The Physiology of Marriage, Part 1 (2024)

Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers

FIRST PART

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC

DEDICATION

Notice the words: The man of distinction to whom this book is dedicated. Need I say: "You are that man."—THE AUTHOR.

The woman who may be induced by the title of this book to open it, can save herself the trouble; she has already read the work without knowing it. A man, however malicious he may possibly be, can never say about a woman as much good or as much evil as they themselves think. If, in spite of this notice, a woman will persist in reading the volume, she ought to be prevented by delicacy from despising the author, from the very moment that he, forfeiting the praise which most artists welcome, has in a certain way engraved on the title page of his book the prudent inscription written on the portal of certain establishments: Ladies must not enter.

INTRODUCTION

"Marriage is not an institution of nature. The family in the east isentirely different from the family in the west. Man is the servant ofnature, and the institutions of society are grafts, not spontaneousgrowths of nature. Laws are made to suit manners, and manners vary.

"Marriage must therefore undergo the gradual development towardsperfection to which all human affairs submit."

These words, pronounced in the presence of the Conseil d'Etat byNapoleon during the discussion of the civil code, produced a profoundimpression upon the author of this book; and perhaps unconsciously hereceived the suggestion of this work, which he now presents to thepublic. And indeed at the period during which, while still in hisyouth, he studied French law, the word ADULTERY made a singularimpression upon him. Taking, as it did, a prominent place in the code,this word never occurred to his mind without conjuring up its mournfultrain of consequences. Tears, shame, hatred, terror, secret crime,bloody wars, families without a head, and social misery rose like asudden line of phantoms before him when he read the solemn wordADULTERY! Later on, when he became acquainted with the most cultivatedcircles of society, the author perceived that the rigor of marriagelaws was very generally modified by adultery. He found that the numberof unhappy homes was larger than that of happy marriages. In fact, hewas the first to notice that of all human sciences that which relatesto marriage was the least progressive. But this was the observation ofa young man; and with him, as with so many others, this thought, likea pebble flung into the bosom of a lake, was lost in the abyss of histumultuous thoughts. Nevertheless, in spite of himself the author wascompelled to investigate, and eventually there was gathered within hismind, little by little, a swarm of conclusions, more or less just, onthe subject of married life. Works like the present one are formed inthe mind of the author with as much mystery as that with whichtruffles grow on the scented plains of Perigord. Out of the primitiveand holy horror which adultery caused him and the investigation whichhe had thoughtlessly made, there was born one morning a triflingthought in which his ideas were formulated. This thought was really asatire upon marriage. It was as follows: A husband and wife foundthemselves in love with each other for the first time aftertwenty-seven years of marriage.

He amused himself with this little axiom and passed a whole week indelight, grouping around this harmless epigram the crowd of ideaswhich came to him unconsciously and which he was astonished to findthat he possessed. His humorous mood yielded at last to the claims ofserious investigation. Willing as he was to take a hint, the authorreturned to his habitual idleness. Nevertheless, this slight germ ofscience and of joke grew to perfection, unfostered, in the fields ofthought. Each phase of the work which had been condemned by otherstook root and gathered strength, surviving like the slight branch of atree which, flung upon the sand by a winter's storm, finds itselfcovered at morning with white and fantastic icicles, produced by thecaprices of nightly frosts. So the sketch lived on and became thestarting point of myriad branching moralizations. It was like apolypus which multiplies itself by generation. The feelings of youth,the observations which a favorable opportunity led him to make, wereverified in the most trifling events of his after life. Soon this massof ideas became harmonized, took life, seemed, as it were, to become aliving individual and moved in the midst of those domains of fancy,where the soul loves to give full rein to its wild creations. Amid allthe distractions of the world and of life, the author always heard avoice ringing in his ears and mockingly revealing the secrets ofthings at the very moment he was watching a woman as she danced,smiled, or talked. Just as Mephistopheles pointed out to Faust in thatterrific assemblage at the Brocken, faces full of frightful augury, sothe author was conscious in the midst of the ball of a demon who wouldstrike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him: "Do younotice that enchanting smile? It is a grin of hatred." And then thedemon would strut about like one of the captains in the old comediesof Hardy. He would twitch the folds of a lace mantle and endeavor tomake new the fretted tinsel and spangles of its former glory. And thenlike Rabelais he would burst into loud and unrestrainable laughter,and would trace on the street-wall a word which might serve as apendant to the "Drink!" which was the only oracle obtainable from theheavenly bottle. This literary Trilby would often appear seated onpiles of books, and with hooked fingers would point out with a grin ofmalice two yellow volumes whose title dazzled the eyes. Then when hesaw he had attracted the author's attention he spelt out, in a voicealluring as the tones of an harmonica, Physiology of Marriage! But,almost always he appeared at night during my dreams, gentle as somefairy guardian; he tried by words of sweetness to subdue the soulwhich he would appropriate to himself. While he attracted, he alsoscoffed at me; supple as a woman's mind, cruel as a tiger, hisfriendliness was more formidable than his hatred, for he never yieldeda caress without also inflicting a wound. One night in particular heexhausted the resources of his sorceries, and crowned all by a lasteffort. He came, he sat on the edge of the bed like a young maidenfull of love, who at first keeps silence but whose eyes sparkle, untilat last her secret escapes her.

"This," said he, "is a prospectus of a new life-buoy, by means ofwhich one can pass over the Seine dry-footed. This other pamphlet isthe report of the Institute on a garment by wearing which we can passthrough flames without being burnt. Have you no scheme which canpreserve marriage from the miseries of excessive cold and excessiveheat? Listen to me! Here we have a book on the Art of preservingfoods; on the Art of curing smoky chimneys; on the Art of makinggood mortar; on the Art of tying a cravat; on the Art of carvingmeat."

In a moment he had named such a prodigious number of books that theauthor felt his head go round.

"These myriads of books," says he, "have been devoured by readers; andwhile everybody does not build a house, and some grow hungry, andothers have no cravat, or no fire to warm themselves at, yet everybodyto some degree is married. But come look yonder."

He waved his hand, and appeared to bring before me a distant oceanwhere all the books of the world were tossing up and down likeagitated waves. The octodecimos bounded over the surface of the water.The octavos as they were flung on their way uttered a solemn sound,sank to the bottom, and only rose up again with great difficulty,hindered as they were by duodecimos and works of smaller bulk whichfloated on the top and melted into light foam. The furious billowswere crowded with journalists, proof-readers, paper-makers,apprentices, printers' agents, whose hands alone were seen mingled inthe confusion among the books. Millions of voices rang in the air,like those of schoolboys bathing. Certain men were seen moving hitherand thither in canoes, engaged in fishing out the books, and landingthem on the shore in the presence of a tall man, of a disdainful air,dressed in black, and of a cold, unsympathetic expression. The wholescene represented the libraries and the public. The demon pointed outwith his finger a skiff freshly decked out with all sails set andinstead of a flag bearing a placard. Then with a peal of sardoniclaughter, he read with a thundering voice: Physiology of Marriage.

The author fell in love, the devil left him in peace, for he wouldhave undertaken more than he could handle if he had entered anapartment occupied by a woman. Several years passed without bringingother torments than those of love, and the author was inclined tobelieve that he had been healed of one infirmity by means of anotherwhich took its place. But one evening he found himself in a Parisiandrawing-room where one of the men among the circle who stood round thefireplace began the conversation by relating in a sepulchral voice thefollowing anecdote:

A peculiar thing took place at Ghent while I was staying there. A ladyten years a widow lay on her bed attacked by mortal sickness. Thethree heirs of collateral lineage were waiting for her last sigh. Theydid not leave her side for fear that she would make a will in favor ofthe convent of Beguins belonging to the town. The sick woman keptsilent, she seemed dozing and death appeared to overspread verygradually her mute and livid face. Can't you imagine those threerelations seated in silence through that winter midnight beside herbed? An old nurse is with them and she shakes her head, and the doctorsees with anxiety that the sickness has reached its last stage, andholds his hat in one hand and with the other makes a sign to therelations, as if to say to them: "I have no more visits to make here."Amid the solemn silence of the room is heard the dull rustling of asnow-storm which beats upon the shutters. For fear that the eyes ofthe dying woman might be dazzled by the light, the youngest of theheirs had fitted a shade to the candle which stood near that bed sothat the circle of light scarcely reached the pillow of the deathbed,from which the sallow countenance of the sick woman stood out like afigure of Christ imperfectly gilded and fixed upon a cross oftarnished silver. The flickering rays shed by the blue flames of acrackling fire were therefore the sole light of this sombre chamber,where the denouement of a drama was just ending. A log suddenly rolledfrom the fire onto the floor, as if presaging some catastrophe. At thesound of it the sick woman quickly rose to a sitting posture. Sheopened two eyes, clear as those of a cat, and all present eyed her inastonishment. She saw the log advance, and before any one could checkan unexpected movement which seemed prompted by a kind of delirium,she bounded from her bed, seized the tongs and threw the coal backinto the fireplace. The nurse, the doctor, the relations rushed to herassistance; they took the dying woman in their arms. They put her backin bed; she laid her head upon her pillow and after a few minutesdied, keeping her eyes fixed even after her death upon that plank inthe floor which the burning brand had touched. Scarcely had theCountess Van Ostroem expired when the three co-heirs exchanged looksof suspicion, and thinking no more about their aunt, began to examinethe mysterious floor. As they were Belgians their calculations were asrapid as their glances. An agreement was made by three words utteredin a low voice that none of them should leave the chamber. A servantwas sent to fetch a carpenter. Their collateral hearts beat excitedlyas they gathered round the treasured flooring, and watched their youngapprentice giving the first blow with his chisel. The plank was cutthrough.

"My aunt made a sign," said the youngest of the heirs.

"No; it was merely the quivering light that made it appear so,"replied the eldest, who kept one eye on the treasure and the other onthe corpse.

The afflicted relations discovered exactly on the spot where the brandhad fallen a certain object artistically enveloped in a mass ofplaster.

"Proceed," said the eldest of the heirs.

The chisel of the apprentice then brought to light a human head andsome odds and ends of clothing, from which they recognized the countwhom all the town believed to have died at Java, and whose loss hadbeen bitterly deplored by his wife.

The narrator of this old story was a tall spare man, with light eyesand brown hair, and the author thought he saw in him a vagueresemblance to the demon who had before this tormented him; but thestranger did not show the cloven foot. Suddenly the word ADULTERYsounded in the ears of the author; and this word woke up in hisimagination the most mournful countenances of that procession whichbefore this had streamed by on the utterance of the magic syllables.From that evening he was haunted and persecuted by dreams of a workwhich did not yet exist; and at no period of his life was the authorassailed with such delusive notions about the fatal subject of thisbook. But he bravely resisted the fiend, although the latter referredthe most unimportant incidents of life to this unknown work, and likea customhouse officer set his stamp of mockery upon every occurrence.

Some days afterwards the author found himself in the company of twoladies. The first of them had been one of the most refined and themost intellectual women of Napoleon's court. In his day she occupied alofty position, but the sudden appearance of the Restoration causedher downfall; she became a recluse. The second, who was young andbeautiful, was at that time living at Paris the life of a fashionablewoman. They were friends, because, the one being forty and the othertwenty-two years old, they were seldom rivals on the same field. Theauthor was considered quite insignificant by the first of the twoladies, and since the other soon discovered this, they carried on inhis presence the conversation which they had begun in a frankdiscussion of a woman's lot.

"Have you noticed, dear, that women in general bestow their love onlyupon a fool?"

"What do you mean by that, duch*ess? And how can you make your remarkfit in with the fact that they have an aversion for their husbands?"

"These women are absolute tyrants!" said the author to himself. "Hasthe devil again turned up in a mob cap?"

"No, dear, I am not joking," replied the duch*ess, "and I shudder withfear for myself when I coolly consider people whom I have known inother times. Wit always has a sparkle which wounds us, and the man whohas much of it makes us fear him perhaps, and if he is a proud man hewill be capable of jealousy, and is not therefore to our taste. Infact, we prefer to raise a man to our own height rather than to haveto climb up to his. Talent has great successes for us to share in, butthe fool affords enjoyment to us; and we would sooner hear said 'thatis a very handsome man' than to see our lover elected to theInstitute."

"That's enough, duch*ess! You have absolutely startled me."

And the young coquette began to describe the lovers about whom all thewomen of her acquaintance raved; there was not a single man ofintellect among them.

"But I swear by my virtue," she said, "their husbands are worth more."

"But these are the sort of people they choose for husbands," theduch*ess answered gravely.

"Tell me," asked the author, "is the disaster which threatens thehusband in France quite inevitable?"

"It is," replied the duch*ess, with a smile; "and the rage whichcertain women breathe out against those of their sex, whoseunfortunate happiness it is to entertain a passion, proves what aburden to them is their chastity. If it were not for fear of thedevil, one would be Lais; another owes her virtue to the dryness ofher selfish heart; a third to the silly behaviour of her first lover;another still—"

The author checked this outpour of revelation by confiding to the twoladies his design for the work with which he had been haunted; theysmiled and promised him their assistance. The youngest, with an air ofgaiety suggested one of the first chapters of the undertaking, bysaying that she would take upon herself to prove mathematically thatwomen who are entirely virtuous were creatures of reason.

When the author got home he said at once to his demon:

"Come! I am ready; let us sign the compact."

But the demon never returned.

If the author has written here the biography of his book he has notacted on the prompting of fatuity. He relates facts which may furnishmaterial for the history of human thought, and will without doubtexplain the work itself. It may perhaps be important to certainanatomists of thought to be told that the soul is feminine. Thusalthough the author made a resolution not to think about the bookwhich he was forced to write, the book, nevertheless, was completed.One page of it was found on the bed of a sick man, another on the sofaof a boudoir. The glances of women when they turned in the mazes of awaltz flung to him some thoughts; a gesture or a word filled hisdisdainful brain with others. On the day when he said to himself,"This work, which haunts me, shall be achieved," everything vanished;and like the three Belgians, he drew forth a skeleton from the placeover which he had bent to seize a treasure.

A mild, pale countenance took the place of the demon who had temptedme; it wore an engaging expression of kindliness; there were no sharppointed arrows of criticism in its lineaments. It seemed to deal morewith words than with ideas, and shrank from noise and clamor. It wasperhaps the household genius of the honorable deputies who sit in thecentre of the Chamber.

"Wouldn't it be better," it said, "to let things be as they are? Arethings so bad? We ought to believe in marriage as we believe in theimmortality of the soul; and you are certainly not making a book toadvertise the happiness of marriage. You will surely conclude thatamong a million of Parisian homes happiness is the exception. You willfind perhaps that there are many husbands disposed to abandon theirwives to you; but there is not a single son who will abandon hismother. Certain people who are hit by the views which you put forthwill suspect your morals and will misrepresent your intentions. In aword, in order to handle social sores, one ought to be a king, or afirst consul at least."

Reason, although it appeared under a form most pleasing to the author,was not listened to; for in the distance Folly tossed the coxcomb ofPanurge, and the author wished to seize it; but, when he tried tocatch it, he found that it was as heavy as the club of Hercules.Moreover, the cure of Meudon adorned it in such fashion that a youngman who was less pleased with producing a good work than with wearingfine gloves could not even touch it.

"Is our work completed?" asked the younger of the two feminineassistants of the author.

"Alas! madame," I said, "will you ever requite me for all the hatredswhich that work will array against me?"

She waved her hand, and then the author replied to her doubt by a lookof indifference.

"What do you mean? Would you hesitate? You must publish it withoutfear. In the present day we accept a book more because it is infashion than because it has anything in it."

Although the author does not here represent himself as anything morethan the secretary of two ladies, he has in compiling theirobservations accomplished a double task. With regard to marriage hehas here arranged matters which represent what everybody thinks but noone dares to say; but has he not also exposed himself to publicdispleasure by expressing the mind of the public? Perhaps, however,the eclecticism of the present essay will save it from condemnation.All the while that he indulges in banter the author has attempted topopularize certain ideas which are particularly consoling. He hasalmost always endeavored to lay bare the hidden springs which move thehuman soul. While undertaking to defend the most material interests ofman, judging them or condemning them, he will perhaps bring to lightmany sources of intellectual delight. But the author does notfoolishly claim always to put forth his pleasantries in the best oftaste; he has merely counted upon the diversity of intellectualpursuits in expectation of receiving as much blame as approbation. Thesubject of his work was so serious that he is constantly launched intoanecdote; because at the present day anecdotes are the vehicle of allmoral teaching, and the anti-narcotic of every work of literature. Inliterature, analysis and investigation prevail, and the wearying ofthe reader increases in proportion with the egotism of the writer.This is one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall a book, andthe present author has been quite aware of it. He has therefore soarranged the topics of this long essay as to afford resting places forthe reader. This method has been successfully adopted by a writer, whoproduced on the subject of Taste a work somewhat parallel to thatwhich is here put forth on the subject of Marriage. From the formerthe present writer may be permitted to borrow a few words in order toexpress a thought which he shares with the author of them. Thisquotation will serve as an expression of homage to his predecessor,whose success has been so swiftly followed by his death:

"When I write and speak of myself in the singular, this implies aconfidential talk with the reader; he can examine the statement,discuss it, doubt and even ridicule it; but when I arm myself with theformidable WE, I become the professor and demand submission."—Brillat-Savarin, Preface to the Physiology of Taste.

DECEMBER 5, 1829.

FIRST PART.

A GENERAL CONSIDERATION.

We will declaim against stupid laws until they are changed, and in themeantime blindly submit to them.—Diderot, Supplement to the Voyageof Bougainville.

MEDITATION I.

THE SUBJECT.

Physiology, what must I consider your meaning?

Is not your object to prove that marriage unites for life two beingswho do not know each other?

That life consists in passion, and that no passion survives marriage?

That marriage is an institution necessary for the preservation ofsociety, but that it is contrary to the laws of nature?

That divorce, this admirable release from the misfortunes of marriage,should with one voice be reinstated?

That, in spite of all its inconveniences, marriage is the foundationon which property is based?

That it furnishes invaluable pledges for the security of government?

That there is something touching in the association of two humanbeings for the purpose of supporting the pains of life?

That there is something ridiculous in the wish that one and the samethoughts should control two wills?

That the wife is treated as a slave?

That there has never been a marriage entirely happy?

That marriage is filled with crimes and that the known murders are notthe worst?

That fidelity is impossible, at least to the man?

That an investigation if it could be undertaken would prove that inthe transmission of patrimonial property there was more risk thansecurity?

That adultery does more harm than marriage does good?

That infidelity in a woman may be traced back to the earliest ages ofsociety, and that marriage still survives this perpetuation oftreachery?

That the laws of love so strongly link together two human beings thatno human law can put them asunder?

That while there are marriages recorded on the public registers, thereare others over which nature herself has presided, and they have beendictated either by the mutual memory of thought, or by an utterdifference of mental disposition, or by corporeal affinity in theparties named; that it is thus that heaven and earth are constantly atvariance?

That there are many husbands fine in figure and of superior intellectwhose wives have lovers exceedingly ugly, insignificant in appearanceor stupid in mind?

All these questions furnish material for books; but the books havebeen written and the questions are constantly reappearing.

Physiology, what must I take you to mean?

Do you reveal new principles? Would you pretend that it is the rightthing that woman should be made common? Lycurgus and certain Greekpeoples as well as Tartars and savages have tried this.

Can it possibly be right to confine women? The Ottomans once did so,and nowadays they give them their liberty.

