Desgenais saw that my despair was incurable, that I would neither listen
to any advice nor leave my room, he took the thing seriously. I saw him
enter one evening with an expression of gravity on his face; he spoke of
my mistress and continued in his tone of persiflage, saying all manner
of evil of women. While he was speaking I was leaning on my elbow, and,
rising in my bed, I listened attentively.
It was one of those sombre evenings when the sighing of the wind recalls
the moaning of a dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between
the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All
nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their
heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of
cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time
before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me
and the friend had stretched me on a bed of pain. I could not clearly
distinguish what was passing in my head; it seemed to me that I was
under the influence of a horrible dream and that I had but to awake to
find myself cured; at times it seemed that my entire life had been a
dream, ridiculous and puerile, the falseness of which had just been
disclosed. Desgenais was seated near the lamp at my side; he was firm
and serious, although a smile hovered about his lips. He was a man of
heart, but as dry as a pumice-stone. An early experience had made him
bald before his time; he knew life and had suffered; but his grief was a
cuirass; he was a materialist and he waited for death.
“Octave,” he said, “after what has happened to you, I see that you
believe in love such as the poets and romancers have represented; in a
word, you believe in what is said here below and not in what is done.
That is because you do not reason soundly, and it may lead you into
great misfortune.
“Poets represent love as sculptors design beauty, as musicians create
melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization,
they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life,
the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of
nature. There lived, it is said, at Athens a great number of beautiful
girls; Praxiteles drew them all one after another; then from these
diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a
single faultless beauty and created Venus. The man who first created a
musical instrument, and who gave to harmony its rules and its laws, had
for a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing of
birds. Thus the poets, who understand life, after knowing much of love,
more or less transitory, after feeling that sublime exaltation which
real passion can for the moment inspire, eliminating from human nature
all that degrades it, created the mysterious names which through the
ages fly from lip to lip: Daphnis and Chloe, Hero and Leander, Pyramus
and Thisbe.
“To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute,
is but to seek on public squares a woman such as Venus, or to expect
nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.
“Perfection does not exist; to comprehend it is the triumph of human
intelligence; to desire to possess it, the most dangerous of follies.
Open your window, Octave; do you not see the infinite? You try to form
some idea of a thing that has no limits, you who were born yesterday and
who will die to-morrow! This spectacle of immensity in every country in
the world produces the wildest illusions. Religions are born of it;
it was to possess the infinite that Cato cut his throat, that the
Christians delivered themselves to lions, the Huguenots to the
Catholics; all the people of the earth have stretched out their hands
to that immensity and have longed to plunge into it. The fool wishes
to possess heaven; the sage admires it, kneels before it, but does not
desire it.
“Perfection, my friend, is no more made for us than immensity. We must
seek for nothing in it, demand nothing of it, neither love nor beauty,
happiness nor virtue; but we must love it if we would be virtuous, if we
would attain the greatest happiness of which man is capable.
“Let us suppose you have in your study a picture by Raphael that you
consider perfect. Let us say that upon a close examination you discover
in one of the figures a gross defect of design, a limb distorted, or a
muscle that belies nature, such as has been discovered, they say, in one
of the arms of an antique gladiator. You would experience a feeling of
displeasure, but you would not throw that picture in the fire; you would
merely say that it is not perfect, but that it has qualities that are
worthy of admiration.
“There are women whose natural singleness of heart and sincerity are
such that they could not have two lovers at the same time. You believed
your mistress such an one; that is best, I admit. You have discovered
that she has deceived you; does that oblige you to depose and to abuse
her, to believe her deserving of your hatred?
“Even if your mistress had never deceived you, even if at this moment
she loved none other than you, think, Octave, how far her love would
still be from perfection, how human it would be, how small, how
restrained by the hypocrisies and conventions of the world; remember
that another man possessed her before you, that many others will possess
her after you.
“Reflect: what drives you at this moment to despair is the idea of
perfection in your mistress, the idea that has been shattered. But
when you understand that the primal idea itself was human, small and
restricted, you will see that it is little more than a rung in the
rotten ladder of human imperfection.
