Among the keenest pleasures of bachelor life, every man reckons the
independence of his getting up. The fancies of the morning compensate
for the glooms of evening. A bachelor turns over and over in his bed:
he is free to gape loud enough to justify apprehensions of murder, and
to scream at a pitch authorizing the suspicion of joys untold. He can
forget his oaths of the day before, let the fire burn upon the hearth
and the candle sink to its socket,—in short, go to sleep again in spite
of pressing work. He can curse the expectant boots which stand holding
their black mouths open at him and pricking up their ears. He can
pretend not to see the steel hooks which glitter in a sunbeam which has
stolen through the curtains, can disregard the sonorous summons of the
obstinate clock, can bury himself in a soft place, saying: “Yes, I was
in a hurry, yesterday, but am so no longer to-day. Yesterday was a
dotard. To-day is a sage: between them stands the night which brings
wisdom, the night which gives light. I ought to go, I ought to do it, I
promised I would—I am weak, I know. But how can I resist the downy
creases of my bed? My feet feel flaccid, I think I must be sick, I am
too happy just here. I long to see the ethereal horizon of my dreams
again, those women without claws, those winged beings and their
obliging ways. In short, I have found the grain of salt to put upon the
tail of that bird that was always flying away: the coquette’s feet are
caught in the line. I have her now—”
Your servant, meantime, reads your newspaper, half-opens your letters,
and leaves you to yourself. And you go to sleep again, lulled by the
rumbling of the morning wagons. Those terrible, vexatious, quivering
teams, laden with meat, those trucks with big tin teats bursting with
milk, though they make a clatter most infernal and even crush the
paving stones, seem to you to glide over cotton, and vaguely remind you
of the orchestra of Napoleon Musard. Though your house trembles in all
its timbers and shakes upon its keel, you think yourself a sailor
cradled by a zephyr.
You alone have the right to bring these joys to an end by throwing away
your night-cap as you twist up your napkin after dinner, and by sitting
up in bed. Then you take yourself to task with such reproaches as
these: “Ah, mercy on me, I must get up!” “Early to bed and early to
rise, makes a man healthy—!” “Get up, lazy bones!”
All this time you remain perfectly tranquil. You look round your
chamber, you collect your wits together. Finally, you emerge from the
bed, spontaneously! Courageously! of your own accord! You go to the
fireplace, you consult the most obliging of timepieces, you utter
hopeful sentences thus couched: “Whatshisname is a lazy creature, I
guess I shall find him in. I’ll run. I’ll catch him if he’s gone. He’s
sure to wait for me. There is a quarter of an hour’s grace in all
appointments, even between debtor and creditor.”
You put on your boots with fury, you dress yourself as if you were
afraid of being caught half-dressed, you have the delight of being in a
hurry, you call your buttons into action, you finally go out like a
conqueror, whistling, brandishing your cane, pricking up your ears and
breaking into a canter.
After all, you say to yourself, you are responsible to no one, you are
your own master!
But you, poor married man, you were stupid enough to say to your wife,
“To-morrow, my dear” (sometimes she knows it two days beforehand), “I
have got to get up early.” Unfortunate Adolphe, you have especially
proved the importance of this appointment: “It’s to—and to—and above
all to—in short to—”
Two hours before dawn, Caroline wakes you up gently and says to you
softly: “Adolphy dear, Adolphy love!”
“What’s the matter? Fire?”
“No, go to sleep again, I’ve made a mistake; but the hour hand was on
it, any way! It’s only four, you can sleep two hours more.”
Is not telling a man, “You’ve only got two hours to sleep,” the same
thing, on a small scale, as saying to a criminal, “It’s five in the
morning, the ceremony will be performed at half-past seven”? Such sleep
is troubled by an idea dressed in grey and furnished with wings, which
comes and flaps, like a bat, upon the windows of your brain.
A woman in a case like this is as exact as a devil coming to claim a
soul he has purchased. When the clock strikes five, your wife’s voice,
too well known, alas! resounds in your ear; she accompanies the stroke,
and says with an atrocious calmness, “Adolphe, it’s five o’clock, get
up, dear.”
“Ye-e-e-s, ah-h-h-h!”
“Adolphe, you’ll be late for your business, you said so yourself.”
“Ah-h-h-h, ye-e-e-e-s.” You turn over in despair.
“Come, come, love. I got everything ready last night; now you must, my
dear; do you want to miss him? There, up, I say; it’s broad daylight.”
Caroline throws off the blankets and gets up: she wants to show you
that _she_ can rise without making a fuss. She opens the blinds, she
lets in the sun, the morning air, the noise of the street, and then
comes back.
“Why, Adolphe, you _must_ get up! Who ever would have supposed you had
no energy! But it’s just like you men! I am only a poor, weak woman,
but when I say a thing, I do it.”
You get up grumbling, execrating the sacrament of marriage. There is
not the slightest merit in your heroism; it wasn’t you, but your wife,
that got up. Caroline gets you everything you want with provoking
promptitude; she foresees everything, she gives you a muffler in
winter, a blue-striped cambric shirt in summer, she treats you like a
child; you are still asleep, she dresses you and has all the trouble.
She finally thrusts you out of doors. Without her nothing would go
straight! She calls you back to give you a paper, a pocketbook, you had
forgotten. You don’t think of anything, she thinks of everything!
You return five hours afterwards to breakfast, between eleven and noon.
The chambermaid is at the door, or on the stairs, or on the landing,
talking with somebody’s valet: she runs in on hearing or seeing you.
Your servant is laying the cloth in a most leisurely style, stopping to
look out of the window or to lounge, and coming and going like a person
who knows he has plenty of time. You ask for your wife, supposing that
she is up and dressed.
“Madame is still in bed,” says the maid.
You find your wife languid, lazy, tired and asleep. She had been awake
all night to wake you in the morning, so she went to bed again, and is
quite hungry now.
You are the cause of all these disarrangements. If breakfast is not
ready, she says it’s because you went out. If she is not dressed, and
if everything is in disorder, it’s all your fault. For everything which
goes awry she has this answer: “Well, you would get up so early!” “He
would get up so early!” is the universal reason. She makes you go to
bed early, because you got up early. She can do nothing all day,
because you would get up so unusually early.
Eighteen months afterwards, she still maintains, “Without me, you would
never get up!” To her friends she says, “My husband get up! If it
weren’t for me, he never _would_ get up!”
To this a man whose hair is beginning to whiten, replies, “A graceful
compliment to you, madame!” This slightly indelicate comment puts an
end to her boasts.
This petty trouble, repeated several times, teaches you to live alone
in the bosom of your family, not to tell all you know, and to have no
confidant but yourself: and it often seems to you a question whether
the inconveniences of the married state do not exceed its advantages.