Would it be right to marry young women without providing a dowry andyet exclude them from the right of succeeding to property? SomeEnglish authors and some moralists have proved that this with theadmission of divorce is the surest method of rendering marriage happy.

Should there be a little Hagar in each marriage establishment? Thereis no need to pass a law for that. The provision of the code whichmakes an unfaithful wife liable to a penalty in whatever place thecrime be committed, and that other article which does not punish theerring husband unless his concubine dwells beneath the conjugal roof,implicitly admits the existence of mistresses in the city.

Sanchez has written a dissertation on the penal cases incident tomarriage; he has even argued on the illegitimacy and the opportunenessof each form of indulgence; he has outlined all the duties, moral,religious and corporeal, of the married couple; in short his workwould form twelve volumes in octavo if the huge folio entitled DeMatrimonio were thus represented.

Clouds of lawyers have flung clouds of treatises over the legaldifficulties which are born of marriage. There exist several works onthe judicial investigation of impotency.

Legions of doctors have marshaled their legions of books on thesubject of marriage in its relation to medicine and surgery.

In the nineteenth century the Physiology of Marriage is either aninsignificant compilation or the work of a fool written for otherfools; old priests have taken their balances of gold and have weighedthe most trifling scruples of the marriage consciences; old lawyershave put on their spectacles and have distinguished between every kindof married transgression; old doctors have seized the scalpel anddrawn it over all the wounds of the subject; old judges have mountedto the bench and have decided all the cases of marriage dissolution;whole generations have passed unuttered cries of joy or of grief onthe subject, each age has cast its vote into the urn; the Holy Spirit,poets and writers have recounted everything from the days of Eve tothe Trojan war, from Helen to Madame de Maintenon, from the mistressof Louis XIV to the woman of their own day.

Physiology, what must I consider your meaning?

Shall I say that you intend to publish pictures more or lessskillfully drawn, for the purpose of convincing us that a man marries:

From ambition—that is well known;

From kindness, in order to deliver a girl from the tyranny of hermother;

From rage, in order to disinherit his relations;

From scorn of a faithless mistress;

From weariness of a pleasant bachelor life;

From folly, for each man always commits one;

In consequence of a wager, which was the case with Lord Byron;

From interest, which is almost always the case;

From youthfulness on leaving college, like a blockhead;

From ugliness,—fear of some day failing to secure a wife;

Through Machiavelism, in order to be the heir of some old woman at anearly date;

From necessity, in order to secure the standing to our son;

From obligation, the damsel having shown herself weak;

From passion, in order to become more surely cured of it;

On account of a quarrel, in order to put an end to a lawsuit;

From gratitude, by which he gives more than he has received;

From goodness, which is the fate of doctrinaires;

From the condition of a will when a dead uncle attaches his legacy tosome girl, marriage with whom is the condition of succession;

From custom, in imitation of his ancestors;

From old age, in order to make an end of life;

From yatidi, that is the hour of going to bed and signifies amongstthe Turks all bodily needs;

From religious zeal, like the Duke of Saint-Aignan, who did not wishto commit sin?[*]

[*] The foregoing queries came in (untranslatable) alphabetic order in
the original.—Editor

But these incidents of marriage have furnished matter for thirtythousand comedies and a hundred thousand romances.

Physiology, for the third and last time I ask you—What is yourmeaning?

So far everything is commonplace as the pavement of the street,familiar as a crossway. Marriage is better known than the Barabbas ofthe Passion. All the ancient ideas which it calls to light permeateliterature since the world is the world, and there is not a singleopinion which might serve to the advantage of the world, nor aridiculous project which could not find an author to write it up, aprinter to print it, a bookseller to sell it and a reader to read it.

Allow me to say to you like Rabelais, who is in every sense ourmaster:

"Gentlemen, God save and guard you! Where are you? I cannot see you;wait until I put on my spectacles. Ah! I see you now; you, your wives,your children. Are you in good health? I am glad to hear it."

But it is not for you that I am writing. Since you have grown-upchildren that ends the matter.

Ah! it is you, illustrious tipplers, pampered and gouty, and you,tireless pie-cutters, favorites who come dear; day-longpantagruellists who keep your private birds, gay and gallant, and whogo to tierce, to sexts, to nones, and also to vespers and compline andnever tire of going.

It is not for you that the Physiology of Marriage is addressed, foryou are not married and may you never be married. You herd of bigots,snails, hypocrites, dotards, lechers, booted for pilgrimage to Rome,disguised and marked, as it were, to deceive the world. Go back, youscoundrels, out of my sight! Gallows birds are ye all—now in thedevil's name will you not begone? There are none left now but the goodsouls who love to laugh; not the snivelers who burst into tears inprose or verse, whatever their subject be, who make people sick withtheir odes, their sonnets, their meditation; none of these dreamers,but certain old-fashioned pantagruellists who don't think twice aboutit when they are invited to join a banquet or provoked to make arepartee, who can take pleasure in a book like Pease and the Lardwith commentary of Rabelais, or in the one entitled The Dignity ofBreeches, and who esteem highly the fair books of high degree, aquarry hard to run down and redoubtable to wrestle with.

It no longer does to laugh at a government, my friend, since it hasinvented means to raise fifteen hundred millions by taxation. Highecclesiastics, monks and nuns are no longer so rich that we can drinkwith them; but let St. Michael come, he who chased the devil fromheaven, and we shall perhaps see the good time come back again! Thereis only one thing in France at the present moment which remains alaughing matter, and that is marriage. Disciples of Panurge, ye arethe only readers I desire. You know how seasonably to take up and laydown a book, how to get the most pleasure out of it, to understand thehint in a half word—how to suck nourishment from a marrow-bone.

The men of the microscope who see nothing but a speck, thecensus-mongers—have they reviewed the whole matter? Have theypronounced without appeal that it is as impossible to write a book onmarriage as to make new again a broken pot?

Yes, master fool. If you begin to squeeze the marriage question yousquirt out nothing but fun for the bachelors and weariness for themarried men. It is everlasting morality. A million printed pages wouldhave no other matter in them.

In spite of this, here is my first proposition: marriage is a fight tothe death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven,because it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love;the fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty,remains in the hands of the cleverer of the two.

Undoubtedly. But do you see in this a fresh idea?

Well, I address myself to the married men of yesterday and of to-day;to those who on leaving the Church or the registration office indulgethe hope of keeping their wives for themselves alone; to those whomsome form or other of egotism or some indefinable sentiment induces tosay when they see the marital troubles of another, "This will neverhappen to me."

I address myself to those sailors who after witnessing the founderingof other ships still put to sea; to those bachelors who afterwitnessing the shipwreck of virtue in a marriage of another ventureupon wedlock. And this is my subject, eternally now, yet eternallyold!

A young man, or it may be an old one, in love or not in love, hasobtained possession by a contract duly recorded at the registrationoffice in heaven and on the rolls of the nation, of a young girl withlong hair, with black liquid eyes, with small feet, with daintytapering fingers, with red lips, with teeth of ivory, finely formed,trembling with life, tempting and plump, white as a lily, loaded withthe most charming wealth of beauty. Her drooping eyelashes seem likethe points of the iron crown; her skin, which is as fresh as the calyxof a white camelia, is streaked with the purple of the red camelia;over her virginal complexion one seems to see the bloom of young fruitand the delicate down of a young peach; the azure veins spread akindling warmth over this transparent surface; she asks for life andshe gives it; she is all joy and love, all tenderness and candor; sheloves her husband, or at least believes she loves him.

The husband who is in love says in the bottom of his heart: "Thoseeyes will see no one but me, that mouth will tremble with love for mealone, that gentle hand will lavish the caressing treasures of delighton me alone, that bosom will heave at no voice but mine, thatslumbering soul will awake at my will alone; I only will entangle myfingers in those shining tresses; I alone will indulge myself indreamily caressing that sensitive head. I will make death the guardianof my pillow if only I may ward off from the nuptial couch thestranger who would violate it; that throne of love shall swim in theblood of the rash or of my own. Tranquillity, honor, happiness, theties of home, the fortune of my children, all are at stake there; Iwould defend them as a lioness defends her cubs. Woe unto him whoshall set foot in my lair!"

Well now, courageous athlete, we applaud your intention. Up to thepresent moment no geographer has ventured to trace the lines oflongitude and latitude in the ocean of marriage. Old husbands havebeen ashamed to point out the sand banks, the reefs, the shallows, thebreakers, the monsoons, the coasts and currents which have wreckedtheir ships, for their shipwrecks brought them shame. There was nopilot, no compass for those pilgrims of marriage. This work isintended to supply the desideratum.

Without mentioning grocers and drapers, there are so many peopleoccupied in discovering the secret motives of women, that it is reallya work of charity to classify for them, by chapter and verse, all thesecret situations of marriage; a good table of contents will enablethem to put their finger on each movement of their wives' heart, as atable of logarithms tells them the product of a given multiplication.

And now what do you think about that? Is not this a novel undertaking,and one which no philosopher has as yet approached, I mean thisattempt to show how a woman may be prevented from deceiving herhusband? Is not this the comedy of comedies? Is it not a secondspeculum vitae humanae. We are not now dealing with the abstractquestions which we have done justice to already in this Meditation. Atthe present day in ethics as in exact science, the world asks forfacts for the results of observation. These we shall furnish.

Let us begin then by examining the true condition of things, byanalyzing the forces which exist on either side. Before arming ourimaginary champion let us reckon up the number of his enemies. Let uscount the Cossacks who intend to invade his little domain.

All who wish may embark with us on this voyage, all who can may laugh.Weigh anchor; hoist sail! You know exactly the point from which youstart. You have this advantage over a great many books that arewritten.

As for our fancy of laughing while we weep, and of weeping while welaugh, as the divine Rabelais drank while he ate and ate while hedrank; as for our humor, to put Heracl*tus and Democritus on the samepage and to discard style or premeditated phrase—if any of the crewmutiny, overboard with the doting cranks, the infamous classicists,the dead and buried romanticists, and steer for the blue water!

Everybody perhaps will jeeringly remark that we are like those who saywith smiling faces, "I am going to tell you a story that will make youlaugh!" But it is the proper thing to joke when speaking of marriage!In short, can you not understand that we consider marriage as atrifling ailment to which all of us are subject and upon which thisvolume is a monograph?

"But you, your bark or your work starts off like those postilions whocrack their whips because their passengers are English. You will nothave galloped at full speed for half a league before you dismount tomend a trace or to breathe your horses. What is the good of blowingthe trumpet before victory?"

Ah! my dear pantagruellists, nowadays to claim success is to obtainit, and since, after all, great works are only due to the expansion oflittle ideas, I do not see why I should not pluck the laurels, if onlyfor the purpose of crowning those dirty bacon faces who join us inswallowing a dram. One moment, pilot, let us not start without makingone little definition.

Reader, if from time to time you meet in this work the terms virtue orvirtuous, let us understand that virtue means a certain laboredfacility by which a wife keeps her heart for her husband; at any rate,that the word is not used in a general sense, and I leave thisdistinction to the natural sagacity of all.

MEDITATION II.

MARRIAGE STATISTICS.

The administration has been occupied for nearly twenty years inreckoning how many acres of woodland, meadow, vineyard and fallow arecomprised in the area of France. It has not stopped there, but hasalso tried to learn the number and species of the animals to be foundthere. Scientific men have gone still further; they have reckoned upthe cords of wood, the pounds of beef, the apples and eggs consumed inParis. But no one has yet undertaken either in the name of maritalhonor or in the interest of marriageable people, or for the advantageof morality and the progress of human institutions, to investigate thenumber of honest wives. What! the French government, if inquiry ismade of it, is able to say how many men it has under arms, how manyspies, how many employees, how many scholars; but, when it is askedhow many virtuous women, it can answer nothing! If the King of Francetook into his head to choose his august partner from among hissubjects, the administration could not even tell him the number ofwhite lambs from whom he could make his choice. It would be obliged toresort to some competition which awards the rose of good conduct, andthat would be a laughable event.

Were the ancients then our masters in political institutions as inmorality? History teaches us that Ahasuerus, when he wished to take awife from among the damsels of Persia, chose Esther, the most virtuousand the most beautiful. His ministers therefore must necessarily havediscovered some method of obtaining the cream of the population.Unfortunately the Bible, which is so clear on all matrimonialquestions, has omitted to give us a rule for matrimonial choice.

Let us try to supply this gap in the work of the administration bycalculating the sum of the female sex in France. Here we call theattention of all friends to public morality, and we appoint themjudges of our method of procedure. We shall attempt to be particularlyliberal in our estimations, particularly exact in our reasoning, inorder that every one may accept the result of this analysis.

The inhabitants of France are generally reckoned at thirty millions.

Certain naturalists think that the number of women exceeds that ofmen; but as many statisticians are of the opposite opinion, we willmake the most probable calculation by allowing fifteen millions forthe women.

We will begin by cutting down this sum by nine millions, which standsfor those who seem to have some resemblance to women, but whom we arecompelled to reject upon serious considerations.

Let us explain:

Naturalists consider man to be no more than a unique species of theorder bimana, established by Dumeril in his Analytic Zoology, page16; and Bory de Saint Vincent thinks that the ourang-outang ought tobe included in the same order if we would make the species complete.

If these zoologists see in us nothing more than a mammal withthirty-two vertebrae possessing the hyoid bone and more folds in thehemispheres of the brain than any other animal; if in their opinion noother differences exist in this order than those produced by theinfluence of climate, on which are founded the nomenclature of fifteenspecies whose scientific names it is needless to cite, thephysiologists ought also to have the right of making species andsub-species in accordance with definite degrees of intelligence anddefinite conditions of existence, oral and pecuniary.

Now the nine millions of human creatures which we here refer topresent at first sight all the attributes of the human race; they havethe hyoid bone, the coracoid process, the acromion, the zygomaticarch. It is therefore permitted for the gentlemen of the Jardin desPlantes to classify them with the bimana; but our Physiology willnever admit that women are to be found among them. In our view, and inthe view of those for whom this book is intended, a woman is a rarevariety of the human race, and her principal characteristics are dueto the special care men have bestowed upon its cultivation,—thanks tothe power of money and the moral fervor of civilization! She isgenerally recognized by the whiteness, the fineness and softness ofher skin. Her taste inclines to the most spotless cleanliness. Herfingers shrink from encountering anything but objects which are soft,yielding and scented. Like the ermine she sometimes dies for grief onseeing her white tunic soiled. She loves to twine her tresses and tomake them exhale the most attractive scents; to brush her rosy nails,to trim them to an almond shape, and frequently to bathe her delicatelimbs. She is not satisfied to spend the night excepting on thesoftest down, and excepting on hair-cushioned lounges, she loves bestto take a horizontal position. Her voice is of penetrating sweetness;her movements are full of grace. She speaks with marvelous fluency.She does not apply herself to any hard work; and, nevertheless, inspite of her apparent weakness, there are burdens which she can bearand move with miraculous ease. She avoids the open sunlight and wardsit off by ingenious appliances. For her to walk is exhausting. Doesshe eat? This is a mystery. Has she the needs of other species? It isa problem. Although she is curious to excess she allows herself easilyto be caught by any one who can conceal from her the slightest thing,and her intellect leads her to seek incessantly after the unknown.Love is her religion; she thinks how to please the one she loves. Tobe beloved is the end of all her actions; to excite desire is themotive of every gesture. She dreams of nothing excepting how she mayshine, and moves only in a circle filled with grace and elegance. Itis for her the Indian girl has spun the soft fleece of Thibet goats,Tarare weaves its airy veils, Brussels sets in motion those shuttleswhich speed the flaxen thread that is purest and most fine, Bidjapourwrenches from the bowels of the earth its sparkling pebbles, and theSevres gilds its snow-white clay. Night and day she reflects upon newcostumes and spends her life in considering dress and in plaiting herapparel. She moves about exhibiting her brightness and freshness topeople she does not know, but whose homage flatters her, while thedesire she excites charms her, though she is indifferent to those whofeel it. During the hours which she spends in private, in pleasure,and in the care of her person, she amuses herself by caroling thesweetest strains. For her France and Italy ordain delightful concertsand Naples imparts to the strings of the violin an harmonious soul.This species is in fine at once the queen of the world and the slaveof passion. She dreads marriage because it ends by spoiling herfigure, but she surrenders herself to it because it promiseshappiness. If she bears children it is by pure chance, and when theyare grown up she tries to conceal them.

These characteristics taken at random from among a thousand others arenot found amongst those beings whose hands are as black as those ofapes and their skin tanned like the ancient parchments of an olim;whose complexion is burnt brown by the sun and whose neck is wrinkledlike that of a turkey; who are covered with rags; whose voice ishoarse; whose intelligence is nil; who think of nothing but the breadbox, and who are incessantly bowed in toil towards the ground; whodig; who harrow; who make hay, glean, gather in the harvest, knead thebread and strip hemp; who, huddled among domestic beasts, infants andmen, dwell in holes and dens scarcely covered with thatch; to whom itis of little importance from what source children rain down into theirhomes. Their work it is to produce many and to deliver them to miseryand toil, and if their love is not like their labor in the fields itis at least as much a work of chance.

Alas! if there are throughout the world multitudes of trades-women whosit all day long between the cradle and the sugar-cask, farmers' wivesand daughters who milk the cows, unfortunate women who are employedlike beasts of burden in the manufactories, who all day long carry theloaded basket, the hoe and the fish-crate, if unfortunately thereexist these common human beings to whom the life of the soul, thebenefits of education, the delicious tempests of the heart are anunattainable heaven; and if Nature has decreed that they should havecoracoid processes and hyoid bones and thirty-two vertebrae, let themremain for the physiologist classed with the ourang-outang. And herewe make no stipulations for the leisure class; for those who have thetime and the sense to fall in love; for the rich who have purchasedthe right of indulging their passions; for the intellectual who haveconquered a monopoly of fads. Anathema on all those who do not live bythought. We say Raca and fool to all those who are not ardent, young,beautiful and passionate. This is the public expression of that secretsentiment entertained by philanthropists who have learned to read andcan keep their own carriage. Among the nine millions of theproscribed, the tax-gatherer, the magistrate, the law-maker and thepriest doubtless see living souls who are to be ruled and made subjectto the administration of justice. But the man of sentiment, thephilosopher of the boudoir, while he eats his fine bread, made ofcorn, sown and harvested by these creatures, will reject them andrelegate them, as we do, to a place outside the genus Woman. For them,there are no women excepting those who can inspire love; and there isno living being but the creature invested with the priesthood ofthought by means of a privileged education, and with whom leisure hasdeveloped the power of imagination; in other words that only is ahuman being whose soul dreams, in love, either of intellectualenjoyments or of physical delights.

We would, however, make the remark that these nine million femalepariahs produce here and there a thousand peasant girls who frompeculiar circ*mstances are as fair as Cupids; they come to Paris or tothe great cities and end up by attaining the rank of femmes comme ilfaut; but to set off against these two or three thousand favoredcreatures, there are one hundred thousand others who remain servantsor abandon themselves to frightful irregularities. Nevertheless, weare obliged to count these Pompadours of the village among thefeminine population.

Our first calculation is based upon the statistical discovery that inFrance there are eighteen millions of the poor, ten millions of peoplein easy circ*mstances and two millions of the rich.

There exist, therefore, in France only six millions of women in whommen of sentiment are now interested, have been interested, or will beinterested.

Let us subject this social elite to a philosophic examination.

We think, without fear of being deceived, that married people who havelived twenty years together may sleep in peace without fear of havingtheir love trespassed upon or of incurring the scandal of a lawsuitfor criminal conversation.

