stormy night, smiling and stealing towards you with an expression\nin which distress and happiness were blended, and flinging herself\ninto your arms!\n\n\"How did you manage it? What did you tell your husband?\" you ask.\n\n\"Your husband!\"--Ah! this brings us back again into the depths of our\nsubject.\n\n\n                                 XV.\n  Morally the man is more often and longer a man than the woman is a\n                                women.\n\n\nOn the other hand we ought to consider that among these two millions\nof celibates there are many unhappy men, in whom a profound sense of\ntheir misery and persistent toil have quenched the instinct of love;\n\nThat they have not all passed through college, that there are many\nartisans among them, many footmen--the Duke of Gevres, an extremely\nplain and short man, as he walked through the park of Versailles saw\nseveral lackeys of fine appearance and said to his friends, \"Look how\nthese fellows are made by us, and how they imitate us\"--that there are\nmany contractors, many trades people who think of nothing but money;\nmany drudges of the shop;\n\nThat there are men more stupid and actually more ugly than God would\nhave made them;\n\nThat there are those whose character is like a chestnut without a\nkernel;\n\nThat the clergy are generally chaste;\n\nThat there are men so situated in life that they can never enter the\nbrilliant sphere in which honest women move, whether for want of a\ncoat, or from their bashfulness, or from the failure of a mahout to\nintroduce them.\n\nBut let us leave to each one the task of adding to the number of these\nexceptions in accordance with his personal experience--for the object\nof a book is above all things to make people think--and let us\ninstantly suppress one-half of the sum total and admit only that there\nare one million of hearts worthy of paying homage to honest women.\nThis number approximately includes those who are superior in all\ndepartments. Women love only the intellectual, but justice must be\ndone to virtue.\n\nAs for these amiable celibates, each of them relates a string of\nadventures, all of which seriously compromise honest women. It would\nbe a very moderate and reserved computation to attribute no more than\nthree adventures to each celibate; but if some of them count their\nadventures by the dozen, there are many more who confine themselves to\ntwo or three incidents of passion and some to a single one in their\nwhole life, so that we have in accordance with the statistical method\ntaken the average. Now if the number of celibates be multiplied by the\nnumber of their excesses in love the result will be three millions of\nadventures; to set against this we have only four hundred thousand\nhonest women!\n\nIf the God of goodness and indulgence who hovers over the worlds does\nnot make a second washing of the human race, it is doubtless because\nso little success attended the first.\n\nHere then we have a people, a society which has been sifted, and you\nsee the result!\n\n\n                                 XVI.\n Manners are the hypocrisy of nations, and hypocrisy is more or less\n                               perfect.\n\n\n                                XVII.\n      Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.\n\n\nPhysical love is a craving like hunger, excepting that man eats all\nthe time, and in love his appetite is neither so persistent nor so\nregular as at the table.\n\nA piece of bread and a carafe of water will satisfy the hunger of any\nman; but our civilization has brought to light the science of\ngastronomy.\n\nLove has its piece of bread, but it has also its science of loving,\nthat science which we call coquetry, a delightful word which the\nFrench alone possess, for that science originated in this country.\n\nWell, after all, isn't it enough to enrage all husbands when they\nthink that man is so endowed with an innate desire to change from one\nfood to another, that in some savage countries, where travelers have\nlanded, they have found alcoholic drinks and ragouts?\n\nHunger is not so violent as love; but the caprices of the soul are\nmore numerous, more bewitching, more exquisite in their intensity than\nthe caprices of gastronomy; but all that the poets and the experiences\nof our own life have revealed to us on the subject of love, arms us\ncelibates with a terrible power: we are the lion of the Gospel seeking\nwhom we may devour.\n\nThen, let every one question his conscience on this point, and search\nhis memory if he has ever met a man who confined himself to the love\nof one woman only!\n\nHow, alas! are we to explain, while respecting the honor of all the\npeoples, the problem which results from the fact that three millions\nof burning hearts can find no more than four hundred thousand women on\nwhich they can feed? Should we apportion four celibates for each woman\nand remember that the honest women would have already established,\ninstinctively and unconsciously, a sort of understanding between\nthemselves and the celibates, like that which the presidents of royal\ncourts have initiated, in order to make their partisans in each\nchamber enter successively after a certain number of years?\n\nThat would be a mournful way of solving the difficulty!\n\nShould we make the conjecture that certain honest women act in\ndividing up the celibates, as the lion in the fable did? What! Surely,\nin that case, half at least of our altars would become whited\nsepulchres!\n\nOught one to suggest for the honor of French ladies that in the time\nof peace all other countries should import into France a certain\nnumber of their honest women, and that these countries should mainly\nconsist of England, Germany and Russia? But the European nations would\nin that case attempt to balance matters by demanding that France\nshould export a certain number of her pretty women.\n\nMorality and religion suffer so much from such calculations as this,\nthat an honest man, in an attempt to prove the innocence of married\nwomen, finds some reason to believe that dowagers and young people are\nhalf of them involved in this general corruption, and are liars even\nmore truly than are the celibates.\n\nBut to what conclusion does our calculation lead us? Think of our\nhusbands, who to the disgrace of morals behave almost all of them like\ncelibates and glory _in petto_ over their secret adventures.\n\nWhy, then we believe that every married man, who is at all attached to\nhis wife from honorable motives, can, in the words of the elder\nCorneille, seek a rope and a nail; _foenum habet in cornu_.\n\nIt is, however, in the bosom of these four hundred thousand honest\nwomen that we must, lantern in hand, seek for the number of the\nvirtuous women in France! As a matter of fact, we have by our\nstatistics of marriage so far only set down the number of those\ncreatures with which society has really nothing to do. Is it not true\nthat in France the honest people, the people _comme il faut_, form a\ntotal of scarcely three million individuals, namely, our one million\nof celibates, five hundred thousand honest women, five hundred\nthousand husbands, and a million of dowagers, of infants and of young\ngirls?\n\nAre you then astonished at the famous verse of Boileau? This verse\nproves that the poet had cleverly fathomed the discovery\nmathematically propounded to you in these tiresome meditations and\nthat his language is by no means hyperbolical.\n\nNevertheless, virtuous women there certainly are:\n\nYes, those who have never been tempted and those who die at their\nfirst child-birth, assuming that their husbands had married them\nvirgins;\n\nYes, those who are ugly as the Kaifakatadary of the Arabian Nights;\n\nYes, those whom Mirabeau calls \"fairy cucumbers\" and who are composed\nof atoms exactly like those of strawberry and water-lily roots.\nNevertheless, we need not believe that!\n\nFurther, we acknowledge that, to the credit of our age, we meet, ever\nsince the revival of morality and religion and during our own times,\nsome women, here and there, so moral, so religious, so devoted to\ntheir duties, so upright, so precise, so stiff, so virtuous, so--that\nthe devil himself dare not even look at them; they are guarded on all\nsides by rosaries, hours of prayer and directors. Pshaw!\n\nWe will not attempt to enumerate the women who are virtuous from\nstupidity, for it is acknowledged that in love all women have\nintellect.\n\nIn conclusion, we may remark that it is not impossible that there\nexist in some corner of the earth women, young, pretty and virtuous,\nwhom the world does not suspect.\n\nBut you must not give the name of virtuous woman to her who, in her\nstruggle against an involuntary passion, has yielded nothing to her\nlover whom she idolizes. She does injury in the most cruel way in\nwhich it can possibly be done to a loving husband. For what remains to\nhim of his wife? A thing without name, a living corpse. In the very\nmidst of delight his wife remains like the guest who has been warned\nby Borgia that certain meats were poisoned; he felt no hunger, he ate\nsparingly or pretended to eat. He longed for the meat which he had\nabandoned for that provided by the terrible cardinal, and sighed for\nthe moment when the feast was over and he could leave the table.\n\nWhat is the result which these reflections on the feminine virtue lead\nto? Here they are; but the last two maxims have been given us by an\neclectic philosopher of the eighteenth century.\n\n\n                                XVIII.\n  A virtuous woman has in her heart one fibre less or one fibre more\n          than other women; she is either stupid or sublime.\n\n\n                                 XIX.\n      The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.\n\n\n                                 XX.\nThe most virtuous women have in them something which is never chaste.\n\n\n                                 XXI.\n\"That a man of intellect has doubts about his mistress is conceivable,\n           but about his wife!--that would be too stupid.\"\n\n\n                                XXII.\n \"Men would be insufferably unhappy if in the presence of women they\nthought the least bit in the world of that which they know by heart.\"\n\n\nThe number of those rare women who, like the Virgins of the Parable,\nhave kept their lamps lighted, will always appear very small in the\neyes of the defenders of virtue and fine feeling; but we must needs\nexclude it from the total sum of honest women, and this subtraction,\nconsoling as it is, will increase the danger which threatens husbands,\nwill intensify the scandal of their married life, and involve, more or\nless, the reputation of all other lawful spouses.\n\nWhat husband will be able to sleep peacefully beside his young and\nbeautiful wife while he knows that three celibates, at least, are on\nthe watch; that if they have not already encroached upon his little\nproperty, they regard the bride as their destined prey, for sooner or\nlater she will fall into their hands, either by stratagem, compulsive\nconquest or free choice? And it is impossible that they should fail\nsome day or other to obtain victory!\n\nWhat a startling conclusion!\n\nOn this point the purist in morality, the _collets montes_ will accuse\nus perhaps of presenting here conclusions which are excessively\ndespairing; they will be desirous of putting up a defence, either for\nthe virtuous women or the celibates; but we have in reserve for them a\nfinal remark.\n\nIncrease the number of honest women and diminish the number of\ncelibates, as much as you choose, you will always find that the result\nwill be a larger number of gallant adventurers than of honest women;\nyou will always find a vast multitude driven through social custom to\ncommit three sorts of crime.\n\nIf they remain chaste, their health is injured, while they are the\nslaves of the most painful torture; they disappoint the sublime ends\nof nature, and finally die of consumption, drinking milk on the\nmountains of Switzerland!\n\nIf they yield to legitimate temptations, they either compromise the\nhonest women, and on this point we re-enter on the subject of this\nbook, or else they debase themselves by a horrible intercourse with\nthe five hundred thousand women of whom we spoke in the third category\nof the first Meditation, and in this case, have still considerable\nchance of visiting Switzerland, drinking milk and dying there!\n\nHave you never been struck, as we have been, by a certain error of\norganization in our social order, the evidence of which gives a moral\ncertainty to our last calculations?\n\nThe average age at which a man marries is thirty years; the average\nage at which his passions, his most violent desires for genesial\ndelight are developed, is twenty years. Now during the ten fairest\nyears of his life, during the green season in which his beauty, his\nyouth and his wit make him more dangerous to husbands than at any\nother epoch of his life, his finds himself without any means of\nsatisfying legitimately that irresistible craving for love which burns\nin his whole nature. During this time, representing the sixth part of\nhuman life, we are obliged to admit that the sixth part or less of our\ntotal male population and the sixth part which is the most vigorous is\nplaced in a position which is perpetually exhausting for them, and\ndangerous for society.\n\n\"Why don't they get married?\" cries a religious woman.\n\nBut what father of good sense would wish his son to be married at\ntwenty years of age?\n\nIs not the danger of these precocious unions apparent at all? It would\nseem as if marriage was a state very much at variance with natural\nhabitude, seeing that it requires a special ripeness of judgment in\nthose who conform to it. All the world knows what Rousseau said:\n\"There must always be a period of libertinage in life either in one\nstate or another. It is an evil leaven which sooner or later\nferments.\"\n\nNow what mother of a family is there who would expose her daughter to\nthe risk of this fermentation when it has not yet taken place?\n\nOn the other hand, what need is there to justify a fact under whose\ndomination all societies exist? Are there not in every country, as we\nhave demonstrated, a vast number of men who live as honestly as\npossible, without being either celibates or married men?\n\nCannot these men, the religious women will always ask, abide in\ncontinence like the priests?\n\nCertainly, madame.\n\nNevertheless, we venture to observe that the vow of chastity is the\nmost startling exception to the natural condition of man which society\nmakes necessary; but continence is the great point in the priest's\nprofession; he must be chaste, as the doctor must be insensible to\nphysical sufferings, as the notary and the advocate insensible to the\nmisery whose wounds are laid bare to their eyes, as the soldier to the\nsight of death which he meets on the field of battle. From the fact\nthat the requirements of civilization ossify certain fibres of the\nheart and render callous certain membranes, we must not necessarily\nconclude that all men are bound to undergo this partial and\nexceptional death of the soul. This would be to reduce the human race\nto a condition of atrocious moral suicide.\n\nBut let it be granted that, in the atmosphere of a drawing-room the\nmost Jansenistic in the world, appears a young man of twenty-eight who\nhas scrupulously guarded his robe of innocence and is as truly\nvirginal as the heath-cock which gourmands enjoy. Do you not see that\nthe most austere of virtuous women would merely pay him a sarcastic\ncompliment on his courage; the magistrate, the strictest that ever\nmounted a bench, would shake his head and smile, and all the ladies\nwould hide themselves, so that he might not hear their laughter? When\nthe heroic and exceptional young victim leaves the drawing-room, what\na deluge of jokes bursts upon his innocent head? What a shower of\ninsults! What is held to be more shameful in France than impotence,\nthan coldness, than the absence of all passion, than simplicity?\n\nThe only king of France who would not have laughed was perhaps Louis\nXIII; but as for his roue of a father, he would perhaps have banished\nthe young man, either under the accusation that he was no Frenchman or\nfrom a conviction that he was setting a dangerous example.\n\nStrange contradiction! A young man is equally blamed if he passes life\nin Holy Land, to use an expression of bachelor life. Could it possibly\nbe for the benefit of the honest women that the prefects of police,\nand mayors of all time have ordained that the passions of the public\nshall not manifest themselves until nightfall, and shall cease at\neleven o'clock in the evening?\n\nWhere do you wish that our mass of celibates should sow their wild\noats? And who is deceived on this point? as Figaro asks. Is it the\ngovernments or the governed? The social order is like the small boys\nwho stop their ears at the theatre, so as not to hear the report of\nthe firearms. Is society afraid to probe its wound or has it\nrecognized the fact that evil is irremediable and things must be\nallowed to run their course? But there crops up here a question of\nlegislation, for it is impossible to escape the material and social\ndilemma created by this balance of public virtue in the matter of\nmarriage. It is not our business to solve this difficulty; but suppose\nfor a moment that society in order to save a multitude of families,\nwomen and honest girls, found itself compelled to grant to certain\nlicensed hearts the right of satisfying the desire of the celibates;\nought not our laws then to raise up a professional body consisting of\nfemale Decii who devote themselves for the republic, and make a\nrampart of their bodies round the honest families? The legislators\nhave been very wrong hitherto in disdaining to regulate the lot of\ncourtesans.\n\n\n                                XXIII.\n        The courtesan is an institution if she is a necessity.\n\n\nThis question bristles with so many ifs and buts that we will bequeath\nit for solution to our descendants; it is right that we shall leave\nthem something to do. Moreover, its discussion is not germane to this\nwork; for in this, more than in any other age, there is a great\noutburst of sensibility; at no other epoch have there been so many\nrules of conduct, because never before has it been so completely\naccepted that pleasure comes from the heart. Now, what man of\nsentiment is there, what celibate is there, who, in the presence of\nfour hundred thousand young and pretty women arrayed in the splendors\nof fortune and the graces of wit, rich in treasures of coquetry, and\nlavish in the dispensing of happiness, would wish to go--? For shame!\n\nLet us put forth for the benefit of our future legislature in clear\nand brief axioms the result arrived at during the last few years.\n\n\n                                XXIV.\n    In the social order, inevitable abuses are laws of nature, in\n accordance with which mankind should frame their civil and political\n                             institutes.\n\n\n                                 XXV.\n\"Adultery is like a commercial failure, with this difference,\" says\nChamfort, \"that it is the innocent party who has been ruined and who\nbears the disgrace.