town of B-----, where a regiment of the chasseurs of Cantal were
garrisoned. A fascinating officer of this regiment had fallen in love
with the wife of this pettifogger, and the regiment was leaving before
the two lovers had been able to enjoy the least privacy. It was the
fourth military man over whom the lawyer had triumphed. As he left the
dinner-table one evening, about six o'clock, the husband took a walk
on the terrace of his garden from which he could see the whole country
side. The officers arrived at this moment to take leave of him.
Suddenly the flame of a conflagration burst forth on the horizon.
"Heavens! La Daudiniere is on fire!" exclaimed the major. He was an
old simple-minded soldier, who had dined at home. Every one mounted
horse. The young wife smiled as she found herself alone, for her
lover, hidden in the coppice, had said to her, "It is a straw stack on
fire!" The flank of the husband was turned with all the more facility
in that a fine courser was provided for him by the captain, and with a
delicacy very rare in the cavalry, the lover actually sacrificed a few
moments of his happiness in order to catch up with the cavalcade, and
return in company with the husband.
Marriage is a veritable duel, in which persistent watchfulness is
required in order to triumph over an adversary; for, if you are
unlucky enough to turn your head, the sword of the celibate will
pierce you through and through.
5. OF THE MAID.
The prettiest waiting-maid I have ever seen is that of Madame V----y,
a lady who to-day plays at Paris a brilliant part among the most
fashionable women, and passes for a wife who keeps on excellent terms
with her husband. Mademoiselle Celestine is a person whose points of
beauty are so numerous that, in order to describe her, it would be
necessary to translate the thirty verses which we are told form an
inscription in the seraglio of the Grand Turk and contain each of them
an excellent description of one of the thirty beauties of women.
"You show a great deal of vanity in keeping near you such an
accomplished creature," said a lady to the mistress of the house.
"Ah! my dear, some day perhaps you will find yourself jealous of me in
possessing Celestine."
"She must be endowed with very rare qualities, I suppose? She perhaps
dresses you well?"
"Oh, no, very badly!"
"She sews well?"
"She never touches her needle."
"She is faithful?"
"She is one of those whose fidelity costs more than the most cunning
dishonesty."
"You astonish me, my dear; she is then your foster-sister?"
"Not at all; she is positively good for nothing, but she is more
useful to me than any other member of my household. If she remains
with me ten years, I have promised her twenty thousand francs. It will
be money well earned, and I shall not forget to give it!" said the
young woman, nodding her head with a meaning gesture.
At last the questioner of Madame V----y understood.
When a woman has no friend of her own sex intimate enough to assist
her in proving false to marital love, her maid is a last resource
which seldom fails in bringing about the desired result.
Oh! after ten years of marriage to find under his roof, and to see all
the time, a young girl of from sixteen to eighteen, fresh, dressed
with taste, the treasures of whose beauty seem to breathe defiance,
whose frank bearing is irresistibly attractive, whose downcast eyes
seem to fear you, whose timid glance tempts you, and for whom the
conjugal bed has no secrets, for she is at once a virgin and an
experienced woman! How can a man remain cold, like St. Anthony, before
such powerful sorcery, and have the courage to remain faithful to the
good principles represented by a scornful wife, whose face is always
stern, whose manners are always snappish, and who frequently refuses
to be caressed? What husband is stoical enough to resist such fires,
such frosts? There, where you see a new harvest of pleasure, the young
innocent sees an income, and your wife her liberty. It is a little
family compact, which is signed in the interest of good will.
In this case, your wife acts with regard to marriage as young
fashionables do with regard to their country. If they are drawn for
the army, they buy a man to carry the musket, to die in their place
and to spare them the hardships of military life.
In compromises of this sort there is not a single woman who does not
know how to put her husband in the wrong. I have noticed that, by a
supreme stroke of diplomacy, the majority of wives do not admit their
maids into the secret of the part which they give them to play. They
trust to nature, and assume an affected superiority over the lover and
his mistress.
These secret perfidies of women explain to a great degree the odd
features of married life which are to be observed in the world; and I
have heard women discuss, with profound sagacity, the dangers which
are inherent in this terrible method of attack, and it is necessary to
know thoroughly both the husband and the creature to whom he is to be
abandoned, in order to make successful use of her. Many a woman, in
this connection, has been the victim of her own calculations.
Moreover, the more impetuous and passionate a husband shows himself,
the less will a woman dare to employ this expedient; but a husband
caught in this snare will never have anything to say to his stern
better-half, when the maid, giving evidence of the fault she has
committed, is sent into the country with an infant and a dowry.
6. OF THE DOCTOR.
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.
MEDITATION XXVI.
OF DIFFERENT WEAPONS.
