“Marriage is not an institution of nature. The family in the east is
entirely different from the family in the west. Man is the servant of
nature, and the institutions of society are grafts, not spontaneous
growths of nature. Laws are made to suit manners, and manners vary.
“Marriage must therefore undergo the gradual development towards
perfection to which all human affairs submit.”
These words, pronounced in the presence of the Conseil d’Etat by
Napoleon during the discussion of the civil code, produced a profound
impression upon the author of this book; and perhaps unconsciously
he received the suggestion of this work, which he now presents to the
public. And indeed at the period during which, while still in his youth,
he studied French law, the word ADULTERY made a singular impression upon
him. Taking, as it did, a prominent place in the code, this word
never occurred to his mind without conjuring up its mournful train of
consequences. Tears, shame, hatred, terror, secret crime, bloody wars,
families without a head, and social misery rose like a sudden line of
phantoms before him when he read the solemn word ADULTERY! Later on,
when he became acquainted with the most cultivated circles of society,
the author perceived that the rigor of marriage laws was very generally
modified by adultery. He found that the number of unhappy homes was
larger than that of happy marriages. In fact, he was the first to notice
that of all human sciences that which relates to marriage was the least
progressive. But this was the observation of a young man; and with him,
as with so many others, this thought, like a pebble flung into the
bosom of a lake, was lost in the abyss of his tumultuous thoughts.
Nevertheless, in spite of himself the author was compelled to
investigate, and eventually there was gathered within his mind, little
by little, a swarm of conclusions, more or less just, on the subject of
married life. Works like the present one are formed in the mind of the
author with as much mystery as that with which truffles grow on the
scented plains of Perigord. Out of the primitive and holy horror which
adultery caused him and the investigation which he had thoughtlessly
made, there was born one morning a trifling thought in which his ideas
were formulated. This thought was really a satire upon marriage. It was
as follows: A husband and wife found themselves in love with each other
for the first time after twenty-seven years of marriage.
He amused himself with this little axiom and passed a whole week in
delight, grouping around this harmless epigram the crowd of ideas which
came to him unconsciously and which he was astonished to find that he
possessed. His humorous mood yielded at last to the claims of serious
investigation. Willing as he was to take a hint, the author returned to
his habitual idleness. Nevertheless, this slight germ of science and
of joke grew to perfection, unfostered, in the fields of thought. Each
phase of the work which had been condemned by others took root and
gathered strength, surviving like the slight branch of a tree which,
flung upon the sand by a winter’s storm, finds itself covered at morning
with white and fantastic icicles, produced by the caprices of nightly
frosts. So the sketch lived on and became the starting point of myriad
branching moralizations. It was like a polypus which multiplies itself
by generation. The feelings of youth, the observations which a favorable
opportunity led him to make, were verified in the most trifling events
of his after life. Soon this mass of ideas became harmonized, took life,
seemed, as it were, to become a living individual and moved in the midst
of those domains of fancy, where the soul loves to give full rein to its
wild creations. Amid all the distractions of the world and of life, the
author always heard a voice ringing in his ears and mockingly revealing
the secrets of things at the very moment he was watching a woman as she
danced, smiled, or talked. Just as Mephistopheles pointed out to Faust
in that terrific assemblage at the Brocken, faces full of frightful
augury, so the author was conscious in the midst of the ball of a demon
who would strike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him:
“Do you notice that enchanting smile? It is a grin of hatred.” And then
the demon would strut about like one of the captains in the old comedies
of Hardy. He would twitch the folds of a lace mantle and endeavor to
make new the fretted tinsel and spangles of its former glory. And then
like Rabelais he would burst into loud and unrestrainable laughter, and
would trace on the street-wall a word which might serve as a pendant
to the “Drink!” which was the only oracle obtainable from the heavenly
bottle. This literary Trilby would often appear seated on piles of
books, and with hooked fingers would point out with a grin of malice
two yellow volumes whose title dazzled the eyes. Then when he saw he had
attracted the author’s attention he spelt out, in a voice alluring as
the tones of an harmonica, _Physiology of Marriage_! But, almost always
he appeared at night during my dreams, gentle as some fairy guardian;
he tried by words of sweetness to subdue the soul which he would
appropriate to himself. While he attracted, he also scoffed at me;
supple as a woman’s mind, cruel as a tiger, his friendliness was more
formidable than his hatred, for he never yielded a caress without also
inflicting a wound. One night in particular he exhausted the resources
of his sorceries, and crowned all by a last effort. He came, he sat on
the edge of the bed like a young maiden full of love, who at first keeps
silence but whose eyes sparkle, until at last her secret escapes her.
