pariahs produce here and there a thousand peasant girls who from
peculiar circumstances are as fair as Cupids; they come to Paris or to
the great cities and end up by attaining the rank of _femmes comme il
faut_; but to set off against these two or three thousand favored
creatures, there are one hundred thousand others who remain servants
or abandon themselves to frightful irregularities. Nevertheless, we
are obliged to count these Pompadours of the village among the
feminine population.
Our first calculation is based upon the statistical discovery that in
France there are eighteen millions of the poor, ten millions of people
in easy circumstances and two millions of the rich.
There exist, therefore, in France only six millions of women in whom
men of sentiment are now interested, have been interested, or will be
interested.
Let us subject this social elite to a philosophic examination.
We think, without fear of being deceived, that married people who have
lived twenty years together may sleep in peace without fear of having
their love trespassed upon or of incurring the scandal of a lawsuit
for criminal conversation.
From these six millions of individuals we must subtract about two
millions of women who are extremely attractive, because for the last
forty years they have seen the world; but since they have not the
power to make any one fall in love with them, they are on the outside
of the discussion now before us. If they are unhappy enough to receive
no attention for the sake of amiability, they are soon seized with
ennui; they fall back upon religion, upon the cultivation of pets,
cats, lap-dogs, and other fancies which are no more offensive than
their devoutness.
The calculations made at the Bureau of Longitudes concerning
population authorize us again to subtract from the total mentioned two
millions of young girls, pretty enough to kill; they are at present in
the A B C of life and innocently play with other children, without
dreading that these little hobbledehoys, who now make them laugh, will
one day make them weep.
Again, of the two millions of the remaining women, what reasonable man
would not throw out a hundred thousand poor girls, humpbacked, plain,
cross-grained, rickety, sickly, blind, crippled in some way, well
educated but penniless, all bound to be spinsters, and by no means
tempted to violate the sacred laws of marriage?
Nor must we retain the one hundred thousand other girls who become
sisters of St. Camille, Sisters of Charity, monastics, teachers,
ladies' companions, etc. And we must put into this blessed company a
number of young people difficult to estimate, who are too grown up to
play with little boys and yet too young to sport their wreath of
orange blossoms.
Finally, of the fifteen million subjects which remain at the bottom of
our crucible we must eliminate five hundred thousand other
individuals, to be reckoned as daughters of Baal, who subserve the
appetites of the base. We must even comprise among those, without fear
that they will be corrupted by their company, the kept women, the
milliners, the shop girls, saleswomen, actresses, singers, the girls
of the opera, the ballet-dancers, upper servants, chambermaids, etc.
Most of these creatures excite the passions of many people, but they
would consider it immodest to inform a lawyer, a mayor, an
ecclesiastic or a laughing world of the day and hour when they
surrendered to a lover. Their system, justly blamed by an inquisitive
world, has the advantage of laying upon them no obligations towards
men in general, towards the mayor or the magistracy. As these women do
not violate any oath made in public, they have no connection whatever
with a work which treats exclusively of lawful marriage.
Some one will say that the claims made by this essay are very slight,
but its limitations make just compensation for those which amateurs
consider excessively padded. If any one, through love for a wealthy
dowager, wishes to obtain admittance for her into the remaining
million, he must classify her under the head of Sisters of Charity,
ballet-dancers, or hunchbacks; in fact we have not taken more than
five hundred thousand individuals in forming this last class, because
it often happens, as we have seen above, that the nine millions of
peasant girls make a large accession to it. We have for the same
reason omitted the working-girl class and the hucksters; the women of
these two sections are the product of efforts made by nine millions of
female bimana to rise to the higher civilization. But for its
scrupulous exactitude many persons might regard this statistical
meditation as a mere joke.
We have felt very much inclined to form a small class of a hundred
thousand individuals as a crowning cabinet of the species, to serve as
a place of shelter for women who have fallen into a middle estate,
like widows, for instance; but we have preferred to estimate in round
figures.
It would be easy to prove the fairness of our analysis: let one
reflection be sufficient.
The life of a woman is divided into three periods, very distinct from
each other: the first begins in the cradle and ends on the attainment
of a marriageable age; the second embraces the time during which a
woman belongs to marriage; the third opens with the critical period,
the ending with which nature closes the passions of life. These three
spheres of existence, being almost equal in duration, might be
employed for the classification into equal groups of a given number of
women. Thus in a mass of six millions, omitting fractions, there are
about two million girls between one and eighteen, two millions women
between eighteen and forty and two millions of old women. The caprices
of society have divided the two millions of marriageable women into
three main classes, namely: those who remain spinsters for reasons
which we have defined; those whose virtue does not reckon in the
obtaining of husbands, and the million of women lawfully married, with
whom we have to deal.
