Predestined means destined in advance for happiness or unhappiness.
Theology has seized upon this word and employs it in relation to the
happy; we give to the term a meaning which is unfortunate to our elect
of which one can say in opposition to the Gospel, “Many are called,
many are chosen.”
Experience has demonstrated that there are certain classes of men more
subject than others to certain infirmities; the Gascons are given to
exaggeration and Parisians to vanity. As we see that apoplexy attacks
people with short necks, or butchers are liable to carbuncle, as gout
attacks the rich, health the poor, deafness kings, paralysis
administrators, so it has been remarked that certain classes of
husbands and their wives are more given to illegitimate passions. Thus
they forestall the celibates, they form another sort of aristocracy. If
any reader should be enrolled in one of these aristocratic classes he
will, we hope, have sufficient presence of mind, he or at least his
wife, instantly to call to mind the favorite axiom of Lhomond’s Latin
Grammar: “No rule without exception.” A friend of the house may even
recite the verse—
“Present company always excepted.”
And then every one will have the right to believe, _in petto_, that he
forms the exception. But our duty, the interest which we take in
husbands and the keen desire which we have to preserve young and pretty
women from the caprices and catastrophes which a lover brings in his
train, force us to give notice to husbands that they ought to be
especially on their guard.
In this recapitulation first are to be reckoned the husbands whom
business, position or public office calls from their houses and detains
for a definite time. It is these who are the standard-bearers of the
brotherhood.
Among them, we would reckon magistrates, holding office during pleasure
or for life, and obliged to remain at the Palace for the greater
portion of the day; other functionaries sometimes find means to leave
their office at business hours; but a judge or a public prosecutor,
seated on his cushion of lilies, is bound even to die during the
progress of the hearing. There is his field of battle.
It is the same with the deputies and peers who discuss the laws, of
ministers who share the toils of the king, of secretaries who work with
the ministers, of soldiers on campaign, and indeed with the corporal of
the police patrol, as the letter of Lafleur, in the _Sentimental
Journey_, plainly shows.
Next to the men who are obliged to be absent from home at certain fixed
hours, come the men whom vast and serious undertakings leave not one
minute for love-making; their foreheads are always wrinkled with
anxiety, their conversation is generally void of merriment.
At the head of these unfortunates we must place the bankers, who toil
in the acquisition of millions, whose heads are so full of calculations
that the figures burst through their skulls and range themselves in
columns of addition on their foreheads.
These millionaires, forgetting most of the time the sacred laws of
marriage and the attention due to the tender flower which they have
undertaken to cultivate, never think of watering it or of defending it
from the heat and cold. They scarcely recognize the fact that the
happiness of their spouses is in their keeping; if they ever do
remember this, it is at table, when they see seated before them a woman
in rich array, or when a coquette, fearing their brutal repulse, comes,
gracious as Venus, to ask them for cash— Oh! it is then, that they
recall, sometimes very vividly, the rights specified in the two hundred
and thirteenth article of the civil code, and their wives are grateful
to them; but like the heavy tariff which the law lays upon foreign
merchandise, their wives suffer and pay the tribute, in virtue of the
axiom which says: “There is no pleasure without pain.”
The men of science who spend whole months in gnawing at the bone of an
antediluvian monster, in calculating the laws of nature, when there is
an opportunity to peer into her secrets, the Grecians and Latinists who
dine on a thought of Tacitus, sup on a phrase of Thucydides, spend
their life in brushing the dust from library shelves, in keeping guard
over a commonplace book, or a papyrus, are all predestined. So great is
their abstraction or their ecstasy, that nothing that goes on around
them strikes their attention. Their unhappiness is consummated; in full
light of noon they scarcely even perceive it. Oh happy men! a thousand
times happy! Example: Beauzee, returning home after session at the
Academy, surprises his wife with a German. “Did not I tell you, madame,
that it was necessary that I shall go,” cried the stranger. “My dear
sir,” interrupted the academician, “you ought to say that I _should_
go!”
Then there come, lyre in hand, certain poets whose whole animal
strength has left the ground floor and mounted to the upper story. They
know better how to mount Pegasus than the beast of old Peter, they
rarely marry, although they are accustomed to lavish the fury of their
passions on some wandering or imaginary Chloris.
