apartment."
I wished to avoid having to lead him to an apartment whose whereabouts
I did not know; but by chance we found it. The door was open and there
I saw my _valet de chambre_ asleep on an armchair. A candle was going
out on a table beside him. He drowsily offered a night robe to the
marquis. I was on pins and needles; but the marquis was in a mood to
be easily deceived, took the man for a mere sleepy-head, and made a
joke of the matter. We passed on to the apartment of Monsieur de
T-----. There was no misunderstanding the reception which he accorded
me, and the welcome, the compliments which he addressed to the
marquis, whom he almost forced to stay. He wished to take him to
madame in order that she might insist on his staying. As for me, I
received no such invitation. I was reminded that my health was
delicate, the country was damp, fever was in the air, and I seemed so
depressed that the chateau would prove too gloomy for me. The marquis
offered me his chaise and I accepted it. The husband seemed delighted
and we were all satisfied. But I could not refuse myself the pleasure
of seeing Madame de T----- once more. My impatience was wonderful. My
friend conceived no suspicions from the late sleep of his mistress.
"Isn't this fine?" he said to me as we followed Monsieur de T-----.
"He couldn't have spoken more kindly if she had dictated his words. He
is a fine fellow. I am not in the least annoyed by this
reconciliation; they will make a good home together, and you will
agree with me, that he could not have chosen a wife better able to do
the honors."
"Certainly," I replied.
"However pleasant the adventure has been," he went on with an air of
mystery, "you must be off! I will let Madame de T----- understand that
her secret will be well kept."
"On that point, my friend, she perhaps counts more on me than on you;
for you see her sleep is not disturbed by the matter."
"Oh! I quite agree that there is no one like you for putting a woman
to sleep."
"Yes, and a husband too, and if necessary a lover, my dear friend."
At last Monsieur de T----- was admitted to his wife's apartment, and
there we were all summoned.
"I trembled," said Madame de T----- to me, "for fear you would go
before I awoke, and I thank you for saving me the annoyance which that
would have caused me."
"Madame," I said, and she must have perceived the feeling that was in
my tones--"I come to say good-bye."
She looked at me and at the marquis with an air of disquietude; but
the self-satisfied, knowing look of her lover reassured her. She
laughed in her sleeve with me as if she would console me as well as
she could, without lowering herself in my eyes.
"He has played his part well," the marquis said to her in a low voice,
pointing to me, "and my gratitude--"
"Let us drop the subject," interrupted Madame de T-----; "you may be
sure that I am well aware of all I owe him."
At last Monsieur de T-----, with a sarcastic remark, dismissed me; my
friend threw the dust in his eyes by making fun of me; and I paid back
both of them by expressing my admiration for Madame de T-----, who
made fools of us all without forfeiting her dignity. I took myself
off; but Madame de T----- followed me, pretending to have a commission
to give me.
"Adieu, monsieur!" she said, "I am indebted to you for the very great
pleasure you have given me; but I have paid you back with a beautiful
dream," and she looked at me with an expression of subtle meaning.
"But adieu, and forever! You have plucked a solitary flower,
blossoming in its loveliness, which no man--"
She stopped and her thought evaporated in a sigh; but she checked the
rising flood of sensibility and smiled significantly.
"The countess loves you," she said. "If I have robbed her of some
transports, I give you back to her less ignorant than before. Adieu!
Do not make mischief between my friend and me."
She wrung my hand and left me.
More than once the ladies who had mislaid their fans blushed as they
listened to the old gentleman, whose brilliant elocution won their
indulgence for certain details which we have suppressed, as too erotic
for the present age; nevertheless, we may believe that each lady
complimented him in private; for some time afterwards he gave to each
of them, as also to the masculine guests, a copy of this charming
story, twenty-five copies of which were printed by Pierre Didot. It is
from copy No. 24 that the author has transcribed this tale, hitherto
unpublished, and, strange to say, attributed to Dorat. It has the
merit of yielding important lessons for husbands, while at the same
time it gives the celibates a delightful picture of morals in the last
century.