You see then, by the exact sifting out of the feminine population,
that there exists in France a little flock of barely a million white
lambs, a privileged fold into which every wolf is anxious to enter.
Let us put this million of women, already winnowed by our fan, through
another examination.
To arrive at the true idea of the degree of confidence which a man
ought to have in his wife, let us suppose for a moment that all wives
will deceive their husbands.
On this hypothesis, it will be proper to cut out about one-twentieth,
viz., young people who are newly married and who will be faithful to
their vows for a certain time.
Another twentieth will be in ill-health. This will be to make a very
modest allowance for human infirmities.
Certain passions, which we are told destroy the dominion of the man
over the heart of his wife, namely, aversion, grief, the bearing of
children, will account for another twentieth.
Adultery does not establish itself in the heart of a married woman
with the promptness of a pistol-shot. Even when sympathy with another
rouses feelings on first sight, a struggle always takes place, whose
duration discounts the total sum of conjugal infidelities. It would be
an insult to French modesty not to admit the duration of this struggle
in a country so naturally combative, without referring to at least a
twentieth in the total of married women; but then we will suppose that
there are certain sickly women who preserve their lovers while they
are using soothing draughts, and that there are certain wives whose
confinement makes sarcastic celibates smile. In this way we shall
vindicate the modesty of those who enter upon the struggle from
motives of virtue. For the same reason we should not venture to
believe that a woman forsaken by her lover will find a new one on the
spot; but this discount being much more uncertain than the preceding
one, we will estimate it at one-fortieth.
These several rebates will reduce our sum total to eight hundred
thousand women, when we come to calculate the number of those who are
likely to violate married faith. Who would not at the present moment
wish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not
the supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming
creatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their
life and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of social
religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chief
glory of France.
It is in the midst of this million we are bound to investigate:
The number of honest women;
The number of virtuous women.
The work of investigating this and of arranging the results under two
categories requires whole meditations, which may serve as an appendix
to the present one.
MEDITATION III.
OF THE HONEST WOMAN.
The preceding meditation has proved that we possess in France a
floating population of one million women reveling in the privilege of
inspiring those passions which a gallant man avows without shame, or
dissembles with delight. It is then among this million of women that
we must carry our lantern of Diogenes in order to discover the honest
women of the land.
This inquiry suggests certain digressions.
Two young people, well dressed, whose slender figures and rounded arms
suggest a paver's tool, and whose boots are elegantly made, meet one
morning on the boulevard, at the end of the Passage des Panoramas.
"What, is this you?"
"Yes, dear boy; it looks like me, doesn't it?"
Then they laugh, with more or less intelligence, according to the
nature of the joke which opens the conversation.
When they have examined each other with the sly curiosity of a police
officer on the lookout for a clew, when they are quite convinced of
the newness of each other's gloves, of each other's waistcoat and of
the taste with which their cravats are tied; when they are pretty
certain that neither of them is down in the world, they link arms and
if they start from the Theater des Varietes, they have not reached
Frascati's before they have asked each other a roundabout question
whose free translation may be this:
"Whom are you living with now?"
As a general rule she is a charming woman.
Who is the infantryman of Paris into whose ear there have not dropped,
like bullets in the day of battle, thousands of words uttered by the
passer-by, and who has not caught one of those numberless sayings
which, according to Rabelais, hang frozen in the air? But the majority
of men take their way through Paris in the same manner as they live
and eat, that is, without thinking about it. There are very few
skillful musicians, very few practiced physiognomists who can
recognize the key in which these vagrant notes are set, the passion
that prompts these floating words. Ah! to wander over Paris! What an
adorable and delightful existence is that! To saunter is a science; it
is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to
saunter is to live. The young and pretty women, long contemplated with
ardent eyes, would be much more admissible in claiming a salary than
the cook who asks for twenty sous from the Limousin whose nose with
inflated nostrils took in the perfumes of beauty. To saunter is to
enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the
sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque
physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand
existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for
the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their
passions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard
to the categorical question which is always with us?
"She is thirty-five years old, but you would not think she was more
than twenty!" said an enthusiastic youth with sparkling eyes, who,
freshly liberated from college, would, like Cherubin, embrace all.
"Zounds! Mine has dressing-gowns of batiste and diamond rings for the
evening!" said a lawyer's clerk.
"But she has a box at the Francais!" said an army officer.
"At any rate," cried another one, an elderly man who spoke as if he
were standing on the defence, "she does not cost me a sou! In our case
--wouldn't you like to have the same chance, my respected friend?"
And he patted his companion lightly on the shoulder.