But the men whose noses are stained with snuff;
But those who, to their misfortune, have a perpetual cold in their
head;
But the sailors who smoke or chew;
But those men whose dry and bilious temperament makes them always look
as if they had eaten a sour apple;
But the men who in private life have certain cynical habits, ridiculous
fads, and who always, in spite of everything, look unwashed;
But the husbands who have obtained the degrading name of “hen-pecked”;
Finally the old men who marry young girls.
All these people are _par excellence_ among the predestined.
There is a final class of the predestined whose ill-fortune is almost
certain, we mean restless and irritable men, who are inclined to meddle
and tyrannize, who have a great idea of domestic domination, who openly
express their low ideas of women and who know no more about life than
herrings about natural history. When these men marry, their homes have
the appearance of a wasp whose head a schoolboy has cut off, and who
dances here and there on a window pane. For this sort of predestined
the present work is a sealed book. We do not write any more for those
imbeciles, walking effigies, who are like the statues of a cathedral,
than for those old machines of Marly which are too weak to fling water
over the hedges of Versailles without being in danger of sudden
collapse.
I rarely make my observations on the conjugal oddities with which the
drawing-room is usually full, without recalling vividly a sight which I
once enjoyed in early youth:
In 1819 I was living in a thatched cottage situated in the bosom of the
delightful valley l’Isle-Adam. My hermitage neighbored on the park of
Cassan, the sweetest of retreats, the most fascinating in aspect, the
most attractive as a place to ramble in, the most cool and refreshing
in summer, of all places created by luxury and art. This verdant
country-seat owes its origin to a farmer-general of the good old times,
a certain Bergeret, celebrated for his originality; who among other
fantastic dandyisms adopted the habit of going to the opera, with his
hair powdered in gold; he used to light up his park for his own
solitary delectation and on one occasion ordered a sumptuous
entertainment there, in which he alone took part. This rustic
Sardanapalus returned from Italy so passionately charmed with the
scenery of that beautiful country that, by a sudden freak of
enthusiasm, he spent four or five millions in order to represent in his
park the scenes of which he had pictures in his portfolio. The most
charming contrasts of foliage, the rarest trees, long valleys, and
prospects the most picturesque that could be brought from abroad,
Borromean islands floating on clear eddying streams like so many rays,
which concentrate their various lustres on a single point, on an Isola
Bella, from which the enchanted eye takes in each detail at its
leisure, or on an island in the bosom of which is a little house
concealed under the drooping foliage of a century-old ash, an island
fringed with irises, rose-bushes, and flowers which appears like an
emerald richly set. Ah! one might rove a thousand leagues for such a
place! The most sickly, the most soured, the most disgusted of our men
of genius in ill health would die of satiety at the end of fifteen
days, overwhelmed with the luscious sweetness of fresh life in such a
spot.
The man who was quite regardless of the Eden which he thus possessed
had neither wife nor children, but was attached to a large ape which he
kept. A graceful turret of wood, supported by a sculptured column,
served as a dwelling place for this vicious animal, who being kept
chained and rarely petted by his eccentric master, oftener at Paris
than in his country home, had gained a very bad reputation. I recollect
seeing him once in the presence of certain ladies show almost as much
insolence as if he had been a man. His master was obliged to kill him,
so mischievous did he gradually become.
