If the most brilliant, the best-looking, the cleverest of husbands
wishes to find himself minotaurized just as the first year of his
married life ends, he will infallibly attain that end if he is unwise
enough to place two beds side by side, under the voluptuous dome of the
same alcove.
The argument in support of this may be briefly stated. The following
are its main lines:
The first husband who invented the twin beds was doubtless an
obstetrician, who feared that in the involuntary struggles of some
dream he might kick the child borne by his wife.
But no, he was rather some predestined one who distrusted his power of
checking a snore.
Perhaps it was some young man who, fearing the excess of his own
tenderness, found himself always lying at the edge of the bed and in
danger of tumbling off, or so near to a charming wife that he disturbed
her slumber.
But may it not have been some Maintenon who received the suggestion
from her confessor, or, more probably, some ambitious woman who wished
to rule her husband? Or, more undoubtedly, some pretty little Pompadour
overcome by that Parisian infirmity so pleasantly described by M. de
Maurepas in that quatrain which cost him his protracted disgrace and
certainly contributed to the disasters of Louis XVI’s reign:
“Iris, we love those features sweet,
Your graces all are fresh and free;
And flowerets spring beneath your feet,
Where naught, alas! but flowers are seen.”
But why should it not have been a philosopher who dreaded the
disenchantment which a woman would experience at the sight of a man
asleep? And such a one would always roll himself up in a coverlet and
keep his head bare.
Unknown author of this Jesuitical method, whoever thou art, in the
devil’s name, we hail thee as a brother! Thou hast been the cause of
many disasters. Thy work has the character of all half measures; it is
satisfactory in no respect, and shares the bad points of the two other
methods without yielding the advantages of either. How can the man of
the nineteenth century, how can this creature so supremely intelligent,
who has displayed a power well-nigh supernatural, who has employed the
resources of his genius in concealing the machinery of his life, in
deifying his necessary cravings in order that he might not despise
them, going so far as to wrest from Chinese leaves, from Egyptian
beans, from seeds of Mexico, their perfume, their treasure, their soul;
going so far as to chisel the diamond, chase the silver, melt the gold
ore, paint the clay and woo every art that may serve to decorate and to
dignify the bowl from which he feeds!—how can this king, after having
hidden under folds of muslin covered with diamonds, studded with
rubies, and buried under linen, under folds of cotton, under the rich
hues of silk, under the fairy patterns of lace, the partner of his
wretchedness, how can he induce her to make shipwreck in the midst of
all this luxury on the decks of two beds. What advantage is it that we
have made the whole universe subserve our existence, our delusions, the
poesy of our life? What good is it to have instituted law, morals and
religion, if the invention of an upholsterer [for probably it was an
upholsterer who invented the twin beds] robs our love of all its
illusions, strips it bare of the majestic company of its delights and
gives it in their stead nothing but what is ugliest and most odious?
For this is the whole history of the two bed system.
LXIII.
That it shall appear either sublime or grotesque are the alternatives
to which we have reduced a desire.
If it be shared, our love is sublime; but should you sleep in twin
beds, your love will always be grotesque. The absurdities which this
half separation occasions may be comprised in either one of two
situations, which will give us occasion to reveal the causes of very
many marital misfortunes.