From these six millions of individuals we must subtract about twomillions of women who are extremely attractive, because for the lastforty years they have seen the world; but since they have not thepower to make any one fall in love with them, they are on the outsideof the discussion now before us. If they are unhappy enough to receiveno attention for the sake of amiability, they are soon seized withennui; they fall back upon religion, upon the cultivation of pets,cats, lap-dogs, and other fancies which are no more offensive thantheir devoutness.

The calculations made at the Bureau of Longitudes concerningpopulation authorize us again to subtract from the total mentioned twomillions of young girls, pretty enough to kill; they are at present inthe A B C of life and innocently play with other children, withoutdreading that these little hobbledehoys, who now make them laugh, willone day make them weep.

Again, of the two millions of the remaining women, what reasonable manwould not throw out a hundred thousand poor girls, humpbacked, plain,cross-grained, rickety, sickly, blind, crippled in some way, welleducated but penniless, all bound to be spinsters, and by no meanstempted to violate the sacred laws of marriage?

Nor must we retain the one hundred thousand other girls who becomesisters of St. Camille, Sisters of Charity, monastics, teachers,ladies' companions, etc. And we must put into this blessed company anumber of young people difficult to estimate, who are too grown up toplay with little boys and yet too young to sport their wreath oforange blossoms.

Finally, of the fifteen million subjects which remain at the bottom ofour crucible we must eliminate five hundred thousand otherindividuals, to be reckoned as daughters of Baal, who subserve theappetites of the base. We must even comprise among those, without fearthat they will be corrupted by their company, the kept women, themilliners, the shop girls, saleswomen, actresses, singers, the girlsof the opera, the ballet-dancers, upper servants, chambermaids, etc.Most of these creatures excite the passions of many people, but theywould consider it immodest to inform a lawyer, a mayor, anecclesiastic or a laughing world of the day and hour when theysurrendered to a lover. Their system, justly blamed by an inquisitiveworld, has the advantage of laying upon them no obligations towardsmen in general, towards the mayor or the magistracy. As these women donot violate any oath made in public, they have no connection whateverwith 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 amateursconsider excessively padded. If any one, through love for a wealthydowager, wishes to obtain admittance for her into the remainingmillion, he must classify her under the head of Sisters of Charity,ballet-dancers, or hunchbacks; in fact we have not taken more thanfive hundred thousand individuals in forming this last class, becauseit often happens, as we have seen above, that the nine millions ofpeasant girls make a large accession to it. We have for the samereason omitted the working-girl class and the hucksters; the women ofthese two sections are the product of efforts made by nine millions offemale bimana to rise to the higher civilization. But for itsscrupulous exactitude many persons might regard this statisticalmeditation as a mere joke.

We have felt very much inclined to form a small class of a hundredthousand individuals as a crowning cabinet of the species, to serve asa place of shelter for women who have fallen into a middle estate,like widows, for instance; but we have preferred to estimate in roundfigures.

It would be easy to prove the fairness of our analysis: let onereflection be sufficient.

The life of a woman is divided into three periods, very distinct fromeach other: the first begins in the cradle and ends on the attainmentof a marriageable age; the second embraces the time during which awoman belongs to marriage; the third opens with the critical period,the ending with which nature closes the passions of life. These threespheres of existence, being almost equal in duration, might beemployed for the classification into equal groups of a given number ofwomen. Thus in a mass of six millions, omitting fractions, there areabout two million girls between one and eighteen, two millions womenbetween eighteen and forty and two millions of old women. The capricesof society have divided the two millions of marriageable women intothree main classes, namely: those who remain spinsters for reasonswhich we have defined; those whose virtue does not reckon in theobtaining of husbands, and the million of women lawfully married, withwhom 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 whitelambs, a privileged fold into which every wolf is anxious to enter.

Let us put this million of women, already winnowed by our fan, throughanother examination.

To arrive at the true idea of the degree of confidence which a manought to have in his wife, let us suppose for a moment that all wiveswill 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 totheir vows for a certain time.

Another twentieth will be in ill-health. This will be to make a verymodest allowance for human infirmities.

Certain passions, which we are told destroy the dominion of the manover the heart of his wife, namely, aversion, grief, the bearing ofchildren, will account for another twentieth.

Adultery does not establish itself in the heart of a married womanwith the promptness of a pistol-shot. Even when sympathy with anotherrouses feelings on first sight, a struggle always takes place, whoseduration discounts the total sum of conjugal infidelities. It would bean insult to French modesty not to admit the duration of this strugglein a country so naturally combative, without referring to at least atwentieth in the total of married women; but then we will suppose thatthere are certain sickly women who preserve their lovers while theyare using soothing draughts, and that there are certain wives whoseconfinement makes sarcastic celibates smile. In this way we shallvindicate the modesty of those who enter upon the struggle frommotives of virtue. For the same reason we should not venture tobelieve that a woman forsaken by her lover will find a new one on thespot; but this discount being much more uncertain than the precedingone, we will estimate it at one-fortieth.

These several rebates will reduce our sum total to eight hundredthousand women, when we come to calculate the number of those who arelikely to violate married faith. Who would not at the present momentwish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they notthe supreme flower of the country? Are they not all bloomingcreatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, theirlife and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of socialreligion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chiefglory 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 twocategories requires whole meditations, which may serve as an appendixto the present one.

MEDITATION III.

OF THE HONEST WOMAN.

The preceding meditation has proved that we possess in France afloating population of one million women reveling in the privilege ofinspiring those passions which a gallant man avows without shame, ordissembles with delight. It is then among this million of women thatwe must carry our lantern of Diogenes in order to discover the honestwomen of the land.

This inquiry suggests certain digressions.

Two young people, well dressed, whose slender figures and rounded armssuggest a paver's tool, and whose boots are elegantly made, meet onemorning 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 thenature of the joke which opens the conversation.

When they have examined each other with the sly curiosity of a policeofficer on the lookout for a clew, when they are quite convinced ofthe newness of each other's gloves, of each other's waistcoat and ofthe taste with which their cravats are tied; when they are prettycertain that neither of them is down in the world, they link arms andif they start from the Theater des Varietes, they have not reachedFrascati's before they have asked each other a roundabout questionwhose 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 thepasser-by, and who has not caught one of those numberless sayingswhich, according to Rabelais, hang frozen in the air? But the majorityof men take their way through Paris in the same manner as they liveand eat, that is, without thinking about it. There are very fewskillful musicians, very few practiced physiognomists who canrecognize the key in which these vagrant notes are set, the passionthat prompts these floating words. Ah! to wander over Paris! What anadorable and delightful existence is that! To saunter is a science; itis the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; tosaunter is to live. The young and pretty women, long contemplated withardent eyes, would be much more admissible in claiming a salary thanthe cook who asks for twenty sous from the Limousin whose nose withinflated nostrils took in the perfumes of beauty. To saunter is toenjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy thesublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesquephysiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousandexistences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; forthe old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share theirpassions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heardto the categorical question which is always with us?

"She is thirty-five years old, but you would not think she was morethan 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 theevening!" 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 hewere 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; butshe has the most stupid of husbands! Ah!—Buffon has admirablydescribed 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 requestdiscreetly 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 prideand takes his friends to lunch at her house. If a young man loves awoman whose husband is engaged in some trade dealing with articles ofnecessity, he will answer, blushingly, "She is the wife of ahaberdasher, of a stationer, of a hatter, of a linen-draper, of aclerk, etc."

But this confession of love for an inferior which buds and blows inthe midst of packages, loaves of sugar, or flannel waistcoats isalways accompanied with an exaggerated praise of the lady's fortune.The husband alone is engaged in the business; he is rich; he has finefurniture. The loved one comes to her lover's house; she wears acashmere shawl; she owns a country house, etc.

In short, a young man is never wanting in excellent arguments to provethat his mistress is very nearly, if not quite, an honest woman. Thisdistinction originates in the refinement of our manners and has becomeas 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 oftheir husbands, is so sensitive that we had better here settle uponsome general rules, which are the result of long observation.

Our one million of privileged women represent a multitude who areeligible for the glorious title of honest women, but by no means allare elected to it. The principles on which these elections are basedmay 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 thousandfrancs, his wife is an honest woman, whatever the business in whichhis fortune was made.

VII.A woman who says "letter of change" for letter of exchange, who saysof 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 sitsat the cashier's desk cannot be one, unless her husband has a verylarge business and she does not live over his shop.

XI.The unmarried niece of a bishop when she lives with him can pass foran honest woman, because if she has an intrigue she has to deceive heruncle.

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 canresolve all the difficulties which our subject presents.

In order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finelyeducated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right topass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a lifeof soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if shelives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris. Thesetwo financial limits will suggest to you how many honest women are tobe reckoned on in the million, for they are really a mere product ofour statistical calculations.

Now three hundred thousand independent people, with an income offifteen thousand francs, represent the sum total of those who live onpensions, on annuities and the interest of treasury bonds andmortgages.

Three hundred thousand landed proprietors enjoy an income of threethousand five hundred francs and represent all territorial wealth.

Two hundred thousand payees, at the rate of fifteen hundred francseach, 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 allowancesfor washing, weapons, victuals, clothes, etc.).

Two hundred thousand fortunes amassed in commerce, reckoning thecapital at twenty thousand francs in each case, represent all thecommercial 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 nomore than a hundred sous, twenty francs, one hundred francs, twohundred, or two hundred and eighty?

At what number shall we reckon those of the governmental leeches, whoare merely quill-drivers with a salary of six hundred francs a year?

How many merchants who have nothing but a fictitious capital shall weadmit? These men are rich in credit and have not a single actual sou,and resemble the sieves through which Pactolus flows. And how manybrokers whose real capital does not amount to more than a thousand,two thousand, four thousand, five thousand francs? Business!—myrespects to you!

Let us suppose more people to be fortunate than actually are so. Letus divide this million into parts; five hundred thousand domesticestablishments will have an income ranging from a hundred to threethousand francs, and five thousand women will fulfill the conditionswhich entitle them to be called honest women.

After these observations, which close our meditation on statistics, weare entitled to cut out of this number one hundred thousandindividuals; consequently we can consider it to be provenmathematically that there exist in France no more than four hundredthousand women who can furnish to men of refinement the exquisite andexalted enjoyments which they look for in love.

And here it is fitting to make a remark to the adepts for whom wewrite, that love does not consist in a series of eager conversations,of nights of pleasure, of an occasional caress more or less well-timedand a spark of amour-propre baptized by the name of jealousy. Ourfour hundred thousand women are not of those concerning whom it may besaid, "The most beautiful girl in the world can give only what shehas." No, they are richly endowed with treasures which appeal to ourardent imaginations, they know how to sell dear that which they do notpossess, in order to compensate for the vulgarity of that which theygive.

Do we feel more pleasure in kissing the glove of a grisette than indraining the five minutes of pleasure which all women offer to us?

Is it the conversation of a shop-girl which makes you expect boundlessdelights?

In your intercourse with a woman who is beneath you, the delight offlattered amour-propre is on her side. You are not in the secret ofthe 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 womanalways puts her lover in the position that she herself occupies. "Ican make princes and you can make nothing but bastards," is an answersparkling with truth.

If love is the first of passions, it is because it flatters all therest of them at the same time. We love with more or less intensity inproportion to the number of chords which are touched by the fingers ofa beautiful mistress.

Biren, the jeweler's son, climbing into the bed of the duch*esse deCourlande and helping her to sign an agreement that he should beproclaimed sovereign of the country, as he was already of the youngand beautiful queen, is an example of the happiness which ought to begiven to their lovers by our four hundred thousand women.

If a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the headswhich crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artisticwoman 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 madeby men whose education, talent or wit gives them the right to beconsidered persons of importance with regard to that success of whichpeople of every country are so proud; and only among this class ofwomen is the wife to be found whose heart has to be defended at allhazard by our husband.

What does it matter whether the considerations which arise from theexistence of a feminine aristocracy are or are not equally applicableto other social classes? That which is true of all women exquisite inmanners, language and thought, in whom exceptional educationalfacilities have developed a taste for art and a capacity for feeling,comparing and thinking, who have a high sense of propriety andpoliteness and who actually set the fashion in French manners, oughtto be true also in the case of women whatever their nation andwhatever their condition. The man of distinction to whom this book isdedicated must of necessity possess a certain mental vision, whichmakes him perceive the various degrees of light that fill each classand comprehend the exact point in the scale of civilization to whicheach of our remarks is severally applicable.

Would it not be then in the highest interests of morality, that weshould in the meantime try to find out the number of virtuous womenwho are to be found among these adorable creatures? Is not this aquestion of marito-national importance?

MEDITATION IV.

OF THE VIRTUOUS WOMAN.

The question, perhaps, is not so much how many virtuous women thereare, as what possibility there is of an honest woman remainingvirtuous.

In order to throw light upon a point so important, let us cast a rapidglance over the male population.

From among our fifteen millions of men we must cut off, in the firstplace, the nine millions of bimana of thirty-two vertebrae and excludefrom our physiological analysis all but six millions of people. TheMarceaus, the Massenas, the Rousseaus, the Diderots and the Rollinsoften sprout forth suddenly from the social swamp, when it is in acondition of fermentation; but, here we plead guilty of deliberateinaccuracy. These errors in calculation are likely, however, to giveall their weight to our conclusion and to corroborate what we areforced to deduce in unveiling the mechanism of passion.

From the six millions of privileged men, we must exclude threemillions of old men and children.

It will be affirmed by some one that this subtraction leaves aremainder of four millions in the case of women.

This difference at first sight seems singular, but is easily accountedfor.

The average age at which women are married is twenty years and atforty they cease to belong to the world of love.

Now a young bachelor of seventeen is apt to make deep cuts with hispenknife in the parchment of contracts, as the chronicles of scandalwill tell you.

On the other hand, a man at fifty-two is more formidable than at anyother age. It is at this fair epoch of life that he enjoys anexperience dearly bought, and probably all the fortune that he willever require. The passions by which his course is directed being thelast under whose scourge he will move, he is unpitying and determined,like the man carried away by a current who snatches at a green andpliant branch of willow, the young nursling of the year.

XIV.
Physically a man is a man much longer than a woman is a woman.

With regard to marriage, the difference in duration of the life oflove with a man and with a woman is fifteen years. This period isequal to three-fourths of the time during which the infidelities ofthe woman can bring unhappiness to her husband. Nevertheless, theremainder in our subtraction from the sum of men only differs by asixth or so from that which results in our subtraction from the sum ofwomen.

Great is the modest caution of our estimates. As to our arguments,they are founded on evidence so widely known, that we have onlyexpounded them for the sake of being exact and in order to anticipateall criticism.

It has, therefore, been proved to the mind of every philosopher,however little disposed he may be to forming numerical estimates, thatthere exists in France a floating mass of three million men betweenseventeen and fifty-two, all perfectly alive, well provided withteeth, quite resolved on biting, in fact, biting and asking nothingbetter than the opportunity of walking strong and upright along theway to Paradise.

The above observations entitle us to separate from this mass of men amillion husbands. Suppose for an instant that these, being satisfiedand always happy, like our model husband, confine themselves toconjugal love.

Our remainder of two millions do not require five sous to make love.

It is quite sufficient for a man to have a fine foot and a clear eyein order to dismantle the portrait of a husband.

It is not necessary that he should have a handsome face nor even agood figure;

Provided that a man appears to be intellectual and has a distinguishedexpression of face, women never look where he comes from but where heis going to;

The charms of youth are the unique equipage of love;

A coat made by Brisson, a pair of gloves bought from Boivin, elegantshoes, for whose payment the dealer trembles, a well-tied cravat aresufficient to make a man king of the drawing-room;

And soldiers—although the passion for gold lace and aiguillettes hasdied away—do not soldiers form of themselves a redoubtable legion ofcelibates? Not to mention Eginhard—for he was a private secretary—has not a newspaper recently recorded how a German princessbequeathed her fortune to a simple lieutenant of cuirassiers in theimperial guard?

But the notary of the village, who in the wilds of Gascony does notdraw more than thirty-six deeds a year, sends his son to study law atParis; the hatter wishes his son to be a notary, the lawyer destineshis to be a judge, the judge wishes to become a minister in order thathis sons may be peers. At no epoch in the world's history has therebeen so eager a thirst for education. To-day it is not intellect butcleverness that promenades the streets. From every crevice in therocky surface of society brilliant flowers burst forth as the springbrings them on the walls of a ruin; even in the caverns there droopfrom the vaulted roof faintly colored tufts of green vegetation. Thesun of education permeates all. Since this vast development ofthought, this even and fruitful diffusion of light, we have scarcelyany men of superiority, because every single man represents the wholeeducation of his age. We are surrounded by living encyclopaedias whowalk about, think, act and wish to be immortalized. Hence thefrightful catastrophes of climbing ambitions and insensate passions.We feel the want of other worlds; there are more hives needed toreceive the swarms, and especially are we in need of more prettywomen.

But the maladies by which a man is afflicted do not nullify the sumtotal of human passion. To our shame be it spoken, a woman is never somuch attached to us as when we are sick.

With this thought, all the epigrams written against the little sex—for it is antiquated nowadays to say the fair sex—ought to bedisarmed of their point and changed into madrigals of eulogy! All menought to consider that the sole virtue of a woman is to love and thatall women are prodigiously virtuous, and at that point to close thebook and end their meditation.

Ah! do you not remember that black and gloomy hour when lonely andsuffering, making accusations against men and especially against yourfriends, weak, discouraged, and filled with thoughts of death, yourhead supported by a fevered pillow and stretched upon a sheet whosewhite trellis-work of linen was stamped upon your skin, you tracedwith your eyes the green paper which covered the walls of your silentchamber? Do you recollect, I say, seeing some one noiselessly openyour door, exhibiting her fair young face, framed with rolls of gold,and a bonnet which you had never seen before? She seemed like a starin a stormy night, smiling and stealing towards you with an expressionin which distress and happiness were blended, and flinging herselfinto your arms!

"How did you manage it? What did you tell your husband?" you ask.

"Your husband!"—Ah! this brings us back again into the depths of oursubject.

XV.
Morally the man is more often and longer a man than the woman is a
women.

On the other hand we ought to consider that among these two millionsof celibates there are many unhappy men, in whom a profound sense oftheir misery and persistent toil have quenched the instinct of love;

That they have not all passed through college, that there are manyartisans among them, many footmen—the Duke of Gevres, an extremelyplain and short man, as he walked through the park of Versailles sawseveral lackeys of fine appearance and said to his friends, "Look howthese fellows are made by us, and how they imitate us"—that there aremany contractors, many trades people who think of nothing but money;many drudges of the shop;

That there are men more stupid and actually more ugly than God wouldhave made them;

That there are those whose character is like a chestnut without akernel;

That the clergy are generally chaste;

That there are men so situated in life that they can never enter thebrilliant sphere in which honest women move, whether for want of acoat, or from their bashfulness, or from the failure of a mahout tointroduce them.

But let us leave to each one the task of adding to the number of theseexceptions in accordance with his personal experience—for the objectof a book is above all things to make people think—and let usinstantly suppress one-half of the sum total and admit only that thereare one million of hearts worthy of paying homage to honest women.This number approximately includes those who are superior in alldepartments. Women love only the intellectual, but justice must bedone to virtue.

