WHEN Desgenais saw that my despondency was incurable, that I would
neither listen to any advice nor leave my room, he took the matter
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 sadness,
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 somber evenings when the sighing of the wind
resembles the moans of a dying man; a storm was brewing, and between the
splashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All
nature suffers in such moments; the trees writhe in pain and twist 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 childish, 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.
"The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the
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 was, it is said, at Athens a great
number of beautiful girls; Praxiteles designed them all, one after
another; then from all these diverse types of beauty, each one of which
had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus.
The first man who created a musical instrument and who gave to that art
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
having known much of love, more or less transitory, after having felt
that sublime exaltation which passion can for the moment inspire,
deducting from human nature all elements which degrade it, created the
mysterious names which through the ages are passed from lip to lip:
Daphne and Chloe, Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe.
"To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is
the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman 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 infinity. 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 suppose 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 a one; that is best, I admit. You have discovered that she
has deceived you; does that oblige you to despise 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 conventionalities 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 first idea itself was human, small and
restricted, you will see that it is little more than a round 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 ago? Since she loves but one at a time what does
it matter whether it is during an interval of two years or 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
clock 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 had to drink for
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 loving beings shall be the act of
generation.
"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 the cup divine because the draft is of
celestial flavor; do not be astonished to find it broken and empty in the
evening. It is but woman, it is 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 sphere 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 heart is sincere and
violent, but they wear a dagger just above it. 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 they lie like
demons.
"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 her
first child her bosom loses its 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 bask 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; yet she hides
romance under her cross; pale and idle she fades away and loses in the
silence of the nights that beauty that stifles her and which has need of
the open air. Then she is suddenly taken 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 shun love.
"That is woman as we have made her; such are your mistresses. But you say
they are women and 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 a 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 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 earthly happiness, it is a
luminous triangle suspended in the temple of the world. To love is to
walk freely through that temple and to have 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, and 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 a starched and unnatural
robe, then to draw bolts and throw it 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, the hideous
debauchee of a heart, worse than all the lubricity of the Romans, or the
Saturnalia of Priapus; bastard parody of vice itself as well as of
virtue; loathsome comedy where all is whispering and oblique glances,
where all is small, elegant and deformed like the porcelain monsters
brought from China; lamentable derision of 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.