Midnight is approaching as a young woman is putting on her curl papers
and yawning as she did so. I do not know whether her melancholy
proceeded from a headache, seated in the right or left lobe of her
brain, or whether she was passing through one of those seasons of
weariness during which all things appear black to us; but to see her
negligently putting up her hair for the night, to see her languidly
raising her leg to take off her garter, it seemed to me that she would
prefer to be drowned rather than to be denied the relief of plunging
her draggled life into the slumber that might restore it. At this
instant, I know not to what degree from the North Pole she stands,
whether at Spitzberg or in Greenland. Cold and indifferent she goes to
bed thinking, as Mistress Walter Shandy might have thought, that the
morrow would be a day of sickness, that her husband is coming home very
late, that the beaten eggs which she has just eaten were not
sufficiently sweetened, that she owes more than five hundred francs to
her dressmaker; in fine, thinking about everything which you may
suppose would occupy the mind of a tired woman. In the meanwhile
arrives her great lout of a husband, who, after some business meeting,
has drunk punch, with a consequent elation. He takes off his boots,
leaves his stockings on a lounge, his bootjack lies before the
fireplace; and wrapping his head up in a red silk handkerchief, without
giving himself the trouble to tuck in the corners, he fires off at his
wife certain interjectory phrases, those little marital endearments,
which form almost the whole conversation at those twilight hours, where
drowsy reason is no longer shining in this mechanism of ours. “What, in
bed already! It was devilish cold this evening! Why don’t you speak, my
pet? You’ve already rolled yourself up in bed, then! Ah! you are in the
dumps and pretend to be asleep!” These exclamations are mingled with
yawns; and after numberless little incidents which according to the
usage of each home vary this preface of the night, our friend flings
himself into his own bed with a heavy thud.
Alas! before a woman who is cold, how mad a man must appear when desire
renders him alternately angry and tender, insolent and abject, biting
as an epigram and soothing as a madrigal; when he enacts with more or
less sprightliness the scene where, in _Venice Preserved_, the genius
of Orway has represented the senator Antonio, repeating a hundred times
over at the feet of Aquilina: “Aquilina, Quilina, Lina, Aqui, Nacki!”
without winning from her aught save the stroke of her whip, inasmuch as
he has undertaken to fawn upon her like a dog. In the eyes of every
woman, even of a lawful wife, the more a man shows eager passion under
these circumstances, the more silly he appears. He is odious when he
commands, he is minotaurized if he abuses his power. On this point I
would remind you of certain aphorisms in the marriage catechism from
which you will see that you are violating its most sacred precepts.
Whether a woman yields, or does not yield, this institution of twin
beds gives to marriage such an element of roughness and nakedness that
the most chaste wife and the most intelligent husband are led to
immodesty.
This scene, which is enacted in a thousand ways and which may originate
in a thousand different incidents, has a sequel in that other situation
which, while it is less pleasant, is far more terrible.
One evening when I was talking about these serious matters with the
late Comte de Noce, of whom I have already had occasion to speak, a
tall white-haired old man, his intimate friend, whose name I will not
give, because he is still alive, looked at us with a somewhat
melancholy air. We guessed that he was about to relate some tale of
scandal, and we accordingly watched him, somewhat as the stenographer
of the _Moniteur_ might watch, as he mounted the tribune, a minister
whose speech had already been written out for the reporter. The
story-teller on this occasion was an old marquis, whose fortune,
together with his wife and children, had perished in the disasters of
the Revolution. The marchioness had been one of the most inconsistent
women of the past generation; the marquis accordingly was not wanting
in observations on feminine human nature. Having reached an age in
which he saw nothing before him but the gulf of the grave, he spoke
about himself as if the subject of his talk were Mark Antony or
Cleopatra.
“My young friend”—he did me the honor to address me, for it was I who
made the last remark in this discussion—“your reflections make me think
of a certain evening, in the course of which one of my friends
conducted himself in such a manner as to lose forever the respect of
his wife. Now, in those days a woman could take vengeance with
marvelous facility—for it was always a word and a blow. The married
couple I speak of were particular in sleeping on separate beds, with
their head under the arch of the same alcove. They came home one night
from a brilliant ball given by the Comte de Mercy, ambassador of the
emperor. The husband had lost a considerable sum at play, so he was
completely absorbed in thought. He had to pay a debt, the next day, of
six thousand crowns!—and you will recollect, Noce, that a hundred
crowns couldn’t be made up from scraping together the resources of ten
such musketeers. The young woman, as generally happens under such
circumstances, was in a gale of high spirits. ‘Give to the marquis,’
she said to a _valet de chambre_, ‘all that he requires for his
toilet.’ In those days people dressed for the night. These
extraordinary words did not rouse the husband from his mood of
abstraction, and then madame, assisted by her maid, began to indulge in
a thousand coquetries. ‘Was my appearance to your taste this evening?’