\"\n\n\nIn France the laws that relate to adultery and those that relate to\nbankruptcy require great modifications. Are they too indulgent? Do\nthey sin on the score of bad principles? _Caveant consules_!\n\nCome now, courageous athlete, who have taken as your task that which\nis expressed in the little apostrophe which our first Meditation\naddresses to people who have the charge of a wife, what are you going\nto say about it? We hope that this rapid review of the question does\nnot make you tremble, that you are not one of those men whose nervous\nfluid congeals at the sight of a precipice or a boa constrictor! Well!\nmy friend, he who owns soil has war and toil. The men who want your\ngold are more numerous than those who want your wife.\n\nAfter all, husbands are free to take these trifles for arithmetical\nestimates, or arithmetical estimates for trifles. The illusions of\nlife are the best things in life; that which is most respectable in\nlife is our futile credulity. Do there not exist many people whose\nprinciples are merely prejudices, and who not having the force of\ncharacter to form their own ideas of happiness and virtue accept what\nis ready made for them by the hand of legislators? Nor do we address\nthose Manfreds who having taken off too many garments wish to raise\nall the curtains, that is, in moments when they are tortured by a sort\nof moral spleen. By them, however, the question is boldly stated and\nwe know the extent of the evil.\n\nIt remains that we should examine the chances and changes which each\nman is likely to meet in marriage, and which may weaken him in that\nstruggle from which our champion should issue victorious.\n\n\n\n                            MEDITATION V.\n\n                         OF THE PREDESTINED.\n\nPredestined means destined in advance for happiness or unhappiness.\nTheology has seized upon this word and employs it in relation to the\nhappy; we give to the term a meaning which is unfortunate to our elect\nof which one can say in opposition to the Gospel, \"Many are called,\nmany are chosen.\"\n\nExperience has demonstrated that there are certain classes of men more\nsubject than others to certain infirmities; the Gascons are given to\nexaggeration and Parisians to vanity. As we see that apoplexy attacks\npeople with short necks, or butchers are liable to carbuncle, as gout\nattacks the rich, health the poor, deafness kings, paralysis\nadministrators, so it has been remarked that certain classes of\nhusbands and their wives are more given to illegitimate passions. Thus\nthey forestall the celibates, they form another sort of aristocracy.\nIf any reader should be enrolled in one of these aristocratic classes\nhe will, we hope, have sufficient presence of mind, he or at least his\nwife, instantly to call to mind the favorite axiom of Lhomond's Latin\nGrammar: \"No rule without exception.\" A friend of the house may even\nrecite the verse--\n\n  \"Present company always excepted.\"\n\nAnd then every one will have the right to believe, _in petto_, that he\nforms the exception. But our duty, the interest which we take in\nhusbands and the keen desire which we have to preserve young and\npretty women from the caprices and catastrophes which a lover brings\nin his train, force us to give notice to husbands that they ought to\nbe especially on their guard.\n\nIn this recapitulation first are to be reckoned the husbands whom\nbusiness, position or public office calls from their houses and\ndetains for a definite time. It is these who are the standard-bearers\nof the brotherhood.\n\nAmong them, we would reckon magistrates, holding office during\npleasure or for life, and obliged to remain at the Palace for the\ngreater portion of the day; other functionaries sometimes find means\nto leave their office at business hours; but a judge or a public\nprosecutor, seated on his cushion of lilies, is bound even to die\nduring the progress of the hearing. There is his field of battle.\n\nIt is the same with the deputies and peers who discuss the laws, of\nministers who share the toils of the king, of secretaries who work\nwith the ministers, of soldiers on campaign, and indeed with the\ncorporal of the police patrol, as the letter of Lafleur, in the\n_Sentimental Journey_, plainly shows.\n\nNext to the men who are obliged to be absent from home at certain\nfixed hours, come the men whom vast and serious undertakings leave not\none minute for love-making; their foreheads are always wrinkled with\nanxiety, their conversation is generally void of merriment.\n\nAt the head of these unfortunates we must place the bankers, who toil\nin the acquisition of millions, whose heads are so full of\ncalculations that the figures burst through their skulls and range\nthemselves in columns of addition on their foreheads.\n\nThese millionaires, forgetting most of the time the sacred laws of\nmarriage and the attention due to the tender flower which they have\nundertaken to cultivate, never think of watering it or of defending it\nfrom the heat and cold. They scarcely recognize the fact that the\nhappiness of their spouses is in their keeping; if they ever do\nremember this, it is at table, when they see seated before them a\nwoman in rich array, or when a coquette, fearing their brutal repulse,\ncomes, gracious as Venus, to ask them for cash-- Oh! it is then, that\nthey recall, sometimes very vividly, the rights specified in the two\nhundred and thirteenth article of the civil code, and their wives are\ngrateful to them; but like the heavy tariff which the law lays upon\nforeign merchandise, their wives suffer and pay the tribute, in virtue\nof the axiom which says: \"There is no pleasure without pain.\"\n\nThe men of science who spend whole months in gnawing at the bone of an\nantediluvian monster, in calculating the laws of nature, when there is\nan opportunity to peer into her secrets, the Grecians and Latinists\nwho dine on a thought of Tacitus, sup on a phrase of Thucydides, spend\ntheir life in brushing the dust from library shelves, in keeping guard\nover a commonplace book, or a papyrus, are all predestined. So great\nis their abstraction or their ecstasy, that nothing that goes on\naround them strikes their attention. Their unhappiness is consummated;\nin full light of noon they scarcely even perceive it. Oh happy men! a\nthousand times happy! Example: Beauzee, returning home after session\nat the Academy, surprises his wife with a German. \"Did not I tell you,\nmadame, that it was necessary that I shall go,\" cried the stranger.\n\"My dear sir,\" interrupted the academician, \"you ought to say that I\n_should_ go!\"\n\nThen there come, lyre in hand, certain poets whose whole animal\nstrength has left the ground floor and mounted to the upper story.\nThey know better how to mount Pegasus than the beast of old Peter,\nthey rarely marry, although they are accustomed to lavish the fury of\ntheir passions on some wandering or imaginary Chloris.\n\nBut the men whose noses are stained with snuff;\n\nBut those who, to their misfortune, have a perpetual cold in their\nhead;\n\nBut the sailors who smoke or chew;\n\nBut those men whose dry and bilious temperament makes them always look\nas if they had eaten a sour apple;\n\nBut the men who in private life have certain cynical habits,\nridiculous fads, and who always, in spite of everything, look\nunwashed;\n\nBut the husbands who have obtained the degrading name of \"hen-pecked\";\n\nFinally the old men who marry young girls.\n\nAll these people are _par excellence_ among the predestined.\n\nThere is a final class of the predestined whose ill-fortune is almost\ncertain, we mean restless and irritable men, who are inclined to\nmeddle and tyrannize, who have a great idea of domestic domination,\nwho openly express their low ideas of women and who know no more about\nlife than herrings about natural history. When these men marry, their\nhomes have the appearance of a wasp whose head a schoolboy has cut\noff, and who dances here and there on a window pane. For this sort of\npredestined the present work is a sealed book. We do not write any\nmore for those imbeciles, walking effigies, who are like the statues\nof a cathedral, than for those old machines of Marly which are too\nweak to fling water over the hedges of Versailles without being in\ndanger of sudden collapse.\n\nI rarely make my observations on the conjugal oddities with which the\ndrawing-room is usually full, without recalling vividly a sight which\nI once enjoyed in early youth:\n\nIn 1819 I was living in a thatched cottage situated in the bosom of\nthe delightful valley l'Isle-Adam. My hermitage neighbored on the park\nof Cassan, the sweetest of retreats, the most fascinating in aspect,\nthe most attractive as a place to ramble in, the most cool and\nrefreshing in summer, of all places created by luxury and art. This\nverdant country-seat owes its origin to a farmer-general of the good\nold times, a certain Bergeret, celebrated for his originality; who\namong other fantastic dandyisms adopted the habit of going to the\nopera, with his hair powdered in gold; he used to light up his park\nfor his own solitary delectation and on one occasion ordered a\nsumptuous entertainment there, in which he alone took part. This\nrustic Sardanapalus returned from Italy so passionately charmed with\nthe scenery of that beautiful country that, by a sudden freak of\nenthusiasm, he spent four or five millions in order to represent in\nhis park the scenes of which he had pictures in his portfolio. The\nmost charming contrasts of foliage, the rarest trees, long valleys,\nand prospects the most picturesque that could be brought from abroad,\nBorromean islands floating on clear eddying streams like so many rays,\nwhich concentrate their various lustres on a single point, on an Isola\nBella, from which the enchanted eye takes in each detail at its\nleisure, or on an island in the bosom of which is a little house\nconcealed under the drooping foliage of a century-old ash, an island\nfringed with irises, rose-bushes, and flowers which appears like an\nemerald richly set. Ah! one might rove a thousand leagues for such a\nplace! The most sickly, the most soured, the most disgusted of our men\nof genius in ill health would die of satiety at the end of fifteen\ndays, overwhelmed with the luscious sweetness of fresh life in such a\nspot.\n\nThe man who was quite regardless of the Eden which he thus possessed\nhad neither wife nor children, but was attached to a large ape which\nhe kept. A graceful turret of wood, supported by a sculptured column,\nserved as a dwelling place for this vicious animal, who being kept\nchained and rarely petted by his eccentric master, oftener at Paris\nthan in his country home, had gained a very bad reputation. I\nrecollect seeing him once in the presence of certain ladies show\nalmost as much insolence as if he had been a man. His master was\nobliged to kill him, so mischievous did he gradually become.\n\nOne morning while I was sitting under a beautiful tulip tree in\nflower, occupied in doing nothing but inhaling the lovely perfumes\nwhich the tall poplars kept confined within the brilliant enclosure,\nenjoying the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters\nand the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head\nby clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of\nmy future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before\nfrom Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has\nnothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear\nanything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If\nthe distant notes of Roland's Horn had only filled the air with life,\nperhaps--but a noisy fiddler like this, who undertakes to bring to you\nthe expression of human ideas and the phraseology of music! This\nAmphion, who was walking up and down the dining-room, finished by\ntaking a seat on the window-sill, exactly in front of the monkey.\nPerhaps he was looking for an audience. Suddenly I saw the animal\nquietly descend from his little dungeon, stand upon his hind feet, bow\nhis head forward like a swimmer and fold his arms over his bosom like\nSpartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker,\nsummoned by a sweet voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir not\nunknown to me, laid his violin on the window-sill and made off like a\nswallow who rejoins his companion by a rapid level swoop. The great\nmonkey, whose chain was sufficiently long, approached the window and\ngravely took in hand the violin. I don't know whether you have ever\nhad as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to learn music, but\nat the present moment, when I laugh much less than I did in those\ncareless days, I never think of that monkey without a smile; the\nsemi-man began by grasping the instrument with his fist and by sniffing\nat it as if he were tasting the flavor of an apple. The snort from his\nnostrils probably produced a dull harmonious sound in the sonorous\nwood and then the orang-outang shook his head, turned over the violin,\nturned it back again, raised it up in the air, lowered it, held it\nstraight out, shook it, put it to his ear, set it down, and picked it\nup again with a rapidity of movement peculiar to these agile\ncreatures. He seemed to question the dumb wood with faltering sagacity\nand in his gestures there was something marvelous as well as\ninfantile. At last he undertook with grotesque gestures to place the\nviolin under his chin, while in one hand he held the neck; but like a\nspoiled child he soon wearied of a study which required skill not to\nbe obtained in a moment and he twitched the strings without being able\nto draw forth anything but discordant sounds. He seemed annoyed, laid\nthe violin on the window-sill and snatching up the bow he began to\npush it to and fro with violence, like a mason sawing a block of\nstone. This effort only succeeded in wearying his fastidious ears, and\nhe took the bow with both hands and snapped it in two on the innocent\ninstrument, source of harmony and delight. It seemed as if I saw\nbefore me a schoolboy holding under him a companion lying face\ndownwards, while he pommeled him with a shower of blows from his fist,\nas if to punish him for some delinquency. The violin being now tried\nand condemned, the monkey sat down upon the fragments of it and amused\nhimself with stupid joy in mixing up the yellow strings of the broken\nbow.\n\nNever since that day have I been able to look upon the home of the\npredestined without comparing the majority of husbands to this\norang-outang trying to play the violin.\n\nLove is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love\nis innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is\nnecessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of\nthem, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious\nwhich befits it. How many monkeys--men, I mean--marry without knowing\nwhat a woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wives\nas the ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken the heart\nwhich they did not understand, as they might dim and disdain the\namulet whose secret was unknown to them. They are children their whole\nlife through, who leave life with empty hands after having talked\nabout love, about pleasure, about licentiousness and virtue as slaves\ntalk about liberty. Almost all of them married with the most profound\nignorance of women and of love. They commenced by breaking in the door\nof a strange house and expected to be welcomed in this drawing-room.\nBut the rudest artist knows that between him and his instrument, of\nwood, or of ivory, there exists a mysterious sort of friendship. He\nknows by experience that it takes years to establish this\nunderstanding between an inert matter and himself. He did not\ndiscover, at the first touch, the resources, the caprices, the\ndeficiencies, the excellencies of his instrument. It did not become a\nliving soul for him, a source of incomparable melody until he had\nstudied for a long time; man and instrument did not come to understand\neach other like two friends, until both of them had been skillfully\nquestioned and tested by frequent intercourse.\n\nCan a man ever learn woman and know how to decipher this wondrous\nstrain of music, by remaining through life like a seminarian in his\ncell? Is it possible that a man who makes it his business to think for\nothers, to judge others, to rule others, to steal money from others,\nto feed, to heal, to wound others--that, in fact, any of our\npredestined, can spare time to study a woman? They sell their time for\nmoney, how can they give it away for happiness? Money is their god. No\none can serve two masters at the same time. Is not the world,\nmoreover, full of young women who drag along pale and weak, sickly and\nsuffering? Some of them are the prey of feverish inflammations more or\nless serious, others lie under the cruel tyranny of nervous attacks\nmore or less violent. All the husbands of these women belong to the\nclass of the ignorant and the predestined. They have caused their own\nmisfortune and expended as much pains in producing it as the husband\nartist would have bestowed in bringing to flower the late and\ndelightful blooms of pleasure. The time which an ignorant man passes\nto consummate his own ruin is precisely that which a man of knowledge\nemploys in the education of his happiness.\n\n\n                                XXVI.\n             Do not begin marriage by a violation of law.\n\n\nIn the preceding meditations we have indicated the extent of the evil\nwith the reckless audacity of those surgeons, who boldly induce the\nformation of false tissues under which a shameful wound is concealed.\nPublic virtue, transferred to the table of our amphitheatre, has lost\neven its carcass under the strokes of the scalpel. Lover or husband,\nhave you smiled, or have you trembled at this evil? Well, it is with\nmalicious delight that we lay this huge social burden on the\nconscience of the predestined. Harlequin, when he tried to find out\nwhether his horse could be accustomed to go without food, was not more\nridiculous than the men who wish to find happiness in their home and\nyet refuse to cultivate it with all the pains which it demands. The\nerrors of women are so many indictments of egotism, neglect and\nworthlessness in husbands.\n\nYet it is yours, reader, it pertains to you, who have often condemned\nin another the crime which you yourself commit, it is yours to hold\nthe balance. One of the scales is quite loaded, take care what you are\ngoing to put in the other. Reckon up the number of predestined ones\nwho may be found among the total number of married people, weigh them,\nand you will then know where the evil is seated.\n\nLet us try to penetrate more deeply into the causes of this conjugal\nsickliness.\n\nThe word love, when applied to the reproduction of the species, is the\nmost hateful blasphemy which modern manners have taught us to utter.\nNature, in raising us above the beasts by the divine gift of thought,\nhad rendered us very sensitive to bodily sensations, emotional\nsentiment, cravings of appetite and passions. This double nature of\nours makes of man both an animal and a lover. This distinction gives\nthe key to the social problem which we are considering.