MEDITATION XXV.
OF ALLIES.
Of all the miseries that civil war can bring upon a country the
greatest lies in the appeal which one of the contestants always ends
by making to some foreign government.
Unhappily we are compelled to confess that all women make this great
mistake, for the lover is only the first of their soldiers. It may be
a member of their family or at least a distant cousin. This
Meditation, then, is intended to answer the inquiry, what assistance
can each of the different powers which influence human life give to
your wife? or better than that, what artifices will she resort to to
arm them against you?
Two beings united by marriage are subject to the laws of religion and
society; to those of private life, and, from considerations of health,
to those of medicine. We will therefore divide this important
Meditation into six paragraphs:
1. OF RELIGIONS AND OF CONFESSION; CONSIDERED IN THEIR CONNECTION
WITH MARRIAGE.
2. OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW.
3. OF BOARDING SCHOOL FRIENDS AND INTIMATE FRIENDS.
4. OF THE LOVER'S ALLIES.
5. OF THE MAID.
6. OF THE DOCTOR.
1. OF RELIGIONS AND OF CONFESSION; CONSIDERED IN THEIR
CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE.
La Bruyere has very wittily said, "It is too much for a husband to
have ranged against him both devotion and gallantry; a woman ought to
choose but one of them for her ally."
The author thinks that La Bruyere is mistaken.
2. OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW.
Up to the age of thirty the face of a woman is a book written in a
foreign tongue, which one may still translate in spite of all the
_feminisms_ of the idiom; but on passing her fortieth year a woman
becomes an insoluble riddle; and if any one can see through an old
woman, it is another old woman.
Some diplomats have attempted on more than one occasion the diabolical
task of gaining over the dowagers who opposed their machinations; but
if they have ever succeeded it was only after making enormous
concessions to them; for diplomats are practiced people and we do not
think that you can employ their recipe in dealing with your
mother-in-law. She will be the first aid-de-camp of her daughter, for
if the mother did not take her daughter's side, it would be one of
those monstrous and unnatural exceptions, which unhappily for husbands
are extremely rare.
When a man is so happy as to possess a mother-in-law who is
well-preserved, he may easily keep her in check for a certain time,
although he may not know any young celibate brave enough to assail
her. But generally husbands who have the slightest conjugal genius
will find a way of pitting their own mother against that of their
wife, and in that case they will naturally neutralize each other's
power.
To be able to keep a mother-in-law in the country while he lives in
Paris, and vice versa, is a piece of good fortune which a husband too
rarely meets with.
What of making mischief between the mother and the daughter?--That may
be possible; but in order to accomplish such an enterprise he must
have the metallic heart of Richelieu, who made a son and a mother
deadly enemies to each other. However, the jealousy of a husband who
forbids his wife to pray to male saints and wishes her to address only
female saints, would allow her liberty to see her mother.
Many sons-in-law take an extreme course which settles everything,
which consists in living on bad terms with their mothers-in-law. This
unfriendliness would be very adroit policy, if it did not inevitably
result in drawing tighter the ties that unite mother and daughter.
These are about all the means which you have for resisting maternal
influence in your home. As for the services which your wife can claim
from her mother, they are immense; and the assistance which she may
derive from the neutrality of her mother is not less powerful. But on
this point everything passes out of the domain of science, for all is
veiled in secrecy. The reinforcements which a mother brings up in
support of a daughter are so varied in nature, they depend so much on
circumstances, that it would be folly to attempt even a nomenclature
for them. Yet you may write out among the most valuable precepts of
this conjugal gospel, the following maxims.
A husband should never let his wife visit her mother unattended.
A husband ought to study all the reasons why all the celibates under
forty who form her habitual society are so closely united by ties of
friendship to his mother-in-law; for, if a daughter rarely falls in
love with the lover of her mother, her mother has always a weak spot
for her daughter's lover.
3. OF BOARDING SCHOOL FRIENDS AND INTIMATE FRIENDS.
Louise de L-----, daughter of an officer killed at Wagram, had been
the object of Napoleon's special protection. She left Ecouen to marry
a commissary general, the Baron de V-----, who is very rich.
