The marital catastrophe which a certain number of husbands cannot
avoid, almost always forms the closing scene of the drama. At that
point all around you is tranquil. Your resignation, if you are
resigned, has the power of awakening keen remorse in the soul of your
wife and of her lover; for their happiness teaches them the depth of
the wound they have inflicted upon you. You are, you may be sure, a
third element in all their pleasures. The principle of kindliness and
goodness which lies at the foundation of the human soul, is not so
easily repressed as people think; moreover the two people who are
causing you tortures are precisely those for whom you wish the most
good.
In the conversations so sweetly familiar which link together the
pleasures of love, and form in some way to lovers the caresses of
thought, your wife often says to your rival:
“Well, I assure you, Auguste, that in any case I should like to see my
poor husband happy; for at bottom he is good; if he were not my
husband, but were only my brother, there are so many things I would do
to please him! He loves me, and—his friendship is irksome to me.”
“Yes, he is a fine fellow!”
Then you become an object of respect to the celibate, who would yield
to you all the indemnity possible for the wrong he has done you; but he
is repelled by the disdainful pride which gives a tone to your whole
conversation, and is stamped upon your face.
So that actually, during the first moments of the Minotaur’s arrival, a
man is like an actor who feels awkward in a theatre where he is not
accustomed to appear. It is very difficult to bear the affront with
dignity; but though generosity is rare, a model husband is sometimes
found to possess it.
Eventually you are little by little won over by the charming way in
which your wife makes herself agreeable to you. Madame assumes a tone
of friendship which she never henceforth abandons. The pleasant
atmosphere of your home is one of the chief compensations which renders
the Minotaur less odious to a husband. But as it is natural to man to
habituate himself to the hardest conditions, in spite of the sentiment
of outraged nobility which nothing can change, you are gradually
induced by a fascination whose power is constantly around you, to
accept the little amenities of your position.
Suppose that conjugal misfortune has fallen upon an epicure. He
naturally demands the consolations which suit his taste. His sense of
pleasure takes refuge in other gratifications, and forms other habits.
You shape your life in accordance with the enjoyment of other
sensations.
One day, returning from your government office, after lingering for a
long time before the rich and tasteful book shop of Chevet, hovering in
suspense between the hundred francs of expense, and the joys of a
Strasbourg _pate de fois gras_, you are struck dumb on finding this
_pate_ proudly installed on the sideboard of your dining-room. Is this
the vision offered by some gastronomic mirage? In this doubting mood
you approach with firm step, for a _pate_ is a living creature, and
seem to neigh as you scent afar off the truffles whose perfumes escape
through the gilded enclosure. You stoop over it two distinct times; all
the nerve centres of your palate have a soul; you taste the delights of
a genuine feast, etc.; and during this ecstasy a feeling of remorse
seizes upon you, and you go to your wife’s room.
“Really, my dear girl, we have not means which warrant our buying
_pates_.”
“But it costs us nothing!”
“Oh! ho!”
“Yes, it is M. Achille’s brother who sent it to him.”
You catch sight of M. Achille in a corner. The celibate greets you, he
is radiant on seeing that you have accepted the _pate_. You look at
your wife, who blushes; you stroke your beard a few times; and, as you
express no thanks, the two lovers divine your acceptance of the
compensation.
A sudden change in the ministry takes place. A husband, who is
Councillor of State, trembles for fear of being wiped from the roll,
when the night before he had been made director-general; all the
ministers are opposed to him and he has turned Constitutionalist.
Foreseeing his disgrace he has betaken himself to Auteuil, in search of
consolation from an old friend who quotes Horace and Tibullus to him.
On returning home he sees the table laid as if to receive the most
influential men of the assembly.
“In truth, madame,” he says with acrimony as he enters his wife’s room,
where she is finishing her toilette, “you seem to have lost your
habitual tact. This is a nice time to be giving dinner parties! Twenty
persons will soon learn—”
“That you are director-general!” she cries, showing him a royal
despatch.
He is thunderstruck. He takes the letter, he turns it now one way, now
another; he opens it. He sits down and spreads it out.
“I well know,” he says, “that justice would be rendered me under
whatever ministers I served.”
“Yes, my dear! But M. Villeplaine has answered for you with his life,
and his eminence the Cardinal de ——- of whom he is the—”
“M. de Villeplaine?”
This is such a munificent recompense, that the husband adds with the
smile of a director-general:
“Why, deuce take it, my dear, this is your doing!”