\n\nMarriage may be considered in three ways, politically, as well as from\na civil and moral point of view: as a law, as a contract and as an\ninstitution. As a law, its object is a reproduction of the species; as\na contract, it relates to the transmission of property; as an\ninstitution, it is a guarantee which all men give and by which all are\nbound: they have father and mother, and they will have children.\nMarriage, therefore, ought to be the object of universal respect.\nSociety can only take into consideration those cardinal points, which,\nfrom a social point of view, dominate the conjugal question.\n\nMost men have no other views in marrying, than reproduction, property\nor children; but neither reproduction nor property nor children\nconstitutes happiness. The command, \"Increase and multiply,\" does not\nimply love. To ask of a young girl whom we have seen fourteen times in\nfifteen days, to give you love in the name of law, the king and\njustice, is an absurdity worthy of the majority of the predestined.\n\nLove is the union between natural craving and sentiment; happiness in\nmarriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair.\nHence it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himself\nbound by certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed the\nbenefit of the social law which consecrates the natural craving, he\nmust obey also the secret laws of nature by which sentiments unfold\nthemselves. If he stakes his happiness on being himself loved, he must\nhimself love sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.\n\nBut to feel this passion is always to feel desire. Can a man always\ndesire his wife?\n\nYes.\n\nIt is as absurd to deny that it is possible for a man always to love\nthe same woman, as it would be to affirm that some famous musician\nneeded several violins in order to execute a piece of music or compose\na charming melody.\n\nLove is the poetry of the senses. It has the destiny of all that which\nis great in man and of all that which proceeds from his thought.\nEither it is sublime, or it is not. When once it exists, it exists\nforever and goes on always increasing. This is the love which the\nancients made the child of heaven and earth.\n\nLiterature revolves round seven situations; music expresses everything\nwith seven notes; painting employs but seven colors; like these three\narts, love perhaps founds itself on seven principles, but we leave\nthis investigation for the next century to carry out.\n\nIf poetry, music and painting have found infinite forms of expression,\npleasure should be even more diversified. For in the three arts which\naid us in seeking, often with little success, truth by means of\nanalogy, the man stands alone with his imagination, while love is the\nunion of two bodies and of two souls. If the three principal methods\nupon which we rely for the expression of thought require preliminary\nstudy in those whom nature has made poets, musicians or painters, is\nit not obvious that, in order, to be happy, it is necessary to be\ninitiated into the secrets of pleasure? All men experience the craving\nfor reproduction, as all feel hunger and thirst; but all are not\ncalled to be lovers and gastronomists. Our present civilization has\nproved that taste is a science, and it is only certain privileged\nbeings who have learned how to eat and drink. Pleasure considered as\nan art is still waiting for its physiologists. As for ourselves, we\nare contented with pointing out that ignorance of the principles upon\nwhich happiness is founded, is the sole cause of that misfortune which\nis the lot of all the predestined.\n\nIt is with the greatest timidity that we venture upon the publication\nof a few aphorisms which may give birth to this new art, as casts have\ncreated the science of geology; and we offer them for the meditation\nof philosophers, of young marrying people and of the predestined.\n\n\n                        CATECHISM OF MARRIAGE.\n\n\n                                XXVII.\n                        Marriage is a science.\n\n\n                               XXVIII.\nA man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected\n                         at least one woman.\n\n\n                                XXIX.\n           The fate of the home depends on the first night.\n\n\n                                 XXX.\nA woman deprived of her free will can never have the credit of making\n                             a sacrifice.\n\n\n                                XXXI.\nIn love, putting aside all consideration of the soul, the heart of a\nwoman is like a lyre which does not reveal its secret, excepting to\nhim who is a skillful player.\n\n\n                                XXXII.\nIndependently of any gesture of repulsion, there exists in the soul of\nall women a sentiment which tends, sooner or later, to proscribe all\npleasure devoid of passionate feeling.\n\n\n                               XXXIII.\nThe interest of a husband as much as his honor forbids him to indulge\n  a pleasure which he has not had the skill to make his wife desire.\n\n\n                                XXXIV.\nPleasure being caused by the union of sensation and sentiment, we can\nsay without fear of contradiction that pleasures are a sort of\nmaterial ideas.\n\n\n                                XXXV.\nAs ideas are capable of infinite combination, it ought to be the same\n                           with pleasures.\n\n\n                                XXXVI.\nIn the life of man there are no two moments of pleasure exactly alike,\n any more than there are two leaves of identical shape upon the same\n                                tree.\n\n\n                               XXXVII.\nIf there are differences between one moment of pleasure and another, a\n             man can always be happy with the same woman.\n\n\n                               XXXVIII.\nTo seize adroitly upon the varieties of pleasure, to develop them, to\nimpart to them a new style, an original expression, constitutes the\ngenius of a husband.\n\n\n                                XXXIX.\nBetween two beings who do not love each other this genius is\nlicentiousness; but the caresses over which love presides are always\npure.\n\n\n                                 XL.\n    The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most\n                             voluptuous.\n\n\n                                 XLI.\n      The most virtuous woman can be forward without knowing it.\n\n\n                                XLII.\nWhen two human beings are united by pleasure, all social\nconventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef on\nwhich many vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgets\nthere is a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal\nlove ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of its\neyes, excepting at the due season.\n\n\n                                XLIII.\n Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but\n                          in striking true.\n\n\n                                XLIV.\nTo call a desire into being, to nourish it, to develop it, to bring it\nto full growth, to excite it, to satisfy it, is a complete poem of\nitself.\n\n\n                                 XLV.\nThe progression of pleasures is from the distich to the quatrain, from\nthe quatrain to the sonnet, from the sonnet to the ballad, from the\nballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to\nthe dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool.\n\n\n                                XLVI.\n                 Each night ought to have its _menu_.\n\n\n                                XLVII.\n    Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours\n                  everything, that is, familiarity.\n\n\n                               XLVIII.\n If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of\n          two consecutive nights, he has married too early.\n\n\n                                XLIX.\nIt is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it\nis more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things\nfrom time to time.\n\n\n                                  L.\n A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to\n                               awaken.\n\n\n                                 LI.\nThe man who enters his wife's dressing-room is either a philosopher or\n                             an imbecile.\n\n\n                                 LII.\n       The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man.\n\n\n                                LIII.\n  The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a\n                               throne.\n\n\n                                 LIV.\n A man must not flatter himself that he knows his wife, and is making\n           her happy unless he sees her often at his knees.\n\n\nIt is to the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions\nof snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men\nthat Sterne addressed, in _Tristram Shandy_, the letter written by\nWalter Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marry\nthe widow Wadman.\n\nThese celebrated instructions which the most original of English\nwriters has comprised in this letter, suffice with some few exceptions\nto complete our observations on the manner in which husbands should\nbehave to their wives; and we offer it in its original form to the\nreflections of the predestined, begging that they will meditate upon\nit as one of the most solid masterpieces of human wit.\n\n\n \"MY DEAR BROTHER TOBY,\n\n \"What I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of\n  love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee--tho' not\n  so well for me--that thou hast occasion for a letter of\n  instructions upon that head, and that I am able to write it to\n  thee.\n\n \"Had it been the good pleasure of Him who disposes of our lots, and\n  thou no sufferer by the knowledge, I had been well content that\n  thou should'st have dipped the pen this moment into the ink\n  instead of myself; but that not being the case--Mrs. Shandy being\n  now close beside me, preparing for bed--I have thrown together\n  without order, and just as they have come into my mind, such hints\n  and documents as I deem may be of use to thee; intending, in this,\n  to give thee a token of my love; not doubting, my dear Toby, of\n  the manner in which it will be accepted.\n\n \"In the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion in\n  the affair--though I perceive from a glow in my cheek, that I\n  blush as I begin to speak to thee upon the subject, as well\n  knowing, notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how few of its\n  offices thou neglectest--yet I would remind thee of one (during\n  the continuance of thy courtship) in a particular manner, which I\n  would not have omitted; and that is, never to go forth upon the\n  enterprise, whether it be in the morning or in the afternoon,\n  without first recommending thyself to the protection of Almighty\n  God, that He may defend thee from the evil one.\n\n \"Shave the whole top of thy crown clean once at least every four or\n  five days, but oftener if convenient; lest in taking off thy wig\n  before her, thro' absence of mind, she should be able to discover\n  how much has been cut away by Time--how much by Trim.\n\n \"'Twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her fancy.\n\n \"Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim,\n  Toby--\n\n \"_'That women are timid.'_ And 'tis well they are--else there would\n  be no dealing with them.\n\n \"Let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang too loose about thy\n  thighs, like the trunk-hose of our ancestors.\n\n \"A just medium prevents all conclusions.\n\n \"Whatever thou hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to utter\n  it in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches\n  it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: For this\n  cause, if thou canst help it, never throw down the tongs and\n  poker.\n\n \"Avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse\n  with her, and do whatever lies in thy power at the same time, to\n  keep from her all books and writings which tend there to: there\n  are some devotional tracts, which if thou canst entice her to\n  read over, it will be well: but suffer her not to look into\n  _Rabelais_, or _Scarron_, or _Don Quixote_.\n\n \"They are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear\n  Toby, that there is no passion so serious as lust.\n\n \"Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her\n  parlor.\n\n \"And if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sofa with her, and\n  she gives thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers--beware of\n  taking it--thou canst not lay thy hand upon hers, but she will\n  feel the temper of thine. Leave that and as many other things as\n  thou canst, quite undetermined; by so doing, thou wilt have her\n  curiosity on thy side; and if she is not conquered by that, and\n  thy Asse continues still kicking, which there is great reason to\n  suppose--thou must begin, with first losing a few ounces of blood\n  below the ears, according to the practice of the ancient\n  Scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits of the appetite by\n  that means.\n\n \"_Avicenna_, after this, is for having the part anointed with the\n  syrup of hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges--and I\n  believe rightly. But thou must eat little or no goat's flesh, nor\n  red deer--nor even foal's flesh by any means; and carefully\n  abstain--that is, as much as thou canst,--from peacocks, cranes,\n  coots, didappers and water-hens.\n\n \"As for thy drink--I need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of\n  Vervain and the herb Hanea, of which Aelian relates such effects;\n  but if thy stomach palls with it--discontinue it from time to\n  time, taking cucumbers, melons, purslane, water-lilies, woodbine,\n  and lettuce, in the stead of them.\n\n \"There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present--\n\n \"Unless the breaking out of a fresh war.--So wishing everything,\n  dear Toby, for the best,\n\n    \"I rest thy affectionate brother,\n\n        \"WALTER SHANDY.\"\n\n\nUnder the present circumstances Sterne himself would doubtless have\nomitted from his letter the passage about the ass; and, far from\nadvising the predestined to be bled he would have changed the regimen\nof cucumbers and lettuces for one eminently substantial. He\nrecommended the exercise of economy, in order to attain to the power\nof magic liberality in the moment of war, thus imitating the admirable\nexample of the English government, which in time of peace has two\nhundred ships in commission, but whose shipwrights can, in time of\nneed, furnish double that quantity when it is desirable to scour the\nsea and carry off a whole foreign navy.\n\nWhen a man belongs to the small class of those who by a liberal\neducation have been made masters of the domain of thought, he ought\nalways, before marrying, to examine his physical and moral resources.\nTo contend advantageously with the tempest which so many attractions\ntend to raise in the heart of his wife, a husband ought to possess,\nbesides the science of pleasure and a fortune which saves him from\nsinking into any class of the predestined, robust health, exquisite\ntact, considerable intellect, too much good sense to make his\nsuperiority felt, excepting on fit occasions, and finally great\nacuteness of hearing and sight.\n\nIf he has a handsome face, a good figure, a manly air, and yet falls\nshort of all these promises, he will sink into the class of the\npredestined. On the other hand, a husband who is plain in features but\nhas a face full of expression, will find himself, if his wife once\nforgets his plainness, in a situation most favorable for his struggle\nagainst the genius of evil.\n\nHe will study (and this is a detail omitted from the letter of Sterne)\nto give no occasion for his wife's disgust. Also, he will resort\nmoderately to the use of perfumes, which, however, always expose\nbeauty to injurious suspicions.\n\nHe ought as carefully to study how to behave and how to pick out\nsubjects of conversation, as if he were courting the most inconstant\nof women. It is for him that a philosopher has made the following\nreflection:\n\n\"More than one woman has been rendered unhappy for the rest of her\nlife, has been lost and dishonored by a man whom she has ceased to\nlove, because he took off his coat awkwardly, trimmed one of his nails\ncrookedly, put on a stocking wrong side out, and was clumsy with a\nbutton.\"\n\nOne of the most important of his duties will be to conceal from his\nwife the real state of his fortune, so that he may satisfy her fancies\nand caprices as generous celibates are wont to do.\n\nThen the most difficult thing of all, a thing to accomplish which\nsuperhuman courage is required, is to exercise the most complete\ncontrol over the ass of which Sterne speaks. This ass ought to be as\nsubmissive as a serf of the thirteenth century was to his lord; to\nobey and be silent, advance and stop, at the slightest word.\n\nEven when equipped with these advantages, a husband enters the lists\nwith scarcely any hope of success. Like all the rest, he still runs\nthe risk of becoming, for his wife, a sort of responsible editor.\n\n\"And why!\" will exclaim certain good but small-minded people, whose\nhorizon is limited to the tip of their nose, \"why is it necessary to\ntake so much pains in order to love, and why is it necessary to go to\nschool beforehand, in order to be happy in your own home? Does the\ngovernment intend to institute a professional chair of love, just as\nit has instituted a chair of law?\"\n\nThis is our answer:\n\nThese multiplied rules, so difficult to deduce, these minute\nobservations, these ideas which vary so as to suit different\ntemperaments, are innate, so to speak, in the heart of those who are\nborn for love; just as his feeling of taste and his indescribable\nfelicity in combining ideas are natural to the soul of the poet, the\npainter or the musician. The men who would experience any fatigue in\nputting into practice the instructions given in this Meditation are\nnaturally predestined, just as he who cannot perceive the connection\nwhich exists between two different ideas is an imbecile. As a matter\nof fact, love has its great men although they be unrecognized, as war\nhas its Napoleons, poetry its Andre Cheniers and philosophy its\nDescartes.\n\nThis last observation contains the germ of a true answer to the\nquestion which men from time immemorial have been asking: Why are\nhappy marriages so very rare?\n\nThis phenomenon of the moral world is rarely met with for the reason\nthat people of genius are rarely met with. A passion which lasts is a\nsublime drama acted by two performers of equal talent, a drama in\nwhich sentiments form the catastrophe, where desires are incidents and\nthe lightest thought brings a change of scene. Now how is it possible,\nin this herd of bimana which we call a nation, to meet, on any but\nrare occasions, a man and a woman who possess in the same degree the\ngenius of love, when men of talent are so thinly sown and so rare in\nall other sciences, in the pursuit of which the artist needs only to\nunderstand himself, in order to attain success?