Louise was eighteen and the baron forty. She was ordinary in face and
her complexion could not be called white, but she had a charming
figure, good eyes, a small foot, a pretty hand, good taste and
abundant intelligence. The baron, worn out by the fatigues of war and
still more by the excesses of a stormy youth, had one of those faces
upon which the Republic, the Directory, the Consulate and the Empire
seemed to have set their impress.
He became so deeply in love with his wife, that he asked and obtained
from the Emperor a post at Paris, in order that he might be enabled to
watch over his treasure. He was as jealous as Count Almaviva, still
more from vanity than from love. The young orphan had married her
husband from necessity, and, flattered by the ascendancy she wielded
over a man much older than herself, waited upon his wishes and his
needs; but her delicacy was offended from the first days of their
marriage by the habits and ideas of a man whose manners were tinged
with republican license. He was a predestined.
I do not know exactly how long the baron made his honeymoon last, nor
when war was declared in his household; but I believe it happened in
1816, at a very brilliant ball given by Monsieur D-----, a
commissariat officer, that the commissary general, who had been
promoted head of the department, admired the beautiful Madame B-----,
the wife of a banker, and looked at her much more amorously than a
married man should have allowed himself to do.
At two o'clock in the morning it happened that the banker, tired of
waiting any longer, went home leaving his wife at the ball.
"We are going to take you home to your house," said the baroness to
Madame B-----. "Monsieur de V-----, offer your arm to Emilie!"
And now the baron is seated in his carriage next to a woman who,
during the whole evening, had been offered and had refused a thousand
attentions, and from whom he had hoped in vain to win a single look.
There she was, in all the lustre of her youth and beauty, displaying
the whitest shoulders and the most ravishing lines of beauty. Her
face, which still reflected the pleasures of the evening, seemed to
vie with the brilliancy of her satin gown; her eyes to rival the blaze
of her diamonds; and her skin to cope with the soft whiteness of the
marabouts which tied in her hair, set off the ebon tresses and the
ringlets dangling from her headdress. Her tender voice would stir the
chords of the most insensible hearts; in a word, so powerfully did she
wake up love in the human breast that Robert d'Abrissel himself would
perhaps have yielded to her.
The baron glanced at his wife, who, overcome with fatigue, had sunk to
sleep in a corner of the carriage. He compared, in spite of himself,
the toilette of Louise and that of Emilie. Now on occasions of this
kind the presence of a wife is singularly calculated to sharpen the
unquenchable desires of a forbidden love. Moreover, the glances of the
baron, directed alternately to his wife and to her friend, were easy
to interpret, and Madame B----- interpreted them.
"Poor Louise," she said, "she is overtired. Going out does not suit
her, her tastes are so simple. At Ecouen she was always reading--"
"And you, what used you to do?"
"I, sir? Oh, I thought about nothing but acting comely. It was my
passion!"
"But why do you so rarely visit Madame de V-----? We have a country
house at Saint-Prix, where we could have a comedy acted, in a little
theatre which I have built there."
"If I have not visited Madame de V-----, whose fault is it?" she
replied. "You are so jealous that you will not allow her either to
visit her friends or to receive them."
"I jealous!" cried Monsieur de V-----, "after four years of marriage,
and after having had three children!"
"Hush," said Emilie, striking the fingers of the baron with her fan,
"Louise is not asleep!"
The carriage stopped, and the baron offered his hand to his wife's
fair friend and helped her to get out.
"I hope," said Madame B-----, "that you will not prevent Louise from
coming to the ball which I am giving this week."
The baron made her a respectful bow.
This ball was a triumph of Madame B-----'s and the ruin of the husband
of Louise; for he became desperately enamored of Emilie, to whom he
would have sacrificed a hundred lawful wives.
Some months after that evening on which the baron gained some hopes of
succeeding with his wife's friend, he found himself one morning at the
house of Madame B-----, when the maid came to announce the Baroness de
V-----.