As for these amiable celibates, each of them relates a string ofadventures, all of which seriously compromise honest women. It wouldbe a very moderate and reserved computation to attribute no more thanthree adventures to each celibate; but if some of them count theiradventures by the dozen, there are many more who confine themselves totwo or three incidents of passion and some to a single one in theirwhole life, so that we have in accordance with the statistical methodtaken the average. Now if the number of celibates be multiplied by thenumber of their excesses in love the result will be three millions ofadventures; to set against this we have only four hundred thousandhonest women!

If the God of goodness and indulgence who hovers over the worlds doesnot make a second washing of the human race, it is doubtless becauseso little success attended the first.

Here then we have a people, a society which has been sifted, and yousee the result!

XVI.
Manners are the hypocrisy of nations, and hypocrisy is more or less
perfect.

XVII.
Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.

Physical love is a craving like hunger, excepting that man eats allthe time, and in love his appetite is neither so persistent nor soregular as at the table.

A piece of bread and a carafe of water will satisfy the hunger of anyman; but our civilization has brought to light the science ofgastronomy.

Love has its piece of bread, but it has also its science of loving,that science which we call coquetry, a delightful word which theFrench alone possess, for that science originated in this country.

Well, after all, isn't it enough to enrage all husbands when theythink that man is so endowed with an innate desire to change from onefood to another, that in some savage countries, where travelers havelanded, they have found alcoholic drinks and ragouts?

Hunger is not so violent as love; but the caprices of the soul aremore numerous, more bewitching, more exquisite in their intensity thanthe caprices of gastronomy; but all that the poets and the experiencesof our own life have revealed to us on the subject of love, arms uscelibates with a terrible power: we are the lion of the Gospel seekingwhom we may devour.

Then, let every one question his conscience on this point, and searchhis memory if he has ever met a man who confined himself to the loveof one woman only!

How, alas! are we to explain, while respecting the honor of all thepeoples, the problem which results from the fact that three millionsof burning hearts can find no more than four hundred thousand women onwhich they can feed? Should we apportion four celibates for each womanand remember that the honest women would have already established,instinctively and unconsciously, a sort of understanding betweenthemselves and the celibates, like that which the presidents of royalcourts have initiated, in order to make their partisans in eachchamber enter successively after a certain number of years?

That would be a mournful way of solving the difficulty!

Should we make the conjecture that certain honest women act individing up the celibates, as the lion in the fable did? What! Surely,in that case, half at least of our altars would become whitedsepulchres!

Ought one to suggest for the honor of French ladies that in the timeof peace all other countries should import into France a certainnumber of their honest women, and that these countries should mainlyconsist of England, Germany and Russia? But the European nations wouldin that case attempt to balance matters by demanding that Franceshould export a certain number of her pretty women.

Morality and religion suffer so much from such calculations as this,that an honest man, in an attempt to prove the innocence of marriedwomen, finds some reason to believe that dowagers and young people arehalf of them involved in this general corruption, and are liars evenmore truly than are the celibates.

But to what conclusion does our calculation lead us? Think of ourhusbands, who to the disgrace of morals behave almost all of them likecelibates and glory in petto over their secret adventures.

Why, then we believe that every married man, who is at all attached tohis wife from honorable motives, can, in the words of the elderCorneille, seek a rope and a nail; foenum habet in cornu.

It is, however, in the bosom of these four hundred thousand honestwomen that we must, lantern in hand, seek for the number of thevirtuous women in France! As a matter of fact, we have by ourstatistics of marriage so far only set down the number of thosecreatures with which society has really nothing to do. Is it not truethat in France the honest people, the people comme il faut, form atotal of scarcely three million individuals, namely, our one millionof celibates, five hundred thousand honest women, five hundredthousand husbands, and a million of dowagers, of infants and of younggirls?

Are you then astonished at the famous verse of Boileau? This verseproves that the poet had cleverly fathomed the discoverymathematically propounded to you in these tiresome meditations andthat his language is by no means hyperbolical.

Nevertheless, virtuous women there certainly are:

Yes, those who have never been tempted and those who die at theirfirst child-birth, assuming that their husbands had married themvirgins;

Yes, those who are ugly as the Kaifakatadary of the Arabian Nights;

Yes, those whom Mirabeau calls "fairy cucumbers" and who are composedof atoms exactly like those of strawberry and water-lily roots.Nevertheless, we need not believe that!

Further, we acknowledge that, to the credit of our age, we meet, eversince the revival of morality and religion and during our own times,some women, here and there, so moral, so religious, so devoted totheir duties, so upright, so precise, so stiff, so virtuous, so—thatthe devil himself dare not even look at them; they are guarded on allsides by rosaries, hours of prayer and directors. Pshaw!

We will not attempt to enumerate the women who are virtuous fromstupidity, for it is acknowledged that in love all women haveintellect.

In conclusion, we may remark that it is not impossible that thereexist in some corner of the earth women, young, pretty and virtuous,whom the world does not suspect.

But you must not give the name of virtuous woman to her who, in herstruggle against an involuntary passion, has yielded nothing to herlover whom she idolizes. She does injury in the most cruel way inwhich it can possibly be done to a loving husband. For what remains tohim of his wife? A thing without name, a living corpse. In the verymidst of delight his wife remains like the guest who has been warnedby Borgia that certain meats were poisoned; he felt no hunger, he atesparingly or pretended to eat. He longed for the meat which he hadabandoned for that provided by the terrible cardinal, and sighed forthe moment when the feast was over and he could leave the table.

What is the result which these reflections on the feminine virtue leadto? Here they are; but the last two maxims have been given us by aneclectic philosopher of the eighteenth century.

XVIII.
A virtuous woman has in her heart one fibre less or one fibre more
than other women; she is either stupid or sublime.

XIX.
The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.

XX.
The most virtuous women have in them something which is never chaste.

XXI.
"That a man of intellect has doubts about his mistress is conceivable,
but about his wife!—that would be too stupid."

XXII.
"Men would be insufferably unhappy if in the presence of women they
thought the least bit in the world of that which they know by heart."

The number of those rare women who, like the Virgins of the Parable,have kept their lamps lighted, will always appear very small in theeyes of the defenders of virtue and fine feeling; but we must needsexclude it from the total sum of honest women, and this subtraction,consoling as it is, will increase the danger which threatens husbands,will intensify the scandal of their married life, and involve, more orless, the reputation of all other lawful spouses.

What husband will be able to sleep peacefully beside his young andbeautiful wife while he knows that three celibates, at least, are onthe watch; that if they have not already encroached upon his littleproperty, they regard the bride as their destined prey, for sooner orlater she will fall into their hands, either by stratagem, compulsiveconquest or free choice? And it is impossible that they should failsome day or other to obtain victory!

What a startling conclusion!

On this point the purist in morality, the collets montes will accuseus perhaps of presenting here conclusions which are excessivelydespairing; they will be desirous of putting up a defence, either forthe virtuous women or the celibates; but we have in reserve for them afinal remark.

Increase the number of honest women and diminish the number ofcelibates, as much as you choose, you will always find that the resultwill be a larger number of gallant adventurers than of honest women;you will always find a vast multitude driven through social custom tocommit three sorts of crime.

If they remain chaste, their health is injured, while they are theslaves of the most painful torture; they disappoint the sublime endsof nature, and finally die of consumption, drinking milk on themountains of Switzerland!

If they yield to legitimate temptations, they either compromise thehonest women, and on this point we re-enter on the subject of thisbook, or else they debase themselves by a horrible intercourse withthe five hundred thousand women of whom we spoke in the third categoryof the first Meditation, and in this case, have still considerablechance of visiting Switzerland, drinking milk and dying there!

Have you never been struck, as we have been, by a certain error oforganization in our social order, the evidence of which gives a moralcertainty to our last calculations?

The average age at which a man marries is thirty years; the averageage at which his passions, his most violent desires for genesialdelight are developed, is twenty years. Now during the ten fairestyears of his life, during the green season in which his beauty, hisyouth and his wit make him more dangerous to husbands than at anyother epoch of his life, his finds himself without any means ofsatisfying legitimately that irresistible craving for love which burnsin his whole nature. During this time, representing the sixth part ofhuman life, we are obliged to admit that the sixth part or less of ourtotal male population and the sixth part which is the most vigorous isplaced in a position which is perpetually exhausting for them, anddangerous for society.

"Why don't they get married?" cries a religious woman.

But what father of good sense would wish his son to be married attwenty years of age?

Is not the danger of these precocious unions apparent at all? It wouldseem as if marriage was a state very much at variance with naturalhabitude, seeing that it requires a special ripeness of judgment inthose who conform to it. All the world knows what Rousseau said:"There must always be a period of libertinage in life either in onestate or another. It is an evil leaven which sooner or laterferments."

Now what mother of a family is there who would expose her daughter tothe risk of this fermentation when it has not yet taken place?

On the other hand, what need is there to justify a fact under whosedomination all societies exist? Are there not in every country, as wehave demonstrated, a vast number of men who live as honestly aspossible, without being either celibates or married men?

Cannot these men, the religious women will always ask, abide incontinence like the priests?

Certainly, madame.

Nevertheless, we venture to observe that the vow of chastity is themost startling exception to the natural condition of man which societymakes necessary; but continence is the great point in the priest'sprofession; he must be chaste, as the doctor must be insensible tophysical sufferings, as the notary and the advocate insensible to themisery whose wounds are laid bare to their eyes, as the soldier to thesight of death which he meets on the field of battle. From the factthat the requirements of civilization ossify certain fibres of theheart and render callous certain membranes, we must not necessarilyconclude that all men are bound to undergo this partial andexceptional death of the soul. This would be to reduce the human raceto a condition of atrocious moral suicide.

But let it be granted that, in the atmosphere of a drawing-room themost Jansenistic in the world, appears a young man of twenty-eight whohas scrupulously guarded his robe of innocence and is as trulyvirginal as the heath-co*ck which gourmands enjoy. Do you not see thatthe most austere of virtuous women would merely pay him a sarcasticcompliment on his courage; the magistrate, the strictest that evermounted a bench, would shake his head and smile, and all the ladieswould hide themselves, so that he might not hear their laughter? Whenthe heroic and exceptional young victim leaves the drawing-room, whata deluge of jokes bursts upon his innocent head? What a shower ofinsults! What is held to be more shameful in France than impotence,than coldness, than the absence of all passion, than simplicity?

The only king of France who would not have laughed was perhaps LouisXIII; but as for his roue of a father, he would perhaps have banishedthe young man, either under the accusation that he was no Frenchman orfrom a conviction that he was setting a dangerous example.

Strange contradiction! A young man is equally blamed if he passes lifein Holy Land, to use an expression of bachelor life. Could it possiblybe for the benefit of the honest women that the prefects of police,and mayors of all time have ordained that the passions of the publicshall not manifest themselves until nightfall, and shall cease ateleven o'clock in the evening?

Where do you wish that our mass of celibates should sow their wildoats? And who is deceived on this point? as Figaro asks. Is it thegovernments or the governed? The social order is like the small boyswho stop their ears at the theatre, so as not to hear the report ofthe firearms. Is society afraid to probe its wound or has itrecognized the fact that evil is irremediable and things must beallowed to run their course? But there crops up here a question oflegislation, for it is impossible to escape the material and socialdilemma created by this balance of public virtue in the matter ofmarriage. It is not our business to solve this difficulty; but supposefor a moment that society in order to save a multitude of families,women and honest girls, found itself compelled to grant to certainlicensed hearts the right of satisfying the desire of the celibates;ought not our laws then to raise up a professional body consisting offemale Decii who devote themselves for the republic, and make arampart of their bodies round the honest families? The legislatorshave been very wrong hitherto in disdaining to regulate the lot ofcourtesans.

XXIII.
The courtesan is an institution if she is a necessity.

This question bristles with so many ifs and buts that we will bequeathit for solution to our descendants; it is right that we shall leavethem something to do. Moreover, its discussion is not germane to thiswork; for in this, more than in any other age, there is a greatoutburst of sensibility; at no other epoch have there been so manyrules of conduct, because never before has it been so completelyaccepted that pleasure comes from the heart. Now, what man ofsentiment is there, what celibate is there, who, in the presence offour hundred thousand young and pretty women arrayed in the splendorsof fortune and the graces of wit, rich in treasures of coquetry, andlavish in the dispensing of happiness, would wish to go—? For shame!

Let us put forth for the benefit of our future legislature in clearand brief axioms the result arrived at during the last few years.

XXIV.
In the social order, inevitable abuses are laws of nature, in
accordance with which mankind should frame their civil and political
institutes.

XXV.
"Adultery is like a commercial failure, with this difference," says
Chamfort, "that it is the innocent party who has been ruined and who
bears the disgrace."

In France the laws that relate to adultery and those that relate tobankruptcy require great modifications. Are they too indulgent? Dothey sin on the score of bad principles? Caveant consules!

Come now, courageous athlete, who have taken as your task that whichis expressed in the little apostrophe which our first Meditationaddresses to people who have the charge of a wife, what are you goingto say about it? We hope that this rapid review of the question doesnot make you tremble, that you are not one of those men whose nervousfluid congeals at the sight of a precipice or a boa constrictor! Well!my friend, he who owns soil has war and toil. The men who want yourgold are more numerous than those who want your wife.

After all, husbands are free to take these trifles for arithmeticalestimates, or arithmetical estimates for trifles. The illusions oflife are the best things in life; that which is most respectable inlife is our futile credulity. Do there not exist many people whoseprinciples are merely prejudices, and who not having the force ofcharacter to form their own ideas of happiness and virtue accept whatis ready made for them by the hand of legislators? Nor do we addressthose Manfreds who having taken off too many garments wish to raiseall the curtains, that is, in moments when they are tortured by a sortof moral spleen. By them, however, the question is boldly stated andwe know the extent of the evil.

It remains that we should examine the chances and changes which eachman is likely to meet in marriage, and which may weaken him in thatstruggle from which our champion should issue victorious.

MEDITATION V.

OF THE PREDESTINED.

Predestined means destined in advance for happiness or unhappiness.Theology has seized upon this word and employs it in relation to thehappy; we give to the term a meaning which is unfortunate to our electof which one can say in opposition to the Gospel, "Many are called,many are chosen."

Experience has demonstrated that there are certain classes of men moresubject than others to certain infirmities; the Gascons are given toexaggeration and Parisians to vanity. As we see that apoplexy attackspeople with short necks, or butchers are liable to carbuncle, as goutattacks the rich, health the poor, deafness kings, paralysisadministrators, so it has been remarked that certain classes ofhusbands and their wives are more given to illegitimate passions. Thusthey forestall the celibates, they form another sort of aristocracy.If any reader should be enrolled in one of these aristocratic classeshe will, we hope, have sufficient presence of mind, he or at least hiswife, instantly to call to mind the favorite axiom of Lhom*ond's LatinGrammar: "No rule without exception." A friend of the house may evenrecite the verse—

"Present company always excepted."

And then every one will have the right to believe, in petto, that heforms the exception. But our duty, the interest which we take inhusbands and the keen desire which we have to preserve young andpretty women from the caprices and catastrophes which a lover bringsin his train, force us to give notice to husbands that they ought tobe especially on their guard.

In this recapitulation first are to be reckoned the husbands whombusiness, position or public office calls from their houses anddetains for a definite time. It is these who are the standard-bearersof the brotherhood.

Among them, we would reckon magistrates, holding office duringpleasure or for life, and obliged to remain at the Palace for thegreater portion of the day; other functionaries sometimes find meansto leave their office at business hours; but a judge or a publicprosecutor, seated on his cushion of lilies, is bound even to dieduring the progress of the hearing. There is his field of battle.

It is the same with the deputies and peers who discuss the laws, ofministers who share the toils of the king, of secretaries who workwith the ministers, of soldiers on campaign, and indeed with thecorporal of the police patrol, as the letter of Lafleur, in theSentimental Journey, plainly shows.

Next to the men who are obliged to be absent from home at certainfixed hours, come the men whom vast and serious undertakings leave notone minute for love-making; their foreheads are always wrinkled withanxiety, their conversation is generally void of merriment.

At the head of these unfortunates we must place the bankers, who toilin the acquisition of millions, whose heads are so full ofcalculations that the figures burst through their skulls and rangethemselves in columns of addition on their foreheads.

These millionaires, forgetting most of the time the sacred laws ofmarriage and the attention due to the tender flower which they haveundertaken to cultivate, never think of watering it or of defending itfrom the heat and cold. They scarcely recognize the fact that thehappiness of their spouses is in their keeping; if they ever doremember this, it is at table, when they see seated before them awoman in rich array, or when a coquette, fearing their brutal repulse,comes, gracious as Venus, to ask them for cash— Oh! it is then, thatthey recall, sometimes very vividly, the rights specified in the twohundred and thirteenth article of the civil code, and their wives aregrateful to them; but like the heavy tariff which the law lays uponforeign merchandise, their wives suffer and pay the tribute, in virtueof the axiom which says: "There is no pleasure without pain."

The men of science who spend whole months in gnawing at the bone of anantediluvian monster, in calculating the laws of nature, when there isan opportunity to peer into her secrets, the Grecians and Latinistswho dine on a thought of Tacitus, sup on a phrase of Thucydides, spendtheir life in brushing the dust from library shelves, in keeping guardover a commonplace book, or a papyrus, are all predestined. So greatis their abstraction or their ecstasy, that nothing that goes onaround them strikes their attention. Their unhappiness is consummated;in full light of noon they scarcely even perceive it. Oh happy men! athousand times happy! Example: Beauzee, returning home after sessionat the Academy, surprises his wife with a German. "Did not I tell you,madame, that it was necessary that I shall go," cried the stranger."My dear sir," interrupted the academician, "you ought to say that Ishould go!"

Then there come, lyre in hand, certain poets whose whole animalstrength has left the ground floor and mounted to the upper story.They know better how to mount Pegasus than the beast of old Peter,they rarely marry, although they are accustomed to lavish the fury oftheir passions on some wandering or imaginary Chloris.

But the men whose noses are stained with snuff;

But those who, to their misfortune, have a perpetual cold in theirhead;

But the sailors who smoke or chew;

But those men whose dry and bilious temperament makes them always lookas if they had eaten a sour apple;

But the men who in private life have certain cynical habits,ridiculous fads, and who always, in spite of everything, lookunwashed;

But the husbands who have obtained the degrading name of "hen-pecked";

Finally the old men who marry young girls.

All these people are par excellence among the predestined.

There is a final class of the predestined whose ill-fortune is almostcertain, we mean restless and irritable men, who are inclined tomeddle and tyrannize, who have a great idea of domestic domination,who openly express their low ideas of women and who know no more aboutlife than herrings about natural history. When these men marry, theirhomes have the appearance of a wasp whose head a schoolboy has cutoff, and who dances here and there on a window pane. For this sort ofpredestined the present work is a sealed book. We do not write anymore for those imbeciles, walking effigies, who are like the statuesof a cathedral, than for those old machines of Marly which are tooweak to fling water over the hedges of Versailles without being indanger of sudden collapse.

