The preceding methods and systems are in a way purely moral; they share
the nobility of the soul, there is nothing repulsive in them; but now we
must proceed to consider precautions _a la Bartholo_. Do not give way to
timidity. There is a marital courage, as there is a civil and military
courage, as there is the courage of the National Guard.
What is the first course of a young girl after having purchased a
parrot? Is it not to fasten it up in a pretty cage, from which it cannot
get out without permission?
You may learn your duty from this child.
Everything that pertains to the arrangement of your house and of your
apartments should be planned so as not to give your wife any advantage,
in case she has decided to deliver you to the Minotaur; half of all
actual mischances are brought about by the deplorable facilities which
the apartments furnish.
Before everything else determine to have for your porter a _single man_
entirely devoted to your person. This is a treasure easily to be
found. What husband is there throughout the world who has not either a
foster-father or some old servant, upon whose knees he has been dandled!
There ought to exist by means of your management, a hatred like that of
Artreus and Thyestes between your wife and this Nestor--guardian of
your gate. This gate is the Alpha and Omega of an intrigue. May not all
intrigues in love be confined in these words--entering and leaving?
Your house will be of no use to you if it does not stand between a
court and a garden, and so constructed as to be detached from all other
buildings. You must abolish all recesses in your apartments. A cupboard,
if it contain but six pots of preserves, should be walled in. You are
preparing yourself for war, and the first thought of a general is to cut
his enemy off from supplies. Moreover, all the walls must be smooth, in
order to present to the eye lines which may be taken in at a glance,
and permit the immediate recognition of the least strange object. If you
consult the remains of antique monuments you will see that the beauty of
Greek and Roman apartments sprang principally from the purity of their
lines, the clear sweep of their walls and scantiness of furniture. The
Greeks would have smiled in pity, if they had seen the gaps which our
closets make in our drawing-rooms.
This magnificent system of defence should above all be put in active
operation in the apartment of your wife; never let her curtain her bed
in such a way that one can walk round it amid a maze of hangings; be
inexorable in the matter of connecting passages, and let her chamber be
at the bottom of your reception-rooms, so as to show at a glance those
who come and go.
_The Marriage of Figaro_ will no doubt have taught you to put your
wife’s chamber at a great height from the ground. All celibates are
Cherubins.
Your means, doubtless, will permit your wife to have a dressing-room,
a bath-room, and a room for her chambermaid. Think then on Susanne,
and never commit the fault of arranging this little room below that of
madame’s, but place it always above, and do not shrink from disfiguring
your mansion by hideous divisions in the windows.
If, by ill luck, you see that this dangerous apartment communicates with
that of your wife by a back staircase, earnestly consult your architect;
let his genius exhaust itself in rendering this dangerous staircase as
innocent as the primitive garret ladder; we conjure you let not this
staircase have appended to it any treacherous lurking-place; its stiff
and angular steps must not be arranged with that tempting curve which
Faublas and Justine found so useful when they waited for the exit of
the Marquis de B-----. Architects nowadays make such staircases as are
absolutely preferable to ottomans. Restore rather the virtuous garret
steps of our ancestors.
Concerning the chimneys in the apartment of madame, you must take care
to place in the flue, five feet from the ground, an iron grill, even
though it be necessary to put up a fresh one every time the chimney is
swept. If your wife laughs at this precaution, suggest to her the number
of murders that have been committed by means of chimneys. Almost all
women are afraid of robbers. The bed is one of those important pieces
of furniture whose structure will demand long consideration. Everything
concerning it is of vital importance. The following is the result of
long experience in the construction of beds. Give to this piece of
furniture a form so original that it may be looked upon without disgust,
in the midst of changes of fashion which succeed so rapidly in rendering
antiquated the creations of former decorators, for it is essential that
your wife be unable to change, at pleasure, this theatre of married
happiness. The base should be plain and massive and admit of no
treacherous interval between it and the floor; and bear in mind always
that the Donna Julia of Byron hid Don Juan under her pillow. But it
would be ridiculous to treat lightly so delicate a subject.
LXII.
The bed is the whole of marriage.
Moreover, we must not delay to direct your attention to this wonderful
creation of human genius, an invention which claims our recognition much
more than ships, firearms, matches, wheeled carriages, steam engines
of all kinds, more than even barrels and bottles. In the first place,
a little thought will convince us that this is all true of the bed;
but when we begin to think that it is our second father, that the most
tranquil and most agitated half of our existence is spent under its
protecting canopy, words fail in eulogizing it. (See Meditation XVII,
entitled “Theory of the Bed.”)
