My imagination has followed marriage through all the phases of its
fantastic life in so fraternal a spirit, that I seem to have grown old
with the house I made my home so early in life at the commencement of
this work.
After experiencing in thought the ardor of man’s first passion; and
outlining, in however imperfect a way, the principal incidents of
married life; after struggling against so many wives that did not belong
to me, exhausting myself in conflict with so many personages called up
from nothingness, and joining so many battles, I feel an intellectual
lassitude, which makes me see everything in life hang, as it were, in
mournful crape. I seem to have a catarrh, to look at everything through
green spectacles, I feel as if my hands trembled, as if I must needs
employ the second half of my existence and of my book in apologizing for
the follies of the first half.
I see myself surrounded by tall children of whom I am not the father,
and seated beside a wife I never married. I think I can feel wrinkles
furrowing my brow. The fire before which I am placed crackles, as if in
derision, the room is ancient in its furniture; I shudder with sudden
fright as I lay my hand upon my heart, and ask myself: “Is that, too,
withered?”
I am like an old attorney, unswayed by any sentiment whatever. I never
accept any statement unless it be confirmed, according to the poetic
maxim of Lord Byron, by the testimony of at least two false witnesses.
No face can delude me. I am melancholy and overcast with gloom. I know
the world and it has no more illusions for me. My closest friends have
proved traitors. My wife and myself exchange glances of profound meaning
and the slightest word either of us utters is a dagger which pierces
the heart of the other through and through. I stagnate in a dreary
calm. This then is the tranquillity of old age! The old man possesses
in himself the cemetery which shall soon possess him. He is growing
accustomed to the chill of the tomb. Man, according to philosophers,
dies in detail; at the same time he may be said even to cheat death; for
that which his withered hand has laid hold upon, can it be called life?
Oh, to die young and throbbing with life! ‘Tis a destiny enviable
indeed! For is not this, as a delightful poet has said, “to take away
with one all one’s illusions, to be buried like an Eastern king, with
all one’s jewels and treasures, with all that makes the fortune of
humanity!”
How many thank-offerings ought we to make to the kind and beneficent
spirit that breathes in all things here below! Indeed, the care which
nature takes to strip us piece by piece of our raiment, to unclothe the
soul by enfeebling gradually our hearing, sight, and sense of touch, in
making slower the circulation of our blood, and congealing our humors so
as to make us as insensible to the approach of death as we were to the
beginnings of life, this maternal care which she lavishes on our frail
tabernacle of clay, she also exhibits in regard to the emotions of man,
and to the double existence which is created by conjugal love. She first
sends us Confidence, which with extended hand and open heart says to us:
“Behold, I am thine forever!” Lukewarmness follows, walking with languid
tread, turning aside her blonde face with a yawn, like a young widow
obliged to listen to the minister of state who is ready to sign for her
a pension warrant. Then Indifference comes; she stretches herself on the
divan, taking no care to draw down the skirts of her robe which Desire
but now lifted so chastely and so eagerly. She casts a glance upon the
nuptial bed, with modesty and without shamelessness; and, if she longs
for anything, it is for the green fruit that calls up again to life the
dulled papillae with which her blase palate is bestrewn. Finally the
philosophical Experience of Life presents herself, with careworn and
disdainful brow, pointing with her finger to the results, and not
the causes of life’s incidents; to the tranquil victory, not to the
tempestuous combat. She reckons up the arrearages, with farmers, and
calculates the dowry of a child. She materializes everything. By a touch
of her wand, life becomes solid and springless; of yore, all was fluid,
now it is crystallized into rock. Delight no longer exists for our
hearts, it has received its sentence, ‘twas but mere sensation, a
passing paroxysm. What the soul desires to-day is a condition of fixity;
and happiness alone is permanent, and consists in absolute tranquillity,
in the regularity with which eating and sleeping succeed each other, and
the sluggish organs perform their functions.
“This is horrible!” I cried; “I am young and full of life! Perish all
the books in the world rather than my illusions should perish!”
I left my laboratory and plunged into the whirl of Paris. As I saw the
fairest faces glide by before me, I felt that I was not old. The first
young woman who appeared before me, lovely in face and form and dressed
to perfection, with one glance of fire made all the sorcery whose spells
I had voluntarily submitted to vanish into thin air. Scarcely had I
walked three steps in the Tuileries gardens, the place which I had
chosen as my destination, before I saw the prototype of the matrimonial
situation which has last been described in this book. Had I desired to
characterize, to idealize, to personify marriage, as I conceived it
to be, it would have been impossible for the Creator himself to have
produced so complete a symbol of it as I then saw before me.