I rarely make my observations on the conjugal oddities with which thedrawing-room is usually full, without recalling vividly a sight whichI once enjoyed in early youth:

In 1819 I was living in a thatched cottage situated in the bosom ofthe delightful valley l'Isle-Adam. My hermitage neighbored on the parkof Cassan, the sweetest of retreats, the most fascinating in aspect,the most attractive as a place to ramble in, the most cool andrefreshing in summer, of all places created by luxury and art. Thisverdant country-seat owes its origin to a farmer-general of the goodold times, a certain Bergeret, celebrated for his originality; whoamong other fantastic dandyisms adopted the habit of going to theopera, with his hair powdered in gold; he used to light up his parkfor his own solitary delectation and on one occasion ordered asumptuous entertainment there, in which he alone took part. Thisrustic Sardanapalus returned from Italy so passionately charmed withthe scenery of that beautiful country that, by a sudden freak ofenthusiasm, he spent four or five millions in order to represent inhis park the scenes of which he had pictures in his portfolio. Themost charming contrasts of foliage, the rarest trees, long valleys,and prospects the most picturesque that could be brought from abroad,Borromean islands floating on clear eddying streams like so many rays,which concentrate their various lustres on a single point, on an IsolaBella, from which the enchanted eye takes in each detail at itsleisure, or on an island in the bosom of which is a little houseconcealed under the drooping foliage of a century-old ash, an islandfringed with irises, rose-bushes, and flowers which appears like anemerald richly set. Ah! one might rove a thousand leagues for such aplace! The most sickly, the most soured, the most disgusted of our menof genius in ill health would die of satiety at the end of fifteendays, overwhelmed with the luscious sweetness of fresh life in such aspot.

The man who was quite regardless of the Eden which he thus possessedhad neither wife nor children, but was attached to a large ape whichhe kept. A graceful turret of wood, supported by a sculptured column,served as a dwelling place for this vicious animal, who being keptchained and rarely petted by his eccentric master, oftener at Paristhan in his country home, had gained a very bad reputation. Irecollect seeing him once in the presence of certain ladies showalmost as much insolence as if he had been a man. His master wasobliged to kill him, so mischievous did he gradually become.

One morning while I was sitting under a beautiful tulip tree inflower, occupied in doing nothing but inhaling the lovely perfumeswhich the tall poplars kept confined within the brilliant enclosure,enjoying the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring watersand the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my headby clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams ofmy future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day beforefrom Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who hasnothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hearanything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. Ifthe distant notes of Roland's Horn had only filled the air with life,perhaps—but a noisy fiddler like this, who undertakes to bring to youthe expression of human ideas and the phraseology of music! ThisAmphion, who was walking up and down the dining-room, finished bytaking a seat on the window-sill, exactly in front of the monkey.Perhaps he was looking for an audience. Suddenly I saw the animalquietly descend from his little dungeon, stand upon his hind feet, bowhis head forward like a swimmer and fold his arms over his bosom likeSpartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker,summoned by a sweet voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir notunknown to me, laid his violin on the window-sill and made off like aswallow who rejoins his companion by a rapid level swoop. The greatmonkey, whose chain was sufficiently long, approached the window andgravely took in hand the violin. I don't know whether you have everhad as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to learn music, butat the present moment, when I laugh much less than I did in thosecareless days, I never think of that monkey without a smile; thesemi-man began by grasping the instrument with his fist and by sniffingat it as if he were tasting the flavor of an apple. The snort from hisnostrils probably produced a dull harmonious sound in the sonorouswood and then the orang-outang shook his head, turned over the violin,turned it back again, raised it up in the air, lowered it, held itstraight out, shook it, put it to his ear, set it down, and picked itup again with a rapidity of movement peculiar to these agilecreatures. He seemed to question the dumb wood with faltering sagacityand in his gestures there was something marvelous as well asinfantile. At last he undertook with grotesque gestures to place theviolin under his chin, while in one hand he held the neck; but like aspoiled child he soon wearied of a study which required skill not tobe obtained in a moment and he twitched the strings without being ableto draw forth anything but discordant sounds. He seemed annoyed, laidthe violin on the window-sill and snatching up the bow he began topush it to and fro with violence, like a mason sawing a block ofstone. This effort only succeeded in wearying his fastidious ears, andhe took the bow with both hands and snapped it in two on the innocentinstrument, source of harmony and delight. It seemed as if I sawbefore me a schoolboy holding under him a companion lying facedownwards, while he pommeled him with a shower of blows from his fist,as if to punish him for some delinquency. The violin being now triedand condemned, the monkey sat down upon the fragments of it and amusedhimself with stupid joy in mixing up the yellow strings of the brokenbow.

Never since that day have I been able to look upon the home of thepredestined without comparing the majority of husbands to thisorang-outang trying to play the violin.

Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of loveis innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it isnecessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position ofthem, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capriciouswhich befits it. How many monkeys—men, I mean—marry without knowingwhat a woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wivesas the ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken the heartwhich they did not understand, as they might dim and disdain theamulet whose secret was unknown to them. They are children their wholelife through, who leave life with empty hands after having talkedabout love, about pleasure, about licentiousness and virtue as slavestalk about liberty. Almost all of them married with the most profoundignorance of women and of love. They commenced by breaking in the doorof a strange house and expected to be welcomed in this drawing-room.But the rudest artist knows that between him and his instrument, ofwood, or of ivory, there exists a mysterious sort of friendship. Heknows by experience that it takes years to establish thisunderstanding between an inert matter and himself. He did notdiscover, at the first touch, the resources, the caprices, thedeficiencies, the excellencies of his instrument. It did not become aliving soul for him, a source of incomparable melody until he hadstudied for a long time; man and instrument did not come to understandeach other like two friends, until both of them had been skillfullyquestioned and tested by frequent intercourse.

Can a man ever learn woman and know how to decipher this wondrousstrain of music, by remaining through life like a seminarian in hiscell? Is it possible that a man who makes it his business to think forothers, to judge others, to rule others, to steal money from others,to feed, to heal, to wound others—that, in fact, any of ourpredestined, can spare time to study a woman? They sell their time formoney, how can they give it away for happiness? Money is their god. Noone can serve two masters at the same time. Is not the world,moreover, full of young women who drag along pale and weak, sickly andsuffering? Some of them are the prey of feverish inflammations more orless serious, others lie under the cruel tyranny of nervous attacksmore or less violent. All the husbands of these women belong to theclass of the ignorant and the predestined. They have caused their ownmisfortune and expended as much pains in producing it as the husbandartist would have bestowed in bringing to flower the late anddelightful blooms of pleasure. The time which an ignorant man passesto consummate his own ruin is precisely that which a man of knowledgeemploys in the education of his happiness.

XXVI.
Do not begin marriage by a violation of law.

In the preceding meditations we have indicated the extent of the evilwith the reckless audacity of those surgeons, who boldly induce theformation of false tissues under which a shameful wound is concealed.Public virtue, transferred to the table of our amphitheatre, has losteven its carcass under the strokes of the scalpel. Lover or husband,have you smiled, or have you trembled at this evil? Well, it is withmalicious delight that we lay this huge social burden on theconscience of the predestined. Harlequin, when he tried to find outwhether his horse could be accustomed to go without food, was not moreridiculous than the men who wish to find happiness in their home andyet refuse to cultivate it with all the pains which it demands. Theerrors of women are so many indictments of egotism, neglect andworthlessness in husbands.

Yet it is yours, reader, it pertains to you, who have often condemnedin another the crime which you yourself commit, it is yours to holdthe balance. One of the scales is quite loaded, take care what you aregoing to put in the other. Reckon up the number of predestined oneswho may be found among the total number of married people, weigh them,and you will then know where the evil is seated.

Let us try to penetrate more deeply into the causes of this conjugalsickliness.

The word love, when applied to the reproduction of the species, is themost hateful blasphemy which modern manners have taught us to utter.Nature, in raising us above the beasts by the divine gift of thought,had rendered us very sensitive to bodily sensations, emotionalsentiment, cravings of appetite and passions. This double nature ofours makes of man both an animal and a lover. This distinction givesthe key to the social problem which we are considering.

Marriage may be considered in three ways, politically, as well as froma civil and moral point of view: as a law, as a contract and as aninstitution. As a law, its object is a reproduction of the species; asa contract, it relates to the transmission of property; as aninstitution, it is a guarantee which all men give and by which all arebound: they have father and mother, and they will have children.Marriage, therefore, ought to be the object of universal respect.Society can only take into consideration those cardinal points, which,from a social point of view, dominate the conjugal question.

Most men have no other views in marrying, than reproduction, propertyor children; but neither reproduction nor property nor childrenconstitutes happiness. The command, "Increase and multiply," does notimply love. To ask of a young girl whom we have seen fourteen times infifteen days, to give you love in the name of law, the king andjustice, is an absurdity worthy of the majority of the predestined.

Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment; happiness inmarriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair.Hence it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himselfbound by certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed thebenefit of the social law which consecrates the natural craving, hemust obey also the secret laws of nature by which sentiments unfoldthemselves. If he stakes his happiness on being himself loved, he musthimself love sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.

But to feel this passion is always to feel desire. Can a man alwaysdesire his wife?

Yes.

It is as absurd to deny that it is possible for a man always to lovethe same woman, as it would be to affirm that some famous musicianneeded several violins in order to execute a piece of music or composea charming melody.

Love is the poetry of the senses. It has the destiny of all that whichis great in man and of all that which proceeds from his thought.Either it is sublime, or it is not. When once it exists, it existsforever and goes on always increasing. This is the love which theancients made the child of heaven and earth.

Literature revolves round seven situations; music expresses everythingwith seven notes; painting employs but seven colors; like these threearts, love perhaps founds itself on seven principles, but we leavethis investigation for the next century to carry out.

If poetry, music and painting have found infinite forms of expression,pleasure should be even more diversified. For in the three arts whichaid us in seeking, often with little success, truth by means ofanalogy, the man stands alone with his imagination, while love is theunion of two bodies and of two souls. If the three principal methodsupon which we rely for the expression of thought require preliminarystudy in those whom nature has made poets, musicians or painters, isit not obvious that, in order, to be happy, it is necessary to beinitiated into the secrets of pleasure? All men experience the cravingfor reproduction, as all feel hunger and thirst; but all are notcalled to be lovers and gastronomists. Our present civilization hasproved that taste is a science, and it is only certain privilegedbeings who have learned how to eat and drink. Pleasure considered asan art is still waiting for its physiologists. As for ourselves, weare contented with pointing out that ignorance of the principles uponwhich happiness is founded, is the sole cause of that misfortune whichis the lot of all the predestined.

It is with the greatest timidity that we venture upon the publicationof a few aphorisms which may give birth to this new art, as casts havecreated the science of geology; and we offer them for the meditationof philosophers, of young marrying people and of the predestined.

CATECHISM OF MARRIAGE.

XXVII.
Marriage is a science.

XXVIII.
A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected
at least one woman.

XXIX.
The fate of the home depends on the first night.

XXX.
A woman deprived of her free will can never have the credit of making
a sacrifice.

XXXI.In love, putting aside all consideration of the soul, the heart of awoman is like a lyre which does not reveal its secret, excepting tohim who is a skillful player.

XXXII.Independently of any gesture of repulsion, there exists in the soul ofall women a sentiment which tends, sooner or later, to proscribe allpleasure devoid of passionate feeling.

XXXIII.
The interest of a husband as much as his honor forbids him to indulge
a pleasure which he has not had the skill to make his wife desire.

XXXIV.Pleasure being caused by the union of sensation and sentiment, we cansay without fear of contradiction that pleasures are a sort ofmaterial ideas.

XXXV.
As ideas are capable of infinite combination, it ought to be the same
with pleasures.

XXXVI.
In the life of man there are no two moments of pleasure exactly alike,
any more than there are two leaves of identical shape upon the same
tree.

XXXVII.
If there are differences between one moment of pleasure and another, a
man can always be happy with the same woman.

XXXVIII.To seize adroitly upon the varieties of pleasure, to develop them, toimpart to them a new style, an original expression, constitutes thegenius of a husband.

XXXIX.Between two beings who do not love each other this genius islicentiousness; but the caresses over which love presides are alwayspure.

XL.
The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most
voluptuous.

XLI.
The most virtuous woman can be forward without knowing it.

XLII.When two human beings are united by pleasure, all socialconventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef onwhich many vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgetsthere is a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugallove ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of itseyes, excepting at the due season.

XLIII.
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but
in striking true.

XLIV.To call a desire into being, to nourish it, to develop it, to bring itto full growth, to excite it, to satisfy it, is a complete poem ofitself.

XLV.The progression of pleasures is from the distich to the quatrain, fromthe quatrain to the sonnet, from the sonnet to the ballad, from theballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata tothe dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool.

XLVI.
Each night ought to have its menu.

XLVII.
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours
everything, that is, familiarity.

XLVIII.
If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of
two consecutive nights, he has married too early.

XLIX.It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that itis more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright thingsfrom time to time.

L.
A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to
awaken.

LI.
The man who enters his wife's dressing-room is either a philosopher or
an imbecile.

LII.
The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man.

LIII.
The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a
throne.

LIV.
A man must not flatter himself that he knows his wife, and is making
her happy unless he sees her often at his knees.

It is to the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legionsof snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious menthat Sterne addressed, in Tristram Shandy, the letter written byWalter Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marrythe widow Wadman.

These celebrated instructions which the most original of Englishwriters has comprised in this letter, suffice with some few exceptionsto complete our observations on the manner in which husbands shouldbehave to their wives; and we offer it in its original form to thereflections of the predestined, begging that they will meditate uponit as one of the most solid masterpieces of human wit.

"MY DEAR BROTHER TOBY,

"What I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee—tho' not so well for me—that thou hast occasion for a letter of instructions upon that head, and that I am able to write it to thee.

"Had it been the good pleasure of Him who disposes of our lots, and thou no sufferer by the knowledge, I had been well content that thou should'st have dipped the pen this moment into the ink instead of myself; but that not being the case—Mrs. Shandy being now close beside me, preparing for bed—I have thrown together without order, and just as they have come into my mind, such hints and documents as I deem may be of use to thee; intending, in this, to give thee a token of my love; not doubting, my dear Toby, of the manner in which it will be accepted.

"In the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion in the affair—though I perceive from a glow in my cheek, that I blush as I begin to speak to thee upon the subject, as well knowing, notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how few of its offices thou neglectest—yet I would remind thee of one (during the continuance of thy courtship) in a particular manner, which I would not have omitted; and that is, never to go forth upon the enterprise, whether it be in the morning or in the afternoon, without first recommending thyself to the protection of Almighty God, that He may defend thee from the evil one.

"Shave the whole top of thy crown clean once at least every four or five days, but oftener if convenient; lest in taking off thy wig before her, thro' absence of mind, she should be able to discover how much has been cut away by Time—how much by Trim.

"'Twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her fancy.

"Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim,
Toby—

"'That women are timid.' And 'tis well they are—else there would
be no dealing with them.

"Let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang too loose about thy
thighs, like the trunk-hose of our ancestors.

"A just medium prevents all conclusions.

"Whatever thou hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to utter it in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: For this cause, if thou canst help it, never throw down the tongs and poker.

"Avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse with her, and do whatever lies in thy power at the same time, to keep from her all books and writings which tend there to: there are some devotional tracts, which if thou canst entice her to read over, it will be well: but suffer her not to look into Rabelais, or Scarron, or Don Quixote.

"They are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear
Toby, that there is no passion so serious as lust.

"Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her
parlor.

"And if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sofa with her, and she gives thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers—beware of taking it—thou canst not lay thy hand upon hers, but she will feel the temper of thine. Leave that and as many other things as thou canst, quite undetermined; by so doing, thou wilt have her curiosity on thy side; and if she is not conquered by that, and thy Asse continues still kicking, which there is great reason to suppose—thou must begin, with first losing a few ounces of blood below the ears, according to the practice of the ancient Scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits of the appetite by that means.

"Avicenna, after this, is for having the part anointed with the syrup of hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges—and I believe rightly. But thou must eat little or no goat's flesh, nor red deer—nor even foal's flesh by any means; and carefully abstain—that is, as much as thou canst,—from peaco*cks, cranes, coots, didappers and water-hens.

"As for thy drink—I need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of Vervain and the herb Hanea, of which Aelian relates such effects; but if thy stomach palls with it—discontinue it from time to time, taking cucumbers, melons, purslane, water-lilies, woodbine, and lettuce, in the stead of them.

"There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present—

"Unless the breaking out of a fresh war.—So wishing everything, dear Toby, for the best,

"I rest thy affectionate brother,

"WALTER SHANDY."

Under the present circ*mstances Sterne himself would doubtless haveomitted from his letter the passage about the ass; and, far fromadvising the predestined to be bled he would have changed the regimenof cucumbers and lettuces for one eminently substantial. Herecommended the exercise of economy, in order to attain to the powerof magic liberality in the moment of war, thus imitating the admirableexample of the English government, which in time of peace has twohundred ships in commission, but whose shipwrights can, in time ofneed, furnish double that quantity when it is desirable to scour thesea and carry off a whole foreign navy.

When a man belongs to the small class of those who by a liberaleducation have been made masters of the domain of thought, he oughtalways, before marrying, to examine his physical and moral resources.To contend advantageously with the tempest which so many attractionstend to raise in the heart of his wife, a husband ought to possess,besides the science of pleasure and a fortune which saves him fromsinking into any class of the predestined, robust health, exquisitetact, considerable intellect, too much good sense to make hissuperiority felt, excepting on fit occasions, and finally greatacuteness of hearing and sight.

If he has a handsome face, a good figure, a manly air, and yet fallsshort of all these promises, he will sink into the class of thepredestined. On the other hand, a husband who is plain in features buthas a face full of expression, will find himself, if his wife onceforgets his plainness, in a situation most favorable for his struggleagainst the genius of evil.

He will study (and this is a detail omitted from the letter of Sterne)to give no occasion for his wife's disgust. Also, he will resortmoderately to the use of perfumes, which, however, always exposebeauty to injurious suspicions.

He ought as carefully to study how to behave and how to pick outsubjects of conversation, as if he were courting the most inconstantof women. It is for him that a philosopher has made the followingreflection:

"More than one woman has been rendered unhappy for the rest of herlife, has been lost and dishonored by a man whom she has ceased tolove, because he took off his coat awkwardly, trimmed one of his nailscrookedly, put on a stocking wrong side out, and was clumsy with abutton."

One of the most important of his duties will be to conceal from hiswife the real state of his fortune, so that he may satisfy her fanciesand caprices as generous celibates are wont to do.

Then the most difficult thing of all, a thing to accomplish whichsuperhuman courage is required, is to exercise the most completecontrol over the ass of which Sterne speaks. This ass ought to be assubmissive as a serf of the thirteenth century was to his lord; toobey and be silent, advance and stop, at the slightest word.

Even when equipped with these advantages, a husband enters the listswith scarcely any hope of success. Like all the rest, he still runsthe risk of becoming, for his wife, a sort of responsible editor.

"And why!" will exclaim certain good but small-minded people, whosehorizon is limited to the tip of their nose, "why is it necessary totake so much pains in order to love, and why is it necessary to go toschool beforehand, in order to be happy in your own home? Does thegovernment intend to institute a professional chair of love, just asit has instituted a chair of law?"

This is our answer:

These multiplied rules, so difficult to deduce, these minuteobservations, these ideas which vary so as to suit differenttemperaments, are innate, so to speak, in the heart of those who areborn for love; just as his feeling of taste and his indescribablefelicity in combining ideas are natural to the soul of the poet, thepainter or the musician. The men who would experience any fatigue inputting into practice the instructions given in this Meditation arenaturally predestined, just as he who cannot perceive the connectionwhich exists between two different ideas is an imbecile. As a matterof fact, love has its great men although they be unrecognized, as warhas its Napoleons, poetry its Andre Cheniers and philosophy itsDescartes.

This last observation contains the germ of a true answer to thequestion which men from time immemorial have been asking: Why arehappy marriages so very rare?

