One morning, Adolphe is seized by the triumphant idea of letting
Caroline find out for herself what she wants. He gives up to her the
control of the house, saying, “Do as you like.” He substitutes the
constitutional system for the autocratic system, a responsible ministry
for an absolute conjugal monarchy. This proof of confidence —the object
of much secret envy—is, to women, a field-marshal’s baton. Women are
then, so to speak, mistresses at home.
After this, nothing, not even the memory of the honey-moon, can be
compared to Adolphe’s happiness for several days. A woman, under such
circumstances, is all sugar. She is too sweet: she would invent the art
of petting and cosseting and of coining tender little names, if this
matrimonial sugar-plummery had not existed ever since the Terrestrial
Paradise. At the end of the month, Adolphe’s condition is like that of
children towards the close of New Year’s week. So Caroline is beginning
to say, not in words, but in acts, in manner, in mimetic expressions:
“It’s difficult to tell _what_ to do to please a man!”
Giving up the helm of the boat to one’s wife, is an exceedingly
ordinary idea, and would hardly deserve the qualification of
“triumphant,” which we have given it at the commencement of this
chapter, if it were not accompanied by that of taking it back again.
Adolphe was seduced by a wish, which invariably seizes persons who are
the prey of misfortune, to know how far an evil will go!—to try how
much damage fire will do when left to itself, the individual
possessing, or thinking he possesses, the power to arrest it. This
curiosity pursues us from the cradle to the grave. Then, after his
plethora of conjugal felicity, Adolphe, who is treating himself to a
farce in his own house, goes through the following phases:
FIRST EPOCH. Things go on altogether too well. Caroline buys little
account books to keep a list of her expenses in, she buys a nice little
piece of furniture to store her money in, she feeds Adolphe superbly,
she is happy in his approbation, she discovers that very many articles
are needed in the house. It is her ambition to be an incomparable
housekeeper. Adolphe, who arrogates to himself the right of censorship,
no longer finds the slightest suggestion to make.
When he dresses himself, everything is ready to his hands. Not even in
Armide’s garden was more ingenious tenderness displayed than that of
Caroline. For her phoenix husband, she renews the wax upon his razor
strap, she substitutes new suspenders for old ones. None of his
button-holes are ever widowed. His linen is as well cared for as that
of the confessor of the devotee, all whose sins are venial. His
stockings are free from holes. At table, his tastes, his caprices even,
are studied, consulted: he is getting fat! There is ink in his
inkstand, and the sponge is always moist. He never has occasion to say,
like Louis XIV, “I came near having to wait!” In short, he hears
himself continually called _a love of a man_. He is obliged to reproach
Caroline for neglecting herself: she does not pay sufficient attention
to her own needs. Of this gentle reproach Caroline takes note.
SECOND EPOCH. The scene changes, at table. Everything is exceedingly
dear. Vegetables are beyond one’s means. Wood sells as if it came from
Campeche. Fruit? Oh! as to fruit, princes, bankers and great lords
alone can eat it. Dessert is a cause of ruin. Adolphe often hears
Caroline say to Madame Deschars: “How do you manage?” Conferences are
held in your presence upon the proper way to keep cooks under the
thumb.
A cook who entered your service without effects, without clothes, and
without talent, has come to get her wages in a blue merino gown, set
off by an embroidered neckerchief, her ears embellished with a pair of
ear-rings enriched with small pearls, her feet clothed in comfortable
shoes which give you a glimpse of neat cotton stockings. She has two
trunks full of property, and keeps an account at the savings bank.
Upon this Caroline complains of the bad morals of the lower classes:
she complains of the education and the knowledge of figures which
distinguish domestics. From time to time she utters little axioms like
the following: There are some mistakes you _must_ make!—It’s only those
who do nothing who do everything well.—She has the anxieties that
belong to power.—Ah! men are fortunate in not having a house to
keep.—Women bear the burden of the innumerable details.
THIRD EPOCH. Caroline, absorbed in the idea that you should eat merely
to live, treats Adolphe to the delights of a cenobitic table.