One morning while I was sitting under a beautiful tulip tree in flower,
occupied in doing nothing but inhaling the lovely perfumes which the
tall poplars kept confined within the brilliant enclosure, enjoying the
silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters and the
rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head by
clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of my
future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before from
Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has nothing
else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear anything so
utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If the distant
notes of Roland’s Horn had only filled the air with life, perhaps—but a
noisy fiddler like this, who undertakes to bring to you the expression
of human ideas and the phraseology of music! This Amphion, who was
walking up and down the dining-room, finished by taking a seat on the
window-sill, exactly in front of the monkey. Perhaps he was looking for
an audience. Suddenly I saw the animal quietly descend from his little
dungeon, stand upon his hind feet, bow his head forward like a swimmer
and fold his arms over his bosom like Spartacus in chains, or Catiline
listening to Cicero. The banker, summoned by a sweet voice whose
silvery tone recalled a boudoir not unknown to me, laid his violin on
the window-sill and made off like a swallow who rejoins his companion
by a rapid level swoop. The great monkey, whose chain was sufficiently
long, approached the window and gravely took in hand the violin. I
don’t know whether you have ever had as I have the pleasure of seeing a
monkey try to learn music, but at the present moment, when I laugh much
less than I did in those careless days, I never think of that monkey
without a smile; the semi-man began by grasping the instrument with his
fist and by sniffing at it as if he were tasting the flavor of an
apple. The snort from his nostrils probably produced a dull harmonious
sound in the sonorous wood and then the orang-outang shook his head,
turned over the violin, turned it back again, raised it up in the air,
lowered it, held it straight out, shook it, put it to his ear, set it
down, and picked it up again with a rapidity of movement peculiar to
these agile creatures. He seemed to question the dumb wood with
faltering sagacity and in his gestures there was something marvelous as
well as infantile. At last he undertook with grotesque gestures to
place the violin under his chin, while in one hand he held the neck;
but like a spoiled child he soon wearied of a study which required
skill not to be obtained in a moment and he twitched the strings
without being able to draw forth anything but discordant sounds. He
seemed annoyed, laid the violin on the window-sill and snatching up the
bow he began to push it to and fro with violence, like a mason sawing a
block of stone. This effort only succeeded in wearying his fastidious
ears, and he took the bow with both hands and snapped it in two on the
innocent instrument, source of harmony and delight. It seemed as if I
saw before me a schoolboy holding under him a companion lying face
downwards, while he pommeled him with a shower of blows from his fist,
as if to punish him for some delinquency. The violin being now tried
and condemned, the monkey sat down upon the fragments of it and amused
himself with stupid joy in mixing up the yellow strings of the broken
bow.
Never since that day have I been able to look upon the home of the
predestined without comparing the majority of husbands to this
orang-outang trying to play the violin.
Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love
is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is
necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them,
the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which
befits it. How many monkeys—men, I mean—marry without knowing what a
woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wives as the
ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken the heart which
they did not understand, as they might dim and disdain the amulet whose
secret was unknown to them. They are children their whole life through,
who leave life with empty hands after having talked about love, about
pleasure, about licentiousness and virtue as slaves talk about liberty.
Almost all of them married with the most profound ignorance of women
and of love. They commenced by breaking in the door of a strange house
and expected to be welcomed in this drawing-room. But the rudest artist
knows that between him and his instrument, of wood, or of ivory, there
exists a mysterious sort of friendship. He knows by experience that it
takes years to establish this understanding between an inert matter and
himself. He did not discover, at the first touch, the resources, the
caprices, the deficiencies, the excellencies of his instrument. It did
not become a living soul for him, a source of incomparable melody until
he had studied for a long time; man and instrument did not come to
understand each other like two friends, until both of them had been
skillfully questioned and tested by frequent intercourse.
Can a man ever learn woman and know how to decipher this wondrous
strain of music, by remaining through life like a seminarian in his
cell? Is it possible that a man who makes it his business to think for
others, to judge others, to rule others, to steal money from others, to
feed, to heal, to wound others—that, in fact, any of our predestined,
can spare time to study a woman? They sell their time for money, how
can they give it away for happiness? Money is their god. No one can
serve two masters at the same time. Is not the world, moreover, full of
young women who drag along pale and weak, sickly and suffering? Some of
them are the prey of feverish inflammations more or less serious,
others lie under the cruel tyranny of nervous attacks more or less
violent. All the husbands of these women belong to the class of the
ignorant and the predestined. They have caused their own misfortune and
expended as much pains in producing it as the husband artist would have
bestowed in bringing to flower the late and delightful blooms of
pleasure. The time which an ignorant man passes to consummate his own
ruin is precisely that which a man of knowledge employs in the
education of his happiness.
XXVI.
Do not begin marriage by a violation of law.
In the preceding meditations we have indicated the extent of the evil
with the reckless audacity of those surgeons, who boldly induce the
formation of false tissues under which a shameful wound is concealed.