This phenomenon of the moral world is rarely met with for the reasonthat people of genius are rarely met with. A passion which lasts is asublime drama acted by two performers of equal talent, a drama inwhich sentiments form the catastrophe, where desires are incidents andthe lightest thought brings a change of scene. Now how is it possible,in this herd of bimana which we call a nation, to meet, on any butrare occasions, a man and a woman who possess in the same degree thegenius of love, when men of talent are so thinly sown and so rare inall other sciences, in the pursuit of which the artist needs only tounderstand himself, in order to attain success?

Up to the present moment, we have been confronted with making aforecast of the difficulties, to some degree physical, which twomarried people have to overcome, in order to be happy; but what a taskwould be ours if it were necessary to unfold the startling array ofmoral obligations which spring from their differences in character?Let us cry halt! The man who is skillful enough to guide thetemperament will certainly show himself master of the soul of another.

We will suppose that our model husband fulfills the primary conditionsnecessary, in order that he may dispute or maintain possession of hiswife, in spite of all assailants. We will admit that he is not to bereckoned in any of the numerous classes of the predestined which wehave passed in review. Let us admit that he has become imbued with thespirit of all our maxims; that he has mastered the admirable science,some of whose precepts we have made known; that he has married wisely,that he knows his wife, that he is loved by her; and let us continuethe enumeration of all those general causes which might aggravate thecritical situation which we shall represent him as occupying for theinstruction of the human race.

MEDITATION VI.

OF BOARDING SCHOOLS.

If you have married a young lady whose education has been carried onat a boarding school, there are thirty more obstacles to yourhappiness, added to all those which we have already enumerated, andyou are exactly like a man who thrusts his hands into a wasp's nest.

Immediately, therefore, after the nuptial blessing has beenpronounced, without allowing yourself to be imposed upon by theinnocent ignorance, the frank graces and the modest countenance ofyour wife, you ought to ponder well and faithfully follow out theaxioms and precepts which we shall develop in the second part of thisbook. You should even put into practice the rigors prescribed in thethird part, by maintaining an active surveillance, a paternalsolicitude at all hours, for the very day after your marriage, perhapson the evening of your wedding day, there is danger in the house.

I mean to say that you should call to mind the secret and profoundinstruction which the pupils have acquired de natura rerum,—of thenature of things. Did Lapeyrouse, Cook or Captain Peary ever show somuch ardor in navigating the ocean towards the Poles as the scholarsof the Lycee do in approaching forbidden tracts in the ocean ofpleasure? Since girls are more cunning, cleverer and more curious thanboys, their secret meetings and their conversations, which all the artof their teachers cannot check, are necessarily presided over by agenius a thousand times more informal than that of college boys. Whatman has ever heard the moral reflections and the corruptingconfidences of these young girls? They alone know the sports at whichhonor is lost in advance, those essays in pleasure, those promptingsin voluptuousness, those imitations of bliss, which may be compared tothe thefts made by greedy children from a dessert which is locked up.A girl may come forth from her boarding school a virgin, but neverchaste. She will have discussed, time and time again at secretmeetings, the important question of lovers, and corruption willnecessarily have overcome her heart or her spirit.

Nevertheless, we will admit that your wife has not participated inthese virginal delights, in these premature deviltries. Is she anybetter because she has never had any voice in the secret councils ofgrown-up girls? No! She will, in any case, have contracted afriendship with other young ladies, and our computation will bemodest, if we attribute to her no more than two or three intimatefriends. Are you certain that after your wife has left boardingschool, her young friends have not there been admitted to thoseconfidences, in which an attempt is made to learn in advance, at leastby analogy, the pastimes of doves? And then her friends will marry;you will have four women to watch instead of one, four characters todivine, and you will be at the mercy of four husbands and a dozencelibates, of whose life, principles and habits you are quiteignorant, at a time when our meditations have revealed to you certaincoming of a day when you will have your hands full with the peoplewhom you married with your wife. Satan alone could have thought ofplacing a girl's boarding school in the middle of a large town! MadameCampan had at least the wisdom to set up her famous institution atEcouen. This sensible precaution proved that she was no ordinarywoman. There, her young ladies did not gaze upon the picture galleryof the streets, the huge and grotesque figures and the obscene wordsdrawn by some evil-spirited pencil. They had not perpetually beforetheir eyes the spectacle of human infirmities exhibited at everybarrier in France, and treacherous book-stalls did not vomit out uponthem in secret the poison of books which taught evil and set passionon fire. This wise school-mistress, moreover, could only at Ecouenpreserve a young lady for you spotless and pure, if, even there, thatwere possible. Perhaps you hope to find no difficulty in preventingyour wife from seeing her school friends? What folly! She will meetthem at the ball, at the theatre, out walking and in the world atlarge; and how many services two friends can render each other! But wewill meditate upon this new subject of alarm in its proper place andorder.

Nor is this all; if your mother-in-law sent her daughter to a boardingschool, do you believe that this was out of solicitude for herdaughter? A girl of twelve or fifteen is a terrible Argus; and if yourmother-in-law did not wish to have an Argus in her house I should beinclined to suspect that your mother-in-law belonged undoubtedly tothe most shady section of our honest women. She will, therefore, provefor her daughter on every occasion either a deadly example or adangerous adviser.

Let us stop here!—The mother-in-law requires a whole Meditation forherself.

So that, whichever way you turn, the bed of marriage, in thisconnection, is equally full of thorns.

Before the Revolution, several aristocratic families used to sendtheir daughters to the convent. This example was followed by a numberof people who imagined that in sending their daughters to a schoolwhere the daughters of some great noblemen were sent, they wouldassume the tone and manners of aristocrats. This delusion of pridewas, from the first, fatal to domestic happiness; for the convents hadall the disadvantages of other boarding schools. The idleness thatprevailed there was more terrible. The cloister bars inflame theimagination. Solitude is a condition very favorable to the devil; andone can scarcely imagine what ravages the most ordinary phenomena oflife are able to leave in the soul of these young girls, dreamy,ignorant and unoccupied.

Some of them, by reason of their having indulged idle fancies, are ledinto curious blunders. Others, having indulged in exaggerated ideas ofmarried life, say to themselves, as soon as they have taken a husband,"What! Is this all?" In every way, the imperfect instruction, which isgiven to girls educated in common, has in it all the danger ofignorance and all the unhappiness of science.

A young girl brought up at home by her mother or by her virtuous,bigoted, amiable or cross-grained old aunt; a young girl, whose stepshave never crossed the home threshold without being surrounded bychaperons, whose laborious childhood has been wearied by tasks, albeitthey were profitless, to whom in short everything is a mystery, eventhe Seraphin puppet show, is one of those treasures which are metwith, here and there in the world, like woodland flowers surrounded bybrambles so thick that mortal eye cannot discern them. The man whoowns a flower so sweet and pure as this, and leaves it to becultivated by others, deserves his unhappiness a thousand times over.He is either a monster or a fool.

And if in the preceding Meditation we have succeeded in proving to youthat by far the greater number of men live in the most absoluteindifference to their personal honor, in the matter of marriage, is itreasonable to believe that any considerable number of them aresufficiently rich, sufficiently intellectual, sufficiently penetratingto waste, like Burchell in the Vicar of Wakefield, one or two yearsin studying and watching the girls whom they mean to make their wives,when they pay so little attention to them after conjugal possessionduring that period of time which the English call the honeymoon, andwhose influence we shall shortly discuss?

Since, however, we have spent some time in reflecting upon thisimportant matter, we would observe that there are many methods ofchoosing more or less successfully, even though the choice be promptlymade.

It is, for example, beyond doubt that the probabilities will be inyour favor:

I. If you have chosen a young lady whose temperament resembles that ofthe women of Louisiana or the Carolinas.

To obtain reliable information concerning the temperament of a youngperson, it is necessary to put into vigorous operation the systemwhich Gil Blas prescribes, in dealing with chambermaids, a systememployed by statesmen to discover conspiracies and to learn how theministers have passed the night.

II. If you choose a young lady who, without being plain, does notbelong to the class of pretty women.

We regard it as an infallible principle that great sweetness ofdisposition united in a woman with plainness that is not repulsive,form two indubitable elements of success in securing the greatestpossible happiness to the home.

But would you learn the truth? Open your Rousseau; for there is not asingle question of public morals whose trend he has not pointed out inadvance. Read:

"Among people of fixed principles the girls are careless, the womensevere; the contrary is the case among people of no principle."

To admit the truth enshrined in this profound and truthful remark isto conclude, that there would be fewer unhappy marriages if men weddedtheir mistresses. The education of girls requires, therefore,important modifications in France. Up to this time French laws andFrench manners instituted to distinguish between a misdemeanor and acrime, have encouraged crime. In reality the fault committed by ayoung girl is scarcely ever a misdemeanor, if you compare it with thatcommitted by the married woman. Is there any comparison between thedanger of giving liberty to girls and that of allowing it to wives?The idea of taking a young girl on trial makes more serious men thinkthan fools laugh. The manners of Germany, of Switzerland, of Englandand of the United States give to young ladies such rights as in Francewould be considered the subversion of all morality; and yet it iscertain that in these countries there are fewer unhappy marriages thanin France.

LV."Before a woman gives herself entirely up to her lover, she ought toconsider well what his love has to offer her. The gift of her esteemand confidence should necessarily precede that of her heart."

Sparkling with truth as they are, these lines probably filled withlight the dungeon, in the depths of which Mirabeau wrote them; and thekeen observation which they bear witness to, although prompted by themost stormy of his passions, has none the less influence even now insolving the social problem on which we are engaged. In fact, amarriage sealed under the auspices of the religious scrutiny whichassumes the existence of love, and subjected to the atmosphere of thatdisenchantment which follows on possession, ought naturally to be themost firmly-welded of all human unions.

A woman then ought never to reproach her husband for the legal right,in virtue of which she belongs to him. She ought not to find in thiscompulsory submission any excuse for yielding to a lover, because sometime after her marriage she has discovered in her own heart a traitorwhose sophisms seduce her by asking twenty times an hour, "Wherefore,since she has been given against her will to a man whom she does notlove, should she not give herself, of her own free-will, to a man whomshe does love." A woman is not to be tolerated in her complaintsconcerning faults inseparable from human nature. She has, in advance,made trial of the tyranny which they exercise, and taken sides withthe caprices which they exhibit.

A great many young girls are likely to be disappointed in their hopesof love!—But will it not be an immense advantage to them to haveescaped being made the companions of men whom they would have had theright to despise?

Certain alarmists will exclaim that such an alteration in our mannerswould bring about a public dissoluteness which would be frightful;that the laws, and the customs which prompt the laws, could not afterall authorize scandal and immorality; and if certain unavoidableabuses do exist, at least society ought not to sanction them.

It is easy to say, in reply, first of all, that the proposed systemtends to prevent those abuses which have been hitherto regarded asincapable of prevention; but, the calculations of our statistics,inexact as they are, have invariably pointed out a widely prevailingsocial sore, and our moralists may, therefore, be accused ofpreferring the greater to the lesser evil, the violation of theprinciple on which society is constituted, to the granting of acertain liberty to girls; and dissoluteness in mothers of families,such as poisons the springs of public education and brings unhappinessupon at least four persons, to dissoluteness in a young girl, whichonly affects herself or at the most a child besides. Let the virtue often virgins be lost rather than forfeit this sanctity of morals, thatcrown of honor with which the mother of a family should be invested!In the picture presented by a young girl abandoned by her betrayer,there is something imposing, something indescribably sacred; here wesee oaths violated, holy confidences betrayed, and on the ruins of atoo facile virtue innocence sits in tears, doubting everything,because compelled to doubt the love of a father for his child. Theunfortunate girl is still innocent; she may yet become a faithfulwife, a tender mother, and, if the past is mantled in clouds, thefuture is blue as the clear sky. Shall we not find these tender tintsin the gloomy pictures of loves which violate the marriage law? In theone, the woman is the victim, in the other, she is a criminal. Whathope is there for the unfaithful wife? If God pardons the fault, themost exemplary life cannot efface, here below, its livingconsequences. If James I was the son of Rizzio, the crime of Marylasted as long as did her mournful though royal house, and the fall ofthe Stuarts was the justice of God.

But in good faith, would the emancipation of girls set free such ahost of dangers?

It is very easy to accuse a young person for suffering herself to bedeceived, in the desire to escape, at any price, from the condition ofgirlhood; but such an accusation is only just in the present conditionof our manners. At the present day, a young person knows nothing aboutseduction and its snares, she relies altogether upon her weakness, andmingling with this reliance the convenient maxims of the fashionableworld, she takes as her guide while under the control of those desireswhich everything conspires to excite, her own deluding fancies, whichprove a guide all the more treacherous, because a young girl rarelyever confides to another the secret thoughts of her first love.

If she were free, an education free from prejudices would arm heragainst the love of the first comer. She would, like any one else, bevery much better able to meet dangers of which she knew, than perilswhose extent had been concealed from her. And, moreover, is itnecessary for a girl to be any the less under the watchful eye of hermother, because she is mistress of her own actions? Are we to count asnothing the modesty and the fears which nature has made so powerful inthe soul of a young girl, for the very purpose of preserving her fromthe misfortune of submitting to a man who does not love her? Again,what girl is there so thoughtless as not to discern, that the mostimmoral man wishes his wife to be a woman of principle, as mastersdesire their servants to be perfect; and that, therefore, her virtueis the richest and the most advantageous of all possessions?

After all, what is the question before us? For what do you think weare stipulating? We are making a claim for five or six hundredthousand maidens, protected by their instinctive timidity, and by thehigh price at which they rate themselves; they understand how todefend themselves, just as well as they know how to sell themselves.The eighteen millions of human beings, whom we have excepted from thisconsideration, almost invariably contract marriages in accordance withthe system which we are trying to make paramount in our system ofmanners; and as to the intermediary classes by which we poor bimanaare separated from the men of privilege who march at the head of anation, the number of castaway children which these classes, althoughin tolerably easy circ*mstances, consign to misery, goes on increasingsince the peace, if we may believe M. Benoiston de Chateauneuf, one ofthe most courageous of those savants who have devoted themselves tothe arid yet useful study of statistics. We may guess how deep-seatedis the social hurt, for which we propound a remedy, if we reckon thenumber of natural children which statistics reveal, and the number ofillicit adventures whose evidence in high society we are forced tosuspect. But it is difficult here to make quite plain all theadvantages which would result from the emancipation of young girls.When we come to observe the circ*mstances which attend a marriage,such as our present manners approve of, judicious minds mustappreciate the value of that system of education and liberty, which wedemand for young girls, in the name of reason and nature. Theprejudice which we in France entertain in favor of the virginity ofbrides is the most silly of all those which still survive among us.The Orientals take their brides without distressing themselves aboutthe past and lock them up in order to be more certain about thefuture; the French put their daughters into a sort of seragliodefended by their mothers, by prejudice, and by religious ideas, andgive the most complete liberty to their wives, thus showing themselvesmuch more solicitous about a woman's past than about her future. Thepoint we are aiming at is to bring about a reversal of our system ofmanners. If we did so we should end, perhaps, by giving to faithfulmarried life all the flavor and the piquancy which women of to-dayfind in acts of infidelity.

But this discussion would take us far from our subject, if it led usto examine, in all its details, the vast improvement in morals whichdoubtless will distinguish twentieth century France; for morals arereformed only very gradually! Is it not necessary, in order to producethe slightest change, that the most daring dreams of the past centurybecome the most trite ideas of the present one? We have touched uponthis question merely in a trifling mood, for the purposes of showingthat we are not blind to its importance, and of bequeathing also toposterity the outline of a work, which they may complete. To speakmore accurately there is a third work to be composed; the firstconcerns courtesans, while the second is the physiology of pleasure!

"When there are ten of us, we cross ourselves."

In the present state of our morals and of our imperfect civilization,a problem crops up which for the moment is insoluble, and whichrenders superfluous all discussion on the art of choosing a wife; wecommend it, as we have done all the others, to the meditation ofphilosophers.

PROBLEM.

It has not yet been decided whether a wife is forced into infidelityby the impossibility of obtaining any change, or by the liberty whichis allowed her in this connection.

Moreover, as in this work we pitch upon a man at the moment that he isnewly married, we declare that if he has found a wife of sanguinetemperament, of vivid imagination, of a nervous constitution or of anindolent character, his situation cannot fail to be extremely serious.

A man would find himself in a position of danger even more critical ifhis wife drank nothing but water [see the Meditation entitledConjugal Hygiene]; but if she had some talent for singing, or if shewere disposed to take cold easily, he should tremble all the time; forit must be remembered that women who sing are at least as passionateas women whose mucous membrane shows extreme delicacy.

Again, this danger would be aggravated still more if your wife wereless than seventeen; or if, on the other hand, her general complexionwere pale and dull, for this sort of woman is almost alwaysartificial.

But we do not wish to anticipate here any description of the terrorswhich threaten husbands from the symptoms of unhappiness which theyread in the character of their wives. This digression has alreadytaken us too far from the subject of boarding schools, in which somany catastrophes are hatched, and from which issue so many younggirls incapable of appreciating the painful sacrifices by which thehonest man who does them the honor of marrying them, has obtainedopulence; young girls eager for the enjoyments of luxury, ignorant ofour laws, ignorant of our manners, claim with avidity the empire whichtheir beauty yields them, and show themselves quite ready to turn awayfrom the genuine utterances of the heart, while they readily listen tothe buzzing of flattery.

This Meditation should plant in the memory of all who read it, eventhose who merely open the book for the sake of glancing at it ordistracting their mind, an intense repugnance for young women educatedin a boarding school, and if it succeeds in doing so, its services tothe public will have already proved considerable.

MEDITATION VII.

OF THE HONEYMOON.

If our meditations prove that it is almost impossible for a marriedwoman to remain virtuous in France, our enumeration of the celibatesand the predestined, our remarks upon the education of girls, and ourrapid survey of the difficulties which attend the choice of a wifewill explain up to a certain point this national frailty. Thus, afterindicating frankly the aching malady under which the social slate islaboring, we have sought for the causes in the imperfection of thelaws, in the irrational condition of our manners, in the incapacity ofour minds, and in the contradictions which characterize our habits. Asingle point still claims our observation, and that is the firstonslaught of the evil we are confronting.

We reach this first question on approaching the high problemssuggested by the honeymoon; and although we find here the startingpoint of all the phenomena of married life, it appears to us to be thebrilliant link round which are clustered all our observations, ouraxioms, our problems, which have been scattered deliberately among thewise quips which our loquacious meditations retail. The honeymoonwould seem to be, if we may use the expression, the apogee of thatanalysis to which we must apply ourselves, before engaging in battleour two imaginary champions.

The expression honeymoon is an Anglicism, which has become an idiomin all languages, so gracefully does it depict the nuptial seasonwhich is so fugitive, and during which life is nothing but sweetnessand rapture; the expression survives as illusions and errors survive,for it contains the most odious of falsehoods. If this season ispresented to us as a nymph crowned with fresh flowers, caressing as asiren, it is because in it is unhappiness personified and unhappinessgenerally comes during the indulgence of folly.

The married couple who intend to love each other during their wholelife have no notion of a honeymoon; for them it has no existence, orrather its existence is perennial; they are like the immortals who donot understand death. But the consideration of this happiness is notgermane to our book; and for our readers marriage is under theinfluence of two moons, the honeymoon and the Red-moon. This lastterminates its course by a revolution, which changes it to a crescent;and when once it rises upon a home its light there is eternal.

How can the honeymoon rise upon two beings who cannot possibly loveeach other?