“Ah! don’t thank me for it; Adolphe did it from personal attachment to
you.”
On a certain evening a poor husband was kept at home by a pouring rain,
or tired, perhaps, of going to spend his evening in play, at the cafe,
or in the world, and sick of all this he felt himself carried away by
an impulse to follow his wife to the conjugal chamber. There he sank
into an arm-chair and like any sultan awaited his coffee, as if he
would say:
“Well, after all, she is my wife!”
The fair siren herself prepares the favorite draught; she strains it
with special care, sweetens it, tastes it, and hands it to him; then,
with a smile, she ventures like a submissive odalisque to make a joke,
with a view to smoothing the wrinkles on the brow of her lord and
master. Up to that moment he had thought his wife stupid; but on
hearing a sally as witty as that which even you would cajole with,
madame, he raises his head in the way peculiar to dogs who are hunting
the hare.
“Where the devil did she get that—but it’s a random shot!” he says to
himself.
From the pinnacle of his own greatness he makes a piquant repartee.
Madame retorts, the conversation becomes as lively as it is
interesting, and this husband, a very superior man, is quite astonished
to discover the wit of his wife, in other respects, an accomplished
woman; the right word occurs to her with wonderful readiness; her tact
and keenness enable her to meet an innuendo with charming originality.
She is no longer the same woman. She notices the effect she produces
upon her husband, and both to avenge herself for his neglect and to win
his admiration for the lover from whom she has received, so to speak,
the treasures of her intellect, she exerts herself, and becomes
actually dazzling. The husband, better able than any one else to
appreciate a species of compensation which may have some influence on
his future, is led to think that the passions of women are really
necessary to their mental culture.
But how shall we treat those compensations which are most pleasing to
husbands?
Between the moment when the last symptoms appear, and the epoch of
conjugal peace, which we will not stop to discuss, almost a dozen years
have elapsed. During this interval and before the married couple sign
the treaty which, by means of a sincere reconciliation of the feminine
subject with her lawful lord, consecrates their little matrimonial
restoration, in order to close in, as Louis XVIII said, the gulf of
revolutions, it is seldom that the honest woman has but one lover.
Anarchy has its inevitable phases. The stormy domination of tribunes is
supplanted by that of the sword and the pen, for few loves are met with
whose constancy outlives ten years. Therefore, since our calculations
prove that an honest woman has merely paid strictly her physiological
or diabolical dues by rendering but three men happy, it is probable
that she has set foot in more than one region of love. Sometimes it may
happen that in an interregnum of love too long protracted, the wife,
whether from whim, temptation or the desire of novelty, undertakes to
seduce her own husband.
Imagine charming Mme. de T——-, the heroine of our Meditation of
_Strategy_, saying with a fascinating smile:
“I never before found you so agreeable!”
By flattery after flattery, she tempts, she rouses curiosity, she
soothes, she rouses in you the faintest spark of desire, she carries
you away with her, and makes you proud of yourself. Then the right of
indemnifications for her husband comes. On this occasion the wife
confounds the imagination of her husband. Like cosmopolitan travelers
she tells tales of all the countries which she had traversed. She
intersperses her conversation with words borrowed from several
languages. The passionate imagery of the Orient, the unique emphasis of
Spanish phraseology, all meet and jostle one another. She opens out the
treasures of her notebook with all the mysteries of coquetry, she is
delightful, you never saw her thus before! With that remarkable art
which women alone possess of making their own everything that has been
told them, she blends all shades and variations of character so as to
create a manner peculiarly her own. You received from the hands of
Hymen only one woman, awkward and innocent; the celibate returns you a
dozen of them. A joyful and rapturous husband sees his bed invaded by
the giddy and wanton courtesans, of whom we spoke in the Meditation on
_The First Symptoms_. These goddesses come in groups, they smile and
sport under the graceful muslin curtains of the nuptial bed. The
Phoenician girl flings to you her garlands, gently sways herself to and
fro; the Chalcidian woman overcomes you by the witchery of her fine and
snowy feet; the Unelmane comes and speaking the dialect of fair Ionia
reveals the treasures of happiness unknown before, and in the study of
which she makes you experience but a single sensation.
Filled with regret at having disdained so many charms, and frequently
tired of finding too often as much perfidiousness in priestesses of
Venus as in honest women, the husband sometimes hurries on by his
gallantry the hour of reconciliation desired of worthy people. The
aftermath of bliss is gathered even with greater pleasure, perhaps,
than the first crop. The Minotaur took your gold, he makes restoration
in diamonds. And really now seems the time to state a fact of the
utmost importance. A man may have a wife without possessing her. Like
most husbands you had hitherto received nothing from yours, and the
powerful intervention of the celibate was needed to make your union
complete. How shall we give a name to this miracle, perhaps the only
one wrought upon a patient during his absence? Alas, my brothers, we
did not make Nature!