Public virtue, transferred to the table of our amphitheatre, has lost
even its carcass under the strokes of the scalpel. Lover or husband,
have you smiled, or have you trembled at this evil? Well, it is with
malicious delight that we lay this huge social burden on the conscience
of the predestined. Harlequin, when he tried to find out whether his
horse could be accustomed to go without food, was not more ridiculous
than the men who wish to find happiness in their home and yet refuse to
cultivate it with all the pains which it demands. The errors of women
are so many indictments of egotism, neglect and worthlessness in
husbands.
Yet it is yours, reader, it pertains to you, who have often condemned
in another the crime which you yourself commit, it is yours to hold the
balance. One of the scales is quite loaded, take care what you are
going to put in the other. Reckon up the number of predestined ones who
may be found among the total number of married people, weigh them, and
you will then know where the evil is seated.
Let us try to penetrate more deeply into the causes of this conjugal
sickliness.
The word love, when applied to the reproduction of the species, is the
most hateful blasphemy which modern manners have taught us to utter.
Nature, in raising us above the beasts by the divine gift of thought,
had rendered us very sensitive to bodily sensations, emotional
sentiment, cravings of appetite and passions. This double nature of
ours makes of man both an animal and a lover. This distinction gives
the key to the social problem which we are considering.
Marriage may be considered in three ways, politically, as well as from
a civil and moral point of view: as a law, as a contract and as an
institution. As a law, its object is a reproduction of the species; as
a contract, it relates to the transmission of property; as an
institution, it is a guarantee which all men give and by which all are
bound: they have father and mother, and they will have children.
Marriage, therefore, ought to be the object of universal respect.
Society can only take into consideration those cardinal points, which,
from a social point of view, dominate the conjugal question.
Most men have no other views in marrying, than reproduction, property
or children; but neither reproduction nor property nor children
constitutes happiness. The command, “Increase and multiply,” does not
imply love. To ask of a young girl whom we have seen fourteen times in
fifteen days, to give you love in the name of law, the king and
justice, is an absurdity worthy of the majority of the predestined.
Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment; happiness in
marriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair. Hence
it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himself bound by
certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed the benefit
of the social law which consecrates the natural craving, he must obey
also the secret laws of nature by which sentiments unfold themselves.
If he stakes his happiness on being himself loved, he must himself love
sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.
But to feel this passion is always to feel desire. Can a man always
desire his wife?
Yes.
It is as absurd to deny that it is possible for a man always to love
the same woman, as it would be to affirm that some famous musician
needed several violins in order to execute a piece of music or compose
a charming melody.
Love is the poetry of the senses. It has the destiny of all that which
is great in man and of all that which proceeds from his thought. Either
it is sublime, or it is not. When once it exists, it exists forever and
goes on always increasing. This is the love which the ancients made the
child of heaven and earth.
Literature revolves round seven situations; music expresses everything
with seven notes; painting employs but seven colors; like these three
arts, love perhaps founds itself on seven principles, but we leave this
investigation for the next century to carry out.
If poetry, music and painting have found infinite forms of expression,
pleasure should be even more diversified. For in the three arts which
aid us in seeking, often with little success, truth by means of
analogy, the man stands alone with his imagination, while love is the
union of two bodies and of two souls. If the three principal methods
upon which we rely for the expression of thought require preliminary
study in those whom nature has made poets, musicians or painters, is it
not obvious that, in order, to be happy, it is necessary to be
initiated into the secrets of pleasure? All men experience the craving
for reproduction, as all feel hunger and thirst; but all are not called
to be lovers and gastronomists. Our present civilization has proved
that taste is a science, and it is only certain privileged beings who
have learned how to eat and drink. Pleasure considered as an art is
still waiting for its physiologists. As for ourselves, we are contented
with pointing out that ignorance of the principles upon which happiness
is founded, is the sole cause of that misfortune which is the lot of
all the predestined.
It is with the greatest timidity that we venture upon the publication
of a few aphorisms which may give birth to this new art, as casts have
created the science of geology; and we offer them for the meditation of
philosophers, of young marrying people and of the predestined.