Axiom.—In our system of civilization a man is entirely responsible for
his wife.
Axiom.—The husband does not mould the wife.
Caroline has one day obstinately maintained, at the house of Madame de
Fischtaminel, a very distinguished lady, that her little last one
resembled neither its father nor its mother, but looked like a certain
friend of the family. She perhaps enlightens Monsieur de Fischtaminel,
and overthrows the labors of three years, by tearing down the
scaffolding of Madame de Fischtaminel’s assertions, who, after this
visit, will treat you will coolness, suspecting, as she does, that you
have been making indiscreet remarks to your wife.
On another occasion, Caroline, after having conversed with a writer
about his works, counsels the poet, who is already a prolific author,
to try to write something likely to live. Sometimes she complains of
the slow attendance at the tables of people who have but one servant
and have put themselves to great trouble to receive her. Sometimes she
speaks ill of widows who marry again, before Madame Deschars who has
married a third time, and on this occasion, an ex-notary,
Nicolas-Jean-Jerome-Nepomucene-Ange-Marie-Victor-Joseph Deschars, a
friend of your father’s.
In short, you are no longer yourself when you are in society with your
wife. Like a man who is riding a skittish horse and glares straight
between the beast’s two ears, you are absorbed by the attention with
which you listen to your Caroline.
In order to compensate herself for the silence to which young ladies
are condemned, Caroline talks; or rather babbles. She wants to make a
sensation, and she does make a sensation; nothing stops her. She
addresses the most eminent men, the most celebrated women. She
introduces herself, and puts you on the rack. Going into society is
going to the stake.
She begins to think you are cross-grained, moody. The fact is, you are
watching her, that’s all! In short, you keep her within a small circle
of friends, for she has already embroiled you with people on whom your
interests depended.
How many times have you recoiled from the necessity of a remonstrance,
in the morning, on awakening, when you had put her in a good humor for
listening! A woman rarely listens. How many times have you recoiled
from the burthen of your imperious obligations!
The conclusion of your ministerial communication can be no other than:
“You have no sense.” You foresee the effect of your first lesson.
Caroline will say to herself: “Ah I have no sense! Haven’t I though?”
No woman ever takes this in good part. Both of you must draw the sword
and throw away the scabbard. Six weeks after, Caroline may prove to you
that she has quite sense enough to _minotaurize_ you without your
perceiving it.
Frightened at such a prospect, you make use of all the eloquent phrases
to gild this pill. In short, you find the means of flattering
Caroline’s various self-loves, for:
Axiom.—A married woman has several self-loves.
You say that you are her best friend, the only one well situated to
enlighten her; the more careful you are, the more watchful and puzzled
she is. At this moment she has plenty of sense.
You ask your dear Caroline, whose waist you clasp, how she, who is so
brilliant when alone with you, who retorts so charmingly (you remind
her of sallies that she has never made, which you put in her mouth,
and, which she smilingly accepts), how she can say this, that, and the
other, in society. She is, doubtless, like many ladies, timid in
company.
“I know,” you say, “many very distinguished men who are just the same.”
You cite the case of some who are admirable tea-party oracles, but who
cannot utter half a dozen sentences in the tribune. Caroline should
keep watch over herself; you vaunt silence as the surest method of
being witty. In society, a good listener is highly prized.
You have broken the ice, though you have not even scratched its glossy
surface: you have placed your hand upon the croup of the most ferocious
and savage, the most wakeful and clear-sighted, the most restless, the
swiftest, the most jealous, the most ardent and violent, the simplest
and most elegant, the most unreasonable, the most watchful chimera of
the moral world—THE VANITY OF A WOMAN!
Caroline clasps you in her arms with a saintly embrace, thanks you for
your advice, and loves you the more for it; she wishes to be beholden
to you for everything, even for her intellect; she may be a dunce, but,
what is better than saying fine things, she knows how to do them! But
she desires also to be your pride! It is not a question of taste in
dress, of elegance and beauty; she wishes to make you proud of her
intelligence. You are the luckiest of men in having successfully
managed to escape from this first dangerous pass in conjugal life.
“We are going this evening to Madame Deschars’, where they never know
what to do to amuse themselves; they play all sorts of forfeit games on
account of a troop of young women and girls there; you shall see!” she
says.
You are so happy at this turn of affairs, that you hum airs and
carelessly chew bits of straw and thread, while still in your shirt and
drawers. You are like a hare frisking on a flowering dew-perfumed
meadow. You leave off your morning gown till the last extremity, when
breakfast is on the table. During the day, if you meet a friend and he
happens to speak of women, you defend them; you consider women
charming, delicious, there is something divine about them.
How often are our opinions dictated to us by the unknown events of our
life!
You take your wife to Madame Deschars’. Madame Deschars is a mother and
is exceedingly devout. You never see any newspapers at her house: she
keeps watch over her daughters by three different husbands, and keeps
them all the more closely from the fact that she herself has, it is
said, some little things to reproach herself with during the career of
her two former lords. At her house, no one dares risk a jest.
