The carriage door slammed, the horse began to pull—the rolling of the
carriage for a short time—then all was over.
* * * * *
For a moment I thought of taking vengeance, of killing him, but I was
bound by the abominable agreement. So nothing was left for me to do
except to keep my pledged word and grit my teeth.
* * * * *
My first impulse after this, the most cruel catastrophe of my life, was
to seek laborious tasks, dangers, and privations. I wanted to become a
soldier and go to Asia or Algiers, but my father was old and ill and
wanted me.
So I quietly returned home and for two years helped him bear his
burdens, and learned how to look after the estate which I had never
done before. To _labor_ and to _do my duty_ was comforting like a drink
of fresh water. Then my father died, and I inherited the estate, but it
meant no change.
I had put on my own Spanish boots and went on living just as rationally
as if the old man were standing behind me, looking over my shoulder
with his large wise eyes.
One day a box arrived, accompanied by a letter. I recognized Wanda’s
writing.
Curiously moved, I opened it, and read.
“Sir.—
Now that over three years have passed since that night in Florence, I
suppose, I may confess to you that I loved you deeply. You yourself,
however, stifled my love by your fantastic devotion and your insane
passion. From the moment that you became my slave, I knew it would be
impossible for you ever to become my husband. However, I found it
interesting to have you realize your ideal in my own person, and, while
I gloriously amused myself, perhaps, to cure you.
I found the strong man for whom I felt a need, and I was as happy with
him as, I suppose, it is possible for any one to be on this funny ball
of clay.
But my happiness, like all things mortal, was of short duration. About
a year ago he fell in a duel, and since then I have been living in
Paris, like an Aspasia—
And you?—Your life surely is not without its sunshine, if you have
gained control of your imagination, and those qualities in you have
materialized, which at first so attracted me to you—your clarity of
intellect, kindness of heart, and, above all else, your—_moral
seriousness_.
I hope you have been cured under my whip; the cure was cruel, but
radical. In memory of that time and of a woman who loved you
passionately, I am sending you the portrait by the poor German.
_Venus in Furs_.”
I had to smile, and as I fell to musing the beautiful woman suddenly
stood before me in her velvet jacket trimmed with ermine, with the whip
in her hand. And I continued to smile at the woman I had once loved so
insanely, at the fur-jacket that had once so entranced me, at the whip,
and ended by smiling at myself and saying: The cure was cruel, but
radical; but the main point is, I have been cured.
* * * * *
“And the moral of the story?” I said to Severin when I put the
manuscript down on the table.
“That I was a donkey,” he exclaimed without turning around, for he
seemed to be embarrassed. “If only I had beaten her!”
“A curious remedy,” I exclaimed, “which might answer with your
peasant-women—”
“Oh, they are used to it,” he replied eagerly, “but imagine the effect
upon one of our delicate, nervous, hysterical ladies—”
“But the moral?”
“That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present
educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot,
but _never his companion._ This she can become only when she has the
same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work.
“At present we have only the choice of being hammer or anvil, and I was
the kind of donkey who let a woman make a slave of him, do you
understand?
“The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped,
deserves to be whipped.
“The blows, as you see, have agreed with me; the roseate supersensual
mist has dissolved, and no one can ever make me believe again that
these ‘sacred apes of Benares’6 or Plato’s rooster7 are the image of
God.”
[Footnote 6: One of Schopenhauer’s designations for women.]
[Footnote 7: Diogenes threw a plucked rooster into Plato’s school and
exclaimed: “Here you have Plato’s human being.”]