“I think you will readily admit that your mistress has had other
admirers, and that she will have still others in the future; you will
doubtless reply that it matters little, so long as she loved you. But I
ask you, since she has had others, what difference does it make whether
it was yesterday or two years since? Since she loves but one at a time,
what does it matter whether it is during an interval of two years or
in the course of a single night? Are you a man, Octave? Do you see the
leaves falling from the trees, the sun rising and setting? Do you hear
the ticking of the horologe of time with each pulsation of your heart?
Is there, then, such a difference between the love of a year and the
love of an hour? I challenge you to answer that, you fool, as you sit
there looking out at the infinite through a window not larger than your
hand.
“You consider that woman faithful who loves you two years; you must have
an almanac that will indicate just how long it takes for an honest man’s
kisses to dry on a woman’s lips. You make a distinction between the
woman who sells herself for money and the one who gives herself for
pleasure; between the one who gives herself through pride and the one
who gives herself through devotion. Among women who are for sale, some
cost more than others; among those who are sought for pleasure some
inspire more confidence than others; and among those who are worthy of
devotion there are some who receive a third of a man’s heart, others a
quarter, others a half, depending upon her education, her manner, her
name, her birth, her beauty, her temperament, according to the occasion,
according to what is said, according to the time, according to what you
have drunk at dinner.
“You love women, Octave, because you are young, ardent, because your
features are regular, and your hair dark and glossy, but you do not, for
all that, understand woman.
“Nature, having all, desires the reproduction of beings; everywhere,
from the summit of the mountain to the bottom of the sea, life
is opposed to death. God, to conserve the work of His hands, has
established this law-that the greatest pleasure of all sentient beings
shall be to procreate.
“Oh! my friend, when you feel bursting on your lips the vow of
eternal love, do not be afraid to yield, but do not confound wine with
intoxication; do not think of the cup divine because the draught is of
celestial flavor; do not be astonished to find it broken and empty in
the evening. It is but woman, but a fragile vase, made of earth by a
potter.
“Thank God for giving you a glimpse of heaven, but do not imagine
yourself a bird because you can flap your wings. The birds themselves
can not escape the clouds; there is a region where air fails them and
the lark, rising with its song into the morning fog, sometimes falls
back dead in the field.
“Take love as a sober man takes wine; do not become a drunkard. If your
mistress is sincere and faithful, love her for that; but if she is
not, if she is merely young and beautiful, love her for that; if she is
agreeable and spirituelle, love her for that; if she is none of these
things but merely loves you, love her for that. Love does not come to us
every day.
“Do not tear your hair and stab yourself because you have a rival. You
say that your mistress deceives you for another; it is your pride that
suffers; but change the words, say that it is for you that she deceives
him, and behold, you are happy!
“Do not make a rule of conduct, and do not say that you wish to be
loved exclusively, for in saying that, as you are a man and inconstant
yourself, you are forced to add tacitly: ‘As far as possible.’
“Take time as it comes, the wind as it blows, woman as she is. The
Spaniards, first among women, love faithfully; their hearts are sincere
and violent, but they wear a dagger just above them. Italian women are
lascivious. The English are exalted and melancholy, cold and unnatural.
The German women are tender and sweet, but colorless and monotonous. The
French are spirituelle, elegant, and voluptuous, but are false at heart.
“Above all, do not accuse women of being what they are; we have made
them thus, undoing the work of nature.
“Nature, who thinks of everything, made the virgin for love; but with
the first child her bosom loses form, her beauty its freshness. Woman
is made for motherhood. Man would perhaps abandon her, disgusted by
the loss of beauty; but his child clings to him and weeps. Behold
the family, the human law; everything that departs from this law is
monstrous.
“Civilization thwarts the ends of nature. In our cities, according to
our customs, the virgin destined by nature for the open air, made to
run in the sunlight; to admire the nude wrestlers, as in Lacedemonia,
to choose and to love, is shut up in close confinement and bolted in.