A weapon is anything which is used for the purpose of wounding. From
this point of view, some sentiments prove to be the most cruel weapons
which man can employ against his fellow man. The genius of Schiller,
lucid as it was comprehensive, seems to have revealed all the
phenomena which certain ideas bring to light in the human organization
by their keen and penetrating action. A man may be put to death by a
thought. Such is the moral of those heartrending scenes, when in _The
Brigands_ the poet shows a young man, with the aid of certain ideas,
making such powerful assaults on the heart of an old man, that he ends
by causing the latter's death. The time is not far distant when
science will be able to observe the complicated mechanism of our
thoughts and to apprehend the transmission of our feelings. Some
developer of the occult sciences will prove that our intellectual
organization constitutes nothing more than a kind of interior man, who
projects himself with less violence than the exterior man, and that
the struggle which may take place between two such powers as these,
although invisible to our feeble eyes, is not a less mortal struggle
than that in which our external man compels us to engage.
But these considerations belong to a different department of study
from that in which we are now engaged; these subjects we intend to
deal with in a future publication; some of our friends are already
acquainted with one of the most important,--that, namely, entitled
"THE PATHOLOGY OF SOCIAL LIFE, _or Meditations mathematical, physical,
chemical and transcendental on the manifestations of thought, taken
under all the forms which are produced by the state of society,
whether by living, marriage, conduct, veterinary medicine, or by
speech and action, etc._," in which all these great questions are
fully discussed. The aim of this brief metaphysical observation is
only to remind you that the higher classes of society reason too well
to admit of their being attacked by any other than intellectual arms.
Although it is true that tender and delicate souls are found enveloped
in a body of metallic hardness, at the same time there are souls of
bronze enveloped in bodies so supple and capricious that their grace
attracts the friendship of others, and their beauty calls for a
caress. But if you flatter the exterior man with your hand, the _Homo
duplex_, the interior man, to use an expression of Buffon, immediately
rouses himself and rends you with his keen points of contact.
This description of a special class of human creatures, which we hope
you will not run up against during your earthly journey, presents a
picture of what your wife may be to you. Every one of the sentiments
which nature has endowed your heart with, in their gentlest form, will
become a dagger in the hand of your wife. You will be stabbed every
moment, and you will necessarily succumb; for your love will flow like
blood from every wound.
This is the last struggle, but for her it also means victory.
In order to carry out the distinction which we think we have
established among three sorts of feminine temperament, we will divide
this Meditation into three parts, under the following titles:
1. OF HEADACHES.
2. OF NERVOUS AFFECTATIONS.
3. OF MODESTY, IN ITS CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE.
1. OF HEADACHES.
Women are constantly the dupes or the victims of excessive
sensibility; but we have already demonstrated that with the greater
number of them this delicacy of soul must needs, almost without their
knowing it, receive many rude blows, from the very fact of their
marriage. (See Meditations entitled _The Predestined_ and _Of the
Honeymoon_.) Most of the means of defence instinctively employed by
husbands are nothing but traps set for the liveliness of feminine
affections.
Now the moment comes when the wife, during the Civil War, traces by a
single act of thought the history of her moral life, and is irritated
on perceiving the prodigious way in which you have taken advantage of
her sensibility. It is very rarely that women, moved either by an
innate feeling for revenge, which they themselves can never explain,
or by their instinct of domination, fail to discover that this quality
in their natural machinery, when brought into play against the man, is
inferior to no other instrument for obtaining ascendancy over him.
With admirable cleverness, they proceed to find out what chords in the
hearts of their husbands are most easily touched; and when once they
discover this secret, they eagerly proceed to put it into practice;
then, like a child with a mechanical toy, whose spring excites their
curiosity, they go on employing it, carelessly calling into play the
movements of the instrument, and satisfied simply with their success
in doing so. If they kill you, they will mourn over you with the best
grace in the world, as the most virtuous, the most excellent, the most
sensible of men.
In this way your wife will first arm herself with that generous
sentiment which leads us to respect those who are in pain. The man
most disposed to quarrel with a woman full of life and health becomes
helpless before a woman who is weak and feeble. If your wife has not
attained the end of her secret designs, by means of those various
methods already described, she will quickly seize this all-powerful
weapon. In virtue of this new strategic method, you will see the young
girl, so strong in life and beauty, whom you had wedded in her flower,
metamorphosing herself into a pale and sickly woman.
Now headache is an affection which affords infinite resources to a
woman. This malady, which is the easiest of all to feign, for it is
destitute of any apparent symptom, merely obliges her to say: "I have
a headache." A woman trifles with you and there is no one in the world
who can contradict her skull, whose impenetrable bones defy touch or
ocular test. Moreover, headache is, in our opinion, the queen of
maladies, the pleasantest and the most terrible weapon employed by
wives against their husbands. There are some coarse and violent men
who have been taught the tricks of women by their mistresses, in the
happy hours of their celibacy, and so flatter themselves that they are
never to be caught by this vulgar trap. But all their efforts, all
their arguments end by being vanquished before the magic of these
words: "I have a headache." If a husband complains, or ventures on a
reproach, if he tries to resist the power of this _Il buondo cani_ of
marriage, he is lost.
