Man goes from aversion to love; but if he has begun by loving, and
afterwards comes to feel aversion, he never returns to love.
In certain human organisms the feelings are dwarfed, as the thought may
be in certain sterile imaginations. Thus, just as some minds have the
faculty of comprehending the connections existing between different
things without formal deduction; and as they have the faculty of seizing
upon each formula separately, without combining them, or without
the power of insight, comparison and expression; so in the same way,
different souls may have more or less imperfect ideas of the various
sentiments. Talent in love, as in every other art, consists in the power
of forming a conception combined with the power of carrying it out. The
world is full of people who sing airs, but who omit the _ritornello_,
who have quarters of an idea, as they have quarters of sentiment, but
who can no more co-ordinate the movements of their affections than
of their thoughts. In a word, they are incomplete. Unite a fine
intelligence with a dwarfed intelligence and you precipitate a disaster;
for it is necessary that equilibrium be preserved in everything.
We leave to the philosophers of the boudoir or to the sages of the
back parlor to investigate the thousand ways in which men of different
temperaments, intellects, social positions and fortunes disturb this
equilibrium. Meanwhile we will proceed to examine the last cause for the
setting of the honeymoon and the rising of the Red-moon.
There is in life one principle more potent than life itself. It is a
movement whose celerity springs from an unknown motive power. Man is
no more acquainted with the secret of this revolution than the earth is
aware of that which causes her rotation. A certain something, which
I gladly call the current of life, bears along our choicest thoughts,
makes use of most people’s will and carries us on in spite of ourselves.
Thus, a man of common-sense, who never fails to pay his bills, if he is
a merchant, a man who has been able to escape death, or what perhaps is
more trying, sickness, by the observation of a certain easy but daily
regimen, is completely and duly nailed up between the four planks of his
coffin, after having said every evening: “Dear me! to-morrow I will not
forget my pills!” How are we to explain this magic spell which rules all
the affairs of life? Do men submit to it from a want of energy? Men who
have the strongest wills are subject to it. Is it default of memory?
People who possess this faculty in the highest degree yield to its
fascination.
Every one can recognize the operation of this influence in the case of
his neighbor, and it is one of the things which exclude the majority of
husbands from the honeymoon. It is thus that the wise man, survivor of
all reefs and shoals, such as we have pointed out, sometimes falls into
the snares which he himself has set.
I have myself noticed that man deals with marriage and its dangers
in very much the same way that he deals with wigs; and perhaps the
following phases of thought concerning wigs may furnish a formula for
human life in general.
FIRST EPOCH.--Is it possible that I shall ever have white hair?
SECOND EPOCH.--In any case, if I have white hair, I shall never wear a
wig. Good Lord! what is more ugly than a wig?
One morning you hear a young voice, which love much oftener makes to
vibrate than lulls to silence, exclaiming:
“Well, I declare! You have a white hair!”
THIRD EPOCH.--Why not wear a well-made wig which people would not
notice? There is a certain merit in deceiving everybody; besides, a wig
keeps you warm, prevents taking cold, etc.
FOURTH EPOCH.--The wig is so skillfully put on that you deceive every
one who does not know you.
The wig takes up all your attention, and _amour-propre_ makes you every
morning as busy as the most skillful hairdresser.
FIFTH EPOCH.--The neglected wig. “Good heavens! How tedious it is, to
have to go with bare head every evening, and to curl one’s wig every
morning!”
SIXTH EPOCH.--The wig allows certain white hairs to escape; it is put on
awry and the observer perceives on the back of your neck a white line,
which contrasts with the deep tints pushed back by the collar of your
coat.
SEVENTH EPOCH.--Your wig is as scraggy as dog’s tooth grass; and--excuse
the expression--you are making fun of your wig.
“Sir,” said one of the most powerful feminine intelligences which have
condescended to enlighten me on some of the most obscure passages in my
book, “what do you mean by this wig?”
“Madame,” I answered, “when a man falls into a mood of indifference with
regard to his wig, he is,--he is--what your husband probably is not.”
“But my husband is not--” (she paused and thought for a moment). “He is
not amiable; he is not--well, he is not--of an even temper; he is not--”
“Then, madame, he would doubtless be indifferent to his wig!”
We looked at each other, she with a well-assumed air of dignity, I with
a suppressed smile.
“I see,” said I, “that we must pay special respect to the ears of the
little sex, for they are the only chaste things about them.”
I assumed the attitude of a man who has something of importance to
disclose, and the fair dame lowered her eyes, as if she had some reason
to blush.
“Madame, in these days a minister is not hanged, as once upon a time,
for saying yes or no; a Chateaubriand would scarcely torture Francoise
de Foix, and we wear no longer at our side a long sword ready to avenge
an insult. Now in a century when civilization has made such rapid
progress, when we can learn a science in twenty-four lessons, everything
must follow this race after perfection. We can no longer speak the
manly, rude, coarse language of our ancestors. The age in which are
fabricated such fine, such brilliant stuffs, such elegant furniture, and
when are made such rich porcelains, must needs be the age of periphrase
and circumlocution. We must try, therefore, to coin a new word in place
of the comic expression which Moliere used; since the language of this
great man, as a contemporary author has said, is too free for ladies who
find gauze too thick for their garments. But people of the world
know, as well as the learned, how the Greeks had an innate taste for
mysteries. That poetic nation knew well how to invest with the tints
of fable the antique traditions of their history. At the voice of their
rhapsodists together with their poets and romancers, kings became
gods and their adventures of gallantry were transformed into immortal
allegories. According to M. Chompre, licentiate in law, the classic
author of the _Dictionary of Mythology_, the labyrinth was ‘an enclosure
planted with trees and adorned with buildings arranged in such a way
that when a young man once entered, he could no more find his way out.’