Meanwhile she hides romance under her cross; pale and idle, she
fades away and loses, in the silence of the nights, that beauty which
oppresses her and needs the open air. Then she is suddenly snatched from
this solitude, knowing nothing, loving nothing, desiring everything; an
old woman instructs her, a mysterious word is whispered in her ear, and
she is thrown into the arms of a stranger. There you have marriage, that
is to say, the civilized family.
“A child is born. This poor creature has lost her beauty and she has
never loved. The child is brought to her with the words: ‘You are a
mother.’ She replies: ‘I am not a mother; take that child to some woman
who can nurse it. I can not.’ Her husband tells her that she is right,
that her child would be disgusted with her. She receives careful
attention and is soon cured of the disease of maternity. A month later
she may be seen at the Tuileries, at the ball, at the opera; her child
is at Chaillot, at Auxerre; her husband with another woman. Then young
men speak to her of love, of devotion, of sympathy, of all that is in
the heart. She takes one, draws him to her bosom; he dishonors her and
returns to the Bourse. She cries all night, but discovers that tears
make her eyes red. She takes a consoler, for the loss of whom another
consoles her; thus up to the age of thirty or more. Then, blase and
corrupted, with no human sentiment, not even disgust, she meets a fine
youth with raven locks, ardent eye and hopeful heart; she recalls her
own youth, she remembers what she has suffered, and telling him the
story of her life, she teaches him to eschew love.
“That is woman as we have made her; such are your mistresses. But you
say they are women and that there is something good in them!
“But if your character is formed, if you are truly a man, sure of
yourself and confident of your strength, you may taste of life without
fear and without reserve; you may be sad or joyous, deceived or
respected; but be sure you are loved, for what matters the rest?
“If you are mediocre and ordinary, I advise you to consider your course
very carefully before deciding, but do not expect too much of your
mistress.
“If you are weak, dependent upon others, inclined to allow yourself to
be dominated by opinion, to take root wherever you see a little soil,
make for yourself a shield that will resist everything, for if you yield
to your weaker nature you will not grow, you will dry up like a dead
plant, and you will bear neither fruit nor flowers. The sap of your life
will dissipate into the formation of useless bark; all your actions will
be as colorless as the leaves of the willow; you will have no tears to
water you, but those from your own eyes; to nourish you, no heart but
your own.
“But if you are of an exalted nature, believing in dreams and wishing to
realize them, I say to you plainly: Love does not exist.
“For to love is to give body and soul, or better, it is to make a single
being of two; it is to walk in the sunlight, in the open air through
the boundless prairies with a body having four arms, two heads, and two
hearts. Love is faith, it is the religion of terrestrial happiness, it
is a luminous triangle suspended in the temple of the world. To love
is to walk freely through that temple, at your side a being capable of
understanding why a thought, a word, a flower makes you pause and raise
your eyes to that celestial triangle. To exercise the noble faculties of
man is a great good--that is why genius is glorious; but to double those
faculties, to place a heart and an intelligence upon a heart and an
intelligence--that is supreme happiness. God has nothing better for man;
that is why love is better than genius.
“But tell me, is that the love of our women? No, no, it must be
admitted. Love, for them, is another thing; it is to go out veiled, to
write in secret, to make trembling advances, to heave chaste sighs under
starched and unnatural robes, then to draw bolts and throw them aside,
to humiliate a rival, to deceive a husband, to render a lover desolate.
To love, for our women, is to play at lying, as children play at hide
and seek, a hideous orgy of the heart, worse than the lubricity of the
Romans, or the Saturnalia of Priapus; a bastard parody of vice itself,
as well as of virtue; a loathsome comedy where all is whispering and
sidelong glances, where all is small, elegant, and deformed, like those
porcelain monsters brought from China; a lamentable satire on all that
is beautiful and ugly, divine and infernal; a shadow without a body, a
skeleton of all that God has made.”
Thus spoke Desgenais; and the shadows of night began to fall.