"Ah!" cried Emilie, "if Louise were to see you with me at such an hour
as this, she would be capable of compromising me. Go into that closet
and don't make the least noise."
The husband, caught like a mouse in a trap, concealed himself in the
closet.
"Good-day, my dear!" said the two women, kissing each other.
"Why are you come so early?" asked Emilie.
"Oh! my dear, cannot you guess? I came to have an understanding with
you!"
"What, a duel?"
"Precisely, my dear. I am not like you, not I! I love my husband and
am jealous of him. You! you are beautiful, charming, you have the
right to be a coquette, you can very well make fun of B-----, to whom
your virtue seems to be of little importance. But as you have plenty
of lovers in society, I beg you that you will leave me my husband. He
is always at your house, and he certainly would not come unless you
were the attraction."
"What a very pretty jacket you have on."
"Do you think so? My maid made it."
"Then I shall get Anastasia to take a lesson from Flore--"
"So, then, my dear, I count on your friendship to refrain from
bringing trouble in my house."
"But, my child, I do not know how you can conceive that I should fall
in love with your husband; he is coarse and fat as a deputy of the
centre. He is short and ugly--Ah! I will allow that he is generous,
but that is all you can say for him, and this is a quality which is
all in all only to opera girls; so that you can understand, my dear,
that if I were choosing a lover, as you seem to suppose I am, I
wouldn't choose an old man like your baron. If I have given him any
hopes, if I have received him, it was certainly for the purpose of
amusing myself, and of giving you liberty; for I believed you had a
weakness for young Rostanges."
"I?" exclaimed Louise, "God preserve me from it, my dear; he is the
most intolerable coxcomb in the world. No, I assure you, I love my
husband! You may laugh as you choose; it is true. I know it may seem
ridiculous, but consider, he has made my fortune, he is no miser, and
he is everything to me, for it has been my unhappy lot to be left an
orphan. Now even if I did not love him, I ought to try to preserve his
esteem. Have I a family who will some day give me shelter?"
"Come, my darling, let us speak no more about it," said Emilie,
interrupting her friend, "for it tires me to death."
After a few trifling remarks the baroness left.
"How is this, monsieur?" cried Madame B-----, opening the door of the
closet where the baron was frozen with cold, for this incident took
place in winter; "how is this? Aren't you ashamed of yourself for not
adoring a little wife who is so interesting? Don't speak to me of
love; you may idolize me, as you say you do, for a certain time, but
you will never love me as you love Louise. I can see that in your
heart I shall never outweigh the interest inspired by a virtuous wife,
children, and a family circle. I should one day be deserted and become
the object of your bitter reflections. You would coldly say of me 'I
have had that woman!' That phrase I have heard pronounced by men with
the most insulting indifference. You see, monsieur, that I reason in
cold blood, and that I do not love you, because you never would be
able to love me."
"What must I do then to convince you of my love?" cried the baron,
fixing his gaze on the young woman.
She had never appeared to him so ravishingly beautiful as at that
moment, when her soft voice poured forth a torrent of words whose
sternness was belied by the grace of her gestures, by the pose of her
head and by her coquettish attitude.
"Oh, when I see Louise in possession of a lover," she replied, "when I
know that I am taking nothing away from her, and that she has nothing
to regret in losing your affection; when I am quite sure that you love
her no longer, and have obtained certain proof of your indifference
towards her--Oh, then I may listen to you!--These words must seem
odious to you," she continued in an earnest voice; "and so indeed they
are, but do not think that they have been pronounced by me. I am the
rigorous mathematician who makes his deductions from a preliminary
proposition. You are married, and do you deliberately set about making
love to some one else? I should be mad to give any encouragement to a
man who cannot be mine eternally."
"Demon!" exclaimed the husband. "Yes, you are a demon, and not a
woman!"
"Come now, you are really amusing!" said the young woman as she seized
the bell-rope.
"Oh! no, Emilie," continued the lover of forty, in a calmer voice. "Do
not ring; stop, forgive me! I will sacrifice everything for you."
"But I do not promise you anything!" she answered quickly with a
laugh.