\n\nUp to the present moment, we have been confronted with making a\nforecast of the difficulties, to some degree physical, which two\nmarried people have to overcome, in order to be happy; but what a task\nwould be ours if it were necessary to unfold the startling array of\nmoral obligations which spring from their differences in character?\nLet us cry halt! The man who is skillful enough to guide the\ntemperament will certainly show himself master of the soul of another.\n\nWe will suppose that our model husband fulfills the primary conditions\nnecessary, in order that he may dispute or maintain possession of his\nwife, in spite of all assailants. We will admit that he is not to be\nreckoned in any of the numerous classes of the predestined which we\nhave passed in review. Let us admit that he has become imbued with the\nspirit of all our maxims; that he has mastered the admirable science,\nsome of whose precepts we have made known; that he has married wisely,\nthat he knows his wife, that he is loved by her; and let us continue\nthe enumeration of all those general causes which might aggravate the\ncritical situation which we shall represent him as occupying for the\ninstruction of the human race.\n\n\n\n                            MEDITATION VI.\n\n                         OF BOARDING SCHOOLS.\n\nIf you have married a young lady whose education has been carried on\nat a boarding school, there are thirty more obstacles to your\nhappiness, added to all those which we have already enumerated, and\nyou are exactly like a man who thrusts his hands into a wasp's nest.\n\nImmediately, therefore, after the nuptial blessing has been\npronounced, without allowing yourself to be imposed upon by the\ninnocent ignorance, the frank graces and the modest countenance of\nyour wife, you ought to ponder well and faithfully follow out the\naxioms and precepts which we shall develop in the second part of this\nbook. You should even put into practice the rigors prescribed in the\nthird part, by maintaining an active surveillance, a paternal\nsolicitude at all hours, for the very day after your marriage, perhaps\non the evening of your wedding day, there is danger in the house.\n\nI mean to say that you should call to mind the secret and profound\ninstruction which the pupils have acquired _de natura rerum_,--of the\nnature of things. Did Lapeyrouse, Cook or Captain Peary ever show so\nmuch ardor in navigating the ocean towards the Poles as the scholars\nof the Lycee do in approaching forbidden tracts in the ocean of\npleasure? Since girls are more cunning, cleverer and more curious than\nboys, their secret meetings and their conversations, which all the art\nof their teachers cannot check, are necessarily presided over by a\ngenius a thousand times more informal than that of college boys. What\nman has ever heard the moral reflections and the corrupting\nconfidences of these young girls? They alone know the sports at which\nhonor is lost in advance, those essays in pleasure, those promptings\nin voluptuousness, those imitations of bliss, which may be compared to\nthe thefts made by greedy children from a dessert which is locked up.\nA girl may come forth from her boarding school a virgin, but never\nchaste. She will have discussed, time and time again at secret\nmeetings, the important question of lovers, and corruption will\nnecessarily have overcome her heart or her spirit.\n\nNevertheless, we will admit that your wife has not participated in\nthese virginal delights, in these premature deviltries. Is she any\nbetter because she has never had any voice in the secret councils of\ngrown-up girls? No! She will, in any case, have contracted a\nfriendship with other young ladies, and our computation will be\nmodest, if we attribute to her no more than two or three intimate\nfriends. Are you certain that after your wife has left boarding\nschool, her young friends have not there been admitted to those\nconfidences, in which an attempt is made to learn in advance, at least\nby analogy, the pastimes of doves? And then her friends will marry;\nyou will have four women to watch instead of one, four characters to\ndivine, and you will be at the mercy of four husbands and a dozen\ncelibates, of whose life, principles and habits you are quite\nignorant, at a time when our meditations have revealed to you certain\ncoming of a day when you will have your hands full with the people\nwhom you married with your wife. Satan alone could have thought of\nplacing a girl's boarding school in the middle of a large town! Madame\nCampan had at least the wisdom to set up her famous institution at\nEcouen. This sensible precaution proved that she was no ordinary\nwoman. There, her young ladies did not gaze upon the picture gallery\nof the streets, the huge and grotesque figures and the obscene words\ndrawn by some evil-spirited pencil. They had not perpetually before\ntheir eyes the spectacle of human infirmities exhibited at every\nbarrier in France, and treacherous book-stalls did not vomit out upon\nthem in secret the poison of books which taught evil and set passion\non fire. This wise school-mistress, moreover, could only at Ecouen\npreserve a young lady for you spotless and pure, if, even there, that\nwere possible. Perhaps you hope to find no difficulty in preventing\nyour wife from seeing her school friends? What folly! She will meet\nthem at the ball, at the theatre, out walking and in the world at\nlarge; and how many services two friends can render each other! But we\nwill meditate upon this new subject of alarm in its proper place and\norder.\n\nNor is this all; if your mother-in-law sent her daughter to a boarding\nschool, do you believe that this was out of solicitude for her\ndaughter? A girl of twelve or fifteen is a terrible Argus; and if your\nmother-in-law did not wish to have an Argus in her house I should be\ninclined to suspect that your mother-in-law belonged undoubtedly to\nthe most shady section of our honest women. She will, therefore, prove\nfor her daughter on every occasion either a deadly example or a\ndangerous adviser.\n\nLet us stop here!--The mother-in-law requires a whole Meditation for\nherself.\n\nSo that, whichever way you turn, the bed of marriage, in this\nconnection, is equally full of thorns.\n\nBefore the Revolution, several aristocratic families used to send\ntheir daughters to the convent. This example was followed by a number\nof people who imagined that in sending their daughters to a school\nwhere the daughters of some great noblemen were sent, they would\nassume the tone and manners of aristocrats. This delusion of pride\nwas, from the first, fatal to domestic happiness; for the convents had\nall the disadvantages of other boarding schools. The idleness that\nprevailed there was more terrible. The cloister bars inflame the\nimagination. Solitude is a condition very favorable to the devil; and\none can scarcely imagine what ravages the most ordinary phenomena of\nlife are able to leave in the soul of these young girls, dreamy,\nignorant and unoccupied.\n\nSome of them, by reason of their having indulged idle fancies, are led\ninto curious blunders. Others, having indulged in exaggerated ideas of\nmarried life, say to themselves, as soon as they have taken a husband,\n\"What! Is this all?\" In every way, the imperfect instruction, which is\ngiven to girls educated in common, has in it all the danger of\nignorance and all the unhappiness of science.\n\nA young girl brought up at home by her mother or by her virtuous,\nbigoted, amiable or cross-grained old aunt; a young girl, whose steps\nhave never crossed the home threshold without being surrounded by\nchaperons, whose laborious childhood has been wearied by tasks, albeit\nthey were profitless, to whom in short everything is a mystery, even\nthe Seraphin puppet show, is one of those treasures which are met\nwith, here and there in the world, like woodland flowers surrounded by\nbrambles so thick that mortal eye cannot discern them. The man who\nowns a flower so sweet and pure as this, and leaves it to be\ncultivated by others, deserves his unhappiness a thousand times over.\nHe is either a monster or a fool.\n\nAnd if in the preceding Meditation we have succeeded in proving to you\nthat by far the greater number of men live in the most absolute\nindifference to their personal honor, in the matter of marriage, is it\nreasonable to believe that any considerable number of them are\nsufficiently rich, sufficiently intellectual, sufficiently penetrating\nto waste, like Burchell in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, one or two years\nin studying and watching the girls whom they mean to make their wives,\nwhen they pay so little attention to them after conjugal possession\nduring that period of time which the English call the honeymoon, and\nwhose influence we shall shortly discuss?\n\nSince, however, we have spent some time in reflecting upon this\nimportant matter, we would observe that there are many methods of\nchoosing more or less successfully, even though the choice be promptly\nmade.\n\nIt is, for example, beyond doubt that the probabilities will be in\nyour favor:\n\nI. If you have chosen a young lady whose temperament resembles that of\nthe women of Louisiana or the Carolinas.\n\nTo obtain reliable information concerning the temperament of a young\nperson, it is necessary to put into vigorous operation the system\nwhich Gil Blas prescribes, in dealing with chambermaids, a system\nemployed by statesmen to discover conspiracies and to learn how the\nministers have passed the night.\n\nII. If you choose a young lady who, without being plain, does not\nbelong to the class of pretty women.\n\nWe regard it as an infallible principle that great sweetness of\ndisposition united in a woman with plainness that is not repulsive,\nform two indubitable elements of success in securing the greatest\npossible happiness to the home.\n\nBut would you learn the truth? Open your Rousseau; for there is not a\nsingle question of public morals whose trend he has not pointed out in\nadvance. Read:\n\n\"Among people of fixed principles the girls are careless, the women\nsevere; the contrary is the case among people of no principle.\"\n\nTo admit the truth enshrined in this profound and truthful remark is\nto conclude, that there would be fewer unhappy marriages if men wedded\ntheir mistresses. The education of girls requires, therefore,\nimportant modifications in France. Up to this time French laws and\nFrench manners instituted to distinguish between a misdemeanor and a\ncrime, have encouraged crime. In reality the fault committed by a\nyoung girl is scarcely ever a misdemeanor, if you compare it with that\ncommitted by the married woman. Is there any comparison between the\ndanger of giving liberty to girls and that of allowing it to wives?\nThe idea of taking a young girl on trial makes more serious men think\nthan fools laugh. The manners of Germany, of Switzerland, of England\nand of the United States give to young ladies such rights as in France\nwould be considered the subversion of all morality; and yet it is\ncertain that in these countries there are fewer unhappy marriages than\nin France.\n\n\n                                 LV.\n\"Before a woman gives herself entirely up to her lover, she ought to\nconsider well what his love has to offer her. The gift of her esteem\nand confidence should necessarily precede that of her heart.\"\n\n\nSparkling with truth as they are, these lines probably filled with\nlight the dungeon, in the depths of which Mirabeau wrote them; and the\nkeen observation which they bear witness to, although prompted by the\nmost stormy of his passions, has none the less influence even now in\nsolving the social problem on which we are engaged. In fact, a\nmarriage sealed under the auspices of the religious scrutiny which\nassumes the existence of love, and subjected to the atmosphere of that\ndisenchantment which follows on possession, ought naturally to be the\nmost firmly-welded of all human unions.\n\nA woman then ought never to reproach her husband for the legal right,\nin virtue of which she belongs to him. She ought not to find in this\ncompulsory submission any excuse for yielding to a lover, because some\ntime after her marriage she has discovered in her own heart a traitor\nwhose sophisms seduce her by asking twenty times an hour, \"Wherefore,\nsince she has been given against her will to a man whom she does not\nlove, should she not give herself, of her own free-will, to a man whom\nshe does love.\" A woman is not to be tolerated in her complaints\nconcerning faults inseparable from human nature. She has, in advance,\nmade trial of the tyranny which they exercise, and taken sides with\nthe caprices which they exhibit.\n\nA great many young girls are likely to be disappointed in their hopes\nof love!--But will it not be an immense advantage to them to have\nescaped being made the companions of men whom they would have had the\nright to despise?\n\nCertain alarmists will exclaim that such an alteration in our manners\nwould bring about a public dissoluteness which would be frightful;\nthat the laws, and the customs which prompt the laws, could not after\nall authorize scandal and immorality; and if certain unavoidable\nabuses do exist, at least society ought not to sanction them.\n\nIt is easy to say, in reply, first of all, that the proposed system\ntends to prevent those abuses which have been hitherto regarded as\nincapable of prevention; but, the calculations of our statistics,\ninexact as they are, have invariably pointed out a widely prevailing\nsocial sore, and our moralists may, therefore, be accused of\npreferring the greater to the lesser evil, the violation of the\nprinciple on which society is constituted, to the granting of a\ncertain liberty to girls; and dissoluteness in mothers of families,\nsuch as poisons the springs of public education and brings unhappiness\nupon at least four persons, to dissoluteness in a young girl, which\nonly affects herself or at the most a child besides. Let the virtue of\nten virgins be lost rather than forfeit this sanctity of morals, that\ncrown of honor with which the mother of a family should be invested!\nIn the picture presented by a young girl abandoned by her betrayer,\nthere is something imposing, something indescribably sacred; here we\nsee oaths violated, holy confidences betrayed, and on the ruins of a\ntoo facile virtue innocence sits in tears, doubting everything,\nbecause compelled to doubt the love of a father for his child. The\nunfortunate girl is still innocent; she may yet become a faithful\nwife, a tender mother, and, if the past is mantled in clouds, the\nfuture is blue as the clear sky. Shall we not find these tender tints\nin the gloomy pictures of loves which violate the marriage law? In the\none, the woman is the victim, in the other, she is a criminal. What\nhope is there for the unfaithful wife? If God pardons the fault, the\nmost exemplary life cannot efface, here below, its living\nconsequences. If James I was the son of Rizzio, the crime of Mary\nlasted as long as did her mournful though royal house, and the fall of\nthe Stuarts was the justice of God.\n\nBut in good faith, would the emancipation of girls set free such a\nhost of dangers?\n\nIt is very easy to accuse a young person for suffering herself to be\ndeceived, in the desire to escape, at any price, from the condition of\ngirlhood; but such an accusation is only just in the present condition\nof our manners. At the present day, a young person knows nothing about\nseduction and its snares, she relies altogether upon her weakness, and\nmingling with this reliance the convenient maxims of the fashionable\nworld, she takes as her guide while under the control of those desires\nwhich everything conspires to excite, her own deluding fancies, which\nprove a guide all the more treacherous, because a young girl rarely\never confides to another the secret thoughts of her first love.\n\nIf she were free, an education free from prejudices would arm her\nagainst the love of the first comer. She would, like any one else, be\nvery much better able to meet dangers of which she knew, than perils\nwhose extent had been concealed from her. And, moreover, is it\nnecessary for a girl to be any the less under the watchful eye of her\nmother, because she is mistress of her own actions? Are we to count as\nnothing the modesty and the fears which nature has made so powerful in\nthe soul of a young girl, for the very purpose of preserving her from\nthe misfortune of submitting to a man who does not love her? Again,\nwhat girl is there so thoughtless as not to discern, that the most\nimmoral man wishes his wife to be a woman of principle, as masters\ndesire their servants to be perfect; and that, therefore, her virtue\nis the richest and the most advantageous of all possessions?\n\nAfter all, what is the question before us? For what do you think we\nare stipulating? We are making a claim for five or six hundred\nthousand maidens, protected by their instinctive timidity, and by the\nhigh price at which they rate themselves; they understand how to\ndefend themselves, just as well as they know how to sell themselves.\nThe eighteen millions of human beings, whom we have excepted from this\nconsideration, almost invariably contract marriages in accordance with\nthe system which we are trying to make paramount in our system of\nmanners; and as to the intermediary classes by which we poor bimana\nare separated from the men of privilege who march at the head of a\nnation, the number of castaway children which these classes, although\nin tolerably easy circumstances, consign to misery, goes on increasing\nsince the peace, if we may believe M. Benoiston de Chateauneuf, one of\nthe most courageous of those savants who have devoted themselves to\nthe arid yet useful study of statistics. We may guess how deep-seated\nis the social hurt, for which we propound a remedy, if we reckon the\nnumber of natural children which statistics reveal, and the number of\nillicit adventures whose evidence in high society we are forced to\nsuspect. But it is difficult here to make quite plain all the\nadvantages which would result from the emancipation of young girls.\nWhen we come to observe the circumstances which attend a marriage,\nsuch as our present manners approve of, judicious minds must\nappreciate the value of that system of education and liberty, which we\ndemand for young girls, in the name of reason and nature. The\nprejudice which we in France entertain in favor of the virginity of\nbrides is the most silly of all those which still survive among us.