How can it set, when once it has risen?

Have all marriages their honeymoon?

Let us proceed to answer these questions in order.

It is in this connection that the admirable education which we give togirls, and the wise provisions made by the law under which men marry,bear all their fruit. Let us examine the circ*mstances which precedeand attend those marriages which are least disastrous.

The tone of our morals develops in the young girl whom you make yourwife a curiosity which is naturally excessive; but as mothers inFrance pique themselves on exposing their girls every day to the firewhich they do not allow to scorch them, this curiosity has no limit.

Her profound ignorance of the mysteries of marriage conceals from thiscreature, who is as innocent as she is crafty, a clear view of thedangers by which marriage is followed; and as marriage is incessantlydescribed to her as an epoch in which tyranny and liberty equallyprevail, and in which enjoyment and supremacy are to be indulged in,her desires are intensified by all her interest in an existence as yetunfulfilled; for her to marry is to be called up from nothingness intolife!

If she has a disposition for happiness, for religion, for morality,the voices of the law and of her mother have repeated to her that thishappiness can only come to her from you.

Obedience if it is not virtue, is at least a necessary thing with her;for she expects everything from you. In the first place, societysanctions the slavery of a wife, but she does not conceive even thewish to be free, for she feels herself weak, timid and ignorant.

Of course she tries to please you, unless a chance error is committed,or she is seized by a repugnance which it would be unpardonable in younot to divine. She tries to please because she does not know you.

In a word, in order to complete your triumph, you take her at a momentwhen nature demands, often with some violence, the pleasure of whichyou are the dispenser. Like St. Peter you hold the keys of Paradise.

I would ask of any reasonable creature, would a demon marshal roundthe angel whose ruin he had vowed all the elements of disaster withmore solicitude than that with which good morals conspire against thehappiness of a husband? Are you not a king surrounded by flatterers?

This young girl, with all her ignorance and all her desires, committedto the mercy of a man who, even though he be in love, cannot know hershrinking and secret emotions, will submit to him with a certain senseof shame, and will be obedient and complaisant so long as her youngimagination persuades her to expect the pleasure or the happiness ofthat morrow which never dawns.

In this unnatural situation social laws and the laws of nature are inconflict, but the young girl obediently abandons herself to it, and,from motives of self-interest, suffers in silence. Her obedience is aspeculation; her complaisance is a hope; her devotion to you is a sortof vocation, of which you reap the advantage; and her silence isgenerosity. She will remain the victim of your caprices so long as shedoes not understand them; she will suffer from the limitations of yourcharacter until she has studied it; she will sacrifice herself withoutlove, because she believed in the show of passion you made at thefirst moment of possession; she will no longer be silent when once shehas learned the uselessness of her sacrifices.

And then the morning arrives when the inconsistencies which haveprevailed in this union rise up like branches of a tree bent down fora moment under a weight which has been gradually lightened. You havemistaken for love the negative attitude of a young girl who waswaiting for happiness, who flew in advance of your desires, in thehope that you would go forward in anticipation of hers, and who didnot dare to complain of the secret unhappiness, for which she at firstaccused herself. What man could fail to be the dupe of a delusionprepared at such long range, and in which a young innocent woman is atonce the accomplice and the victim? Unless you were a divine being itwould be impossible for you to escape the fascination with whichnature and society have surrounded you. Is not a snare set ineverything which surrounds you on the outside and influences youwithin? For in order to be happy, is it not necessary to control theimpetuous desires of your senses? Where is the powerful barrier torestrain her, raised by the light hand of a woman whom you wish toplease, because you do not possess? Moreover, you have caused yourtroops to parade and march by, when there was no one at the window;you have discharged your fireworks whose framework alone was left,when your guest arrived to see them. Your wife, before the pledges ofmarriage, was like a Mohican at the Opera: the teacher becomeslistless, when the savage begins to understand.

LVI.In married life, the moment when two hearts come to understand eachother is sudden as a flash of lightning, and never returns, when onceit is passed.

This first entrance into life of two persons, during which a woman isencouraged by the hope of happiness, by the still fresh sentiment ofher married duty, by the wish to please, by the sense of virtue whichbegins to be so attractive as soon as it shows love to be in harmonywith duty, is called the honeymoon. How can it last long between twobeings who are united for their whole life, unless they know eachother perfectly? If there is one thing which ought to causeastonishment it is this, that the deplorable absurdities which ourmanners heap up around the nuptial couch give birth to so few hatreds!But that the life of the wise man is a calm current, and that of theprodigal a cataract; that the child, whose thoughtless hands havestripped the leaves from every rose upon his pathway, finds nothingbut thorns on his return, that the man who in his wild youth hassquandered a million, will never enjoy, during his life, the income offorty thousand francs, which this million would have provided—aretrite commonplaces, if one thinks of the moral theory of life; but newdiscoveries, if we consider the conduct of most men. You may see herea true image of all honeymoons; this is their history, this is theplain fact and not the cause that underlies it.

But that men endowed with a certain power of thought by a privilegededucation, and accustomed to think deliberately, in order to shine inpolitics, literature, art, commerce or private life—that these menshould all marry with the intention of being happy, of governing awife, either by love or by force, and should all tumble into the samepitfall and should become foolish, after having enjoyed a certainhappiness for a certain time,—this is certainly a problem whosesolution is to be found rather in the unknown depths of the humansoul, than in the quasi physical truths, on the basis of which we havehitherto attempted to explain some of these phenomena. The riskysearch for the secret laws, which almost all men are bound to violatewithout knowing it, under these circ*mstances, promises abundant gloryfor any one even though he make shipwreck in the enterprise upon whichwe now venture to set forth. Let us then make the attempt.

In spite of all that fools have to say about the difficulty they havehad in explaining love, there are certain principles relating to it asinfallible as those of geometry; but in each character these aremodified according to its tendency; hence the caprices of love, whichare due to the infinite number of varying temperaments. If we werepermitted never to see the various effects of light without alsoperceiving on what they were based, many minds would refuse to believein the movement of the sun and in its oneness. Let the blind men cryout as they like; I boast with Socrates, although I am not as wise ashe was, that I know of naught save love; and I intend to attempt theformulation of some of its precepts, in order to spare married peoplethe trouble of cudgeling their brains; they would soon reach the limitof their wit.

Now all the preceding observations may be resolved into a singleproposition, which may be considered either the first or last term inthis secret theory of love, whose statement would end by wearying us,if we did not bring it to a prompt conclusion. This principle iscontained in the following formula:

LVII.Between two beings susceptible of love, the duration of passion is inproportion to the original resistance of the woman, or to theobstacles which the accidents of social life put in the way of yourhappiness.

If you have desired your object only for one day, your love perhapswill not last more than three nights. Where must we seek for thecauses of this law? I do not know. If you cast your eyes around you,you will find abundant proof of this rule; in the vegetable world theplants which take the longest time to grow are those which promise tohave the longest life; in the moral order of things the works producedyesterday die to-morrow; in the physical world the womb whichinfringes the laws of gestation bears dead fruit. In everything, awork which is permanent has been brooded over by time for a longperiod. A long future requires a long past. If love is a child,passion is a man. This general law, which all men obey, to which allbeings and all sentiments must submit, is precisely that which everymarriage infringes, as we have plainly shown. This principle has givenrise to the love tales of the Middle Ages; the Amadises, theLancelots, the Tristans of ballad literature, whose constancy mayjustly be called fabulous, are allegories of the national mythologywhich our imitation of Greek literature nipped in the bud. Thesefascinating characters, outlined by the imagination of thetroubadours, set their seal and sanction upon this truth.

LVIII.We do not attach ourselves permanently to any possessions, exceptingin proportion to the trouble, toil and longing which they have costus.

All our meditations have revealed to us about the basis of theprimordial law of love is comprised in the following axiom, which isat the same time the principle and the result of the law.

LIX.
In every case we receive only in proportion to what we give.

This last principle is so self-evident that we will not attempt todemonstrate it. We merely add a single observation which appears to usof some importance. The writer who said: "Everything is true, andeverything is false," announced a fact which the human intellect,naturally prone to sophism, interprets as it chooses, but it reallyseems as though human affairs have as many facets as there are mindsthat contemplate them. This fact may be detailed as follows:

There cannot be found, in all creation, a single law which is notcounterbalanced by a law exactly contrary to it; life in everything ismaintained by the equilibrium of two opposing forces. So in thepresent subject, as regards love, if you give too much, you will notreceive enough. The mother who shows her children her whole tendernesscalls forth their ingratitude, and ingratitude is occasioned, perhaps,by the impossibility of reciprocation. The wife who loves more thanshe is loved must necessarily be the object of tyranny. Durable loveis that which always keeps the forces of two human beings inequilibrium. Now this equilibrium may be maintained permanently; theone who loves the more ought to stop at the point of the one who lovesthe less. And is it not, after all the sweetest sacrifice that aloving heart can make, that love should so accommodate itself as toadjust the inequality?

What sentiment of admiration must rise in the soul of a philosopher ondiscovering that there is, perhaps, but one single principle in theworld, as there is but one God; and that our ideas and our affectionsare subject to the same laws which cause the sun to rise, the flowersto bloom, the universe to teem with life!

Perhaps, we ought to seek in the metaphysics of love the reasons forthe following proposition, which throws the most vivid light on thequestion of honeymoons and of Red-moons:

THEOREM.

Man goes from aversion to love; but if he has begun by loving, and afterwards comes to feel aversion, he never returns to love.

In certain human organisms the feelings are dwarfed, as the thoughtmay be in certain sterile imaginations. Thus, just as some minds havethe faculty of comprehending the connections existing betweendifferent things without formal deduction; and as they have thefaculty of seizing upon each formula separately, without combiningthem, or without the power of insight, comparison and expression; soin the same way, different souls may have more or less imperfect ideasof the various sentiments. Talent in love, as in every other art,consists in the power of forming a conception combined with the powerof carrying it out. The world is full of people who sing airs, but whoomit the ritornello, who have quarters of an idea, as they havequarters of sentiment, but who can no more co-ordinate the movementsof their affections than of their thoughts. In a word, they areincomplete. Unite a fine intelligence with a dwarfed intelligence andyou precipitate a disaster; for it is necessary that equilibrium bepreserved in everything.

We leave to the philosophers of the boudoir or to the sages of theback parlor to investigate the thousand ways in which men of differenttemperaments, intellects, social positions and fortunes disturb thisequilibrium. Meanwhile we will proceed to examine the last cause forthe setting of the honeymoon and the rising of the Red-moon.

There is in life one principle more potent than life itself. It is amovement whose celerity springs from an unknown motive power. Man isno more acquainted with the secret of this revolution than the earthis aware of that which causes her rotation. A certain something, whichI gladly call the current of life, bears along our choicest thoughts,makes use of most people's will and carries us on in spite ofourselves. Thus, a man of common-sense, who never fails to pay hisbills, if he is a merchant, a man who has been able to escape death,or what perhaps is more trying, sickness, by the observation of acertain easy but daily regimen, is completely and duly nailed upbetween the four planks of his coffin, after having said everyevening: "Dear me! to-morrow I will not forget my pills!" How are weto explain this magic spell which rules all the affairs of life? Domen submit to it from a want of energy? Men who have the strongestwills are subject to it. Is it default of memory? People who possessthis faculty in the highest degree yield to its fascination.

Every one can recognize the operation of this influence in the case ofhis neighbor, and it is one of the things which exclude the majorityof husbands from the honeymoon. It is thus that the wise man, survivorof all reefs and shoals, such as we have pointed out, sometimes fallsinto the snares which he himself has set.

I have myself noticed that man deals with marriage and its dangers invery much the same way that he deals with wigs; and perhaps thefollowing phases of thought concerning wigs may furnish a formula forhuman life in general.

FIRST EPOCH.—Is it possible that I shall ever have white hair?

SECOND EPOCH.—In any case, if I have white hair, I shall never wear awig. Good Lord! what is more ugly than a wig?

One morning you hear a young voice, which love much oftener makes tovibrate than lulls to silence, exclaiming:

"Well, I declare! You have a white hair!"

THIRD EPOCH.—Why not wear a well-made wig which people would notnotice? There is a certain merit in deceiving everybody; besides, awig keeps you warm, prevents taking cold, etc.

FOURTH EPOCH.—The wig is so skillfully put on that you deceive everyone who does not know you.

The wig takes up all your attention, and amour-propre makes youevery morning as busy as the most skillful hairdresser.

FIFTH EPOCH.—The neglected wig. "Good heavens! How tedious it is, tohave to go with bare head every evening, and to curl one's wig everymorning!"

SIXTH EPOCH.—The wig allows certain white hairs to escape; it is puton awry and the observer perceives on the back of your neck a whiteline, which contrasts with the deep tints pushed back by the collar ofyour coat.

SEVENTH EPOCH.—Your wig is as scraggy as dog's tooth grass; and—excuse the expression—you are making fun of your wig.

"Sir," said one of the most powerful feminine intelligences which havecondescended to enlighten me on some of the most obscure passages inmy book, "what do you mean by this wig?"

"Madame," I answered, "when a man falls into a mood of indifferencewith regard to his wig, he is,—he is—what your husband probably isnot."

"But my husband is not—" (she paused and thought for a moment). "Heis not amiable; he is not—well, he is not—of an even temper; he isnot—"

"Then, madame, he would doubtless be indifferent to his wig!"

We looked at each other, she with a well-assumed air of dignity, Iwith a suppressed smile.

"I see," said I, "that we must pay special respect to the ears of thelittle sex, for they are the only chaste things about them."

I assumed the attitude of a man who has something of importance todisclose, and the fair dame lowered her eyes, as if she had somereason to blush.

"Madame, in these days a minister is not hanged, as once upon a time,for saying yes or no; a Chateaubriand would scarcely torture Francoisede Foix, and we wear no longer at our side a long sword ready toavenge an insult. Now in a century when civilization has made suchrapid progress, when we can learn a science in twenty-four lessons,everything must follow this race after perfection. We can no longerspeak the manly, rude, coarse language of our ancestors. The age inwhich are fabricated such fine, such brilliant stuffs, such elegantfurniture, and when are made such rich porcelains, must needs be theage of periphrase and circumlocution. We must try, therefore, to coina new word in place of the comic expression which Moliere used; sincethe language of this great man, as a contemporary author has said, istoo free for ladies who find gauze too thick for their garments. Butpeople of the world know, as well as the learned, how the Greeks hadan innate taste for mysteries. That poetic nation knew well how toinvest with the tints of fable the antique traditions of theirhistory. At the voice of their rhapsodists together with their poetsand romancers, kings became gods and their adventures of gallantrywere transformed into immortal allegories. According to M. Chompre,licentiate in law, the classic author of the Dictionary ofMythology, the labyrinth was 'an enclosure planted with trees andadorned with buildings arranged in such a way that when a young manonce entered, he could no more find his way out.' Here and thereflowery thickets were presented to his view, but in the midst of amultitude of alleys, which crossed and recrossed his path and bore theappearance of a uniform passage, among the briars, rocks and thorns,the patient found himself in combat with an animal called theMinotaur.

"Now, madame, if you will allow me the honor of calling to your mindthe fact that the Minotaur was of all known beasts that whichMythology distinguishes as the most dangerous; that in order to savethemselves from his ravages, the Athenians were bound to deliver tohim, every single year, fifty virgins; you will perhaps escape theerror of good M. Chompre, who saw in the labyrinth nothing but anEnglish garden; and you will recognize in this ingenious fable arefined allegory, or we may better say a faithful and fearful image ofthe dangers of marriage. The paintings recently discovered atHerculaneum have served to confirm this opinion. And, as a matter offact, learned men have for a long time believed, in accordance withthe writings of certain authors, that the Minotaur was an animalhalf-man, half-bull; but the fifth panel of ancient paintings atHerculaneum represents to us this allegorical monster with a bodyentirely human; and, to take away all vestige of doubt, he liescrushed at the feet of Theseus. Now, my dear madame, why should we notask Mythology to come and rescue us from that hypocrisy which isgaining ground with us and hinders us from laughing as our fatherslaughed? And thus, since in the world a young lady does not very wellknow how to spread the veil under which an honest woman hides herbehavior, in a contingency which our grandfathers would have roughlyexplained by a single word, you, like a crowd of beautiful butprevaricating ladies, you content yourselves with saying, 'Ah! yes,she is very amiable, but,'—but what?—'but she is often veryinconsistent—.' I have for a long time tried to find out the meaningof this last word, and, above all, the figure of rhetoric by which youmake it express the opposite of that which it signifies; but all myresearches have been in vain. Vert-Vert used the word last, and wasunfortunately addressed to the innocent nuns whose infidelities didnot in any way infringe the honor of the men. When a woman isinconsistent the husband must be, according to me, minotaurized.If the minotaurized man is a fine fellow, if he enjoys a certainesteem,—and many husbands really deserve to be pitied,—then inspeaking of him, you say in a pathetic voice, 'M. A—- is a veryestimable man, his wife is exceedingly pretty, but they say he is nothappy in his domestic relations.' Thus, madame, the estimable man whois unhappy in his domestic relations, the man who has an inconsistentwife, or the husband who is minotaurized are simply husbands as theyappear in Moliere. Well, then, O goddess of modern taste, do not theseexpressions seem to you characterized by a transparency chaste enoughfor anybody?"

"Ah! mon Dieu!" she answered, laughing, "if the thing is the same,what does it matter whether it be expressed in two syllables or in ahundred?"

She bade me good-bye, with an ironical nod and disappeared, doubtlessto join the countesses of my preface and all the metaphoricalcreatures, so often employed by romance-writers as agents for therecovery or composition of ancient manuscripts.

As for you, the more numerous and the more real creatures who read mybook, if there are any among you who make common cause with myconjugal champion, I give you notice that you will not at once becomeunhappy in your domestic relations. A man arrives at this conjugalcondition not suddenly, but insensibly and by degrees. Many husbandshave even remained unfortunate in their domestic relations duringtheir whole life and have never known it. This domestic revolutiondevelops itself in accordance with fixed rules; for the revolutions ofthe honeymoon are as regular as the phases of the moon in heaven, andare the same in every married house. Have we not proved that moralnature, like physical nature, has its laws?

Your young wife will never take a lover, as we have elsewhere said,without making serious reflections. As soon as the honeymoon wanes,you will find that you have aroused in her a sentiment of pleasurewhich you have not satisfied; you have opened to her the book of life;and she has derived an excellent idea from the prosaic dullness whichdistinguishes your complacent love, of the poetry which is the naturalresult when souls and pleasures are in accord. Like a timid bird, juststartled by the report of a gun which has ceased, she puts her headout of her nest, looks round her, and sees the world; and knowing theword of a charade which you have played, she feels instinctively thevoid which exists in your languishing passion. She divines that it isonly with a lover that she can regain the delightful exercise of herfree will in love.

You have dried the green wood in preparation for a fire.

In the situation in which both of you find yourselves, there is nowoman, even the most virtuous, who would not be found worthy of agrande passion, who has not dreamed of it, and who does not believethat it is easily kindled, for there is always found a certainamour-propre ready to reinforce that conquered enemy—a jaded wife.

"If the role of an honest woman were nothing more than perilous," saidan old lady to me, "I would admit that it would serve. But it istiresome; and I have never met a virtuous woman who did not thinkabout deceiving somebody."

