On a night in December, Frederick the Great looked up at the sky, whose
stars were twinkling with that clear and living light which presages
heavy frost, and he exclaimed, “This weather will result in a great
many soldiers to Prussia.”
The king expressed here, by a single phrase, the principal disadvantage
which results from the constant living together of married people.
Although it may be permitted to Napoleon and to Frederick to estimate
the value of a woman more or less according to the number of her
children, yet a husband of talent ought, according to the maxims of the
thirteenth Meditation, to consider child-begetting merely as a means of
defence, and it is for him to know to what extent it may take place.
The observation leads into mysteries from which the physiological Muse
recoils. She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chambers while
they are occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and there are
occasions on which she retires. For, since it is at this passage in my
book that the Muse is inclined to put her white hands before her eyes
so as to see nothing, like the young girl looking through the
interstices of her tapering fingers, she will take advantage of this
attack of modesty, to administer a reprimand to our manners. In England
the nuptial chamber is a sacred place. The married couple alone have
the privilege of entering it, and more than one lady, we are told,
makes her bed herself. Of all the crazes which reign beyond the sea,
why should the only one which we despise be precisely that, whose grace
and mystery ought undoubtedly to meet the approval of all tender souls
on this continent? Refined women condemn the immodesty with which
strangers are introduced into the sanctuary of marriage. As for us, who
have energetically anathematized women who walk abroad at the time when
they expect soon to be confined, our opinion cannot be doubted. If we
wish the celibate to respect marriage, married people ought to have
some regard for the inflammability of bachelors.
To sleep every night with one’s wife may seem, we confess, an act of
the most insolent folly.
Many husbands are inclined to ask how a man, who desires to bring
marriage to perfection, dare prescribe to a husband a rule of conduct
which would be fatal in a lover.
Nevertheless, such is the decision of a doctor of arts and sciences
conjugal.
In the first place, without making a resolution never to sleep by
himself, this is the only course left to a husband, since we have
demonstrated the dangers of the preceding systems. We must now try to
prove that this last method yields more advantage and less disadvantage
than the two preceding methods, that is, so far as relates to the
critical position in which a conjugal establishment stands.
Our observations on the twin beds ought to have taught husbands that
they should always be strung into the same degree of fervor as that
which prevails in the harmonious organization of their wives. Now it
seems to us that this perfect equality in feelings would naturally be
created under the white Aegis, which spreads over both of them its
protecting sheet; this at the outset is an immense advantage, and
really nothing is easier to verify at any moment than the degree of
love and expansion which a woman reaches when the same pillow receives
the heads of both spouses.
Man [we speak now of the species] walks about with a memorandum always
totalized, which shows distinctly and without error the amount of
passion which he carries within him. This mysterious gynometer is
traced in the hollow of the hand, for the hand is really that one of
our members which bears the impress most plainly of our characters.
Chirology is a fifth work which I bequeath to my successors, for I am
contented here to make known but the elements of this interesting
science.
The hand is the essential organ of touch. Touch is the sense which very
nearly takes the place of all the others, and which alone is
indispensable. Since the hand alone can carry out all that a man
desires, it is to an extent action itself. The sum total of our
vitality passes through it; and men of powerful intellects are usually
remarkable for their shapely hands, perfection in that respect being a
distinguishing trait of their high calling.
Jesus Christ performed all His miracles by the imposition of hands. The
hand is the channel through which life passes. It reveals to the
physician all the mysteries of our organism. It exhales more than any
other part of our bodies the nervous fluid, or that unknown substance,
which for want of another term we style _will_. The eye can discover
the mood of our soul but the hand betrays at the same time the secrets
of the body and those of the soul. We can acquire the faculty of
imposing silence on our eyes, on our lips, on our brows, and on our
forehead; but the hand never dissembles and nothing in our features can
be compared to the richness of its expression. The heat and cold which
it feels in such delicate degrees often escape the notice of other
senses in thoughtless people; but a man knows how to distinguish them,
however little time he may have bestowed in studying the anatomy of
sentiments and the affairs of human life. Thus the hand has a thousand
ways of becoming dry, moist, hot, cold, soft, rough, unctuous. The hand
palpitates, becomes supple, grows hard and again is softened. In fine
it presents a phenomenon which is inexplicable so that one is tempted
to call it the incarnation of thought. It causes the despair of the
sculptor and the painter when they wish to express the changing
labyrinth of its mysterious lineaments. To stretch out your hand to a
man is to save him, it serves as a ratification of the sentiments we
express. The sorcerers of every age have tried to read our future
destines in those lines which have nothing fanciful in them, but
absolutely correspond with the principles of each one’s life and
character. When she charges a man with want of tact, which is merely
touch, a woman condemns him without hope. We use the expressions, the
“Hand of Justice,” the “Hand of God;” and a _coup de main_ means a bold
undertaking.