\nThe Orientals take their brides without distressing themselves about\nthe past and lock them up in order to be more certain about the\nfuture; the French put their daughters into a sort of seraglio\ndefended by their mothers, by prejudice, and by religious ideas, and\ngive the most complete liberty to their wives, thus showing themselves\nmuch more solicitous about a woman's past than about her future. The\npoint we are aiming at is to bring about a reversal of our system of\nmanners. If we did so we should end, perhaps, by giving to faithful\nmarried life all the flavor and the piquancy which women of to-day\nfind in acts of infidelity.\n\nBut this discussion would take us far from our subject, if it led us\nto examine, in all its details, the vast improvement in morals which\ndoubtless will distinguish twentieth century France; for morals are\nreformed only very gradually! Is it not necessary, in order to produce\nthe slightest change, that the most daring dreams of the past century\nbecome the most trite ideas of the present one? We have touched upon\nthis question merely in a trifling mood, for the purposes of showing\nthat we are not blind to its importance, and of bequeathing also to\nposterity the outline of a work, which they may complete. To speak\nmore accurately there is a third work to be composed; the first\nconcerns courtesans, while the second is the physiology of pleasure!\n\n\"When there are ten of us, we cross ourselves.\"\n\nIn the present state of our morals and of our imperfect civilization,\na problem crops up which for the moment is insoluble, and which\nrenders superfluous all discussion on the art of choosing a wife; we\ncommend it, as we have done all the others, to the meditation of\nphilosophers.\n\n\n                               PROBLEM.\n\nIt has not yet been decided whether a wife is forced into infidelity\nby the impossibility of obtaining any change, or by the liberty which\nis allowed her in this connection.\n\nMoreover, as in this work we pitch upon a man at the moment that he is\nnewly married, we declare that if he has found a wife of sanguine\ntemperament, of vivid imagination, of a nervous constitution or of an\nindolent character, his situation cannot fail to be extremely serious.\n\nA man would find himself in a position of danger even more critical if\nhis wife drank nothing but water [see the Meditation entitled\n_Conjugal Hygiene_]; but if she had some talent for singing, or if she\nwere disposed to take cold easily, he should tremble all the time; for\nit must be remembered that women who sing are at least as passionate\nas women whose mucous membrane shows extreme delicacy.\n\nAgain, this danger would be aggravated still more if your wife were\nless than seventeen; or if, on the other hand, her general complexion\nwere pale and dull, for this sort of woman is almost always\nartificial.\n\nBut we do not wish to anticipate here any description of the terrors\nwhich threaten husbands from the symptoms of unhappiness which they\nread in the character of their wives. This digression has already\ntaken us too far from the subject of boarding schools, in which so\nmany catastrophes are hatched, and from which issue so many young\ngirls incapable of appreciating the painful sacrifices by which the\nhonest man who does them the honor of marrying them, has obtained\nopulence; young girls eager for the enjoyments of luxury, ignorant of\nour laws, ignorant of our manners, claim with avidity the empire which\ntheir beauty yields them, and show themselves quite ready to turn away\nfrom the genuine utterances of the heart, while they readily listen to\nthe buzzing of flattery.\n\nThis Meditation should plant in the memory of all who read it, even\nthose who merely open the book for the sake of glancing at it or\ndistracting their mind, an intense repugnance for young women educated\nin a boarding school, and if it succeeds in doing so, its services to\nthe public will have already proved considerable.\n\n\n\n                           MEDITATION VII.\n\n                          OF THE HONEYMOON.\n\nIf our meditations prove that it is almost impossible for a married\nwoman to remain virtuous in France, our enumeration of the celibates\nand the predestined, our remarks upon the education of girls, and our\nrapid survey of the difficulties which attend the choice of a wife\nwill explain up to a certain point this national frailty. Thus, after\nindicating frankly the aching malady under which the social slate is\nlaboring, we have sought for the causes in the imperfection of the\nlaws, in the irrational condition of our manners, in the incapacity of\nour minds, and in the contradictions which characterize our habits. A\nsingle point still claims our observation, and that is the first\nonslaught of the evil we are confronting.\n\nWe reach this first question on approaching the high problems\nsuggested by the honeymoon; and although we find here the starting\npoint of all the phenomena of married life, it appears to us to be the\nbrilliant link round which are clustered all our observations, our\naxioms, our problems, which have been scattered deliberately among the\nwise quips which our loquacious meditations retail. The honeymoon\nwould seem to be, if we may use the expression, the apogee of that\nanalysis to which we must apply ourselves, before engaging in battle\nour two imaginary champions.\n\nThe expression _honeymoon_ is an Anglicism, which has become an idiom\nin all languages, so gracefully does it depict the nuptial season\nwhich is so fugitive, and during which life is nothing but sweetness\nand rapture; the expression survives as illusions and errors survive,\nfor it contains the most odious of falsehoods. If this season is\npresented to us as a nymph crowned with fresh flowers, caressing as a\nsiren, it is because in it is unhappiness personified and unhappiness\ngenerally comes during the indulgence of folly.\n\nThe married couple who intend to love each other during their whole\nlife have no notion of a honeymoon; for them it has no existence, or\nrather its existence is perennial; they are like the immortals who do\nnot understand death. But the consideration of this happiness is not\ngermane to our book; and for our readers marriage is under the\ninfluence of two moons, the honeymoon and the Red-moon. This last\nterminates its course by a revolution, which changes it to a crescent;\nand when once it rises upon a home its light there is eternal.\n\nHow can the honeymoon rise upon two beings who cannot possibly love\neach other?\n\nHow can it set, when once it has risen?\n\nHave all marriages their honeymoon?\n\nLet us proceed to answer these questions in order.\n\nIt is in this connection that the admirable education which we give to\ngirls, and the wise provisions made by the law under which men marry,\nbear all their fruit. Let us examine the circumstances which precede\nand attend those marriages which are least disastrous.\n\nThe tone of our morals develops in the young girl whom you make your\nwife a curiosity which is naturally excessive; but as mothers in\nFrance pique themselves on exposing their girls every day to the fire\nwhich they do not allow to scorch them, this curiosity has no limit.\n\nHer profound ignorance of the mysteries of marriage conceals from this\ncreature, who is as innocent as she is crafty, a clear view of the\ndangers by which marriage is followed; and as marriage is incessantly\ndescribed to her as an epoch in which tyranny and liberty equally\nprevail, and in which enjoyment and supremacy are to be indulged in,\nher desires are intensified by all her interest in an existence as yet\nunfulfilled; for her to marry is to be called up from nothingness into\nlife!\n\nIf she has a disposition for happiness, for religion, for morality,\nthe voices of the law and of her mother have repeated to her that this\nhappiness can only come to her from you.\n\nObedience if it is not virtue, is at least a necessary thing with her;\nfor she expects everything from you. In the first place, society\nsanctions the slavery of a wife, but she does not conceive even the\nwish to be free, for she feels herself weak, timid and ignorant.\n\nOf course she tries to please you, unless a chance error is committed,\nor she is seized by a repugnance which it would be unpardonable in you\nnot to divine. She tries to please because she does not know you.\n\nIn a word, in order to complete your triumph, you take her at a moment\nwhen nature demands, often with some violence, the pleasure of which\nyou are the dispenser. Like St. Peter you hold the keys of Paradise.\n\nI would ask of any reasonable creature, would a demon marshal round\nthe angel whose ruin he had vowed all the elements of disaster with\nmore solicitude than that with which good morals conspire against the\nhappiness of a husband? Are you not a king surrounded by flatterers?\n\nThis young girl, with all her ignorance and all her desires, committed\nto the mercy of a man who, even though he be in love, cannot know her\nshrinking and secret emotions, will submit to him with a certain sense\nof shame, and will be obedient and complaisant so long as her young\nimagination persuades her to expect the pleasure or the happiness of\nthat morrow which never dawns.\n\nIn this unnatural situation social laws and the laws of nature are in\nconflict, but the young girl obediently abandons herself to it, and,\nfrom motives of self-interest, suffers in silence. Her obedience is a\nspeculation; her complaisance is a hope; her devotion to you is a sort\nof vocation, of which you reap the advantage; and her silence is\ngenerosity. She will remain the victim of your caprices so long as she\ndoes not understand them; she will suffer from the limitations of your\ncharacter until she has studied it; she will sacrifice herself without\nlove, because she believed in the show of passion you made at the\nfirst moment of possession; she will no longer be silent when once she\nhas learned the uselessness of her sacrifices.\n\nAnd then the morning arrives when the inconsistencies which have\nprevailed in this union rise up like branches of a tree bent down for\na moment under a weight which has been gradually lightened. You have\nmistaken for love the negative attitude of a young girl who was\nwaiting for happiness, who flew in advance of your desires, in the\nhope that you would go forward in anticipation of hers, and who did\nnot dare to complain of the secret unhappiness, for which she at first\naccused herself. What man could fail to be the dupe of a delusion\nprepared at such long range, and in which a young innocent woman is at\nonce the accomplice and the victim? Unless you were a divine being it\nwould be impossible for you to escape the fascination with which\nnature and society have surrounded you. Is not a snare set in\neverything which surrounds you on the outside and influences you\nwithin? For in order to be happy, is it not necessary to control the\nimpetuous desires of your senses? Where is the powerful barrier to\nrestrain her, raised by the light hand of a woman whom you wish to\nplease, because you do not possess? Moreover, you have caused your\ntroops to parade and march by, when there was no one at the window;\nyou have discharged your fireworks whose framework alone was left,\nwhen your guest arrived to see them. Your wife, before the pledges of\nmarriage, was like a Mohican at the Opera: the teacher becomes\nlistless, when the savage begins to understand.\n\n\n                                      LVI.\nIn married life, the moment when two hearts come to understand each\nother is sudden as a flash of lightning, and never returns, when once\nit is passed.\n\n\nThis first entrance into life of two persons, during which a woman is\nencouraged by the hope of happiness, by the still fresh sentiment of\nher married duty, by the wish to please, by the sense of virtue which\nbegins to be so attractive as soon as it shows love to be in harmony\nwith duty, is called the honeymoon. How can it last long between two\nbeings who are united for their whole life, unless they know each\nother perfectly? If there is one thing which ought to cause\nastonishment it is this, that the deplorable absurdities which our\nmanners heap up around the nuptial couch give birth to so few hatreds!\nBut that the life of the wise man is a calm current, and that of the\nprodigal a cataract; that the child, whose thoughtless hands have\nstripped the leaves from every rose upon his pathway, finds nothing\nbut thorns on his return, that the man who in his wild youth has\nsquandered a million, will never enjoy, during his life, the income of\nforty thousand francs, which this million would have provided--are\ntrite commonplaces, if one thinks of the moral theory of life; but new\ndiscoveries, if we consider the conduct of most men. You may see here\na true image of all honeymoons; this is their history, this is the\nplain fact and not the cause that underlies it.\n\nBut that men endowed with a certain power of thought by a privileged\neducation, and accustomed to think deliberately, in order to shine in\npolitics, literature, art, commerce or private life--that these men\nshould all marry with the intention of being happy, of governing a\nwife, either by love or by force, and should all tumble into the same\npitfall and should become foolish, after having enjoyed a certain\nhappiness for a certain time,--this is certainly a problem whose\nsolution is to be found rather in the unknown depths of the human\nsoul, than in the quasi physical truths, on the basis of which we have\nhitherto attempted to explain some of these phenomena. The risky\nsearch for the secret laws, which almost all men are bound to violate\nwithout knowing it, under these circumstances, promises abundant glory\nfor any one even though he make shipwreck in the enterprise upon which\nwe now venture to set forth. Let us then make the attempt.\n\nIn spite of all that fools have to say about the difficulty they have\nhad in explaining love, there are certain principles relating to it as\ninfallible as those of geometry; but in each character these are\nmodified according to its tendency; hence the caprices of love, which\nare due to the infinite number of varying temperaments. If we were\npermitted never to see the various effects of light without also\nperceiving on what they were based, many minds would refuse to believe\nin the movement of the sun and in its oneness. Let the blind men cry\nout as they like; I boast with Socrates, although I am not as wise as\nhe was, that I know of naught save love; and I intend to attempt the\nformulation of some of its precepts, in order to spare married people\nthe trouble of cudgeling their brains; they would soon reach the limit\nof their wit.\n\nNow all the preceding observations may be resolved into a single\nproposition, which may be considered either the first or last term in\nthis secret theory of love, whose statement would end by wearying us,\nif we did not bring it to a prompt conclusion. This principle is\ncontained in the following formula:\n\n\n                                LVII.\nBetween two beings susceptible of love, the duration of passion is in\nproportion to the original resistance of the woman, or to the\nobstacles which the accidents of social life put in the way of your\nhappiness.\n\n\nIf you have desired your object only for one day, your love perhaps\nwill not last more than three nights. Where must we seek for the\ncauses of this law? I do not know. If you cast your eyes around you,\nyou will find abundant proof of this rule; in the vegetable world the\nplants which take the longest time to grow are those which promise to\nhave the longest life; in the moral order of things the works produced\nyesterday die to-morrow; in the physical world the womb which\ninfringes the laws of gestation bears dead fruit. In everything, a\nwork which is permanent has been brooded over by time for a long\nperiod. A long future requires a long past. If love is a child,\npassion is a man. This general law, which all men obey, to which all\nbeings and all sentiments must submit, is precisely that which every\nmarriage infringes, as we have plainly shown. This principle has given\nrise to the love tales of the Middle Ages; the Amadises, the\nLancelots, the Tristans of ballad literature, whose constancy may\njustly be called fabulous, are allegories of the national mythology\nwhich our imitation of Greek literature nipped in the bud. These\nfascinating characters, outlined by the imagination of the\ntroubadours, set their seal and sanction upon this truth.\n\n\n                                LVIII.\nWe do not attach ourselves permanently to any possessions, excepting\nin proportion to the trouble, toil and longing which they have cost\nus.\n\n\nAll our meditations have revealed to us about the basis of the\nprimordial law of love is comprised in the following axiom, which is\nat the same time the principle and the result of the law.\n\n\n                                 LIX.\n     In every case we receive only in proportion to what we give.\n\n\nThis last principle is so self-evident that we will not attempt to\ndemonstrate it. We merely add a single observation which appears to us\nof some importance. The writer who said: \"Everything is true, and\neverything is false,\" announced a fact which the human intellect,\nnaturally prone to sophism, interprets as it chooses, but it really\nseems as though human affairs have as many facets as there are minds\nthat contemplate them. This fact may be detailed as follows:\n\nThere cannot be found, in all creation, a single law which is not\ncounterbalanced by a law exactly contrary to it; life in everything is\nmaintained by the equilibrium of two opposing forces. So in the\npresent subject, as regards love, if you give too much, you will not\nreceive enough. The mother who shows her children her whole tenderness\ncalls forth their ingratitude, and ingratitude is occasioned, perhaps,\nby the impossibility of reciprocation. The wife who loves more than\nshe is loved must necessarily be the object of tyranny. Durable love\nis that which always keeps the forces of two human beings in\nequilibrium. Now this equilibrium may be maintained permanently; the\none who loves the more ought to stop at the point of the one who loves\nthe less. And is it not, after all the sweetest sacrifice that a\nloving heart can make, that love should so accommodate itself as to\nadjust the inequality?\n\nWhat sentiment of admiration must rise in the soul of a philosopher on\ndiscovering that there is, perhaps, but one single principle in the\nworld, as there is but one God; and that our ideas and our affections\nare subject to the same laws which cause the sun to rise, the flowers\nto bloom, the universe to teem with life!\n\nPerhaps, we ought to seek in the metaphysics of love the reasons for\nthe following proposition, which throws the most vivid light on the\nquestion of honeymoons and of Red-moons:\n\n\n                               THEOREM.\n\n  Man goes from aversion to love; but if he has begun by loving, and\n     afterwards comes to feel aversion, he never returns to love.