When your wife reaches that crisis in which we have left her, you
yourself are wrapped in a pleasant and unsuspicious security. You have
so often seen the sun that you begin to think it is shining over
everybody. You therefore give no longer that attention to the least
action of your wife, which was impelled by your first outburst of
passion.
This indolence prevents many husbands from perceiving the symptoms
which, in their wives, herald the first storm; and this disposition of
mind has resulted in the minotaurization of more husbands than have
either opportunity, carriages, sofas and apartments in town.
The feeling of indifference in the presence of danger is to some degree
justified by the apparent tranquillity which surrounds you. The
conspiracy which is formed against you by our million of hungry
celibates seems to be unanimous in its advance. Although all are
enemies of each other and know each other well, a sort of instinct
forces them into co-operation.
Two persons are married. The myrmidons of the Minotaur, young and old,
have usually the politeness to leave the bride and bridegroom entirely
to themselves at first. They look upon the husband as an artisan, whose
business it is to trim, polish, cut into facets and mount the diamond,
which is to pass from hand to hand in order to be admired all around.
Moreover, the aspect of a young married couple much taken with each
other always rejoices the heart of those among the celibates who are
known as _roues_; they take good care not to disturb the excitement by
which society is to be profited; they also know that heavy showers to
not last long. They therefore keep quiet; they watch, and wait, with
incredible vigilance, for the moment when bride and groom begin to
weary of the seventh heaven.
The tact with which celibates discover the moment when the breeze
begins to rise in a new home can only be compared to the indifference
of those husbands for whom the Red-moon rises. There is, even in
intrigue, a moment of ripeness which must be waited for. The great man
is he who anticipates the outcome of certain circumstances. Men of
fifty-two, whom we have represented as being so dangerous, know very
well, for example, that any man who offers himself as lover to a woman
and is haughtily rejected, will be received with open arms three months
afterwards. But it may be truly said that in general married people in
betraying their indifference towards each other show the same naivete
with which they first betrayed their love. At the time when you are
traversing with madame the ravishing fields of the seventh heaven—where
according to their temperament, newly married people remain encamped
for a longer or shorter time, as the preceding Meditation has
proved—you go little or not at all into society. Happy as you are in
your home, if you do go abroad, it will be for the purpose of making up
a choice party and visiting the theatre, the country, etc. From the
moment you the newly wedded make your appearance in the world again,
you and your bride together, or separately, and are seen to be
attentive to each other at balls, at parties, at all the empty
amusements created to escape the void of an unsatisfied heart, the
celibates discern that your wife comes there in search of distraction;
her home, her husband are therefore wearisome to her.
At this point the celibate knows that half of the journey is
accomplished. At this point you are on the eve of being minotaurized,
and your wife is likely to become inconsistent; which means that she is
on the contrary likely to prove very consistent in her conduct, that
she has reasoned it out with astonishing sagacity and that you are
likely very soon to smell fire. From that moment she will not in
appearance fail in any of her duties, and will put on the colors of
that virtue in which she is most lacking. Said Crebillon:
“Alas!
Is it right to be heir of the man who we slay?”
Never has she seemed more anxious to please you. She will seek, as much
as possible, to allay the secret wounds which she thinks about
inflicting upon your married bliss, she will do so by those little
attentions which induce you to believe in the eternity of her love;
hence the proverb, “Happy as a fool.” But in accordance with the
character of women, they either despise their own husbands from the
very fact that they find no difficulty in deceiving them; or they hate
them when they find themselves circumvented by them; or they fall into
a condition of indifference towards them, which is a thousand times
worse than hatred. In this emergency, the first thing which may be
diagnosed in a woman is a decided oddness of behavior. A woman loves to
be saved from herself, to escape her conscience, but without the
eagerness shown in this connection by wives who are thoroughly unhappy.
She dresses herself with especial care, in order, she will tell you, to
flatter your _amour-propre_ by drawing all eyes upon her in the midst
of parties and public entertainments.
When she returns to the bosom of her stupid home you will see that, at
times, she is gloomy and thoughtful, then suddenly laughing and gay as
if beside herself; or assuming the serious expression of a German when
he advances to the fight. Such varying moods always indicate the
terrible doubt and hesitation to which we have already referred. There
are women who read romances in order to feast upon the images of love
cleverly depicted and always varied, of love crowned yet triumphant; or
in order to familiarize themselves in thought with the perils of an
intrigue.
She will profess the highest esteem for you, she will tell you that she
loves you as a sister; and that such reasonable friendship is the only
true, the only durable friendship, the only tie which it is the aim of
marriage to establish between man and wife.
She will adroitly distinguish between the duties which are all she has
to perform and the rights which she can demand to exercise.
