After several years of wedded life, your love has become so placid,
that Caroline sometimes tries, in the evening, to wake you up by
various little coquettish phrases. There is about you a certain
calmness and tranquillity which always exasperates a lawful wife. Women
see in it a sort of insolence: they look upon the indifference of
happiness as the fatuity of confidence, for of course they never
imagine their inestimable equalities can be regarded with disdain:
their virtue is therefore enraged at being so cordially trusted in.
In this situation, which is what every couple must come to, and which
both husband and wife must expect, no husband dares confess that the
constant repetition of the same dish has become wearisome; but his
appetite certainly requires the condiments of dress, the ideas excited
by absence, the stimulus of an imaginary rivalry.
In short, at this period, you walk very comfortably with your wife on
your arm, without pressing hers against your heart with the solicitous
and watchful cohesion of a miser grasping his treasure. You gaze
carelessly round upon the curiosities in the street, leading your wife
in a loose and distracted way, as if you were towing a Norman scow.
Come now, be frank! If, on passing your wife, an admirer were gently to
press her, accidentally or purposely, would you have the slightest
desire to discover his motives? Besides, you say, no woman would seek
to bring about a quarrel for such a trifle. Confess this, too, that the
expression “such a trifle” is exceedingly flattering to both of you.
You are in this position, but you have as yet proceeded no farther.
Still, you have a horrible thought which you bury in the depths of your
heart and conscience: Caroline has not come up to your expectations.
Caroline has imperfections, which, during the high tides of the
honey-moon, were concealed under the water, but which the ebb of the
gall-moon has laid bare. You have several times run against these
breakers, your hopes have been often shipwrecked upon them, more than
once your desires—those of a young marrying man—(where, alas, is that
time!) have seen their richly laden gondolas go to pieces there: the
flower of the cargo went to the bottom, the ballast of the marriage
remained. In short, to make use of a colloquial expression, as you talk
over your marriage with yourself you say, as you look at Caroline,
“_She is not what I took her to be!_”
Some evening, at a ball, in society, at a friend’s house, no matter
where, you meet a sublime young woman, beautiful, intellectual and
kind: with a soul, oh! a soul of celestial purity, and of miraculous
beauty! Yes, there is that unchangeable oval cut of face, those
features which time will never impair, that graceful and thoughtful
brow. The unknown is rich, well-educated, of noble birth: she will
always be what she should be, she knows when to shine, when to remain
in the background: she appears in all her glory and power, the being
you have dreamed of, your wife that should have been, she whom you feel
you could love forever. She would always have flattered your little
vanities, she would understand and admirably serve your interests. She
is tender and gay, too, this young lady who reawakens all your better
feelings, who rekindles your slumbering desires.
You look at Caroline with gloomy despair, and here are the phantom-like
thoughts which tap, with wings of a bat, the beak of a vulture, the
body of a death’s-head moth, upon the walls of the palace in which,
enkindled by desire, glows your brain like a lamp of gold:
FIRST STANZA. Ah, dear me, why did I get married? Fatal idea! I allowed
myself to be caught by a small amount of cash. And is it really over?
Cannot I have another wife? Ah, the Turks manage things better! It is
plain enough that the author of the Koran lived in the desert!
SECOND STANZA. My wife is sick, she sometimes coughs in the morning. If
it is the design of Providence to remove her from the world, let it be
speedily done for her sake and for mine. The angel has lived long
enough.
THIRD STANZA. I am a monster! Caroline is the mother of my children!
You go home, that night, in a carriage with your wife: you think her
perfectly horrible: she speaks to you, but you answer in monosyllables.
She says, “What is the matter?” and you answer, “Nothing.” She coughs,
you advise her to see the doctor in the morning. Medicine has its
hazards.
FOURTH STANZA. I have been told that a physician, poorly paid by the
heirs of his deceased patient, imprudently exclaimed, “What! they cut
down my bill, when they owe me forty thousand a year.” _I_ would not
haggle over fees!
“Caroline,” you say to her aloud, “you must take care of yourself;
cross your shawl, be prudent, my darling angel.”
Your wife is delighted with you since you seem to take such an interest
in her. While she is preparing to retire, you lie stretched out upon
the sofa. You contemplate the divine apparition which opens to you the
ivory portals of your castles in the air. Delicious ecstasy! ’Tis the
sublime young woman that you see before you! She is as white as the
sail of the treasure-laden galleon as it enters the harbor of Cadiz.
Your wife, happy in your admiration, now understands your former
taciturnity. You still see, with closed eyes, the sublime young woman;
she is the burden of your thoughts, and you say aloud:
FIFTH AND LAST STANZA. Divine! Adorable! Can there be another woman
like her? Rose of Night! Column of ivory! Celestial maiden! Morning and
Evening Star!
Everyone says his prayers; you have said four.
The next morning, your wife is delightful, she coughs no more, she has
no need of a doctor; if she dies, it will be of good health; you
launched four maledictions upon her, in the name of your sublime young
woman, and four times she blessed you for it. Caroline does not know
that in the depths of your heart there wriggles a little red fish like
a crocodile, concealed beneath conjugal love like the other would be
hid in a basin.
A few days before, your wife had spoken of you in rather equivocal
terms to Madame de Fischtaminel: your fair friend comes to visit her,
and Caroline compromises you by a long and humid gaze; she praises you
and says she never was happier.
You rush out in a rage, you are beside yourself, and are glad to meet a
friend, that you may work off your bile.
“Don’t you ever marry, George; it’s better to see your heirs carrying
away your furniture while the death-rattle is in your throat, better to
go through an agony of two hours without a drop to cool your tongue,
better to be assassinated by inquiries about your will by a nurse like
the one in Henry Monnier’s terrible picture of a ‘Bachelor’s Last
Moments!’ Never marry under any pretext!”
Fortunately you see the sublime young woman no more. You are saved from
the tortures to which a criminal passion was leading you. You fall back
again into the purgatory of your married bliss; but you begin to be
attentive to Madame de Fischtaminel, with whom you were dreadfully in
love, without being able to get near her, while you were a bachelor.