But how many other compensations, not less precious, are there, by
which the noble and generous soul of the young celibate may many a time
purchase his pardon! I recollect witnessing one of the most magnificent
acts of reparation which a lover should perform toward the husband he
is minotaurizing.
One warm evening in the summer of 1817, I saw entering one of the rooms
of Tortoni one of the two hundred young men whom we confidently style
our friends; he was in the full bloom of his modesty. A lovely woman,
dressed in perfect taste, and who had consented to enter one of the
cool parlors devoted to people of fashion, had stepped from an elegant
carriage which had stopped on the boulevard, and was approaching on
foot along the sidewalk. My young friend, the celibate, then appeared
and offered his arm to his queen, while the husband followed holding by
the hand two little boys, beautiful as cupids. The two lovers, more
nimble than the father of the family, reached in advance of him one of
the small rooms pointed out by the attendant. In crossing the vestibule
the husband knocked up against some dandy, who claimed that he had been
jostled. Then arose a quarrel, whose seriousness was betrayed by the
sharp tones of the altercation. The moment the dandy was about to make
a gesture unworthy of a self-respecting man, the celibate intervened,
seized the dandy by the arm, caught him off his guard, overcame and
threw him to the ground; it was magnificent. He had done the very thing
the aggressor was meditating, as he exclaimed:
“Monsieur!”
This “Monsieur” was one of the finest things I have ever heard. It was
as if the young celibate had said: “This father of a family belongs to
me; as I have carried off his honor, it is mine to defend him. I know
my duty, I am his substitute and will fight for him.” The young woman
behaved superbly! Pale, and bewildered, she took the arm of her
husband, who continued his objurgations; without a word she led him
away to the carriage, together with her children. She was one of those
women of the aristocracy, who also know how to retain their dignity and
self-control in the midst of violent emotions.
“O Monsieur Adolphe!” cried the young lady as she saw her friend with
an air of gayety take his seat in the carriage.
“It is nothing, madame, he is one of my friends; we have shaken hands.”
Nevertheless, the next morning, the courageous celibate received a
sword thrust which nearly proved fatal, and confined him six months to
his bed. The attentions of the married couple were lavished upon him.
What numerous compensations do we see here! Some years afterwards, an
old uncle of the husband, whose opinions did not fit in with those of
the young friend of the house, and who nursed a grudge against him on
account of some political discussion, undertook to have him driven from
the house. The old fellow went so far as to tell his nephew to choose
between being his heir and sending away the presumptuous celibate. It
was then that the worthy stockbroker said to his uncle:
“Ah, you must never think, uncle, that you will succeed in making me
ungrateful! But if I tell him to do so this young man will let himself
be killed for you. He has saved my credit, he would go through fire and
water for me, he has relieved me of my wife, he has brought me clients,
he has procured for me almost all the business in the Villele loans—I
owe my life to him, he is the father of my children; I can never forget
all this.”
In this case the compensations may be looked upon as complete; but
unfortunately there are compensations of all kinds. There are those
which must be considered negative, deluding, and those which are both
in one.
I knew a husband of advanced years who was possessed by the demon of
gambling. Almost every evening his wife’s lover came and played with
him. The celibate gave him a liberal share of the pleasures which come
from games of hazard, and knew how to lose to him a certain number of
francs every month; but madame used to give them to him, and the
compensation was a deluding one.
You are a peer of France, and you have no offspring but daughters. Your
wife is brought to bed of a boy! The compensation is negative.
The child who is to save your name from oblivion is like his mother.
The duchess persuades you that the child is yours. The negative
compensation becomes deluding.
Here is one of the most charming compensations known. One morning the
Prince de Ligne meets his wife’s lover and rushes up to him, laughing
wildly:
“My friend,” he says to him, “I cuckolded you, last night!”
If some husbands attain to conjugal peace by quiet methods, and carry
so gracefully the imaginary ensigns of matrimonial pre-eminence, their
philosophy is doubtless based on the _comfortabilisme_ of accepting
certain compensations, a _comfortabilisme_ which indifferent men cannot
imagine. As years roll by the married couple reach the last stage in
that artificial existence to which their union has condemned them.