"Oh! she loves me!" said another. "It seems too good to be true; but
she has the most stupid of husbands! Ah!--Buffon has admirably
described the animals, but the biped called husband--"
What a pleasant thing for a married man to hear!
"Oh! what an angel you are, my dear!" is the answer to a request
discreetly whispered into the ear.
"Can you tell me her name or point her out to me?"
"Oh! no; she is an honest woman."
When a student is loved by a waitress, he mentions her name with pride
and takes his friends to lunch at her house. If a young man loves a
woman whose husband is engaged in some trade dealing with articles of
necessity, he will answer, blushingly, "She is the wife of a
haberdasher, of a stationer, of a hatter, of a linen-draper, of a
clerk, etc."
But this confession of love for an inferior which buds and blows in
the midst of packages, loaves of sugar, or flannel waistcoats is
always accompanied with an exaggerated praise of the lady's fortune.
The husband alone is engaged in the business; he is rich; he has fine
furniture. The loved one comes to her lover's house; she wears a
cashmere shawl; she owns a country house, etc.
In short, a young man is never wanting in excellent arguments to prove
that his mistress is very nearly, if not quite, an honest woman. This
distinction originates in the refinement of our manners and has become
as indefinite as the line which separates _bon ton_ from vulgarity.
What then is meant by an honest woman?
On this point the vanity of women, of their lovers, and even that of
their husbands, is so sensitive that we had better here settle upon
some general rules, which are the result of long observation.
Our one million of privileged women represent a multitude who are
eligible for the glorious title of honest women, but by no means all
are elected to it. The principles on which these elections are based
may be found in the following axioms:
APHORISMS.
I.
An honest woman is necessarily a married woman.
II.
An honest woman is under forty years old.
III.
A married woman whose favors are to be paid for is not an honest
woman.
IV.
A married woman who keeps a private carriage is an honest woman.
V.
A woman who does her own cooking is not an honest woman.
VI.
When a man has made enough to yield an income of twenty thousand
francs, his wife is an honest woman, whatever the business in which
his fortune was made.
VII.
A woman who says "letter of change" for letter of exchange, who says
of a man, "He is an elegant gentleman," can never be an honest woman,
whatever fortune she possesses.
VIII.
An honest woman ought to be in a financial condition such as forbids
her lover to think she will ever cost him anything.
IX.
A woman who lives on the third story of any street excepting the Rue
de Rivoli and the Rue de Castiglione is not an honest woman.
X.
The wife of a banker is always an honest woman, but the woman who sits
at the cashier's desk cannot be one, unless her husband has a very
large business and she does not live over his shop.
XI.
The unmarried niece of a bishop when she lives with him can pass for
an honest woman, because if she has an intrigue she has to deceive her
uncle.
XII.
An honest woman is one whom her lover fears to compromise.
XIII.
The wife of an artist is always an honest woman.
By the application of these principles even a man from Ardeche can
resolve all the difficulties which our subject presents.
In order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely
educated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to
pass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life
of soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she
lives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris. These
two financial limits will suggest to you how many honest women are to
be reckoned on in the million, for they are really a mere product of
our statistical calculations.
Now three hundred thousand independent people, with an income of
fifteen thousand francs, represent the sum total of those who live on
pensions, on annuities and the interest of treasury bonds and
mortgages.
Three hundred thousand landed proprietors enjoy an income of three
thousand five hundred francs and represent all territorial wealth.
Two hundred thousand payees, at the rate of fifteen hundred francs
each, represent the distribution of public funds by the state budget,
by the budgets of the cities and departments, less the national debt,
church funds and soldier's pay, (i.e. five sous a day with allowances
for washing, weapons, victuals, clothes, etc.).
Two hundred thousand fortunes amassed in commerce, reckoning the
capital at twenty thousand francs in each case, represent all the
commercial establishments possible in France.
Here we have a million husbands represented.
But at what figure shall we count those who have an income of fifty,
of a hundred, of two, three, four, five, and six hundred francs only,
from consols or some other investment?
How many landed proprietors are there who pay taxes amounting to no
more than a hundred sous, twenty francs, one hundred francs, two
hundred, or two hundred and eighty?
At what number shall we reckon those of the governmental leeches, who
are merely quill-drivers with a salary of six hundred francs a year?
How many merchants who have nothing but a fictitious capital shall we
admit? These men are rich in credit and have not a single actual sou,
and resemble the sieves through which Pactolus flows. And how many
brokers whose real capital does not amount to more than a thousand,
two thousand, four thousand, five thousand francs? Business!--my
respects to you!
Let us suppose more people to be fortunate than actually are so. Let
us divide this million into parts; five hundred thousand domestic
establishments will have an income ranging from a hundred to three
thousand francs, and five thousand women will fulfill the conditions
which entitle them to be called honest women.