“This,” said he, “is a prospectus of a new life-buoy, by means of which
one can pass over the Seine dry-footed. This other pamphlet is the
report of the Institute on a garment by wearing which we can pass
through flames without being burnt. Have you no scheme which can
preserve marriage from the miseries of excessive cold and excessive
heat? Listen to me! Here we have a book on the _Art_ of preserving
foods; on the _Art_ of curing smoky chimneys; on the _Art_ of making
good mortar; on the _Art_ of tying a cravat; on the _Art_ of carving
meat.”
In a moment he had named such a prodigious number of books that the
author felt his head go round.
“These myriads of books,” says he, “have been devoured by readers; and
while everybody does not build a house, and some grow hungry, and others
have no cravat, or no fire to warm themselves at, yet everybody to some
degree is married. But come look yonder.”
He waved his hand, and appeared to bring before me a distant ocean where
all the books of the world were tossing up and down like agitated waves.
The octodecimos bounded over the surface of the water. The octavos as
they were flung on their way uttered a solemn sound, sank to the bottom,
and only rose up again with great difficulty, hindered as they were by
duodecimos and works of smaller bulk which floated on the top and melted
into light foam. The furious billows were crowded with journalists,
proof-readers, paper-makers, apprentices, printers’ agents, whose hands
alone were seen mingled in the confusion among the books. Millions of
voices rang in the air, like those of schoolboys bathing. Certain men
were seen moving hither and thither in canoes, engaged in fishing out
the books, and landing them on the shore in the presence of a tall man,
of a disdainful air, dressed in black, and of a cold, unsympathetic
expression. The whole scene represented the libraries and the public.
The demon pointed out with his finger a skiff freshly decked out with
all sails set and instead of a flag bearing a placard. Then with a peal
of sardonic laughter, he read with a thundering voice: _Physiology of
Marriage_.
The author fell in love, the devil left him in peace, for he would have
undertaken more than he could handle if he had entered an apartment
occupied by a woman. Several years passed without bringing other
torments than those of love, and the author was inclined to believe that
he had been healed of one infirmity by means of another which took its
place. But one evening he found himself in a Parisian drawing-room where
one of the men among the circle who stood round the fireplace began the
conversation by relating in a sepulchral voice the following anecdote:
A peculiar thing took place at Ghent while I was staying there. A lady
ten years a widow lay on her bed attacked by mortal sickness. The three
heirs of collateral lineage were waiting for her last sigh. They did
not leave her side for fear that she would make a will in favor of the
convent of Beguins belonging to the town. The sick woman kept silent,
she seemed dozing and death appeared to overspread very gradually her
mute and livid face. Can’t you imagine those three relations seated in
silence through that winter midnight beside her bed? An old nurse is
with them and she shakes her head, and the doctor sees with anxiety that
the sickness has reached its last stage, and holds his hat in one hand
and with the other makes a sign to the relations, as if to say to them:
“I have no more visits to make here.” Amid the solemn silence of the
room is heard the dull rustling of a snow-storm which beats upon the
shutters. For fear that the eyes of the dying woman might be dazzled by
the light, the youngest of the heirs had fitted a shade to the candle
which stood near that bed so that the circle of light scarcely reached
the pillow of the deathbed, from which the sallow countenance of the
sick woman stood out like a figure of Christ imperfectly gilded and
fixed upon a cross of tarnished silver. The flickering rays shed by the
blue flames of a crackling fire were therefore the sole light of this
sombre chamber, where the denouement of a drama was just ending. A
log suddenly rolled from the fire onto the floor, as if presaging some
catastrophe. At the sound of it the sick woman quickly rose to a sitting
posture. She opened two eyes, clear as those of a cat, and all present
eyed her in astonishment. She saw the log advance, and before any one
could check an unexpected movement which seemed prompted by a kind of
delirium, she bounded from her bed, seized the tongs and threw the coal
back into the fireplace. The nurse, the doctor, the relations rushed to
her assistance; they took the dying woman in their arms. They put her
back in bed; she laid her head upon her pillow and after a few minutes
died, keeping her eyes fixed even after her death upon that plank in the
floor which the burning brand had touched. Scarcely had the Countess Van
Ostroem expired when the three co-heirs exchanged looks of suspicion,
and thinking no more about their aunt, began to examine the mysterious
floor. As they were Belgians their calculations were as rapid as their
glances. An agreement was made by three words uttered in a low voice
that none of them should leave the chamber. A servant was sent to fetch
a carpenter. Their collateral hearts beat excitedly as they gathered
round the treasured flooring, and watched their young apprentice giving
the first blow with his chisel. The plank was cut through.
