The doctor is one of the most potent auxiliaries of an honest woman,
when she wishes to acquire a friendly divorce from her husband. The
services that the doctor renders, most of the time without knowing it,
to a woman, are of such importance that there does not exist a single
house in France where the doctor is chosen by any one but the wife.
All doctors know what great influence women have on their reputation;
thus we meet with few doctors who do not study to please the ladies.
When a man of talent has become celebrated it is true that he does not
lend himself to the crafty conspiracies which women hatch; but without
knowing it he becomes involved in them.
I suppose that a husband taught by the adventures of his own youth makes
up his mind to pick out a doctor for his wife, from the first days of
his marriage. So long as his feminine adversary fails to conceive
the assistance that she may derive from this ally, she will submit in
silence; but later on, if all her allurements fail to win over the man
chosen by her husband, she will take a more favorable opportunity to
give her husband her confidence, in the following remarkable manner.
“I don’t like the way in which the doctor feels my pulse!”
And of course the doctor is dropped.
Thus it happens that either a woman chooses her doctor, wins over the
man who has been imposed upon her, or procures his dismissal. But this
contest is very rare; the majority of young men who marry are acquainted
with none but beardless doctors whom they have no anxiety to procure for
their wives, and almost always the Esculapius of the household is
chosen by the feminine power. Thus it happens that some fine morning the
doctor, when he leaves the chamber of madame, who has been in bed for a
fortnight, is induced by her to say to you:
“I do not say that the condition of madame presents any serious
symptoms; but this constant drowsiness, this general listlessness, and
her natural tendency to a spinal affection demand great care. Her lymph
is inspissated. She wants a change of air. She ought to be sent either
to the waters of Bareges or to the waters of Plombieres.”
“All right, doctor.”
You allow your wife to go to Plombieres; but she goes there because
Captain Charles is quartered in the Vosges. She returns in capital
health and the waters of Plombieres have done wonders for her. She has
written to you every day, she has lavished upon you from a distance
every possible caress. The danger of a spinal affection has utterly
disappeared.
There is extant a little pamphlet, whose publication was prompted
doubtless by hate. It was published in Holland, and it contains some
very curious details of the manner in which Madame de Maintenon entered
into an understanding with Fagon, for the purposes of controlling
Louis XIV. Well, some morning your doctor will threaten you, as Fagon
threatened his master, with a fit of apoplexy, if you do not diet
yourself. This witty work of satire, doubtless the production of some
courtier, entitled “Madame de Saint Tron,” has been interpreted by the
modern author who has become proverbial as “the young doctor.” But his
delightful sketch is very much superior to the work whose title I
cite for the benefit of the book-lovers, and we have great pleasure in
acknowledging that the work of our clever contemporary has prevented us,
out of regard for the glory of the seventeenth century, from publishing
the fragment of the old pamphlet.
Very frequently a doctor becomes duped by the judicious manoeuvres of a
young and delicate wife, and comes to you with the announcement:
“Sir, I would not wish to alarm madame with regard to her condition;
but I will advise you, if you value her health, to keep her in perfect
tranquillity. The irritation at this moment seems to threaten the chest,
and we must gain control of it; there is need of rest for her, perfect
rest; the least agitation might change the seat of the malady. At this
crisis, the prospect of bearing a child would be fatal to her.”
“But, doctor--”
“Ah, yes! I know that!”
He laughs and leaves the house.
Like the rod of Moses, the doctor’s mandate makes and unmakes
generations. The doctor will restore you to your marriage bed with the
same arguments that he used in debarring you. He treats your wife for
complaints which she has not, in order to cure her of those which she
has, and all the while you have no idea of it; for the scientific jargon
of doctors can only be compared to the layers in which they envelop
their pills.
An honest woman in her chamber with the doctor is like a minister sure
of a majority; she has it in her power to make a horse, or a carriage,
according to her good pleasure and her taste; she will send you away or
receive you, as she likes. Sometimes she will pretend to be ill in
order to have a chamber separate from yours; sometimes she will surround
herself with all the paraphernalia of an invalid; she will have an old
woman for a nurse, regiments of vials and of bottles, and, environed by
these ramparts, will defy you by her invalid airs. She will talk to you
in such a depressing way of the electuaries and of the soothing draughts
which she has taken, of the agues which she has had, of her plasters and
cataplasms, that she will fill you with disgust at these sickly details,
if all the time these sham sufferings are not intended to serve as
engines by means of which, eventually, a successful attack may be made
on that singular abstraction known as _your honor_.
In this way your wife will be able to fortify herself at every point of
contact which you possess with the world, with society and with life.
Thus everything will take arms against you, and you will be alone among
all these enemies. But suppose that it is your unprecedented privilege
to possess a wife who is without religious connections, without parents
or intimate friends; that you have penetration enough to see through
all the tricks by which your wife’s lover tries to entrap you; that you
still have sufficient love for your fair enemy to resist all the Martons
of the earth; that, in fact, you have for your doctor a man who is so
celebrated that he has no time to listen to the maunderings of your
wife; or that if your Esculapius is madame’s vassal, you demand a
consultation, and an incorruptible doctor intervenes every time the
favorite doctor prescribes a remedy that disquiets you; even in that
case, your prospects will scarcely be more brilliant. In fact, even if
you do not succumb to this invasion of allies, you must not forget that,
so far, your adversary has not, so to speak, struck the decisive blow.
If you hold out still longer, your wife, having flung round you thread
upon thread, as a spider spins his web, an invisible net, will resort to
the arms which nature has given her, which civilization has perfected,
and which will be treated of in the next Meditation.