If love be the life of the world, why do austere philosophers count it
for nothing in marriage? Why should Society take for its first law that
the woman must be sacrificed to the family, introducing thus a note of
discord into the very heart of marriage? And this discord was foreseen,
since it was to meet the dangers arising from it that men were armed
with new-found powers against us. But for these, we should have been
able to bring their whole theory to nothing, whether by the force of
love or of a secret, persistent aversion.
I see in marriage, as it at present exists, two opposing forces which
it was the task of the lawgiver to reconcile. "When will they be
reconciled?" I said to myself, as I read your letter. Oh! my dear, one
such letter alone is enough to overthrow the whole fabric constructed by
the sage of Aveyron, under whose shelter I had so cheerfully ensconced
myself! The laws were made by old men--any woman can see that--and
they have been prudent enough to decree that conjugal love, apart from
passion, is not degrading, and that a woman in yielding herself may
dispense with the sanction of love, provided the man can legally call
her his. In their exclusive concern for the family they have imitated
Nature, whose one care is to propagate the species.
Formerly I was a person, now I am a chattel. Not a few tears have I
gulped down, alone and far from every one. How gladly would I have
exchanged them for a consoling smile! Why are our destinies so unequal?
Your soul expands in the atmosphere of a lawful passion. For you, virtue
will coincide with pleasure. If you encounter pain, it will be of your
own free choice. Your duty, if you marry Felipe, will be one with the
sweetest, freest indulgence of feeling. Our future is big with the
answer to my question, and I look for it with restless eagerness.
You love and are adored. Oh! my dear, let this noble romance, the
old subject of our dreams, take full possession of your soul. Womanly
beauty, refined and spiritualized in you, was created by God, for His
own purposes, to charm and to delight. Yes, my sweet, guard well the
secret of your heart, and submit Felipe to those ingenious devices of
ours for testing a lover's metal. Above all, make trial of your own
love, for this is even more important. It is so easy to be misled by
the deceptive glamour of novelty and passion, and by the vision of
happiness.
Alone of the two friends, you remain in your maiden independence; and
I beseech you, dearest, do not risk the irrevocable step of marriage
without some guarantee. It happens sometimes, when two are talking
together, apart from the world, their souls stripped of social disguise,
that a gesture, a word, a look lights up, as by a flash, some dark
abyss. You have courage and strength to tread boldly in paths where
others would be lost.
You have no conception in what anxiety I watch you. Across all this
space I see you; my heart beats with yours. Be sure, therefore, to write
and tell me everything. Your letters create an inner life of passion
within my homely, peaceful household, which reminds me of a level
highroad on a gray day. The only event here, my sweet, is that I am
playing cross-purposes with myself. But I don't want to tell you about
it just now; it must wait for another day. With dogged obstinacy, I pass
from despair to hope, now yielding, now holding back. It may be that
I ask from life more than we have a right to claim. In youth we are so
ready to believe that the ideal and the real will harmonize!
I have been pondering alone, seated beneath a rock in my park, and the
fruit of my pondering is that love in marriage is a happy accident on
which it is impossible to base a universal law. My Aveyron philosopher
is right in looking on the family as the only possible unit in society,
and in placing woman in subjection to the family, as she has been in all
ages. The solution of this great--for us almost awful--question lies in
our first child. For this reason, I would gladly be a mother, were it
only to supply food for the consuming energy of my soul.
Louis' temper remains as perfect as ever; his love is of the active, my
tenderness of the passive, type. He is happy, plucking the flowers which
bloom for him, without troubling about the labor of the earth which has
produced them. Blessed self-absorption! At whatever cost to myself, I
fall in with his illusions, as a mother, in my idea of her, should be
ready to spend herself to satisfy a fancy of her child. The intensity of
his joy blinds him, and even throws its reflection upon me. The smile
or look of satisfaction which the knowledge of his content brings to my
face is enough to satisfy him. And so, "my child" is the pet name which
I give him when we are alone.
And I wait for the fruit of all these sacrifices which remain a secret
between God, myself, and you. On motherhood I have staked enormously;
my credit account is now too large, I fear I shall never receive full
payment. To it I look for employment of my energy, expansion of my
heart, and the compensation of a world of joys. Pray Heaven I be not
deceived! It is a question of all my future and, horrible thought, of my
virtue.