\n\n\nIn certain human organisms the feelings are dwarfed, as the thought\nmay be in certain sterile imaginations. Thus, just as some minds have\nthe faculty of comprehending the connections existing between\ndifferent things without formal deduction; and as they have the\nfaculty of seizing upon each formula separately, without combining\nthem, or without the power of insight, comparison and expression; so\nin the same way, different souls may have more or less imperfect ideas\nof the various sentiments. Talent in love, as in every other art,\nconsists in the power of forming a conception combined with the power\nof carrying it out. The world is full of people who sing airs, but who\nomit the _ritornello_, who have quarters of an idea, as they have\nquarters of sentiment, but who can no more co-ordinate the movements\nof their affections than of their thoughts. In a word, they are\nincomplete. Unite a fine intelligence with a dwarfed intelligence and\nyou precipitate a disaster; for it is necessary that equilibrium be\npreserved in everything.\n\nWe leave to the philosophers of the boudoir or to the sages of the\nback parlor to investigate the thousand ways in which men of different\ntemperaments, intellects, social positions and fortunes disturb this\nequilibrium. Meanwhile we will proceed to examine the last cause for\nthe setting of the honeymoon and the rising of the Red-moon.\n\nThere is in life one principle more potent than life itself. It is a\nmovement whose celerity springs from an unknown motive power. Man is\nno more acquainted with the secret of this revolution than the earth\nis aware of that which causes her rotation. A certain something, which\nI gladly call the current of life, bears along our choicest thoughts,\nmakes use of most people's will and carries us on in spite of\nourselves. Thus, a man of common-sense, who never fails to pay his\nbills, if he is a merchant, a man who has been able to escape death,\nor what perhaps is more trying, sickness, by the observation of a\ncertain easy but daily regimen, is completely and duly nailed up\nbetween the four planks of his coffin, after having said every\nevening: \"Dear me! to-morrow I will not forget my pills!\" How are we\nto explain this magic spell which rules all the affairs of life? Do\nmen submit to it from a want of energy? Men who have the strongest\nwills are subject to it. Is it default of memory? People who possess\nthis faculty in the highest degree yield to its fascination.\n\nEvery one can recognize the operation of this influence in the case of\nhis neighbor, and it is one of the things which exclude the majority\nof husbands from the honeymoon. It is thus that the wise man, survivor\nof all reefs and shoals, such as we have pointed out, sometimes falls\ninto the snares which he himself has set.\n\nI have myself noticed that man deals with marriage and its dangers in\nvery much the same way that he deals with wigs; and perhaps the\nfollowing phases of thought concerning wigs may furnish a formula for\nhuman life in general.\n\nFIRST EPOCH.--Is it possible that I shall ever have white hair?\n\nSECOND EPOCH.--In any case, if I have white hair, I shall never wear a\nwig. Good Lord! what is more ugly than a wig?\n\nOne morning you hear a young voice, which love much oftener makes to\nvibrate than lulls to silence, exclaiming:\n\n\"Well, I declare! You have a white hair!\"\n\nTHIRD EPOCH.--Why not wear a well-made wig which people would not\nnotice? There is a certain merit in deceiving everybody; besides, a\nwig keeps you warm, prevents taking cold, etc.\n\nFOURTH EPOCH.--The wig is so skillfully put on that you deceive every\none who does not know you.\n\nThe wig takes up all your attention, and _amour-propre_ makes you\nevery morning as busy as the most skillful hairdresser.\n\nFIFTH EPOCH.--The neglected wig. \"Good heavens! How tedious it is, to\nhave to go with bare head every evening, and to curl one's wig every\nmorning!\"\n\nSIXTH EPOCH.--The wig allows certain white hairs to escape; it is put\non awry and the observer perceives on the back of your neck a white\nline, which contrasts with the deep tints pushed back by the collar of\nyour coat.\n\nSEVENTH EPOCH.--Your wig is as scraggy as dog's tooth grass; and\n--excuse the expression--you are making fun of your wig.\n\n\"Sir,\" said one of the most powerful feminine intelligences which have\ncondescended to enlighten me on some of the most obscure passages in\nmy book, \"what do you mean by this wig?\"\n\n\"Madame,\" I answered, \"when a man falls into a mood of indifference\nwith regard to his wig, he is,--he is--what your husband probably is\nnot.\"\n\n\"But my husband is not--\" (she paused and thought for a moment). \"He\nis not amiable; he is not--well, he is not--of an even temper; he is\nnot--\"\n\n\"Then, madame, he would doubtless be indifferent to his wig!\"\n\nWe looked at each other, she with a well-assumed air of dignity, I\nwith a suppressed smile.\n\n\"I see,\" said I, \"that we must pay special respect to the ears of the\nlittle sex, for they are the only chaste things about them.\"\n\nI assumed the attitude of a man who has something of importance to\ndisclose, and the fair dame lowered her eyes, as if she had some\nreason to blush.\n\n\"Madame, in these days a minister is not hanged, as once upon a time,\nfor saying yes or no; a Chateaubriand would scarcely torture Francoise\nde Foix, and we wear no longer at our side a long sword ready to\navenge an insult. Now in a century when civilization has made such\nrapid progress, when we can learn a science in twenty-four lessons,\neverything must follow this race after perfection. We can no longer\nspeak the manly, rude, coarse language of our ancestors. The age in\nwhich are fabricated such fine, such brilliant stuffs, such elegant\nfurniture, and when are made such rich porcelains, must needs be the\nage of periphrase and circumlocution. We must try, therefore, to coin\na new word in place of the comic expression which Moliere used; since\nthe language of this great man, as a contemporary author has said, is\ntoo free for ladies who find gauze too thick for their garments. But\npeople of the world know, as well as the learned, how the Greeks had\nan innate taste for mysteries. That poetic nation knew well how to\ninvest with the tints of fable the antique traditions of their\nhistory. At the voice of their rhapsodists together with their poets\nand romancers, kings became gods and their adventures of gallantry\nwere transformed into immortal allegories. According to M. Chompre,\nlicentiate in law, the classic author of the _Dictionary of\nMythology_, the labyrinth was 'an enclosure planted with trees and\nadorned with buildings arranged in such a way that when a young man\nonce entered, he could no more find his way out.' Here and there\nflowery thickets were presented to his view, but in the midst of a\nmultitude of alleys, which crossed and recrossed his path and bore the\nappearance of a uniform passage, among the briars, rocks and thorns,\nthe patient found himself in combat with an animal called the\nMinotaur.\n\n\"Now, madame, if you will allow me the honor of calling to your mind\nthe fact that the Minotaur was of all known beasts that which\nMythology distinguishes as the most dangerous; that in order to save\nthemselves from his ravages, the Athenians were bound to deliver to\nhim, every single year, fifty virgins; you will perhaps escape the\nerror of good M. Chompre, who saw in the labyrinth nothing but an\nEnglish garden; and you will recognize in this ingenious fable a\nrefined allegory, or we may better say a faithful and fearful image of\nthe dangers of marriage. The paintings recently discovered at\nHerculaneum have served to confirm this opinion. And, as a matter of\nfact, learned men have for a long time believed, in accordance with\nthe writings of certain authors, that the Minotaur was an animal\nhalf-man, half-bull; but the fifth panel of ancient paintings at\nHerculaneum represents to us this allegorical monster with a body\nentirely human; and, to take away all vestige of doubt, he lies\ncrushed at the feet of Theseus. Now, my dear madame, why should we not\nask Mythology to come and rescue us from that hypocrisy which is\ngaining ground with us and hinders us from laughing as our fathers\nlaughed? And thus, since in the world a young lady does not very well\nknow how to spread the veil under which an honest woman hides her\nbehavior, in a contingency which our grandfathers would have roughly\nexplained by a single word, you, like a crowd of beautiful but\nprevaricating ladies, you content yourselves with saying, 'Ah! yes,\nshe is very amiable, but,'--but what?--'but she is often very\ninconsistent--.' I have for a long time tried to find out the meaning\nof this last word, and, above all, the figure of rhetoric by which you\nmake it express the opposite of that which it signifies; but all my\nresearches have been in vain. Vert-Vert used the word last, and was\nunfortunately addressed to the innocent nuns whose infidelities did\nnot in any way infringe the honor of the men. When a woman is\n_inconsistent_ the husband must be, according to me, _minotaurized_.\nIf the minotaurized man is a fine fellow, if he enjoys a certain\nesteem,--and many husbands really deserve to be pitied,--then in\nspeaking of him, you say in a pathetic voice, 'M. A--- is a very\nestimable man, his wife is exceedingly pretty, but they say he is not\nhappy in his domestic relations.' Thus, madame, the estimable man who\nis unhappy in his domestic relations, the man who has an inconsistent\nwife, or the husband who is minotaurized are simply husbands as they\nappear in Moliere. Well, then, O goddess of modern taste, do not these\nexpressions seem to you characterized by a transparency chaste enough\nfor anybody?\"\n\n\"Ah! mon Dieu!\" she answered, laughing, \"if the thing is the same,\nwhat does it matter whether it be expressed in two syllables or in a\nhundred?\"\n\nShe bade me good-bye, with an ironical nod and disappeared, doubtless\nto join the countesses of my preface and all the metaphorical\ncreatures, so often employed by romance-writers as agents for the\nrecovery or composition of ancient manuscripts.\n\nAs for you, the more numerous and the more real creatures who read my\nbook, if there are any among you who make common cause with my\nconjugal champion, I give you notice that you will not at once become\nunhappy in your domestic relations. A man arrives at this conjugal\ncondition not suddenly, but insensibly and by degrees. Many husbands\nhave even remained unfortunate in their domestic relations during\ntheir whole life and have never known it. This domestic revolution\ndevelops itself in accordance with fixed rules; for the revolutions of\nthe honeymoon are as regular as the phases of the moon in heaven, and\nare the same in every married house. Have we not proved that moral\nnature, like physical nature, has its laws?\n\nYour young wife will never take a lover, as we have elsewhere said,\nwithout making serious reflections. As soon as the honeymoon wanes,\nyou will find that you have aroused in her a sentiment of pleasure\nwhich you have not satisfied; you have opened to her the book of life;\nand she has derived an excellent idea from the prosaic dullness which\ndistinguishes your complacent love, of the poetry which is the natural\nresult when souls and pleasures are in accord. Like a timid bird, just\nstartled by the report of a gun which has ceased, she puts her head\nout of her nest, looks round her, and sees the world; and knowing the\nword of a charade which you have played, she feels instinctively the\nvoid which exists in your languishing passion. She divines that it is\nonly with a lover that she can regain the delightful exercise of her\nfree will in love.\n\nYou have dried the green wood in preparation for a fire.\n\nIn the situation in which both of you find yourselves, there is no\nwoman, even the most virtuous, who would not be found worthy of a\n_grande passion_, who has not dreamed of it, and who does not believe\nthat it is easily kindled, for there is always found a certain\n_amour-propre_ ready to reinforce that conquered enemy--a jaded wife.\n\n\"If the role of an honest woman were nothing more than perilous,\" said\nan old lady to me, \"I would admit that it would serve. But it is\ntiresome; and I have never met a virtuous woman who did not think\nabout deceiving somebody.\"\n\nAnd then, before any lover presents himself, a wife discusses with\nherself the legality of the act; she enters into a conflict with her\nduties, with the law, with religion and with the secret desires of a\nnature which knows no check-rein excepting that which she places upon\nherself. And then commences for you a condition of affairs totally\nnew; then you receive the first intimation which nature, that good and\nindulgent mother, always gives to the creatures who are exposed to any\ndanger. Nature has put a bell on the neck of the Minotaur, as on the\ntail of that frightful snake which is the terror of travelers. And\nthen appear in your wife what we will call the first symptoms, and woe\nto him who does not know how to contend with them. Those who in\nreading our book will remember that they saw those symptoms in their\nown domestic life can pass to the conclusion of this work, where they\nwill find how they may gain consolation.\n\nThe situation referred to, in which a married couple bind themselves\nfor a longer or a shorter time, is the point from which our work\nstarts, as it is the end at which our observations stop. A man of\nintelligence should know how to recognize the mysterious indications,\nthe obscure signs and the involuntary revelation which a wife\nunwittingly exhibits; for the next Meditation will doubtless indicate\nthe more evident of the manifestations to neophytes in the sublime\nscience of marriage.\n\n\n\n                           MEDITATION VIII.\n\n                        OF THE FIRST SYMPTOMS.\n\nWhen your wife reaches that crisis in which we have left her, you\nyourself are wrapped in a pleasant and unsuspicious security. You have\nso often seen the sun that you begin to think it is shining over\neverybody. You therefore give no longer that attention to the least\naction of your wife, which was impelled by your first outburst of\npassion.\n\nThis indolence prevents many husbands from perceiving the symptoms\nwhich, in their wives, herald the first storm; and this disposition of\nmind has resulted in the minotaurization of more husbands than have\neither opportunity, carriages, sofas and apartments in town.\n\nThe feeling of indifference in the presence of danger is to some\ndegree justified by the apparent tranquillity which surrounds you. The\nconspiracy which is formed against you by our million of hungry\ncelibates seems to be unanimous in its advance. Although all are\nenemies of each other and know each other well, a sort of instinct\nforces them into co-operation.\n\nTwo persons are married. The myrmidons of the Minotaur, young and old,\nhave usually the politeness to leave the bride and bridegroom entirely\nto themselves at first. They look upon the husband as an artisan,\nwhose business it is to trim, polish, cut into facets and mount the\ndiamond, which is to pass from hand to hand in order to be admired all\naround. Moreover, the aspect of a young married couple much taken with\neach other always rejoices the heart of those among the celibates who\nare known as _roues_; they take good care not to disturb the\nexcitement by which society is to be profited; they also know that\nheavy showers to not last long. They therefore keep quiet; they watch,\nand wait, with incredible vigilance, for the moment when bride and\ngroom begin to weary of the seventh heaven.\n\nThe tact with which celibates discover the moment when the breeze\nbegins to rise in a new home can only be compared to the indifference\nof those husbands for whom the Red-moon rises. There is, even in\nintrigue, a moment of ripeness which must be waited for. The great man\nis he who anticipates the outcome of certain circumstances. Men of\nfifty-two, whom we have represented as being so dangerous, know very\nwell, for example, that any man who offers himself as lover to a woman\nand is haughtily rejected, will be received with open arms three\nmonths afterwards. But it may be truly said that in general married\npeople in betraying their indifference towards each other show the\nsame naivete with which they first betrayed their love. At the time\nwhen you are traversing with madame the ravishing fields of the\nseventh heaven--where according to their temperament, newly married\npeople remain encamped for a longer or shorter time, as the preceding\nMeditation has proved--you go little or not at all into society. Happy\nas you are in your home, if you do go abroad, it will be for the\npurpose of making up a choice party and visiting the theatre, the\ncountry, etc. From the moment you the newly wedded make your\nappearance in the world again, you and your bride together, or\nseparately, and are seen to be attentive to each other at balls, at\nparties, at all the empty amusements created to escape the void of an\nunsatisfied heart, the celibates discern that your wife comes there in\nsearch of distraction; her home, her husband are therefore wearisome\nto her.\n\nAt this point the celibate knows that half of the journey is\naccomplished. At this point you are on the eve of being minotaurized,\nand your wife is likely to become inconsistent; which means that she\nis on the contrary likely to prove very consistent in her conduct,\nthat she has reasoned it out with astonishing sagacity and that you\nare likely very soon to smell fire. From that moment she will not in\nappearance fail in any of her duties, and will put on the colors of\nthat virtue in which she is most lacking. Said Crebillon:\n\n    \"Alas!\n  Is it right to be heir of the man who we slay?\"\n\nNever has she seemed more anxious to please you. She will seek, as\nmuch as possible, to allay the secret wounds which she thinks about\ninflicting upon your married bliss, she will do so by those little\nattentions which induce you to believe in the eternity of her love;\nhence the proverb, \"Happy as a fool.\" But in accordance with the\ncharacter of women, they either despise their own husbands from the\nvery fact that they find no difficulty in deceiving them; or they hate\nthem when they find themselves circumvented by them; or they fall into\na condition of indifference towards them, which is a thousand times\nworse than hatred. In this emergency, the first thing which may be\ndiagnosed in a woman is a decided oddness of behavior. A woman loves\nto be saved from herself, to escape her conscience, but without the\neagerness shown in this connection by wives who are thoroughly\nunhappy. She dresses herself with especial care, in order, she will\ntell you, to flatter your _amour-propre_ by drawing all eyes upon her\nin the midst of parties and public entertainments.\n\nWhen she returns to the bosom of her stupid home you will see that, at\ntimes, she is gloomy and thoughtful, then suddenly laughing and gay as\nif beside herself; or assuming the serious expression of a German when\nhe advances to the fight. Such varying moods always indicate the\nterrible doubt and hesitation to which we have already referred. There\nare women who read romances in order to feast upon the images of love\ncleverly depicted and always varied, of love crowned yet triumphant;\nor in order to familiarize themselves in thought with the perils of an\nintrigue.