“My aunt made a sign,” said the youngest of the heirs.
“No; it was merely the quivering light that made it appear so,” replied
the eldest, who kept one eye on the treasure and the other on the
corpse.
The afflicted relations discovered exactly on the spot where the brand
had fallen a certain object artistically enveloped in a mass of plaster.
“Proceed,” said the eldest of the heirs.
The chisel of the apprentice then brought to light a human head and some
odds and ends of clothing, from which they recognized the count whom all
the town believed to have died at Java, and whose loss had been bitterly
deplored by his wife.
The narrator of this old story was a tall spare man, with light eyes and
brown hair, and the author thought he saw in him a vague resemblance to
the demon who had before this tormented him; but the stranger did not
show the cloven foot. Suddenly the word ADULTERY sounded in the ears of
the author; and this word woke up in his imagination the most mournful
countenances of that procession which before this had streamed by on the
utterance of the magic syllables. From that evening he was haunted and
persecuted by dreams of a work which did not yet exist; and at no period
of his life was the author assailed with such delusive notions about the
fatal subject of this book. But he bravely resisted the fiend, although
the latter referred the most unimportant incidents of life to this
unknown work, and like a customhouse officer set his stamp of mockery
upon every occurrence.
Some days afterwards the author found himself in the company of two
ladies. The first of them had been one of the most refined and the most
intellectual women of Napoleon’s court. In his day she occupied a
lofty position, but the sudden appearance of the Restoration caused her
downfall; she became a recluse. The second, who was young and beautiful,
was at that time living at Paris the life of a fashionable woman. They
were friends, because, the one being forty and the other twenty-two
years old, they were seldom rivals on the same field. The author was
considered quite insignificant by the first of the two ladies, and since
the other soon discovered this, they carried on in his presence the
conversation which they had begun in a frank discussion of a woman’s
lot.
“Have you noticed, dear, that women in general bestow their love only
upon a fool?”
“What do you mean by that, duchess? And how can you make your remark fit
in with the fact that they have an aversion for their husbands?”
“These women are absolute tyrants!” said the author to himself. “Has the
devil again turned up in a mob cap?”
“No, dear, I am not joking,” replied the duchess, “and I shudder with
fear for myself when I coolly consider people whom I have known in other
times. Wit always has a sparkle which wounds us, and the man who has
much of it makes us fear him perhaps, and if he is a proud man he will
be capable of jealousy, and is not therefore to our taste. In fact, we
prefer to raise a man to our own height rather than to have to climb
up to his. Talent has great successes for us to share in, but the fool
affords enjoyment to us; and we would sooner hear said ‘that is a very
handsome man’ than to see our lover elected to the Institute.”
“That’s enough, duchess! You have absolutely startled me.”
And the young coquette began to describe the lovers about whom all the
women of her acquaintance raved; there was not a single man of intellect
among them.
“But I swear by my virtue,” she said, “their husbands are worth more.”
“But these are the sort of people they choose for husbands,” the duchess
answered gravely.
“Tell me,” asked the author, “is the disaster which threatens the
husband in France quite inevitable?”
“It is,” replied the duchess, with a smile; “and the rage which
certain women breathe out against those of their sex, whose unfortunate
happiness it is to entertain a passion, proves what a burden to them is
their chastity. If it were not for fear of the devil, one would be Lais;
another owes her virtue to the dryness of her selfish heart; a third to
the silly behaviour of her first lover; another still--”
The author checked this outpour of revelation by confiding to the two
ladies his design for the work with which he had been haunted; they
smiled and promised him their assistance. The youngest, with an air of
gaiety suggested one of the first chapters of the undertaking, by saying
that she would take upon herself to prove mathematically that women who
are entirely virtuous were creatures of reason.