When the war, of which we shall speak in our third part, breaks out
between you and madame, you will always have plenty of ingenious excuses
for rummaging in the drawers and escritoires; for if your wife is trying
to hide from you some statue of her adoration, it is your interest to
know where she has hidden it. A gyneceum, constructed on the method
described, will enable you to calculate at a glance, whether there is
present in it two pounds of silk more than usual. Should a single closet
be constructed there, you are a lost man! Above all, accustom your wife,
during the honeymoon, to bestow especial pains in the neatness of her
apartment; let nothing put off that. If you do not habituate her to be
minutely particular in this respect, if the same objects are not always
found in the same places, she will allow things to become so untidy,
that you will not be able to see that there are two pounds of silk more
or less in her room.
The curtains of your apartments ought to be of a stuff which is quite
transparent, and you ought to contract the habit in the evenings of
walking outside so that madame may see you come right up to the window
just out of absent-mindedness. In a word, with regard to windows, let
the sills be so narrow that even a sack of flour cannot be set up on
them.
If the apartment of your wife can be arranged on these principles, you
will be in perfect safety, even if there are niches enough there to
contain all the saints of Paradise. You will be able, every evening,
with the assistance of your porter, to strike the balance between
the entrances and exits of visitors; and, in order to obtain accurate
results, there is nothing to prevent your teaching him to keep a book of
visitors, in double entry.
If you have a garden, cultivate a taste for dogs, and always keep at
large one of these incorruptible guardians under your windows; you will
thus gain the respect of the Minotaur, especially if you accustom your
four-footed friend to take nothing substantial excepting from the
hand of your porter, so that hard-hearted celibates may not succeed in
poisoning him.
But all these precautions must be taken as a natural thing so that they
may not arouse suspicions. If husbands are so imprudent as to neglect
precautions from the moment they are married, they ought at once to sell
their house and buy another one, or, under the pretext of repairs, alter
their present house in the way prescribed.
You will without scruple banish from your apartment all sofas, ottomans,
lounges, sedan chairs and the like. In the first place, this is the
kind of furniture that adorns the homes of grocers, where they are
universally found, as they are in those of barbers; but they are
essentially the furniture of perdition; I can never see them without
alarm. It has always seemed to me that there the devil himself is
lurking with his horns and cloven foot.
After all, nothing is so dangerous as a chair, and it is extremely
unfortunate that women cannot be shut up within the four walls of a bare
room! What husband is there, who on sitting down on a rickety chair is
not always forced to believe that this chair has received some of the
lessons taught by the _Sofa_ of Crebillion junior? But happily we have
arranged your apartment on such a system of prevention that nothing
so fatal can happen, or, at any rate, not without your contributory
negligence.
One fault which you must contract, and which you must never correct,
will consist in a sort of heedless curiosity, which will make you
examine unceasingly all the boxes, and turn upside down the contents
of all dressing-cases and work-baskets. You must proceed to this
domiciliary visit in a humorous mood, and gracefully, so that each time
you will obtain pardon by exciting the amusement of your wife.
You must always manifest a most profound astonishment on noticing any
piece of furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointed apartment.
You must immediately make her explain to you the advantages of the
change; and then you must ransack your mind to discover whether there be
not some underhand motive in the transaction.
This is by no means all. You have too much sense to forget that your
pretty parrot will remain in her cage only so long as that cage is
beautiful. The least accessory of her apartment ought, therefore, to
breathe elegance and taste. The general appearance should always present
a simple, at the same time a charming picture. You must constantly renew
the hangings and muslin curtains. The freshness of the decorations
is too essential to permit of economy on this point. It is the fresh
chickweed each morning carefully put into the cage of their birds, that
makes their pets believe it is the verdure of the meadows. An apartment
of this character is then the _ultima ratio_ of husbands; a wife has
nothing to say when everything is lavished on her.
Husbands who are condemned to live in rented apartments find themselves
in the most terrible situation possible. What happy or what fatal
influence cannot the porter exercise upon their lot?
Is not their home flanked on either side by other houses? It is true
that by placing the apartment of their wives on one side of the house
the danger is lessened by one-half; but are they not obliged to learn by
heart and to ponder the age, the condition, the fortune, the character,
the habits of the tenants of the next house and even to know their
friends and relations?
A husband will never take lodgings on the ground floor.
Every man, however, can apply in his apartments the precautionary
methods which we have suggested to the owner of a house, and thus the
tenant will have this advantage over the owner, that the apartment,
which is less spacious than the house, is more easily guarded.