She views with indifference, appreciated by you alone, all the details
of married happiness. This sort of happiness, perhaps, has never been
very agreeable to her and moreover it is always with her. She knows it
well, she has analyzed it; and what slight but terrible evidence comes
from these circumstances to prove to an intelligent husband that this
frail creature argues and reasons, instead of being carried away on the
tempest of passion.
LX.
The more a man judges the less he loves.
And now will burst forth from her those pleasantries at which you will
be the first to laugh and those reflections which will startle you by
their profundity; now you will see sudden changes of mood and the
caprices of a mind which hesitates. At times she will exhibit extreme
tenderness, as if she repented of her thoughts and her projects;
sometimes she will be sullen and at cross-purposes with you; in a word,
she will fulfill the _varium et mutabile femina_ which we hitherto have
had the folly to attribute to the feminine temperament. Diderot, in his
desire to explain the mutations almost atmospheric in the behavior of
women, has even gone so far as to make them the offspring of what he
calls _la bete feroce_; but we never see these whims in a woman who is
happy.
These symptoms, light as gossamer, resemble the clouds which scarcely
break the azure surface of the sky and which they call flowers of the
storm. But soon their colors take a deeper intensity.
In the midst of this solemn premeditation, which tends, as Madame de
Stael says, to bring more poetry into life, some women, in whom
virtuous mothers either from considerations of worldly advantage of
duty or sentiment, or through sheer hypocrisy, have inculcated
steadfast principles, take the overwhelming fancies by which they are
assailed for suggestions of the devil; and you will see them therefore
trotting regularly to mass, to midday offices, even to vespers. This
false devotion exhibits itself, first of all in the shape of pretty
books of devotion in a costly binding, by the aid of which these dear
sinners attempt in vain to fulfill the duties imposed by religion, and
long neglected for the pleasures of marriage.
Now here we will lay down a principle, and you must engrave it on your
memory in letters of fire.
When a young woman suddenly takes up religious practices which she has
before abandoned, this new order of life always conceals a motive
highly significant, in view of her husband’s happiness. In the case of
at least seventy-nine women out of a hundred this return to God proves
that they have been inconsistent, or that they intend to become so.
But a symptom more significant still and more decisive, and one that
every husband should recognize under pain of being considered a fool,
is this:
At the time when both of you are immersed in the illusive delights of
the honeymoon, your wife, as one devoted to you, would constantly carry
out your will. She was happy in the power of showing the ready will,
which both of you mistook for love, and she would have liked for you to
have asked her to walk on the edge of the roof, and immediately, nimble
as a squirrel, she would have run over the tiles. In a word, she found
an ineffable delight in sacrificing to you that _ego_ which made her a
being distinct from yours. She had identified herself with your nature
and was obedient to that vow of the heart, _Una caro_.
All this delightful promptness of an earlier day gradually faded away.
Wounded to find her will counted as nothing, your wife will attempt,
nevertheless, to reassert it by means of a system developed gradually,
and from day to day, with increased energy.
This system is founded upon what we may call the dignity of the married
woman. The first effect of this system is to mingle with your pleasures
a certain reserve and a certain lukewarmness, of which you are the sole
judge.
According to the greater or lesser violence of your sensual passion,
you have perhaps discerned some of those twenty-two pleasures which in
other times created in Greece twenty-two kinds of courtesans, devoted
especially to these delicate branches of the same art. Ignorant and
simple, curious and full of hope, your young wife may have taken some
degrees in this science as rare as it is unknown, and which we
especially commend to the attention of the future author of _Physiology
of Pleasure_.
Lacking all these different kinds of pleasure, all these caprices of
soul, all these arrows of love, you are reduced to the most common of
love fashions, of that primitive and innocent wedding gait, the calm
homage which the innocent Adam rendered to our common Mother and which
doubtless suggested to the Serpent the idea of taking them in. But a
symptom so complete is not frequent. Most married couples are too good
Christians to follow the usages of pagan Greece, so we have ranged,
among the last symptoms, the appearance in the calm nuptial couch of
those shameless pleasures which spring generally from lawless passion.
In their proper time and place we will treat more fully of this
fascinating diagnostic; at this point, things are reduced to a
listlessness and conjugal repugnance which you alone are in a condition
to appreciate.
At the same time that she is ennobling by her dignity the objects of
marriage, your wife will pretend that she ought to have her opinion and
you yours. “In marrying,” she will say, “a woman does not vow that she
will abdicate the throne of reason. Are women then really slaves? Human
laws can fetter the body; but the mind!—ah! God has placed it so near
Himself that no human hand can touch it.”
These ideas necessarily proceed either from the too liberal teachings
which you have allowed her to receive, or from some reflections which
you have permitted her to make. A whole Meditation has been devoted to
_Home Instruction_.
Then your wife begins to say, “_My_ chamber, _my_ bed, _my_ apartment.”