Everything there is white and pink and perfumed with sanctity, as at
the houses of widows who are approaching the confines of their third
youth. It seems as if every day were Sunday there.
You, a young husband, join the juvenile society of young women and
girls, misses and young people, in the chamber of Madame Deschars. The
serious people, politicians, whist-players, and tea-drinkers, are in
the parlor.
In Madame Deschars’ room they are playing a game which consists in
hitting upon words with several meanings, to fit the answers that each
player is to make to the following questions:
How do you like it?
What do you do with it?
Where do you put it?
Your turn comes to guess the word, you go into the parlor, take part in
a discussion, and return at the call of a smiling young lady. They have
selected a word that may be applied to the most enigmatical replies.
Everybody knows that, in order to puzzle the strongest heads, the best
way is to choose a very ordinary word, and to invent phrases that will
send the parlor Oedipus a thousand leagues from each of his previous
thoughts.
This game is a poor substitute for lansquenet or dice, but it is not
very expensive.
The word MAL has been made the Sphinx of this particular occasion.
Every one has determined to put you off the scent. The word, among
other acceptations, has that of _mal_ [evil], a substantive that
signifies, in aesthetics, the opposite of good; of _mal_ [pain,
disease, complaint], a substantive that enters into a thousand
pathological expressions; then _malle_ [a mail-bag], and finally
_malle_ [a trunk], that box of various forms, covered with all kinds of
skin, made of every sort of leather, with handles, that journeys
rapidly, for it serves to carry travelling effects in, as a man of
Delille’s school would say.
For you, a man of some sharpness, the Sphinx displays his wiles; he
spreads his wings and folds them up again; he shows you his lion’s
paws, his woman’s neck, his horse’s loins, and his intellectual head;
he shakes his sacred fillets, he strikes an attitude and runs away, he
comes and goes, and sweeps the place with his terrible equine tail; he
shows his shining claws, and draws them in; he smiles, frisks, and
murmurs. He puts on the looks of a joyous child and those of a matron;
he is, above all, there to make fun of you.
You ask the group collectively, “How do you like it?”
“I like it for love’s sake,” says one.
“I like it regular,” says another.
“I like it with a long mane.”
“I like it with a spring lock.”
“I like it unmasked.”
“I like it on horseback.”
“I like it as coming from God,” says Madame Deschars.
“How do you like it?” you say to your wife.
“I like it legitimate.”
This response of your wife is not understood, and sends you a journey
into the constellated fields of the infinite, where the mind, dazzled
by the multitude of creations, finds it impossible to make a choice.
“Where do you put it?”
“In a carriage.”
“In a garret.”
“In a steamboat.”
“In the closet.”
“On a cart.”
“In prison.”
“In the ears.”
“In a shop.”
Your wife says to you last of all: “In bed.”
You were on the point of guessing it, but you know no word that fits
this answer, Madame Deschars not being likely to have allowed anything
improper.
“What do you do with it?”
“I make it my sole happiness,” says your wife, after the answers of all
the rest, who have sent you spinning through a whole world of
linguistic suppositions.
This response strikes everybody, and you especially; so you persist in
seeking the meaning of it. You think of the bottle of hot water that
your wife has put to her feet when it is cold,—of the warming pan,
above all! Now of her night-cap,—of her handkerchief,—of her curling
paper,—of the hem of her chemise,—of her embroidery,—of her flannel
jacket,—of your bandanna,—of the pillow.
In short, as the greatest pleasure of the respondents is to see their
Oedipus mystified, as each word guessed by you throws them into fits of
laughter, superior men, perceiving no word that will fit all the
explanations, will sooner give it up than make three unsuccessful
attempts. According to the law of this innocent game you are condemned
to return to the parlor after leaving a forfeit; but you are so
exceedingly puzzled by your wife’s answers, that you ask what the word
was.
“Mal,” exclaims a young miss.
You comprehend everything but your wife’s replies: she has not played
the game. Neither Madame Deschars, nor any one of the young women
understand. She has cheated. You revolt, there is an insurrection among
the girls and young women. They seek and are puzzled. You want an
explanation, and every one participates in your desire.
“In what sense did you understand the word, my dear?” you say to
Caroline.
“Why, _male_!” [male.]
Madame Deschars bites her lips and manifests the greatest displeasure;
the young women blush and drop their eyes; the little girls open
theirs, nudge each other and prick up their ears. Your feet are glued
to the carpet, and you have so much salt in your throat that you
believe in a repetition of the event which delivered Lot from his wife.
You see an infernal life before you; society is out of the question.
To remain at home with this triumphant stupidity is equivalent to
condemnation to the state’s prison.
Axiom.—Moral tortures exceed physical sufferings by all the difference
which exists between the soul and the body.