The citizen Anet, son of Jean Louis Anet, and the _citoyenne_ Maria
Saint; she engaged to follow the said citizen everywhere and to
love him always.--ANET. MARIA SAINT.
Witnessed by the under-mentioned citizen and _citoyenne._--FOURIER.
LAROCHE.
PARIS, April 22, 1871.
What a comfortable arrangement is this! Poor _citoyenne_ Maria Saint, even
when all human laws have suspended their action, still holds by her
grammar, still must annex herself to _le sexe noble_. She still must follow
citizen Anet as the feminine pronoun follows the masculine, or as a verb
agrees with its nominative case in number and in person. But with what a
lordly freedom from all obligation does citizen Anet, representative of
this nobility of sex, accept the allegiance! The citizeness may "follow
him," certainly,--so long as she is not in the way,--and she must "love him
always;" but he is not bound. Why should he be? It would be quite
ungrammatical.
Yet, after all is said and done, there is a brutal honesty in this frank
subordination of the woman according to the grammar. It has the same merit
with the old Russian marriage consecration: "Here, wolf, take thy lamb,"
which at least put the thing clearly, and made no nonsense about it. I do
not know that anywhere in France the wedding ritual is now so severely
simple as this, but I know that in some French villages the bride is still
married in a mourning-gown. I should think she would be.