After these observations, which close our meditation on statistics, we
are entitled to cut out of this number one hundred thousand
individuals; consequently we can consider it to be proven
mathematically that there exist in France no more than four hundred
thousand women who can furnish to men of refinement the exquisite and
exalted enjoyments which they look for in love.
And here it is fitting to make a remark to the adepts for whom we
write, that love does not consist in a series of eager conversations,
of nights of pleasure, of an occasional caress more or less well-timed
and a spark of _amour-propre_ baptized by the name of jealousy. Our
four hundred thousand women are not of those concerning whom it may be
said, "The most beautiful girl in the world can give only what she
has." No, they are richly endowed with treasures which appeal to our
ardent imaginations, they know how to sell dear that which they do not
possess, in order to compensate for the vulgarity of that which they
give.
Do we feel more pleasure in kissing the glove of a grisette than in
draining the five minutes of pleasure which all women offer to us?
Is it the conversation of a shop-girl which makes you expect boundless
delights?
In your intercourse with a woman who is beneath you, the delight of
flattered _amour-propre_ is on her side. You are not in the secret of
the happiness which you give.
In a case of a woman above you, either in fortune or social position,
the ticklings of vanity are not only intense, but are equally shared.
A man can never raise his mistress to his own level; but a woman
always puts her lover in the position that she herself occupies. "I
can make princes and you can make nothing but bastards," is an answer
sparkling with truth.
If love is the first of passions, it is because it flatters all the
rest of them at the same time. We love with more or less intensity in
proportion to the number of chords which are touched by the fingers of
a beautiful mistress.
Biren, the jeweler's son, climbing into the bed of the Duchesse de
Courlande and helping her to sign an agreement that he should be
proclaimed sovereign of the country, as he was already of the young
and beautiful queen, is an example of the happiness which ought to be
given to their lovers by our four hundred thousand women.
If a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the heads
which crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artistic
woman of fashion. Now we all love more or less to be at the top.
It is on this brilliant section of the nation that the attack is made
by men whose education, talent or wit gives them the right to be
considered persons of importance with regard to that success of which
people of every country are so proud; and only among this class of
women is the wife to be found whose heart has to be defended at all
hazard by our husband.
What does it matter whether the considerations which arise from the
existence of a feminine aristocracy are or are not equally applicable
to other social classes? That which is true of all women exquisite in
manners, language and thought, in whom exceptional educational
facilities have developed a taste for art and a capacity for feeling,
comparing and thinking, who have a high sense of propriety and
politeness and who actually set the fashion in French manners, ought
to be true also in the case of women whatever their nation and
whatever their condition. The man of distinction to whom this book is
dedicated must of necessity possess a certain mental vision, which
makes him perceive the various degrees of light that fill each class
and comprehend the exact point in the scale of civilization to which
each of our remarks is severally applicable.
Would it not be then in the highest interests of morality, that we
should in the meantime try to find out the number of virtuous women
who are to be found among these adorable creatures? Is not this a
question of marito-national importance?
MEDITATION IV.
OF THE VIRTUOUS WOMAN.
The question, perhaps, is not so much how many virtuous women there
are, as what possibility there is of an honest woman remaining
virtuous.
In order to throw light upon a point so important, let us cast a rapid
glance over the male population.
From among our fifteen millions of men we must cut off, in the first
place, the nine millions of bimana of thirty-two vertebrae and exclude
from our physiological analysis all but six millions of people. The
Marceaus, the Massenas, the Rousseaus, the Diderots and the Rollins
often sprout forth suddenly from the social swamp, when it is in a
condition of fermentation; but, here we plead guilty of deliberate
inaccuracy. These errors in calculation are likely, however, to give
all their weight to our conclusion and to corroborate what we are
forced to deduce in unveiling the mechanism of passion.
From the six millions of privileged men, we must exclude three
millions of old men and children.
It will be affirmed by some one that this subtraction leaves a
remainder of four millions in the case of women.
This difference at first sight seems singular, but is easily accounted
for.
The average age at which women are married is twenty years and at
forty they cease to belong to the world of love.
Now a young bachelor of seventeen is apt to make deep cuts with his
penknife in the parchment of contracts, as the chronicles of scandal
will tell you.
On the other hand, a man at fifty-two is more formidable than at any
other age. It is at this fair epoch of life that he enjoys an
experience dearly bought, and probably all the fortune that he will
ever require. The passions by which his course is directed being the
last under whose scourge he will move, he is unpitying and determined,
like the man carried away by a current who snatches at a green and
pliant branch of willow, the young nursling of the year.
XIV.
Physically a man is a man much longer than a woman is a woman.