"My God! How you make me suffer!" he exclaimed.
"Well, and have not you in your life caused the unhappiness of more
than one person?" she asked. "Remember all the tears which have been
shed through you and for you! Oh, your passion does not inspire me
with the least pity. If you do not wish to make me laugh, make me
share your feelings."
"Adieu, madame, there is a certain clemency in your sternness. I
appreciate the lesson you have taught me. Yes, I have many faults to
expiate."
"Well then, go and repent of them," she said with a mocking smile; "in
making Louise happy you will perform the rudest penance in your
power."
They parted. But the love of the baron was too violent to allow of
Madame B-----'s harshness failing to accomplish her end, namely, the
separation of the married couple.
At the end of some months the Baron de V----- and his wife lived
apart, though they lived in the same mansion. The baroness was the
object of universal pity, for in public she always did justice to her
husband and her resignation seemed wonderful. The most prudish women
of society found nothing to blame in the friendship which united
Louise to the young Rostanges. And all was laid to the charge of
Monsieur de V-----'s folly.
When this last had made all the sacrifices that a man could make for
Madame B-----, his perfidious mistress started for the waters of Mount
Dore, for Switzerland and for Italy, on the pretext of seeking the
restoration of her health.
The baron died of inflammation of the liver, being attended during his
sickness by the most touching ministrations which his wife could
lavish upon him; and judging from the grief which he manifested at
having deserted her, he seemed never to have suspected her
participation in the plan which had been his ruin.
This anecdote, which we have chosen from a thousand others,
exemplifies the services which two women can render each other.
From the words--"Let me have the pleasure of bringing my husband" up
to the conception of the drama, whose denouement was inflammation of
the liver, every female perfidy was assembled to work out the end.
Certain incidents will, of course, be met with which diversify more or
less the typical example which we have given, but the march of the
drama is almost always the same. Moreover a husband ought always to
distrust the woman friends of his wife. The subtle artifices of these
lying creatures rarely fail of their effect, for they are seconded by
two enemies, who always keep close to a man--and these are vanity and
desire.
4. OF THE LOVER'S ALLIES.
The man who hastens to tell another man that he has dropped a thousand
franc bill from his pocket-book, or even that the handkerchief is
coming out of his pocket, would think it a mean thing to warn him that
some one was carrying off his wife. There is certainly something
extremely odd in this moral inconsistency, but after all it admits of
explanation. Since the law cannot exercise any interference with
matrimonial rights, the citizens have even less right to constitute
themselves a conjugal police; and when one restores a thousand franc
bill to him who has lost it, he acts under a certain kind of
obligation, founded on the principle which says, "Do unto others as ye
would they should do unto you!"
But by what reasoning can justification be found for the help which
one celibate never asks in vain, but always receives from another
celibate in deceiving a husband, and how shall we qualify the
rendering of such help? A man who is incapable of assisting a gendarme
in discovering an assassin, has no scruple in taking a husband to a
theatre, to a concert or even to a questionable house, in order to
help a comrade, whom he would not hesitate to kill in a duel
to-morrow, in keeping an assignation, the result of which is to
introduce into a family a spurious child, and to rob two brothers of a
portion of their fortune by giving them a co-heir whom they never
perhaps would otherwise have had; or to effect the misery of three
human beings. We must confess that integrity is a very rare virtue,
and, very often, the man that thinks he has most actually has least.
Families have been divided by feuds, and brothers have been murdered,
which events would never have taken place if some friend had refused
to perform what passes to the world as a harmless trick.
It is impossible for a man to be without some hobby or other, and all
of us are devoted either to hunting, fishing, gambling, music, money,
or good eating. Well, your ruling passion will always be an accomplice
in the snare which a lover sets for you, the invisible hand of this
passion will direct your friends, or his, whether they consent or not,
to play a part in the little drama when they want to take you away
from home, or to induce you to leave your wife to the mercy of
another. A lover will spend two whole months, if necessary, in
planning the construction of the mouse-trap.
I have seen the most cunning men on earth thus taken in.