Imagine a young woman, voluptuously lying on a divan, her head softly
supported by a cushion, one hand hanging down; on a small table close
at hand is her glass of lime-water. Now place by her side a burly
husband. He has made five or six turns round the room; but each time
he has turned on his heels to begin his walk all over again, the
little invalid has made a slight movement of her eyebrows in a vain
attempt to remind him that the slightest noise fatigues her. At last
he musters all his courage and utters a protest against her pretended
malady, in the bold phrase:
"And have you really a headache?"
At these words the young woman slightly raises her languid head, lifts
an arm, which feebly falls back again upon her divan, raises her eyes
to the ceiling, raises all that she has power to raise; then darting
at you a leaden glance, she says in a voice of remarkable feebleness:
"Oh! What can be the matter with me? I suffer the agonies of death!
And this is all the comfort you give me! Ah! you men, it is plainly
seen that nature has not given you the task of bringing children into
the world. What egoists and tyrants you are! You take us in all the
beauty of our youth, fresh, rosy, with tapering waist, and then all is
well! When your pleasures have ruined the blooming gifts which we
received from nature, you never forgive us for having forfeited them
to you! That was all understood. You will allow us to have neither the
virtues nor the sufferings of our condition. You must needs have
children, and we pass many nights in taking care of them. But
child-bearing has ruined our health, and left behind the germs of
serious maladies.--Oh, what pain I suffer! There are few women who are
not subject to headaches; but your wife must be an exception. You even
laugh at our sufferings; that is generosity!--please don't walk about
--I should not have expected this of you!--Stop the clock; the click
of the pendulum rings in my head. Thanks! Oh, what an unfortunate
creature I am! Have you a scent-bottle with you? Yes, oh! for pity's
sake, allow me to suffer in peace, and go away; for this scent splits
my head!"
What can you say in reply? Do you not hear within you a voice which
cries, "And what if she is actually suffering?" Moreover, almost all
husbands evacuate the field of battle very quietly, while their wives
watch them from the corner of their eyes, marching off on tip-toe and
closing the door quietly on the chamber henceforth to be considered
sacred by them.
Such is the headache, true or false, which is patronized at your home.
Then the headache begins to play a regular role in the bosom of your
family. It is a theme on which a woman can play many admirable
variations. She sets it forth in every key. With the aid of the
headache alone a wife can make a husband desperate. A headache seizes
madame when she chooses, where she chooses, and as much as she
chooses. There are headaches of five days, of ten minutes, periodic or
intermittent headaches.
You sometimes find your wife in bed, in pain, helpless, and the blinds
of her room are closed. The headache has imposed silence on every one,
from the regions of the porter's lodge, where he is cutting wood, even
to the garret of your groom, from which he is throwing down innocent
bundles of straw. Believing in this headache, you leave the house, but
on your return you find that madame has decamped! Soon madame returns,
fresh and ruddy:
"The doctor came," she says, "and advised me to take exercise, and I
find myself much better!"
Another day you wish to enter madame's room.
"Oh, sir," says the maid, showing the most profound astonishment,
"madame has her usual headache, and I have never seen her in such
pain! The doctor has been sent for."
"You are a happy man," said Marshal Augereau to General R-----, "to
have such a pretty wife!"
"To have!" replied the other. "If I have my wife ten days in the year,
that is about all. These confounded women have always either the
headache or some other thing!"
The headache in France takes the place of the sandals, which, in
Spain, the Confessor leaves at the door of the chamber in which he is
with his penitent.
If your wife, foreseeing some hostile intentions on your part, wishes
to make herself as inviolable as the charter, she immediately gets up
a little headache performance. She goes to bed in a most deliberate
fashion, she utters shrieks which rend the heart of the hearer. She
goes gracefully through a series of gesticulations so cleverly
executed that you might think her a professional contortionist. Now
what man is there so inconsiderate as to dare to speak to a suffering
woman about desires which, in him, prove the most perfect health?
Politeness alone demands of him perfect silence. A woman knows under
these circumstances that by means of this all-powerful headache, she
can at her will paste on her bed the placard which sends back home the
amateurs who have been allured by the announcement of the Comedie
Francaise, when they read the words: "Closed through the sudden
indisposition of Mademoiselle Mars."
O headache, protectress of love, tariff of married life, buckler
against which all married desires expire! O mighty headache! Can it be
possible that lovers have never sung thy praises, personified thee, or
raised thee to the skies? O magic headache, O delusive headache, blest
be the brain that first invented thee! Shame on the doctor who shall
find out thy preventive! Yes, thou art the only ill that women bless,
doubtless through gratitude for the good things thou dispensest to
them, O deceitful headache! O magic headache!
2. OF NERVOUS AFFECTATIONS.