To many of your questions she will reply, “But, my dear, this is no
business of yours!” Or: “Men have their part in the direction of the
house, and women have theirs.” Or, laughing at men who meddle in
household affairs, she will affirm that “men do not understand some
things.”
The number of things which you do not understand increases day by day.
One fine morning, you will see in your little church two altars, where
before you never worshiped but at one. The altar of your wife and your
own altar have become distinct, and this distinction will go on
increasing, always in accordance with the system founded upon the
dignity of woman.
Then the following ideas will appear, and they will be inculcated in
you whether you like it or not, by means of a living force very ancient
in origin and little known. Steam-power, horse-power, man-power, and
water-power are good inventions, but nature has provided women with a
moral power, in comparison with which all other powers are nothing; we
may call it _rattle-power_. This force consists in a continuance of the
same sound, in an exact repetition of the same words, in a reversion,
over and over again, to the same ideas, and this so unvaried, that from
hearing them over and over again you will admit them, in order to be
delivered from the discussion. Thus the power of the rattle will prove
to you:
That you are very fortunate to have such an excellent wife;
That she has done you too much honor in marrying you;
That women often see clearer than men;
That you ought to take the advice of your wife in everything, and
almost always ought to follow it;
That you ought to respect the mother of your children, to honor her and
have confidence in her;
That the best way to escape being deceived, is to rely upon a wife’s
refinement, for according to certain old ideas which we have had the
weakness to give credit, it is impossible for a man to prevent his wife
from minotaurizing him;
That a lawful wife is a man’s best friend;
That a woman is mistress in her own house and queen in her
drawing-room, etc.
Those who wish to oppose a firm resistance to a woman’s conquest,
effected by means of her dignity over man’s power, fall into the
category of the predestined.
At first, quarrels arise which in the eye of wives give an air of
tyranny to husbands. The tyranny of a husband is always a terrible
excuse for inconsistency in a wife. Then, in their frivolous
discussions they are enabled to prove to their families and to ours, to
everybody and to ourselves, that we are in the wrong. If, for the sake
of peace, or from love, you acknowledge the pretended rights of women,
you yield an advantage to your wife by which she will profit eternally.
A husband, like a government, ought never to acknowledge a mistake. In
case you do so, your power will be outflanked by the subtle artifices
of feminine dignity; then all will be lost; from that moment she will
advance from concession to concession until she has driven you from her
bed.
The woman being shrewd, intelligent, sarcastic and having leisure to
meditate over an ironical phrase, can easily turn you into ridicule
during a momentary clash of opinions. The day on which she turns you
into ridicule, sees the end of your happiness. Your power has expired.
A woman who has laughed at her husband cannot henceforth love him. A
man should be, to the woman who is in love with him, a being full of
power, of greatness, and always imposing. A family cannot exist without
despotism. Think of that, ye nations!
Now the difficult course which a man has to steer in presence of such
serious incidents as these, is what we may call the _haute politique_
of marriage, and is the subject of the second and third parts of our
book. That breviary of marital Machiavelism will teach you the manner
in which you may grow to greatness within that frivolous mind, within
that soul of lacework, to use Napoleon’s phrase. You may learn how a
man may exhibit a soul of steel, may enter upon this little domestic
war without ever yielding the empire of his will, and may do so without
compromising his happiness. For if you exhibit any tendency to
abdication, your wife will despise you, for the sole reason that she
has discovered you to be destitute of mental vigor; you are no longer a
_man_ to her.
But we have not yet reached the point at which are to be developed
those theories and principles, by means of which a man may unite
elegance of manners with severity of measures; let it suffice us, for
the moment, to point out the importance of impending events and let us
pursue our theme.
At this fatal epoch, you will see that she is adroitly setting up a
right to go out alone.
You were at one time her god, her idol. She has now reached that height
of devotion at which it is permitted to see holes in the garments of
the saints.
“Oh, mon Dieu! My dear,” said Madame de la Valliere to her husband,
“how badly you wear your sword! M. de Richelieu has a way of making it
hang straight at his side, which you ought to try to imitate; it is in
much better taste.”
“My dear, you could not tell me in a more tactful manner that we have
been married five months!” replied the Duke, whose repartee made his
fortune in the reign of Louis XV.
She will study your character in order to find weapons against you.
Such a study, which love would hold in horror, reveals itself in the
thousand little traps which she lays purposely to make you scold her;
when a woman has no excuse for minotaurizing her husband she sets to
work to make one.
She will perhaps begin dinner without waiting for you.
If you drive through the middle of the town, she will point out certain
objects which escaped your notice; she will sing before you without
feeling afraid; she will interrupt you, sometimes vouchsafe no reply to
you, and will prove to you, in a thousand different ways, that she is
enjoying at your side the use of all her faculties and exercising her
private judgment.