Here and there flowery thickets were presented to his view, but in the
midst of a multitude of alleys, which crossed and recrossed his path and
bore the appearance of a uniform passage, among the briars, rocks and
thorns, the patient found himself in combat with an animal called the
Minotaur.
“Now, madame, if you will allow me the honor of calling to your mind
the fact that the Minotaur was of all known beasts that which Mythology
distinguishes as the most dangerous; that in order to save themselves
from his ravages, the Athenians were bound to deliver to him, every
single year, fifty virgins; you will perhaps escape the error of good M.
Chompre, who saw in the labyrinth nothing but an English garden; and
you will recognize in this ingenious fable a refined allegory, or we may
better say a faithful and fearful image of the dangers of marriage. The
paintings recently discovered at Herculaneum have served to confirm
this opinion. And, as a matter of fact, learned men have for a long time
believed, in accordance with the writings of certain authors, that
the Minotaur was an animal half-man, half-bull; but the fifth panel
of ancient paintings at Herculaneum represents to us this allegorical
monster with a body entirely human; and, to take away all vestige of
doubt, he lies crushed at the feet of Theseus. Now, my dear madame, why
should we not ask Mythology to come and rescue us from that hypocrisy
which is gaining ground with us and hinders us from laughing as our
fathers laughed? And thus, since in the world a young lady does not very
well know how to spread the veil under which an honest woman hides her
behavior, in a contingency which our grandfathers would have roughly
explained by a single word, you, like a crowd of beautiful but
prevaricating ladies, you content yourselves with saying, ‘Ah! yes,
she is very amiable, but,’--but what?--‘but she is often very
inconsistent--.’ I have for a long time tried to find out the meaning of
this last word, and, above all, the figure of rhetoric by which you
make it express the opposite of that which it signifies; but all my
researches have been in vain. Vert-Vert used the word last, and was
unfortunately addressed to the innocent nuns whose infidelities did not
in any way infringe the honor of the men. When a woman is _inconsistent_
the husband must be, according to me, _minotaurized_. If the
minotaurized man is a fine fellow, if he enjoys a certain esteem,--and
many husbands really deserve to be pitied,--then in speaking of him, you
say in a pathetic voice, ‘M. A--- is a very estimable man, his wife
is exceedingly pretty, but they say he is not happy in his domestic
relations.’ Thus, madame, the estimable man who is unhappy in his
domestic relations, the man who has an inconsistent wife, or the husband
who is minotaurized are simply husbands as they appear in Moliere. Well,
then, O goddess of modern taste, do not these expressions seem to you
characterized by a transparency chaste enough for anybody?”
“Ah! mon Dieu!” she answered, laughing, “if the thing is the same,
what does it matter whether it be expressed in two syllables or in a
hundred?”
She bade me good-bye, with an ironical nod and disappeared, doubtless to
join the countesses of my preface and all the metaphorical creatures,
so often employed by romance-writers as agents for the recovery or
composition of ancient manuscripts.
As for you, the more numerous and the more real creatures who read my
book, if there are any among you who make common cause with my conjugal
champion, I give you notice that you will not at once become unhappy in
your domestic relations. A man arrives at this conjugal condition
not suddenly, but insensibly and by degrees. Many husbands have even
remained unfortunate in their domestic relations during their whole life
and have never known it. This domestic revolution develops itself in
accordance with fixed rules; for the revolutions of the honeymoon are as
regular as the phases of the moon in heaven, and are the same in every
married house. Have we not proved that moral nature, like physical
nature, has its laws?
Your young wife will never take a lover, as we have elsewhere said,
without making serious reflections. As soon as the honeymoon wanes, you
will find that you have aroused in her a sentiment of pleasure which you
have not satisfied; you have opened to her the book of life; and she has
derived an excellent idea from the prosaic dullness which distinguishes
your complacent love, of the poetry which is the natural result when
souls and pleasures are in accord. Like a timid bird, just startled by
the report of a gun which has ceased, she puts her head out of her nest,
looks round her, and sees the world; and knowing the word of a charade
which you have played, she feels instinctively the void which exists in
your languishing passion. She divines that it is only with a lover that
she can regain the delightful exercise of her free will in love.
You have dried the green wood in preparation for a fire.
In the situation in which both of you find yourselves, there is no
woman, even the most virtuous, who would not be found worthy of a
_grande passion_, who has not dreamed of it, and who does not believe
that it is easily kindled, for there is always found a certain
_amour-propre_ ready to reinforce that conquered enemy--a jaded wife.
“If the role of an honest woman were nothing more than perilous,”
said an old lady to me, “I would admit that it would serve. But it is
tiresome; and I have never met a virtuous woman who did not think about
deceiving somebody.”
And then, before any lover presents himself, a wife discusses with
herself the legality of the act; she enters into a conflict with her
duties, with the law, with religion and with the secret desires of a
nature which knows no check-rein excepting that which she places upon
herself. And then commences for you a condition of affairs totally
new; then you receive the first intimation which nature, that good and
indulgent mother, always gives to the creatures who are exposed to any
danger. Nature has put a bell on the neck of the Minotaur, as on the
tail of that frightful snake which is the terror of travelers. And then
appear in your wife what we will call the first symptoms, and woe to
him who does not know how to contend with them. Those who in reading our
book will remember that they saw those symptoms in their own domestic
life can pass to the conclusion of this work, where they will find how
they may gain consolation.
The situation referred to, in which a married couple bind themselves for
a longer or a shorter time, is the point from which our work starts,
as it is the end at which our observations stop. A man of intelligence
should know how to recognize the mysterious indications, the obscure
signs and the involuntary revelation which a wife unwittingly exhibits;
for the next Meditation will doubtless indicate the more evident of the
manifestations to neophytes in the sublime science of marriage.