E-text prepared by Al Haines
HOW WOMEN LOVE
(Soul Analysis.)
Translated from the German of
MAX NORDAU,
Author of "Degeneration," "The Malady of the Century,"
"The Comedy of Sentiment," Etc., Etc
Copyright, 1898, by F. T. Neely.
Copyright, 1901, by Hurst & Co.
New York
Hurst & Company
Publishers
CONTENTS
Justice or Revenge
Prince and Peasant
The Art of Growing Old
How Women Love
A Midsummer Night's Dream
JUSTICE OR REVENGE.
CHAPTER I.
A more unequally matched couple than the cartwright Molnar and his wife
can seldom be seen. When, on Sunday, the pair went to church through
the main street of Kisfalu, an insignificant village in the Pesth
county, every one looked after them, though every child, nay, every cur
in the hamlet, knew them and, during the five years since their
marriage, might have become accustomed to the spectacle. But it seemed
as though it produced an ever new and surprising effect upon the by no
means sensitive inhabitants of Kisfalu, who imposed no constraint upon
themselves to conceal the emotions awakened by the sight of the Molnar
pair. They never called the husband by any other name than "Csunya
Pista," ugly Stephen. And he well merited the epithet. He was
one-eyed, had a broken, shapeless nose, and an ugly scar, on which no
hair grew, upon his upper lip, so that his moustache looked as if it
had been shaven off there; to complete the picture, one of his upper
eye-teeth and incisors were missing, and he had the unpleasant habit of
putting his tongue into these gaps in his upper row of teeth, which
rendered his countenance still more repulsive.
The wife, on the contrary, was a very beautiful woman, a magnificent
type of the Magyar race. She was tall, powerful, only perhaps a trifle
too broad-shouldered. Her intensely dark hair and sparkling black eyes
suited the warm bronze hue of her plump face, which, with its little
mouth filled with magnificent teeth, its fresh full lips, the
transparent, enamel like crimson of the firm, round cheeks, and the
somewhat low, but beautifully formed brow, suggested a newly-ripe
peach. This unusually healthy countenance, overspread with a light
down, involuntarily produced in the spectator the impression that it
must exhale a warm, intoxicating, spicy fragrance; it looked so
tempting that one would fain have bitten it.
This had been much the feeling of the Uhlan officers who, with part of
a company of men, were stationed in Kisfalu. From the first day that
the three gentlemen had entered their village garrison the beautiful
woman had attracted their attention, and they had seen in the husband's
ugliness a pleasant encouragement to make gallant advances. The
captain, a Bohemian gentleman, was the first to introduce himself to
the fair wife. The morning of the second day after his arrival in the
hamlet, taking advantage of the absence of the master of the house, he
stole into the miserable clay hut tenanted by the ill-assorted pair,
but remained inside only a few minutes, after which he came out with a
deeply-flushed face and somewhat hasty steps, cast stealthy glances
around him to the right and left, and then hurried away. In the
afternoon of the same day, the young lieutenant tried his luck, but he
too left the cartwright's hut more quickly than he had entered, and not
exactly with the air of a conqueror. In the evening the three
gentlemen met in the spare room of the tavern where they took their
meals, and were remarkably taciturn and ill-tempered. On the third day
the slender, handsome first lieutenant called on the cartwright's wife.
He was a far-famed conqueror of women's hearts, which he was accustomed
to win with as little trouble as a child gathers strawberries in the
woods, and was envied by the whole regiment for his numberless
successes, which he did not treat with too much reticence. This time
the adventure lasted somewhat longer; those who were passing heard loud
outcries and uproar for a short time, as if a wrestling match were
going on in the hut, and the letter-carrier, an old woman, who was just
going by, even stood still in surprise and curiosity. The curiosity
was satisfied, for she soon saw the handsome Uhlan officer rush out,
pressing his hand to his cheek as if he had a violent toothache. He
looked very much dishevelled and made off with noticeable haste. He
did not appear in the tavern at noon, so in the afternoon his two
comrades sent their orderlies to him to enquire about his health; in
the evening he joined them at table and showed his astonished friends a
broad strip of black court-plaster on his right cheek.
"What does that mean?" asked the captain.
"It seems to be a bad cut," observed the lieutenant.
"Razor? sword-stroke? cat's claw?" continued the captain, pursuing his
enquiries.
"Woman's nails!" burst forth the Don Juan of the regiment, and now the
game of hide-and-seek between the trio ended, and they bewailed to one
another, with comic despair, the ill-luck they had all encountered.
She had courteously asked the captain to what she owed the honour of
his visit, and when, instead of answering, he pinched her plump cheek
and put his arm around her waist, she flew into a passion and pointed
to the door with the voice and gesture of an insulted queen. The
lieutenant had found her far more ungracious; she did not ask what he
desired, but angrily thundered, almost before he crossed the threshold,
an order to march which permitted neither remonstrance nor refusal;
finally, at the appearance of the first lieutenant, she had passed from
the position of defence to that of assault, shrieked at him with a
crimson face and flashing eyes to be off at once, if he valued the
smooth skin of his cheeks; and when, somewhat bewildered, yet not
wholly intimidated, he had ventured, notwithstanding this by no means
encouraging reception, to attempt to seize and embrace her, as he was
accustomed to do with the colonel's wife's maid, when, making eyes at
him in the ante-room, she whispered under her breath: "Let me go, or
I'll scream!" she rushed upon him literally like a wild-cat, and, in an
instant, so mauled him that he could neither hear nor see, and
considered himself fortunate to find his way out quickly. And when all
three heroes had finished their tragi-comic general confession, they
unanimously exclaimed: "The woman has the very devil in her!"
They would have learned this truth without being obliged to pass
through all sorts of experiences, if, instead of indulging in
self-complacent speculations concerning the possible combination of
circumstances which had united the beautiful woman to so ugly a man,
they had enquired about the cause of this remarkable phenomenon. They
would then have heard a strange tale which might have deterred them
from finding in Molnar's hideousness encouragement to pursue his wife
with gallantries.