She will try to abolish entirely your influence in the management of
the house and to become sole mistress of your fortune. At first this
struggle will serve as a distraction for her soul, whether it be empty
or in too violent commotion; next, she will find in your opposition a
new motive for ridicule. Slang expressions will not fail her, and in
France we are so quickly vanquished by the ironical smile of another!
At other times headaches and nervous attacks make their appearance; but
these symptoms furnish matter for a whole future Meditation. In the
world she will speak of you without blushing, and will gaze at you with
assurance. She will begin to blame your least actions because they are
at variance with her ideas, or her secret intentions. She will take no
care of what pertains to you, she will not even know whether you have
all you need. You are no longer her paragon.
In imitation of Louis XIV, who carried to his mistresses the bouquets
of orange blossoms which the head gardener of Versailles put on his
table every morning, M. de Vivonne used almost every day to give his
wife choice flowers during the early period of his marriage. One
morning he found the bouquet lying on the side table without having
been placed, as usual, in a vase of water.
“Oh! Oh!” said he, “if I am not a cuckold, I shall very soon be one.”
You go on a journey for eight days and you receive no letters, or you
receive one, three pages of which are blank.—Symptom.
You come home mounted on a valuable horse which you like very much, and
between her kisses your wife shows her uneasiness about the horse and
his fodder.—Symptom.
To these features of the case, you will be able to add others. We shall
endeavor in the present volume always to paint things in bold fresco
style and leave the miniatures to you. According to the characters
concerned, the indications which we are describing, veiled under the
incidents of ordinary life, are of infinite variety. One man may
discover a symptom in the way a shawl is put on, while another needs to
receive a fillip to his intellect, in order to notice the indifference
of his mate.
Some fine spring morning, the day after a ball, or the eve of a country
party, this situation reaches its last phase; your wife is listless and
the happiness within her reach has no more attractions for her. Her
mind, her imagination, perhaps her natural caprices call for a lover.
Nevertheless, she dare not yet embark upon an intrigue whose
consequences and details fill her with dread. You are still there for
some purpose or other; you are a weight in the balance, although a very
light one. On the other hand, the lover presents himself arrayed in all
the graces of novelty and all the charms of mystery. The conflict which
has arisen in the heart of your wife becomes, in presence of the enemy,
more real and more full of peril than before. Very soon the more
dangers and risks there are to be run, the more she burns to plunge
into that delicious gulf of fear, enjoyment, anguish and delight. Her
imagination kindles and sparkles, her future life rises before her
eyes, colored with romantic and mysterious hues. Her soul discovers
that existence has already taken its tone from this struggle which to a
woman has so much solemnity in it. All is agitation, all is fire, all
is commotion within her. She lives with three times as much intensity
as before, and judges the future by the present. The little pleasure
which you have lavished upon her bears witness against you; for she is
not excited as much by the pleasures which she has received, as by
those which she is yet to enjoy; does not imagination show her that her
happiness will be keener with this lover, whom the laws deny her, than
with you? And then, she finds enjoyment even in her terror and terror
in her enjoyment. Then she falls in love with this imminent danger,
this sword of Damocles hung over her head by you yourself, thus
preferring the delirious agonies of such a passion, to that conjugal
inanity which is worse to her than death, to that indifference which is
less a sentiment than the absence of all sentiment.
You, who must go to pay your respects to the Minister of Finance, to
write memorandums at the bank, to make your reports at the Bourse, or
to speak in the Chamber; you, young men, who have repeated with many
others in our first Meditation the oath that you will defend your
happiness in defending your wife, what can you oppose to these desires
of hers which are so natural? For, with these creatures of fire, to
live is to feel; the moment they cease to experience emotion they are
dead. The law in virtue of which you take your position produces in her
this involuntary act of minotaurism. “There is one sequel,” said
D’Alembert, “to the laws of movement.” Well, then, where are your means
of defence?— Where, indeed?
Alas! if your wife has not yet kissed the apple of the Serpent, the
Serpent stands before her; you sleep, we are awake, and our book
begins.
Without inquiring how many husbands, among the five hundred thousand
which this book concerns, will be left with the predestined; how many
have contracted unfortunate marriages; how many have made a bad
beginning with their wives; and without wishing to ask if there be many
or few of this numerous band who can satisfy the conditions required
for struggling against the danger which is impending, we intend to
expound in the second and third part of this work the methods of
fighting the Minotaur and keeping intact the virtue of wives. But if
fate, the devil, the celibate, opportunity, desire your ruin, in
recognizing the progress of all intrigues, in joining in the battles
which are fought by every home, you will possibly be able to find some
consolation. Many people have such a happy disposition, that on showing
to them the condition of things and explaining to them the why and the
wherefore, they scratch their foreheads, rub their hands, stamp on the
ground, and are satisfied.