Imagine a woman of fifty, dressed in a jacket of reddish brown merino,
holding in her left hand a green cord, which was tied to the collar of
an English terrier, and with her right arm linked with that of a man
in knee-breeches and silk stockings, whose hat had its brim whimsically
turned up, while snow-white tufts of hair like pigeon plumes rose at its
sides. A slender queue, thin as a quill, tossed about on the back of
his sallow neck, which was thick, as far as it could be seen above the
turned down collar of a threadbare coat. This couple assumed the stately
tread of an ambassador; and the husband, who was at least seventy,
stopped complaisantly every time the terrier began to gambol. I hastened
to pass this living impersonation of my Meditation, and was surprised to
the last degree to recognize the Marquis de T-----, friend of the Comte
de Noce, who had owed me for a long time the end of the interrupted
story which I related in the _Theory of the Bed_. [See Meditation XVII.]
“I have the honor to present to you the Marquise de T-----,” he said to
me.
I made a low bow to a lady whose face was pale and wrinkled; her
forehead was surmounted by a toupee, whose flattened ringlets, ranged
around it, deceived no one, but only emphasized, instead of concealing,
the wrinkles by which it was deeply furrowed. The lady was slightly
roughed, and had the appearance of an old country actress.
“I do not see, sir, what you can say against a marriage such as ours,”
said the old man to me.
“The laws of Rome forefend!” I cried, laughing.
The marchioness gave me a look filled with inquietude as well as
disapprobation, which seemed to say, “Is it possible that at my age I
have become but a concubine?”
We sat down upon a bench, in the gloomy clump of trees planted at the
corner of the high terrace which commands La Place Louis XV, on the
side of the Garde-Meuble. Autumn had already begun to strip the trees of
their foliage, and was scattering before our eyes the yellow leaves
of his garland; but the sun nevertheless filled the air with grateful
warmth.
“Well, is your work finished?” asked the old man, in the unctuous tones
peculiar to men of the ancient aristocracy.
And with these words he gave a sardonic smile, as if for commentary.
“Very nearly, sir,” I replied. “I have come to the philosophic
situation, which you appear to have reached, but I confess that I--”
“You are searching for ideas?” he added--finishing for me a sentence,
which I confess I did not know how to end.
“Well,” he continued, “you may boldly assume, that on arriving at the
winter of his life, a man--a man who thinks, I mean--ends by denying
that love has any existence, in the wild form with which our illusions
invested it!”
“What! would you deny the existence of love on the day after that of
marriage?”
“In the first place, the day after would be the very reason; but my
marriage was a commercial speculation,” replied he, stooping to speak
into my ear. “I have thereby purchased the care, the attention, the
services which I need; and I am certain to obtain all the consideration
my age demands; for I have willed all my property to my nephew, and as
my wife will be rich only during my life, you can imagine how--”
I turned on the old marquis a look so piercing that he wrung my hand
and said: “You seem to have a good heart, for nothing is certain in this
life--”
“Well, you may be sure that I have arranged a pleasant surprise for her
in my will,” he replied, gayly.
“Come here, Joseph,” cried the marchioness, approaching a servant who
carried an overcoat lined with silk. “The marquis is probably feeling
the cold.”
The old marquis put on his overcoat, buttoned it up, and taking my arm,
led me to the sunny side of the terrace.
“In your work,” he continued, “you have doubtless spoken of the love of
a young man. Well, if you wish to act up to the scope which you give to
your work--in the word ec--elec--”
“Eclectic,” I said, smiling, seeing he could not remember this
philosophic term.
“I know the word well!” he replied. “If then you wish to keep your vow
of eclecticism, you should be willing to express certain virile ideas
on the subject of love which I will communicate to you, and I will not
grudge you the benefit of them, if benefit there be; I wish to bequeath
my property to you, but this will be all that you will get of it.”
“There is no money fortune which is worth as much as a fortune of ideas
if they be valuable ideas! I shall, therefore, listen to you with a
grateful mind.”
“There is no such thing as love,” pursued the old man, fixing his gaze
upon me. “It is not even a sentiment, it is an unhappy necessity, which
is midway between the needs of the body and those of the soul. But
siding for a moment with your youthful thoughts, let us try to reason
upon this social malady. I suppose that you can only conceive of love as
either a need or a sentiment.”