To understand and recognize the hidden feelings by the atmospheric
variations of the hand, which a woman almost always yields without
distrust, is a study less unfruitful and surer than that of
physiognomy.
In this way you will be able, if you acquire this science, to wield
vast power, and to find a clue which will guide you through the
labyrinth of the most impenetrable heart. This will render your living
together free from very many mistakes, and, at the same time, rich in
the acquisition of many a treasure.
Buffon and certain physiologists affirm that our members are more
completely exhausted by desire than by the most keen enjoyments. And
really, does not desire constitute of itself a sort of intuitive
possession? Does it not stand in the same relation to visible action,
as those incidents in our mental life, in which we take part in a
dream, stand to the incidents of our actual life? This energetic
apprehension of things, does it not call into being an internal emotion
more powerful than that of the external action? If our gestures are
only the accomplishment of things already enacted by our thought, you
may easily calculate how desire frequently entertained must necessarily
consume the vital fluids. But the passions which are no more than the
aggregation of desires, do they not furrow with the wrinkle of their
lightning the faces of the ambitious, of gamblers, for instance, and do
they not wear out their bodies with marvelous swiftness?
These observations, therefore, necessarily contain the germs of a
mysterious system equally favored by Plato and by Epicurus; we will
leave it for you to meditate upon, enveloped as it is in the veil which
enshrouds Egyptian statues.
But the greatest mistake that a man commits is to believe that love can
belong only to those fugitive moments which, according to the
magnificent expression of Bossuet, are like to the nails scattered over
a wall: to the eye they appear numerous; but when they are collected
they make but a handful.
Love consists almost always in conversation. There are few things
inexhaustible in a lover: goodness, gracefulness and delicacy. To feel
everything, to divine everything, to anticipate everything; to reproach
without bringing affliction upon a tender heart; to make a present
without pride; to double the value of a certain action by the way in
which it is done; to flatter rather by actions than by words; to make
oneself understood rather than to produce a vivid impression; to touch
without striking; to make a look and the sound of the voice produce the
effect of a caress; never to produce embarrassment; to amuse without
offending good taste; always to touch the heart; to speak to the
soul—this is all that women ask. They will abandon all the delights of
all the nights of Messalina, if only they may live with a being who
will yield them those caresses of the soul, for which they are so
eager, and which cost nothing to men if only they have a little
consideration.
This outline comprises a great portion of such secrets as belong to the
nuptial couch. There are perhaps some witty people who may take this
long definition of politeness for a description of love, while in any
case it is no more than a recommendation to treat your wife as you
would treat the minister on whose good-will depends your promotion to
the post you covet.
I hear numberless voices crying out that this book is a special
advocate for women and neglects the cause of men;
That the majority of women are unworthy of these delicate attentions
and would abuse them;
That there are women given to licentiousness who would not lend
themselves to very much of what they would call mystification;
That women are nothing but vanity and think of nothing but dress;
That they have notions which are truly unreasonable;
That they are very often annoyed by an attention;
That they are fools, they understand nothing, are worth nothing, etc.
In answer to all these clamors we will write here the following
phrases, which, placed between two spaces, will perhaps have the air of
a thought, to quote an expression of Beaumarchais.
LXIV.
A wife is to her husband just what her husband has made her.
The reasons why the single bed must triumph over the other two methods
of organizing the nuptial couch are as follows: In the single couch we
have a faithful interpreter to translate with profound truthfulness the
sentiments of a woman, to render her a spy over herself, to keep her at
the height of her amorous temperature, never to leave her, to have the
power of hearing her breathe in slumber, and thus to avoid all the
nonsense which is the ruin of so many marriages.
As it is impossible to receive benefits without paying for them, you
are bound to learn how to sleep gracefully, to preserve your dignity
under the silk handkerchief that wraps your head, to be polite, to see
that your slumber is light, not to cough too much, and to imitate those
modern authors who write more prefaces than books.