\n\nShe will profess the highest esteem for you, she will tell you that\nshe loves you as a sister; and that such reasonable friendship is the\nonly true, the only durable friendship, the only tie which it is the\naim of marriage to establish between man and wife.\n\nShe will adroitly distinguish between the duties which are all she has\nto perform and the rights which she can demand to exercise.\n\nShe views with indifference, appreciated by you alone, all the details\nof married happiness. This sort of happiness, perhaps, has never been\nvery agreeable to her and moreover it is always with her. She knows it\nwell, she has analyzed it; and what slight but terrible evidence comes\nfrom these circumstances to prove to an intelligent husband that this\nfrail creature argues and reasons, instead of being carried away on\nthe tempest of passion.\n\n\n                                 LX.\n               The more a man judges the less he loves.\n\n\nAnd now will burst forth from her those pleasantries at which you will\nbe the first to laugh and those reflections which will startle you by\ntheir profundity; now you will see sudden changes of mood and the\ncaprices of a mind which hesitates. At times she will exhibit extreme\ntenderness, as if she repented of her thoughts and her projects;\nsometimes she will be sullen and at cross-purposes with you; in a\nword, she will fulfill the _varium et mutabile femina_ which we\nhitherto have had the folly to attribute to the feminine temperament.\nDiderot, in his desire to explain the mutations almost atmospheric in\nthe behavior of women, has even gone so far as to make them the\noffspring of what he calls _la bete feroce_; but we never see these\nwhims in a woman who is happy.\n\nThese symptoms, light as gossamer, resemble the clouds which scarcely\nbreak the azure surface of the sky and which they call flowers of the\nstorm. But soon their colors take a deeper intensity.\n\nIn the midst of this solemn premeditation, which tends, as Madame de\nStael says, to bring more poetry into life, some women, in whom\nvirtuous mothers either from considerations of worldly advantage of\nduty or sentiment, or through sheer hypocrisy, have inculcated\nsteadfast principles, take the overwhelming fancies by which they are\nassailed for suggestions of the devil; and you will see them therefore\ntrotting regularly to mass, to midday offices, even to vespers. This\nfalse devotion exhibits itself, first of all in the shape of pretty\nbooks of devotion in a costly binding, by the aid of which these dear\nsinners attempt in vain to fulfill the duties imposed by religion, and\nlong neglected for the pleasures of marriage.\n\nNow here we will lay down a principle, and you must engrave it on your\nmemory in letters of fire.\n\nWhen a young woman suddenly takes up religious practices which she has\nbefore abandoned, this new order of life always conceals a motive\nhighly significant, in view of her husband's happiness. In the case of\nat least seventy-nine women out of a hundred this return to God proves\nthat they have been inconsistent, or that they intend to become so.\n\nBut a symptom more significant still and more decisive, and one that\nevery husband should recognize under pain of being considered a fool,\nis this:\n\nAt the time when both of you are immersed in the illusive delights of\nthe honeymoon, your wife, as one devoted to you, would constantly\ncarry out your will. She was happy in the power of showing the ready\nwill, which both of you mistook for love, and she would have liked for\nyou to have asked her to walk on the edge of the roof, and\nimmediately, nimble as a squirrel, she would have run over the tiles.\nIn a word, she found an ineffable delight in sacrificing to you that\n_ego_ which made her a being distinct from yours. She had identified\nherself with your nature and was obedient to that vow of the heart,\n_Una caro_.\n\nAll this delightful promptness of an earlier day gradually faded away.\nWounded to find her will counted as nothing, your wife will attempt,\nnevertheless, to reassert it by means of a system developed gradually,\nand from day to day, with increased energy.\n\nThis system is founded upon what we may call the dignity of the\nmarried woman. The first effect of this system is to mingle with your\npleasures a certain reserve and a certain lukewarmness, of which you\nare the sole judge.\n\nAccording to the greater or lesser violence of your sensual passion,\nyou have perhaps discerned some of those twenty-two pleasures which in\nother times created in Greece twenty-two kinds of courtesans, devoted\nespecially to these delicate branches of the same art. Ignorant and\nsimple, curious and full of hope, your young wife may have taken some\ndegrees in this science as rare as it is unknown, and which we\nespecially commend to the attention of the future author of\n_Physiology of Pleasure_.\n\nLacking all these different kinds of pleasure, all these caprices of\nsoul, all these arrows of love, you are reduced to the most common of\nlove fashions, of that primitive and innocent wedding gait, the calm\nhomage which the innocent Adam rendered to our common Mother and which\ndoubtless suggested to the Serpent the idea of taking them in. But a\nsymptom so complete is not frequent. Most married couples are too good\nChristians to follow the usages of pagan Greece, so we have ranged,\namong the last symptoms, the appearance in the calm nuptial couch of\nthose shameless pleasures which spring generally from lawless passion.\nIn their proper time and place we will treat more fully of this\nfascinating diagnostic; at this point, things are reduced to a\nlistlessness and conjugal repugnance which you alone are in a\ncondition to appreciate.\n\nAt the same time that she is ennobling by her dignity the objects of\nmarriage, your wife will pretend that she ought to have her opinion\nand you yours. \"In marrying,\" she will say, \"a woman does not vow that\nshe will abdicate the throne of reason. Are women then really slaves?\nHuman laws can fetter the body; but the mind!--ah! God has placed it\nso near Himself that no human hand can touch it.\"\n\nThese ideas necessarily proceed either from the too liberal teachings\nwhich you have allowed her to receive, or from some reflections which\nyou have permitted her to make. A whole Meditation has been devoted to\n_Home Instruction_.\n\nThen your wife begins to say, \"_My_ chamber, _my_ bed, _my_\napartment.\" To many of your questions she will reply, \"But, my dear,\nthis is no business of yours!\" Or: \"Men have their part in the\ndirection of the house, and women have theirs.\" Or, laughing at men\nwho meddle in household affairs, she will affirm that \"men do not\nunderstand some things.\"\n\nThe number of things which you do not understand increases day by day.\n\nOne fine morning, you will see in your little church two altars, where\nbefore you never worshiped but at one. The altar of your wife and your\nown altar have become distinct, and this distinction will go on\nincreasing, always in accordance with the system founded upon the\ndignity of woman.\n\nThen the following ideas will appear, and they will be inculcated in\nyou whether you like it or not, by means of a living force very\nancient in origin and little known. Steam-power, horse-power,\nman-power, and water-power are good inventions, but nature has provided\nwomen with a moral power, in comparison with which all other powers\nare nothing; we may call it _rattle-power_. This force consists in a\ncontinuance of the same sound, in an exact repetition of the same\nwords, in a reversion, over and over again, to the same ideas, and\nthis so unvaried, that from hearing them over and over again you will\nadmit them, in order to be delivered from the discussion. Thus the\npower of the rattle will prove to you:\n\nThat you are very fortunate to have such an excellent wife;\n\nThat she has done you too much honor in marrying you;\n\nThat women often see clearer than men;\n\nThat you ought to take the advice of your wife in everything, and\nalmost always ought to follow it;\n\nThat you ought to respect the mother of your children, to honor her\nand have confidence in her;\n\nThat the best way to escape being deceived, is to rely upon a wife's\nrefinement, for according to certain old ideas which we have had the\nweakness to give credit, it is impossible for a man to prevent his\nwife from minotaurizing him;\n\nThat a lawful wife is a man's best friend;\n\nThat a woman is mistress in her own house and queen in her\ndrawing-room, etc.\n\nThose who wish to oppose a firm resistance to a woman's conquest,\neffected by means of her dignity over man's power, fall into the\ncategory of the predestined.\n\nAt first, quarrels arise which in the eye of wives give an air of\ntyranny to husbands. The tyranny of a husband is always a terrible\nexcuse for inconsistency in a wife. Then, in their frivolous\ndiscussions they are enabled to prove to their families and to ours,\nto everybody and to ourselves, that we are in the wrong. If, for the\nsake of peace, or from love, you acknowledge the pretended rights of\nwomen, you yield an advantage to your wife by which she will profit\neternally. A husband, like a government, ought never to acknowledge a\nmistake. In case you do so, your power will be outflanked by the\nsubtle artifices of feminine dignity; then all will be lost; from that\nmoment she will advance from concession to concession until she has\ndriven you from her bed.\n\nThe woman being shrewd, intelligent, sarcastic and having leisure to\nmeditate over an ironical phrase, can easily turn you into ridicule\nduring a momentary clash of opinions. The day on which she turns you\ninto ridicule, sees the end of your happiness. Your power has expired.\nA woman who has laughed at her husband cannot henceforth love him. A\nman should be, to the woman who is in love with him, a being full of\npower, of greatness, and always imposing. A family cannot exist\nwithout despotism. Think of that, ye nations!\n\nNow the difficult course which a man has to steer in presence of such\nserious incidents as these, is what we may call the _haute politique_\nof marriage, and is the subject of the second and third parts of our\nbook. That breviary of marital Machiavelism will teach you the manner\nin which you may grow to greatness within that frivolous mind, within\nthat soul of lacework, to use Napoleon's phrase. You may learn how a\nman may exhibit a soul of steel, may enter upon this little domestic\nwar without ever yielding the empire of his will, and may do so\nwithout compromising his happiness. For if you exhibit any tendency to\nabdication, your wife will despise you, for the sole reason that she\nhas discovered you to be destitute of mental vigor; you are no longer\na _man_ to her.\n\nBut we have not yet reached the point at which are to be developed\nthose theories and principles, by means of which a man may unite\nelegance of manners with severity of measures; let it suffice us, for\nthe moment, to point out the importance of impending events and let us\npursue our theme.\n\nAt this fatal epoch, you will see that she is adroitly setting up a\nright to go out alone.\n\nYou were at one time her god, her idol. She has now reached that\nheight of devotion at which it is permitted to see holes in the\ngarments of the saints.\n\n\"Oh, mon Dieu! My dear,\" said Madame de la Valliere to her husband,\n\"how badly you wear your sword! M. de Richelieu has a way of making it\nhang straight at his side, which you ought to try to imitate; it is in\nmuch better taste.\"\n\n\"My dear, you could not tell me in a more tactful manner that we have\nbeen married five months!\" replied the Duke, whose repartee made his\nfortune in the reign of Louis XV.\n\nShe will study your character in order to find weapons against you.\nSuch a study, which love would hold in horror, reveals itself in the\nthousand little traps which she lays purposely to make you scold her;\nwhen a woman has no excuse for minotaurizing her husband she sets to\nwork to make one.\n\nShe will perhaps begin dinner without waiting for you.\n\nIf you drive through the middle of the town, she will point out\ncertain objects which escaped your notice; she will sing before you\nwithout feeling afraid; she will interrupt you, sometimes vouchsafe no\nreply to you, and will prove to you, in a thousand different ways,\nthat she is enjoying at your side the use of all her faculties and\nexercising her private judgment.\n\nShe will try to abolish entirely your influence in the management of\nthe house and to become sole mistress of your fortune. At first this\nstruggle will serve as a distraction for her soul, whether it be empty\nor in too violent commotion; next, she will find in your opposition a\nnew motive for ridicule. Slang expressions will not fail her, and in\nFrance we are so quickly vanquished by the ironical smile of another!\n\nAt other times headaches and nervous attacks make their appearance;\nbut these symptoms furnish matter for a whole future Meditation. In\nthe world she will speak of you without blushing, and will gaze at you\nwith assurance. She will begin to blame your least actions because\nthey are at variance with her ideas, or her secret intentions. She\nwill take no care of what pertains to you, she will not even know\nwhether you have all you need. You are no longer her paragon.\n\nIn imitation of Louis XIV, who carried to his mistresses the bouquets\nof orange blossoms which the head gardener of Versailles put on his\ntable every morning, M. de Vivonne used almost every day to give his\nwife choice flowers during the early period of his marriage. One\nmorning he found the bouquet lying on the side table without having\nbeen placed, as usual, in a vase of water.\n\n\"Oh! Oh!\" said he, \"if I am not a cuckold, I shall very soon be one.\"\n\nYou go on a journey for eight days and you receive no letters, or you\nreceive one, three pages of which are blank.--Symptom.\n\nYou come home mounted on a valuable horse which you like very much,\nand between her kisses your wife shows her uneasiness about the horse\nand his fodder.--Symptom.\n\nTo these features of the case, you will be able to add others. We\nshall endeavor in the present volume always to paint things in bold\nfresco style and leave the miniatures to you. According to the\ncharacters concerned, the indications which we are describing, veiled\nunder the incidents of ordinary life, are of infinite variety. One man\nmay discover a symptom in the way a shawl is put on, while another\nneeds to receive a fillip to his intellect, in order to notice the\nindifference of his mate.\n\nSome fine spring morning, the day after a ball, or the eve of a\ncountry party, this situation reaches its last phase; your wife is\nlistless and the happiness within her reach has no more attractions\nfor her. Her mind, her imagination, perhaps her natural caprices call\nfor a lover. Nevertheless, she dare not yet embark upon an intrigue\nwhose consequences and details fill her with dread. You are still\nthere for some purpose or other; you are a weight in the balance,\nalthough a very light one. On the other hand, the lover presents\nhimself arrayed in all the graces of novelty and all the charms of\nmystery. The conflict which has arisen in the heart of your wife\nbecomes, in presence of the enemy, more real and more full of peril\nthan before. Very soon the more dangers and risks there are to be run,\nthe more she burns to plunge into that delicious gulf of fear,\nenjoyment, anguish and delight. Her imagination kindles and sparkles,\nher future life rises before her eyes, colored with romantic and\nmysterious hues. Her soul discovers that existence has already taken\nits tone from this struggle which to a woman has so much solemnity in\nit. All is agitation, all is fire, all is commotion within her. She\nlives with three times as much intensity as before, and judges the\nfuture by the present. The little pleasure which you have lavished\nupon her bears witness against you; for she is not excited as much by\nthe pleasures which she has received, as by those which she is yet to\nenjoy; does not imagination show her that her happiness will be keener\nwith this lover, whom the laws deny her, than with you? And then, she\nfinds enjoyment even in her terror and terror in her enjoyment. Then\nshe falls in love with this imminent danger, this sword of Damocles\nhung over her head by you yourself, thus preferring the delirious\nagonies of such a passion, to that conjugal inanity which is worse to\nher than death, to that indifference which is less a sentiment than\nthe absence of all sentiment.\n\nYou, who must go to pay your respects to the Minister of Finance, to\nwrite memorandums at the bank, to make your reports at the Bourse, or\nto speak in the Chamber; you, young men, who have repeated with many\nothers in our first Meditation the oath that you will defend your\nhappiness in defending your wife, what can you oppose to these desires\nof hers which are so natural? For, with these creatures of fire, to\nlive is to feel; the moment they cease to experience emotion they are\ndead. The law in virtue of which you take your position produces in\nher this involuntary act of minotaurism. \"There is one sequel,\" said\nD'Alembert, \"to the laws of movement.\" Well, then, where are your\nmeans of defence?-- Where, indeed?\n\nAlas! if your wife has not yet kissed the apple of the Serpent, the\nSerpent stands before her; you sleep, we are awake, and our book\nbegins.\n\nWithout inquiring how many husbands, among the five hundred thousand\nwhich this book concerns, will be left with the predestined; how many\nhave contracted unfortunate marriages; how many have made a bad\nbeginning with their wives; and without wishing to ask if there be\nmany or few of this numerous band who can satisfy the conditions\nrequired for struggling against the danger which is impending, we\nintend to expound in the second and third part of this work the\nmethods of fighting the Minotaur and keeping intact the virtue of\nwives. But if fate, the devil, the celibate, opportunity, desire your\nruin, in recognizing the progress of all intrigues, in joining in the\nbattles which are fought by every home, you will possibly be able to\nfind some consolation. Many people have such a happy disposition, that\non showing to them the condition of things and explaining to them the\nwhy and the wherefore, they scratch their foreheads, rub their hands,\nstamp on the ground, and are satisfied.\n\n\n\n                            MEDITATION IX.\n\n                              EPILOGUE.\n\nFaithful to our promise, this first part has indicated the general\ncauses which bring all marriages to the crises which we are about to\ndescribe; and, in tracing the steps of this conjugal preamble, we have\nalso pointed out the way in which the catastrophe is to be avoided,\nfor we have pointed out the errors by which it is brought about.\n\nBut these first considerations would be incomplete if, after\nendeavoring to throw some light upon the inconsistency of our ideas,\nof our manners and of our laws, with regard to a question which\nconcerns the life of almost all living beings, we did not endeavor to\nmake plain, in a short peroration, the political causes of the\ninfirmity which pervades all modern society. After having exposed the\nsecret vices of marriage, would it not be an inquiry worthy of\nphilosophers to search out the causes which have rendered it so\nvicious?