The preceding methods and systems are in a way purely moral; they share
the nobility of the soul, there is nothing repulsive in them; but now
we must proceed to consider precautions _a la Bartholo_. Do not give
way to timidity. There is a marital courage, as there is a civil and
military courage, as there is the courage of the National Guard.
What is the first course of a young girl after having purchased a
parrot? Is it not to fasten it up in a pretty cage, from which it
cannot get out without permission?
You may learn your duty from this child.
Everything that pertains to the arrangement of your house and of your
apartments should be planned so as not to give your wife any advantage,
in case she has decided to deliver you to the Minotaur; half of all
actual mischances are brought about by the deplorable facilities which
the apartments furnish.
Before everything else determine to have for your porter a _single man_
entirely devoted to your person. This is a treasure easily to be found.
What husband is there throughout the world who has not either a
foster-father or some old servant, upon whose knees he has been
dandled! There ought to exist by means of your management, a hatred
like that of Artreus and Thyestes between your wife and this Nestor
—guardian of your gate. This gate is the Alpha and Omega of an
intrigue. May not all intrigues in love be confined in these words
—entering and leaving?
Your house will be of no use to you if it does not stand between a
court and a garden, and so constructed as to be detached from all other
buildings. You must abolish all recesses in your apartments. A
cupboard, if it contain but six pots of preserves, should be walled in.
You are preparing yourself for war, and the first thought of a general
is to cut his enemy off from supplies. Moreover, all the walls must be
smooth, in order to present to the eye lines which may be taken in at a
glance, and permit the immediate recognition of the least strange
object. If you consult the remains of antique monuments you will see
that the beauty of Greek and Roman apartments sprang principally from
the purity of their lines, the clear sweep of their walls and
scantiness of furniture. The Greeks would have smiled in pity, if they
had seen the gaps which our closets make in our drawing-rooms.
This magnificent system of defence should above all be put in active
operation in the apartment of your wife; never let her curtain her bed
in such a way that one can walk round it amid a maze of hangings; be
inexorable in the matter of connecting passages, and let her chamber be
at the bottom of your reception-rooms, so as to show at a glance those
who come and go.
_The Marriage of Figaro_ will no doubt have taught you to put your
wife’s chamber at a great height from the ground. All celibates are
Cherubins.
Your means, doubtless, will permit your wife to have a dressing-room, a
bath-room, and a room for her chambermaid. Think then on Susanne, and
never commit the fault of arranging this little room below that of
madame’s, but place it always above, and do not shrink from disfiguring
your mansion by hideous divisions in the windows.
If, by ill luck, you see that this dangerous apartment communicates
with that of your wife by a back staircase, earnestly consult your
architect; let his genius exhaust itself in rendering this dangerous
staircase as innocent as the primitive garret ladder; we conjure you
let not this staircase have appended to it any treacherous
lurking-place; its stiff and angular steps must not be arranged with
that tempting curve which Faublas and Justine found so useful when they
waited for the exit of the Marquis de B——-. Architects nowadays make
such staircases as are absolutely preferable to ottomans. Restore
rather the virtuous garret steps of our ancestors.
Concerning the chimneys in the apartment of madame, you must take care
to place in the flue, five feet from the ground, an iron grill, even
though it be necessary to put up a fresh one every time the chimney is
swept. If your wife laughs at this precaution, suggest to her the
number of murders that have been committed by means of chimneys. Almost
all women are afraid of robbers. The bed is one of those important
pieces of furniture whose structure will demand long consideration.
Everything concerning it is of vital importance. The following is the
result of long experience in the construction of beds. Give to this
piece of furniture a form so original that it may be looked upon
without disgust, in the midst of changes of fashion which succeed so
rapidly in rendering antiquated the creations of former decorators, for
it is essential that your wife be unable to change, at pleasure, this
theatre of married happiness. The base should be plain and massive and
admit of no treacherous interval between it and the floor; and bear in
mind always that the Donna Julia of Byron hid Don Juan under her
pillow. But it would be ridiculous to treat lightly so delicate a
subject.
LXII.
The bed is the whole of marriage.
Moreover, we must not delay to direct your attention to this wonderful
creation of human genius, an invention which claims our recognition
much more than ships, firearms, matches, wheeled carriages, steam
engines of all kinds, more than even barrels and bottles. In the first
place, a little thought will convince us that this is all true of the
bed; but when we begin to think that it is our second father, that the
most tranquil and most agitated half of our existence is spent under
its protecting canopy, words fail in eulogizing it. (See Meditation
XVII, entitled “Theory of the Bed.”)