Adolphe’s stockings are either full of holes or else rough with the
lichen of hasty mendings, for the day is not long enough for all that
his wife has to do. He wears suspenders blackened by use. His linen is
old and gapes like a door-keeper, or like the door itself. At a time
when Adolphe is in haste to conclude a matter of business, it takes him
an hour to dress: he has to pick out his garments one by one, opening
many an article before finding one fit to wear. But Caroline is
charmingly dressed. She has pretty bonnets, velvet boots, mantillas.
She has made up her mind, she conducts her administration in virtue of
this principle: Charity well understood begins at home. When Adolphe
complains of the contrast between his poverty-stricken wardrobe and
Caroline’s splendor, she says, “Why, you reproached me with buying
nothing for myself!”
The husband and the wife here begin to bandy jests more or less
acrimonious. One evening Caroline makes herself very agreeable, in
order to insinuate an avowal of a rather large deficit, just as the
ministry begins to eulogize the tax-payers, and boast of the wealth of
the country, when it is preparing to bring forth a bill for an
additional appropriation. There is this further similitude that both
are done in the chamber, whether in administration or in housekeeping.
From this springs the profound truth that the constitutional system is
infinitely dearer than the monarchical system. For a nation as for a
household, it is the government of the happy balance, of mediocrity, of
chicanery.
Adolphe, enlightened by his past annoyances, waits for an opportunity
to explode, and Caroline slumbers in a delusive security.
What starts the quarrel? Do we ever know what electric current
precipitates the avalanche or decides a revolution? It may result from
anything or nothing. But finally, Adolphe, after a period to be
determined in each case by the circumstances of the couple, utters this
fatal phrase, in the midst of a discussion: “Ah! when I was a
bachelor!”
Her husband’s bachelor life is to a woman what the phrase, “My dear
deceased,” is to a widow’s second husband. These two stings produce
wounds which are never completely healed.
Then Adolphe goes on like General Bonaparte haranguing the Five
Hundred: “We are on a volcano!—The house no longer has a head, the time
to come to an understanding has arrived.—You talk of happiness,
Caroline, but you have compromised, imperiled it by your exactions, you
have violated the civil code: you have mixed yourself up in the
discussions of business, and you have invaded the conjugal authority.
—We must reform our internal affairs.”
Caroline does not shout, like the Five Hundred, “Down with the
dictator!” For people never shout a man down, when they feel that they
can put him down.
“When I was a bachelor I had none but new stockings! I had a clean
napkin every day on my plate. The restaurateur only fleeced me of a
determinate sum. I have given up to you my beloved liberty! What have
you done with it?”
“Am I then so very wrong, Adolphe, to have sought to spare you numerous
cares?” says Caroline, taking an attitude before her husband. “Take the
key of the money-box back,—but do you know what will happen? I am
ashamed, but you will compel me to go on to the stage to get the merest
necessaries of life. Is this what you want? Degrade your wife, or bring
in conflict two contrary, hostile interests—”
Such, for three quarters of the French people is an exact definition of
marriage.
“Be perfectly easy, dear,” resumes Caroline, seating herself in her
chair like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, “I will never ask you for
anything. I am not a beggar! I know what I’ll do—you don’t know me
yet.”
“Well, what will you do?” asks Adolphe; “it seems impossible to joke or
have an explanation with you women. What will you do?”
“It doesn’t concern you at all.”
“Excuse me, madame, quite the contrary. Dignity, honor—”
“Oh, have no fear of that, sir. For your sake more than for my own, I
will keep it a dead secret.”
“Come, Caroline, my own Carola, what do you mean to do?”
Caroline darts a viper-like glance at Adolphe, who recoils and proceeds
to walk up and down the room.
“There now, tell me, what will you do?” he repeats after much too
prolonged a silence.
“I shall go to work, sir!”
At this sublime declaration, Adolphe executes a movement in retreat,
detecting a bitter exasperation, and feeling the sharpness of a north
wind which had never before blown in the matrimonial chamber.