When the author got home he said at once to his demon:
“Come! I am ready; let us sign the compact.”
But the demon never returned.
If the author has written here the biography of his book he has not
acted on the prompting of fatuity. He relates facts which may furnish
material for the history of human thought, and will without doubt
explain the work itself. It may perhaps be important to certain
anatomists of thought to be told that the soul is feminine. Thus
although the author made a resolution not to think about the book which
he was forced to write, the book, nevertheless, was completed. One
page of it was found on the bed of a sick man, another on the sofa of a
boudoir. The glances of women when they turned in the mazes of a waltz
flung to him some thoughts; a gesture or a word filled his disdainful
brain with others. On the day when he said to himself, “This work, which
haunts me, shall be achieved,” everything vanished; and like the three
Belgians, he drew forth a skeleton from the place over which he had bent
to seize a treasure.
A mild, pale countenance took the place of the demon who had tempted
me; it wore an engaging expression of kindliness; there were no sharp
pointed arrows of criticism in its lineaments. It seemed to deal more
with words than with ideas, and shrank from noise and clamor. It was
perhaps the household genius of the honorable deputies who sit in the
centre of the Chamber.
“Wouldn’t it be better,” it said, “to let things be as they are? Are
things so bad? We ought to believe in marriage as we believe in the
immortality of the soul; and you are certainly not making a book to
advertise the happiness of marriage. You will surely conclude that among
a million of Parisian homes happiness is the exception. You will find
perhaps that there are many husbands disposed to abandon their wives to
you; but there is not a single son who will abandon his mother. Certain
people who are hit by the views which you put forth will suspect your
morals and will misrepresent your intentions. In a word, in order
to handle social sores, one ought to be a king, or a first consul at
least.”
Reason, although it appeared under a form most pleasing to the author,
was not listened to; for in the distance Folly tossed the coxcomb of
Panurge, and the author wished to seize it; but, when he tried to catch
it, he found that it was as heavy as the club of Hercules. Moreover, the
cure of Meudon adorned it in such fashion that a young man who was less
pleased with producing a good work than with wearing fine gloves could
not even touch it.
“Is our work completed?” asked the younger of the two feminine
assistants of the author.
“Alas! madame,” I said, “will you ever requite me for all the hatreds
which that work will array against me?”
She waved her hand, and then the author replied to her doubt by a look
of indifference.
“What do you mean? Would you hesitate? You must publish it without fear.
In the present day we accept a book more because it is in fashion than
because it has anything in it.”
Although the author does not here represent himself as anything more
than the secretary of two ladies, he has in compiling their observations
accomplished a double task. With regard to marriage he has here arranged
matters which represent what everybody thinks but no one dares to say;
but has he not also exposed himself to public displeasure by expressing
the mind of the public? Perhaps, however, the eclecticism of the present
essay will save it from condemnation. All the while that he indulges in
banter the author has attempted to popularize certain ideas which are
particularly consoling. He has almost always endeavored to lay bare the
hidden springs which move the human soul. While undertaking to defend
the most material interests of man, judging them or condemning them, he
will perhaps bring to light many sources of intellectual delight. But
the author does not foolishly claim always to put forth his pleasantries
in the best of taste; he has merely counted upon the diversity of
intellectual pursuits in expectation of receiving as much blame
as approbation. The subject of his work was so serious that he is
constantly launched into anecdote; because at the present day anecdotes
are the vehicle of all moral teaching, and the anti-narcotic of every
work of literature. In literature, analysis and investigation prevail,
and the wearying of the reader increases in proportion with the egotism
of the writer. This is one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall
a book, and the present author has been quite aware of it. He has
therefore so arranged the topics of this long essay as to afford resting
places for the reader. This method has been successfully adopted by a
writer, who produced on the subject of Taste a work somewhat parallel to
that which is here put forth on the subject of Marriage. From the former
the present writer may be permitted to borrow a few words in order
to express a thought which he shares with the author of them. This
quotation will serve as an expression of homage to his predecessor,
whose success has been so swiftly followed by his death:
“When I write and speak of myself in the singular, this implies a
confidential talk with the reader; he can examine the statement,
discuss it, doubt and even ridicule it; but when I arm myself with
the formidable WE, I become the professor and demand
submission.”--Brillat-Savarin, Preface to the _Physiology of Taste_.