‘You are always to my taste,’ answered the marquis, continuing to
stride up and down the room. ‘You are very gloomy! Come and talk to me,
you frowning lover,’ said she, placing herself before him in the most
seductive negligee. But you can have no idea of the enchantments of the
marchioness unless you had known her. Ah! you have seen her, Noce!” he
said with a mocking smile. “Finally, in spite of all her allurements
and beauty, the marchioness was lost sight of amid thoughts of the six
thousand crowns which this fool of a husband could not get out of his
head, and she went to bed all alone. But women always have one resource
left; so that the moment that the good husband made as though he would
get into his bed, the marchioness cried, ‘Oh, how cold I am!’ ‘So am
I,’ he replied. ‘How is it that the servants have not warmed our
beds?’—And then I rang.”
The Comte de Noce could not help laughing, and the old marquis, quite
put out of countenance, stopped short.
Not to divine the desire of a wife, to snore while she lies awake, to
be in Siberia when she is in the tropics, these are the slighter
disadvantages of twin beds. What risks will not a passionate woman run
when she becomes aware that her husband is a heavy sleeper?
I am indebted to Beyle for an Italian anecdote, to which his dry and
sarcastic manner lent an infinite charm, as he told me this tale of
feminine hardihood.
Ludovico had his palace at one end of the town of Milan; at the other
was that of the Countess of Pernetti. At midnight, on a certain
occasion, Ludovico resolved, at the peril of his life, to make a rash
expedition for the sake of gazing for one second on the face he adored,
and accordingly appeared as if by magic in the palace of his
well-beloved. He reached the nuptial chamber. Elisa Pernetti, whose
heart most probably shared the desire of her lover, heard the sound of
his footsteps and divined his intention. She saw through the walls of
her chamber a countenance glowing with love. She rose from her marriage
bed, light as a shadow she glided to the threshold of her door, with a
look she embraced him, she seized his hand, she made a sign to him, she
drew him in.
“But he will kill you!” said he.
“Perhaps so.”
But all this amounts to nothing. Let us grant that most husbands sleep
lightly. Let us grant that they sleep without snoring, and that they
always discern the degree of latitude at which their wives are to be
found. Moreover, all the reasons which we have given why twin beds
should be condemned, let us consider but dust in the balance. But,
after all, a final consideration would make us also proscribe the use
of beds ranged within the limits of the same alcove.
To a man placed in the position of a husband, there are circumstances
which have led us to consider the nuptial couch as an actual means of
defence. For it is only in bed that a man can tell whether his wife’s
love is increasing or decreasing. It is the conjugal barometer. Now to
sleep in twin beds is to wish for ignorance. You will understand, when
we come to treat of _civil war_ (See Part Third) of what extreme
usefulness a bed is and how many secrets a wife reveals in bed, without
knowing it.
Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good
nature of such an institution as that of twin beds.
It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the
world. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it!
But in proportion as this method is pernicious in the case of young
married people, it is salutary and advantageous for those who have
reached the twentieth year of married life. Husband and wife can then
most conveniently indulge their duets of snoring. It will, moreover, be
more convenient for their various maladies, whether rheumatism,
obstinate gout, or even the taking of a pinch of snuff; and the cough
or the snore will not in any respect prove a greater hindrance than it
is found to be in any other arrangement.
We have not thought it necessary to mention the exceptional cases which
authorize a husband to resort to twin beds. However, the opinion of
Bonaparte was that when once there had taken place an interchange of
life and breath (such are his words), nothing, not even sickness,
should separate married people. This point is so delicate that it is
not possible here to treat it methodically.
Certain narrow minds will object that there are certain patriarchal
families whose legislation of love is inflexible in the matter of two
beds and an alcove, and that, by this arrangement, they have been happy
from generation to generation. But, the only answer that the author
vouchsafes to this is that he knows a great many respectable people who
pass their lives in watching games of billiards.