\n\nThe system of law and of manners which so far directs women and\ncontrols marriage in France, is the outcome of ancient beliefs and\ntraditions which are no longer in accordance with the eternal\nprinciples of reason and of justice, brought to light by the great\nRevolution of 1789.\n\nThree great disturbances have agitated France; the conquest of the\ncountry by the Romans, the establishment of Christianity and the\ninvasion of the Franks. Each of these events has left a deep impress\nupon the soil, upon the laws, upon the manners and upon the intellect\nof the nation.\n\nGreece having one foot on Europe and the other on Asia, was influenced\nby her voluptuous climate in the choice of her marriage institutions;\nshe received them from the East, where her philosophers, her\nlegislators and her poets went to study the abstruse antiquities of\nEgypt and Chaldea. The absolute seclusion of women which was\nnecessitated under the burning sun of Asia prevailed under the laws of\nGreece and Ionia. The women remained in confinement within the marbles\nof the gyneceum. The country was reduced to the condition of a city,\nto a narrow territory, and the courtesans who were connected with art\nand religion by so many ties, were sufficient to satisfy the first\npassions of the young men, who were few in number, since their\nstrength was elsewhere taken up in the violent exercises of that\ntraining which was demanded of them by the military system of those\nheroic times.\n\nAt the beginning of her royal career Rome, having sent to Greece to\nseek such principles of legislation as might suit the sky of Italy,\nstamped upon the forehead of the married woman the brand of complete\nservitude. The senate understood the importance of virtue in a\nrepublic, hence the severity of manners in the excessive development\nof the marital and paternal power. The dependence of the woman on her\nhusband is found inscribed on every code. The seclusion prescribed by\nthe East becomes a duty, a moral obligation, a virtue. On these\nprinciples were raised temples to modesty and temples consecrated to\nthe sanctity of marriage; hence, sprang the institution of censors,\nthe law of dowries, the sumptuary laws, the respect for matrons and\nall the characteristics of the Roman law. Moreover, three acts of\nfeminine violation either accomplished or attempted, produced three\nrevolutions! And was it not a grand event, sanctioned by the decrees\nof the country, that these illustrious women should make their\nappearances on the political arena! Those noble Roman women, who were\nobliged to be either brides or mothers, passed their life in\nretirement engaged in educating the masters of the world. Rome had no\ncourtesans because the youth of the city were engaged in eternal war.\nIf, later on, dissoluteness appeared, it merely resulted from the\ndespotism of emperors; and still the prejudices founded upon ancient\nmanners were so influential that Rome never saw a woman on a stage.\nThese facts are not put forth idly in scanning the history of marriage\nin France.\n\nAfter the conquest of Gaul, the Romans imposed their laws upon the\nconquered; but they were incapable of destroying both the profound\nrespect which our ancestors entertained for women and the ancient\nsuperstitions which made women the immediate oracles of God. The Roman\nlaws ended by prevailing, to the exclusion of all others, in this\ncountry once known as the \"land of written law,\" or _Gallia togata_,\nand their ideas of marriage penetrated more or less into the \"land of\ncustoms.\"\n\nBut, during the conflict of laws with manners, the Franks invaded the\nGauls and gave to the country the dear name of France. These warriors\ncame from the North and brought the system of gallantry which had\noriginated in their western regions, where the mingling of the sexes\ndid not require in those icy climates the jealous precautions of the\nEast. The women of that time elevated the privations of that kind of\nlife by the exaltation of their sentiments. The drowsy minds of the\nday made necessary those varied forms of delicate solicitation, that\nversatility of address, the fancied repulse of coquetry, which belong\nto the system whose principles have been unfolded in our First Part,\nas admirably suited to the temperate clime of France.\n\nTo the East, then, belong the passion and the delirium of passion, the\nlong brown hair, the harem, the amorous divinities, the splendor, the\npoetry of love and the monuments of love.-- To the West, the liberty\nof wives, the sovereignty of their blond locks, gallantry, the fairy\nlife of love, the secrecy of passion, the profound ecstasy of the\nsoul, the sweet feelings of melancholy and the constancy of love.\n\nThese two systems, starting from opposite points of the globe, have\ncome into collision in France; in France, where one part of the\ncountry, Languedoc, was attracted by Oriental traditions, while the\nother, Languedoil, was the native land of a creed which attributes to\nwoman a magical power. In the Languedoil, love necessitates mystery,\nin the Languedoc, to see is to love.\n\nAt the height of this struggle came the triumphant entry of\nChristianity into France, and there it was preached by women, and\nthere it consecrated the divinity of a woman who in the forests of\nBrittany, of Vendee and of Ardennes took, under the name of\nNotre-Dame, the place of more than one idol in the hollow of old\nDruidic oaks.\n\nIf the religion of Christ, which is above all things a code of\nmorality and politics, gave a soul to all living beings, proclaimed\nthat equality of all in the sight of God, and by such principles as\nthese fortified the chivalric sentiments of the North, this advantage\nwas counterbalanced by the fact, that the sovereign pontiff resided at\nRome, of which seat he considered himself the lawful heir, through the\nuniversality of the Latin tongue, which became that of Europe during\nthe Middle Ages, and through the keen interest taken by monks, writers\nand lawyers in establishing the ascendency of certain codes,\ndiscovered by a soldier in the sack of Amalfi.\n\nThese two principles of the servitude and the sovereignty of women\nretain possession of the ground, each of them defended by fresh\narguments.\n\nThe Salic law, which was a legal error, was a triumph for the\nprinciple of political and civil servitude for women, but it did not\ndiminish the power which French manners accorded them, for the\nenthusiasm of chivalry which prevailed in Europe supplanted the party\nof manners against the party of law.\n\nAnd in this way was created that strange phenomenon which since that\ntime has characterized both our national despotism and our\nlegislation; for ever since those epochs which seemed to presage the\nRevolution, when the spirit of philosophy rose and reflected upon the\nhistory of the past, France has been the prey of many convulsions.\nFeudalism, the Crusades, the Reformation, the struggle between the\nmonarchy and the aristocracy. Despotism and Priestcraft have so\nclosely held the country within their clutches, that woman still\nremains the subject of strange counter-opinions, each springing from\none of the three great movements to which we have referred. Was it\npossible that the woman question should be discussed and woman's\npolitical education and marriage should be ventilated when feudalism\nthreatened the throne, when reform menaced both king and barons, and\nthe people, between the hierarchy and the empire, were forgotten?\nAccording to a saying of Madame Necker, women, amid these great\nmovements, were like the cotton wool put into a case of porcelain.\nThey were counted for nothing, but without them everything would have\nbeen broken.\n\nA married woman, then, in France presents the spectacle of a queen out\nat service, of a slave, at once free and a prisoner; a collision\nbetween these two principles which frequently occurred, produced odd\nsituations by the thousand. And then, woman was physically little\nunderstood, and what was actually sickness in her, was considered a\nprodigy, witchcraft or monstrous turpitude. In those days these\ncreatures, treated by the law as reckless children, and put under\nguardianship, were by the manners of the time deified and adored. Like\nthe freedmen of emperors, they disposed of crowns, they decided\nbattles, they awarded fortunes, they inspired crimes and revolutions,\nwonderful acts of virtue, by the mere flash of their glances, and yet\nthey possessed nothing and were not even possessors of themselves.\nThey were equally fortunate and unfortunate. Armed with their weakness\nand strong in instinct, they launched out far beyond the sphere which\nthe law allotted them, showing themselves omnipotent for evil, but\nimpotent for good; without merit in the virtues that were imposed upon\nthem, without excuse in their vices; accused of ignorance and yet\ndenied an education; neither altogether mothers nor altogether wives.\nHaving all the time to conceal their passions, while they fostered\nthem, they submitted to the coquetry of the Franks, while they were\nobliged like Roman women, to stay within the ramparts of their castles\nand bring up those who were to be warriors. While no system was\ndefinitely decided upon by legislation as to the position of women,\ntheir minds were left to follow their inclinations, and there are\nfound among them as many who resemble Marion Delorme as those who\nresemble Cornelia; there are vices among them, but there are as many\nvirtues. These were creatures as incomplete as the laws which governed\nthem; they were considered by some as a being midway between man and\nthe lower animals, as a malignant beast which the laws could not too\nclosely fetter, and which nature had destined, with so many other\nthings, to serve the pleasure of men; while others held woman to be an\nangel in exile, a source of happiness and love, the only creature who\nresponded to the highest feelings of man, while her miseries were to\nbe recompensed by the idolatry of every heart. How could the\nconsistency, which was wanting in a political system, be expected in\nthe general manners of the nation?\n\nAnd so woman became what circumstances and men made her, instead of\nbeing what the climate and native institutions should have made her;\nsold, married against her taste, in accordance with the _Patria\npotestas_ of the Romans, at the same time that she fell under the\nmarital despotism which desired her seclusion, she found herself\ntempted to take the only reprisals which were within her power. Then\nshe became a dissolute creature, as soon as men ceased to be intently\noccupied in intestine war, for the same reason that she was a virtuous\nwoman in the midst of civil disturbances. Every educated man can fill\nin this outline, for we seek from movements like these the lessons and\nnot the poetic suggestion which they yield.\n\nThe Revolution was too entirely occupied in breaking down and building\nup, had too many enemies, or followed perhaps too closely on the\ndeplorable times witnessed under the regency and under Louis XV, to\npay any attention to the position which women should occupy in the\nsocial order.\n\nThe remarkable men who raised the immortal monument which our codes\npresent were almost all old-fashioned students of law deeply imbued\nwith a spirit of Roman jurisprudence; and moreover they were not the\nfounders of any political institutions. Sons of the Revolution, they\nbelieved, in accordance with that movement, that the law of divorce\nwisely restricted and the bond of dutiful submission were sufficient\nameliorations of the previous marriage law. When that former order of\nthings was remembered, the change made by the new legislation seemed\nimmense.\n\nAt the present day the question as to which of these two principles\nshall triumph rests entirely in the hands of our wise legislators. The\npast has teaching which should bear fruit in the future. Have we lost\nall sense of the eloquence of fact?\n\nThe principles of the East resulted in the existence of eunuchs and\nseraglios; the spurious social standing of France has brought in the\nplague of courtesans and the more deadly plague of our marriage\nsystem; and thus, to use the language of a contemporary, the East\nsacrifices to paternity men and the principle of justice; France,\nwomen and modesty. Neither the East nor France has attained the goal\nwhich their institutions point to; for that is happiness. The man is\nnot more loved by the women of a harem than the husband is sure of\nbeing in France, as the father of his children; and marrying is not\nworth what it costs. It is time to offer no more sacrifice to this\ninstitution, and to amass a larger sum of happiness in the social\nstate by making our manners and our institution conformable to our\nclimate.\n\nConstitutional government, a happy mixture of two extreme political\nsystems, despotism and democracy, suggests by the necessity of\nblending also the two principles of marriage, which so far clash\ntogether in France. The liberty which we boldly claim for young people\nis the only remedy for the host of evils whose source we have pointed\nout, by exposing the inconsistencies resulting from the bondage in\nwhich girls are kept. Let us give back to youth the indulgence of\nthose passions, those coquetries, love and its terrors, love and its\ndelights, and that fascinating company which followed the coming of\nthe Franks. At this vernal season of life no fault is irreparable, and\nHymen will come forth from the bosom of experiences, armed with\nconfidence, stripped of hatred, and love in marriage will be\njustified, because it will have had the privilege of comparison.\n\nIn this change of manners the disgraceful plague of public\nprostitution will perish of itself. It is especially at the time when\nthe man possesses the frankness and timidity of adolescence, that in\nhis pursuit of happiness he is competent to meet and struggle with\ngreat and genuine passions of the heart. The soul is happy in making\ngreat efforts of whatever kind; provided that it can act, that it can\nstir and move, it makes little difference, even though it exercise its\npower against itself. In this observation, the truth of which\neverybody can see, there may be found one secret of successful\nlegislation, of tranquillity and happiness. And then, the pursuit of\nlearning has now become so highly developed that the most tempestuous\nof our coming Mirabeaus can consume his energy either in the\nindulgence of a passion or the study of a science. How many young\npeople have been saved from debauchery by self-chosen labors or the\npersistent obstacles put in the way of a first love, a love that was\npure! And what young girl does not desire to prolong the delightful\nchildhood of sentiment, is not proud to have her nature known, and has\nnot felt the secret tremblings of timidity, the modesty of her secret\ncommunings with herself, and wished to oppose them to the young\ndesires of a lover inexperienced as herself! The gallantry of the\nFranks and the pleasures which attend it should then be the portion of\nyouth, and then would naturally result a union of soul, of mind, of\ncharacter, of habits, of temperament and of fortune, such as would\nproduce the happy equilibrium necessary for the felicity of the\nmarried couple. This system would rest upon foundations wider and\nfreer, if girls were subjected to a carefully calculated system of\ndisinheritance; or if, in order to force men to choose only those who\npromised happiness by their virtues, their character or their talents,\nthey married as in the United States without dowry.\n\nIn that case, the system adopted by the Romans could advantageously be\napplied to the married women who when they were girls used their\nliberty. Being exclusively engaged in the early education of their\nchildren, which is the most important of all maternal obligations,\noccupied in creating and maintaining the happiness of the household,\nso admirably described in the fourth book of _Julie_, they would be in\ntheir houses like the women of ancient Rome, living images of\nProvidence, which reigns over all, and yet is nowhere visible. In this\ncase, the laws covering the infidelity of the wife should be extremely\nsevere. They should make the penalty disgrace, rather than inflict\npainful or coercive sentences. France has witnessed the spectacle of\nwomen riding asses for the pretended crime of magic, and many an\ninnocent woman has died of shame. In this may be found the secret of\nfuture marriage legislation. The young girls of Miletus delivered\nthemselves from marriage by voluntary death; the senate condemned the\nsuicides to be dragged naked on a hurdle, and the other virgins\ncondemned themselves for life.\n\nWomen and marriage will never be respected until we have that radical\nchange in manners which we are now begging for. This profound thought\nis the ruling principle in the two finest productions of an immortal\ngenius. _Emile_ and _La Nouvelle Heloise_ are nothing more than two\neloquent pleas for the system. The voice there raised will resound\nthrough the ages, because it points to the real motives of true\nlegislation, and the manners which will prevail in the future. By\nplacing children at the breast of their mothers, Jean-Jacques rendered\nan immense service to the cause of virtue; but his age was too deeply\ngangrened with abuses to understand the lofty lessons unfolded in\nthose two poems; it is right to add also that the philosopher was in\nthese works overmastered by the poet, and in leaving in the heart of\n_Julie_ after her marriage some vestiges of her first love, he was led\nastray by the attractiveness of a poetic situation, more touching\nindeed, but less useful than the truth which he wished to display.\n\nNevertheless, if marriage in France is an unlimited contract to which\nmen agree with a silent understanding that they may thus give more\nrelish to passion, more curiosity, more mystery to love, more\nfascination to women; if a woman is rather an ornament to the\ndrawing-room, a fashion-plate, a portmanteau, than a being whose\nfunctions in the order politic are an essential part of the country's\nprosperity and the nation's glory, a creature whose endeavors in life\nvie in utility with those of men--I admit that all the above theory,\nall these long considerations sink into nothingness at the prospect of\nsuch an important destiny!----\n\nBut after having squeezed a pound of actualities in order to obtain\none drop of philosophy, having paid sufficient homage to that passion\nfor the historic, which is so dominant in our time, let us turn our\nglance upon the manners of the present period. Let us take the cap and\nbells and the coxcomb of which Rabelais once made a sceptre, and let\nus pursue the course of this inquiry without giving to one joke more\nseriousness than comports with it, and without giving to serious\nthings the jesting tone which ill befits them.","title":"The Physiology of Marriage, Part 1","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":39887}