When the war, of which we shall speak in our third part, breaks out
between you and madame, you will always have plenty of ingenious
excuses for rummaging in the drawers and escritoires; for if your wife
is trying to hide from you some statue of her adoration, it is your
interest to know where she has hidden it. A gyneceum, constructed on
the method described, will enable you to calculate at a glance, whether
there is present in it two pounds of silk more than usual. Should a
single closet be constructed there, you are a lost man! Above all,
accustom your wife, during the honeymoon, to bestow especial pains in
the neatness of her apartment; let nothing put off that. If you do not
habituate her to be minutely particular in this respect, if the same
objects are not always found in the same places, she will allow things
to become so untidy, that you will not be able to see that there are
two pounds of silk more or less in her room.
The curtains of your apartments ought to be of a stuff which is quite
transparent, and you ought to contract the habit in the evenings of
walking outside so that madame may see you come right up to the window
just out of absent-mindedness. In a word, with regard to windows, let
the sills be so narrow that even a sack of flour cannot be set up on
them.
If the apartment of your wife can be arranged on these principles, you
will be in perfect safety, even if there are niches enough there to
contain all the saints of Paradise. You will be able, every evening,
with the assistance of your porter, to strike the balance between the
entrances and exits of visitors; and, in order to obtain accurate
results, there is nothing to prevent your teaching him to keep a book
of visitors, in double entry.
If you have a garden, cultivate a taste for dogs, and always keep at
large one of these incorruptible guardians under your windows; you will
thus gain the respect of the Minotaur, especially if you accustom your
four-footed friend to take nothing substantial excepting from the hand
of your porter, so that hard-hearted celibates may not succeed in
poisoning him.
But all these precautions must be taken as a natural thing so that they
may not arouse suspicions. If husbands are so imprudent as to neglect
precautions from the moment they are married, they ought at once to
sell their house and buy another one, or, under the pretext of repairs,
alter their present house in the way prescribed.
You will without scruple banish from your apartment all sofas,
ottomans, lounges, sedan chairs and the like. In the first place, this
is the kind of furniture that adorns the homes of grocers, where they
are universally found, as they are in those of barbers; but they are
essentially the furniture of perdition; I can never see them without
alarm. It has always seemed to me that there the devil himself is
lurking with his horns and cloven foot.
After all, nothing is so dangerous as a chair, and it is extremely
unfortunate that women cannot be shut up within the four walls of a
bare room! What husband is there, who on sitting down on a rickety
chair is not always forced to believe that this chair has received some
of the lessons taught by the _Sofa_ of Crebillion junior? But happily
we have arranged your apartment on such a system of prevention that
nothing so fatal can happen, or, at any rate, not without your
contributory negligence.
One fault which you must contract, and which you must never correct,
will consist in a sort of heedless curiosity, which will make you
examine unceasingly all the boxes, and turn upside down the contents of
all dressing-cases and work-baskets. You must proceed to this
domiciliary visit in a humorous mood, and gracefully, so that each time
you will obtain pardon by exciting the amusement of your wife.
You must always manifest a most profound astonishment on noticing any
piece of furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointed apartment.
You must immediately make her explain to you the advantages of the
change; and then you must ransack your mind to discover whether there
be not some underhand motive in the transaction.
This is by no means all. You have too much sense to forget that your
pretty parrot will remain in her cage only so long as that cage is
beautiful. The least accessory of her apartment ought, therefore, to
breathe elegance and taste. The general appearance should always
present a simple, at the same time a charming picture. You must
constantly renew the hangings and muslin curtains. The freshness of the
decorations is too essential to permit of economy on this point. It is
the fresh chickweed each morning carefully put into the cage of their
birds, that makes their pets believe it is the verdure of the meadows.
An apartment of this character is then the _ultima ratio_ of husbands;
a wife has nothing to say when everything is lavished on her.
Husbands who are condemned to live in rented apartments find themselves
in the most terrible situation possible. What happy or what fatal
influence cannot the porter exercise upon their lot?
Is not their home flanked on either side by other houses? It is true
that by placing the apartment of their wives on one side of the house
the danger is lessened by one-half; but are they not obliged to learn
by heart and to ponder the age, the condition, the fortune, the
character, the habits of the tenants of the next house and even to know
their friends and relations?
A husband will never take lodgings on the ground floor.
Every man, however, can apply in his apartments the precautionary
methods which we have suggested to the owner of a house, and thus the
tenant will have this advantage over the owner, that the apartment,
which is less spacious than the house, is more easily guarded.