And then, before any lover presents himself, a wife discusses withherself the legality of the act; she enters into a conflict with herduties, with the law, with religion and with the secret desires of anature which knows no check-rein excepting that which she places uponherself. And then commences for you a condition of affairs totallynew; then you receive the first intimation which nature, that good andindulgent mother, always gives to the creatures who are exposed to anydanger. Nature has put a bell on the neck of the Minotaur, as on thetail of that frightful snake which is the terror of travelers. Andthen appear in your wife what we will call the first symptoms, and woeto him who does not know how to contend with them. Those who inreading our book will remember that they saw those symptoms in theirown domestic life can pass to the conclusion of this work, where theywill find how they may gain consolation.

The situation referred to, in which a married couple bind themselvesfor a longer or a shorter time, is the point from which our workstarts, as it is the end at which our observations stop. A man ofintelligence should know how to recognize the mysterious indications,the obscure signs and the involuntary revelation which a wifeunwittingly exhibits; for the next Meditation will doubtless indicatethe more evident of the manifestations to neophytes in the sublimescience of marriage.

MEDITATION VIII.

OF THE FIRST SYMPTOMS.

When your wife reaches that crisis in which we have left her, youyourself are wrapped in a pleasant and unsuspicious security. You haveso often seen the sun that you begin to think it is shining overeverybody. You therefore give no longer that attention to the leastaction of your wife, which was impelled by your first outburst ofpassion.

This indolence prevents many husbands from perceiving the symptomswhich, in their wives, herald the first storm; and this disposition ofmind has resulted in the minotaurization of more husbands than haveeither opportunity, carriages, sofas and apartments in town.

The feeling of indifference in the presence of danger is to somedegree justified by the apparent tranquillity which surrounds you. Theconspiracy which is formed against you by our million of hungrycelibates seems to be unanimous in its advance. Although all areenemies of each other and know each other well, a sort of instinctforces them into co-operation.

Two persons are married. The myrmidons of the Minotaur, young and old,have usually the politeness to leave the bride and bridegroom entirelyto themselves at first. They look upon the husband as an artisan,whose business it is to trim, polish, cut into facets and mount thediamond, which is to pass from hand to hand in order to be admired allaround. Moreover, the aspect of a young married couple much taken witheach other always rejoices the heart of those among the celibates whoare known as roues; they take good care not to disturb theexcitement by which society is to be profited; they also know thatheavy showers to not last long. They therefore keep quiet; they watch,and wait, with incredible vigilance, for the moment when bride andgroom begin to weary of the seventh heaven.

The tact with which celibates discover the moment when the breezebegins to rise in a new home can only be compared to the indifferenceof those husbands for whom the Red-moon rises. There is, even inintrigue, a moment of ripeness which must be waited for. The great manis he who anticipates the outcome of certain circ*mstances. Men offifty-two, whom we have represented as being so dangerous, know verywell, for example, that any man who offers himself as lover to a womanand is haughtily rejected, will be received with open arms threemonths afterwards. But it may be truly said that in general marriedpeople in betraying their indifference towards each other show thesame naivete with which they first betrayed their love. At the timewhen you are traversing with madame the ravishing fields of theseventh heaven—where according to their temperament, newly marriedpeople remain encamped for a longer or shorter time, as the precedingMeditation has proved—you go little or not at all into society. Happyas you are in your home, if you do go abroad, it will be for thepurpose of making up a choice party and visiting the theatre, thecountry, etc. From the moment you the newly wedded make yourappearance in the world again, you and your bride together, orseparately, and are seen to be attentive to each other at balls, atparties, at all the empty amusem*nts created to escape the void of anunsatisfied heart, the celibates discern that your wife comes there insearch of distraction; her home, her husband are therefore wearisometo her.

At this point the celibate knows that half of the journey isaccomplished. At this point you are on the eve of being minotaurized,and your wife is likely to become inconsistent; which means that sheis on the contrary likely to prove very consistent in her conduct,that she has reasoned it out with astonishing sagacity and that youare likely very soon to smell fire. From that moment she will not inappearance fail in any of her duties, and will put on the colors ofthat virtue in which she is most lacking. Said Crebillon:

"Alas!
Is it right to be heir of the man who we slay?"

Never has she seemed more anxious to please you. She will seek, asmuch as possible, to allay the secret wounds which she thinks aboutinflicting upon your married bliss, she will do so by those littleattentions which induce you to believe in the eternity of her love;hence the proverb, "Happy as a fool." But in accordance with thecharacter of women, they either despise their own husbands from thevery fact that they find no difficulty in deceiving them; or they hatethem when they find themselves circumvented by them; or they fall intoa condition of indifference towards them, which is a thousand timesworse than hatred. In this emergency, the first thing which may bediagnosed in a woman is a decided oddness of behavior. A woman lovesto be saved from herself, to escape her conscience, but without theeagerness shown in this connection by wives who are thoroughlyunhappy. She dresses herself with especial care, in order, she willtell you, to flatter your amour-propre by drawing all eyes upon herin the midst of parties and public entertainments.

When she returns to the bosom of her stupid home you will see that, attimes, she is gloomy and thoughtful, then suddenly laughing and gay asif beside herself; or assuming the serious expression of a German whenhe advances to the fight. Such varying moods always indicate theterrible doubt and hesitation to which we have already referred. Thereare women who read romances in order to feast upon the images of lovecleverly depicted and always varied, of love crowned yet triumphant;or in order to familiarize themselves in thought with the perils of anintrigue.

She will profess the highest esteem for you, she will tell you thatshe loves you as a sister; and that such reasonable friendship is theonly true, the only durable friendship, the only tie which it is theaim of marriage to establish between man and wife.

She will adroitly distinguish between the duties which are all she hasto perform and the rights which she can demand to exercise.

She views with indifference, appreciated by you alone, all the detailsof married happiness. This sort of happiness, perhaps, has never beenvery agreeable to her and moreover it is always with her. She knows itwell, she has analyzed it; and what slight but terrible evidence comesfrom these circ*mstances to prove to an intelligent husband that thisfrail creature argues and reasons, instead of being carried away onthe tempest of passion.

LX.
The more a man judges the less he loves.

And now will burst forth from her those pleasantries at which you willbe the first to laugh and those reflections which will startle you bytheir profundity; now you will see sudden changes of mood and thecaprices of a mind which hesitates. At times she will exhibit extremetenderness, as if she repented of her thoughts and her projects;sometimes she will be sullen and at cross-purposes with you; in aword, she will fulfill the varium et mutabile femina which wehitherto have had the folly to attribute to the feminine temperament.Diderot, in his desire to explain the mutations almost atmospheric inthe behavior of women, has even gone so far as to make them theoffspring of what he calls la bete feroce; but we never see thesewhims in a woman who is happy.

These symptoms, light as gossamer, resemble the clouds which scarcelybreak the azure surface of the sky and which they call flowers of thestorm. But soon their colors take a deeper intensity.

In the midst of this solemn premeditation, which tends, as Madame deStael says, to bring more poetry into life, some women, in whomvirtuous mothers either from considerations of worldly advantage ofduty or sentiment, or through sheer hypocrisy, have inculcatedsteadfast principles, take the overwhelming fancies by which they areassailed for suggestions of the devil; and you will see them thereforetrotting regularly to mass, to midday offices, even to vespers. Thisfalse devotion exhibits itself, first of all in the shape of prettybooks of devotion in a costly binding, by the aid of which these dearsinners attempt in vain to fulfill the duties imposed by religion, andlong neglected for the pleasures of marriage.

Now here we will lay down a principle, and you must engrave it on yourmemory in letters of fire.

When a young woman suddenly takes up religious practices which she hasbefore abandoned, this new order of life always conceals a motivehighly significant, in view of her husband's happiness. In the case ofat least seventy-nine women out of a hundred this return to God provesthat they have been inconsistent, or that they intend to become so.

But a symptom more significant still and more decisive, and one thatevery husband should recognize under pain of being considered a fool,is this:

At the time when both of you are immersed in the illusive delights ofthe honeymoon, your wife, as one devoted to you, would constantlycarry out your will. She was happy in the power of showing the readywill, which both of you mistook for love, and she would have liked foryou to have asked her to walk on the edge of the roof, andimmediately, nimble as a squirrel, she would have run over the tiles.In a word, she found an ineffable delight in sacrificing to you thatego which made her a being distinct from yours. She had identifiedherself with your nature and was obedient to that vow of the heart,Una caro.

All this delightful promptness of an earlier day gradually faded away.Wounded to find her will counted as nothing, your wife will attempt,nevertheless, to reassert it by means of a system developed gradually,and from day to day, with increased energy.

This system is founded upon what we may call the dignity of themarried woman. The first effect of this system is to mingle with yourpleasures a certain reserve and a certain lukewarmness, of which youare the sole judge.

According to the greater or lesser violence of your sensual passion,you have perhaps discerned some of those twenty-two pleasures which inother times created in Greece twenty-two kinds of courtesans, devotedespecially to these delicate branches of the same art. Ignorant andsimple, curious and full of hope, your young wife may have taken somedegrees in this science as rare as it is unknown, and which weespecially commend to the attention of the future author ofPhysiology of Pleasure.

Lacking all these different kinds of pleasure, all these caprices ofsoul, all these arrows of love, you are reduced to the most common oflove fashions, of that primitive and innocent wedding gait, the calmhomage which the innocent Adam rendered to our common Mother and whichdoubtless suggested to the Serpent the idea of taking them in. But asymptom so complete is not frequent. Most married couples are too goodChristians to follow the usages of pagan Greece, so we have ranged,among the last symptoms, the appearance in the calm nuptial couch ofthose shameless pleasures which spring generally from lawless passion.In their proper time and place we will treat more fully of thisfascinating diagnostic; at this point, things are reduced to alistlessness and conjugal repugnance which you alone are in acondition to appreciate.

At the same time that she is ennobling by her dignity the objects ofmarriage, your wife will pretend that she ought to have her opinionand you yours. "In marrying," she will say, "a woman does not vow thatshe will abdicate the throne of reason. Are women then really slaves?Human laws can fetter the body; but the mind!—ah! God has placed itso near Himself that no human hand can touch it."

These ideas necessarily proceed either from the too liberal teachingswhich you have allowed her to receive, or from some reflections whichyou have permitted her to make. A whole Meditation has been devoted toHome Instruction.

Then your wife begins to say, "My chamber, my bed, myapartment." To many of your questions she will reply, "But, my dear,this is no business of yours!" Or: "Men have their part in thedirection of the house, and women have theirs." Or, laughing at menwho meddle in household affairs, she will affirm that "men do notunderstand some things."

The number of things which you do not understand increases day by day.

One fine morning, you will see in your little church two altars, wherebefore you never worshiped but at one. The altar of your wife and yourown altar have become distinct, and this distinction will go onincreasing, always in accordance with the system founded upon thedignity of woman.

Then the following ideas will appear, and they will be inculcated inyou whether you like it or not, by means of a living force veryancient in origin and little known. Steam-power, horse-power,man-power, and water-power are good inventions, but nature has providedwomen with a moral power, in comparison with which all other powersare nothing; we may call it rattle-power. This force consists in acontinuance of the same sound, in an exact repetition of the samewords, in a reversion, over and over again, to the same ideas, andthis so unvaried, that from hearing them over and over again you willadmit them, in order to be delivered from the discussion. Thus thepower of the rattle will prove to you:

That you are very fortunate to have such an excellent wife;

That she has done you too much honor in marrying you;

That women often see clearer than men;

That you ought to take the advice of your wife in everything, andalmost always ought to follow it;

That you ought to respect the mother of your children, to honor herand have confidence in her;

That the best way to escape being deceived, is to rely upon a wife'srefinement, for according to certain old ideas which we have had theweakness to give credit, it is impossible for a man to prevent hiswife from minotaurizing him;

That a lawful wife is a man's best friend;

That a woman is mistress in her own house and queen in herdrawing-room, etc.

Those who wish to oppose a firm resistance to a woman's conquest,effected by means of her dignity over man's power, fall into thecategory of the predestined.

At first, quarrels arise which in the eye of wives give an air oftyranny to husbands. The tyranny of a husband is always a terribleexcuse for inconsistency in a wife. Then, in their frivolousdiscussions they are enabled to prove to their families and to ours,to everybody and to ourselves, that we are in the wrong. If, for thesake of peace, or from love, you acknowledge the pretended rights ofwomen, you yield an advantage to your wife by which she will profiteternally. A husband, like a government, ought never to acknowledge amistake. In case you do so, your power will be outflanked by thesubtle artifices of feminine dignity; then all will be lost; from thatmoment she will advance from concession to concession until she hasdriven you from her bed.

The woman being shrewd, intelligent, sarcastic and having leisure tomeditate over an ironical phrase, can easily turn you into ridiculeduring a momentary clash of opinions. The day on which she turns youinto ridicule, sees the end of your happiness. Your power has expired.A woman who has laughed at her husband cannot henceforth love him. Aman should be, to the woman who is in love with him, a being full ofpower, of greatness, and always imposing. A family cannot existwithout despotism. Think of that, ye nations!

Now the difficult course which a man has to steer in presence of suchserious incidents as these, is what we may call the haute politiqueof marriage, and is the subject of the second and third parts of ourbook. That breviary of marital Machiavelism will teach you the mannerin which you may grow to greatness within that frivolous mind, withinthat soul of lacework, to use Napoleon's phrase. You may learn how aman may exhibit a soul of steel, may enter upon this little domesticwar without ever yielding the empire of his will, and may do sowithout compromising his happiness. For if you exhibit any tendency toabdication, your wife will despise you, for the sole reason that shehas discovered you to be destitute of mental vigor; you are no longera man to her.

But we have not yet reached the point at which are to be developedthose theories and principles, by means of which a man may uniteelegance of manners with severity of measures; let it suffice us, forthe moment, to point out the importance of impending events and let uspursue our theme.

At this fatal epoch, you will see that she is adroitly setting up aright to go out alone.

You were at one time her god, her idol. She has now reached thatheight of devotion at which it is permitted to see holes in thegarments of the saints.

"Oh, mon Dieu! My dear," said Madame de la Valliere to her husband,"how badly you wear your sword! M. de Richelieu has a way of making ithang straight at his side, which you ought to try to imitate; it is inmuch better taste."

"My dear, you could not tell me in a more tactful manner that we havebeen married five months!" replied the Duke, whose repartee made hisfortune in the reign of Louis XV.

She will study your character in order to find weapons against you.Such a study, which love would hold in horror, reveals itself in thethousand little traps which she lays purposely to make you scold her;when a woman has no excuse for minotaurizing her husband she sets towork to make one.

She will perhaps begin dinner without waiting for you.

If you drive through the middle of the town, she will point outcertain objects which escaped your notice; she will sing before youwithout feeling afraid; she will interrupt you, sometimes vouchsafe noreply to you, and will prove to you, in a thousand different ways,that she is enjoying at your side the use of all her faculties andexercising her private judgment.

She will try to abolish entirely your influence in the management ofthe house and to become sole mistress of your fortune. At first thisstruggle will serve as a distraction for her soul, whether it be emptyor in too violent commotion; next, she will find in your opposition anew motive for ridicule. Slang expressions will not fail her, and inFrance we are so quickly vanquished by the ironical smile of another!

At other times headaches and nervous attacks make their appearance;but these symptoms furnish matter for a whole future Meditation. Inthe world she will speak of you without blushing, and will gaze at youwith assurance. She will begin to blame your least actions becausethey are at variance with her ideas, or her secret intentions. Shewill take no care of what pertains to you, she will not even knowwhether you have all you need. You are no longer her paragon.

In imitation of Louis XIV, who carried to his mistresses the bouquetsof orange blossoms which the head gardener of Versailles put on histable every morning, M. de Vivonne used almost every day to give hiswife choice flowers during the early period of his marriage. Onemorning he found the bouquet lying on the side table without havingbeen placed, as usual, in a vase of water.

"Oh! Oh!" said he, "if I am not a cuckold, I shall very soon be one."

You go on a journey for eight days and you receive no letters, or youreceive one, three pages of which are blank.—Symptom.

You come home mounted on a valuable horse which you like very much,and between her kisses your wife shows her uneasiness about the horseand his fodder.—Symptom.

To these features of the case, you will be able to add others. Weshall endeavor in the present volume always to paint things in boldfresco style and leave the miniatures to you. According to thecharacters concerned, the indications which we are describing, veiledunder the incidents of ordinary life, are of infinite variety. One manmay discover a symptom in the way a shawl is put on, while anotherneeds to receive a fillip to his intellect, in order to notice theindifference of his mate.

Some fine spring morning, the day after a ball, or the eve of acountry party, this situation reaches its last phase; your wife islistless and the happiness within her reach has no more attractionsfor her. Her mind, her imagination, perhaps her natural caprices callfor a lover. Nevertheless, she dare not yet embark upon an intriguewhose consequences and details fill her with dread. You are stillthere for some purpose or other; you are a weight in the balance,although a very light one. On the other hand, the lover presentshimself arrayed in all the graces of novelty and all the charms ofmystery. The conflict which has arisen in the heart of your wifebecomes, in presence of the enemy, more real and more full of perilthan before. Very soon the more dangers and risks there are to be run,the more she burns to plunge into that delicious gulf of fear,enjoyment, anguish and delight. Her imagination kindles and sparkles,her future life rises before her eyes, colored with romantic andmysterious hues. Her soul discovers that existence has already takenits tone from this struggle which to a woman has so much solemnity init. All is agitation, all is fire, all is commotion within her. Shelives with three times as much intensity as before, and judges thefuture by the present. The little pleasure which you have lavishedupon her bears witness against you; for she is not excited as much bythe pleasures which she has received, as by those which she is yet toenjoy; does not imagination show her that her happiness will be keenerwith this lover, whom the laws deny her, than with you? And then, shefinds enjoyment even in her terror and terror in her enjoyment. Thenshe falls in love with this imminent danger, this sword of Damocleshung over her head by you yourself, thus preferring the deliriousagonies of such a passion, to that conjugal inanity which is worse toher than death, to that indifference which is less a sentiment thanthe absence of all sentiment.

You, who must go to pay your respects to the Minister of Finance, towrite memorandums at the bank, to make your reports at the Bourse, orto speak in the Chamber; you, young men, who have repeated with manyothers in our first Meditation the oath that you will defend yourhappiness in defending your wife, what can you oppose to these desiresof hers which are so natural? For, with these creatures of fire, tolive is to feel; the moment they cease to experience emotion they aredead. The law in virtue of which you take your position produces inher this involuntary act of minotaurism. "There is one sequel," saidD'Alembert, "to the laws of movement." Well, then, where are yourmeans of defence?— Where, indeed?

Alas! if your wife has not yet kissed the apple of the Serpent, theSerpent stands before her; you sleep, we are awake, and our bookbegins.

Without inquiring how many husbands, among the five hundred thousandwhich this book concerns, will be left with the predestined; how manyhave contracted unfortunate marriages; how many have made a badbeginning with their wives; and without wishing to ask if there bemany or few of this numerous band who can satisfy the conditionsrequired for struggling against the danger which is impending, weintend to expound in the second and third part of this work themethods of fighting the Minotaur and keeping intact the virtue ofwives. But if fate, the devil, the celibate, opportunity, desire yourruin, in recognizing the progress of all intrigues, in joining in thebattles which are fought by every home, you will possibly be able tofind some consolation. Many people have such a happy disposition, thaton showing to them the condition of things and explaining to them thewhy and the wherefore, they scratch their foreheads, rub their hands,stamp on the ground, and are satisfied.

MEDITATION IX.

EPILOGUE.

Faithful to our promise, this first part has indicated the generalcauses which bring all marriages to the crises which we are about todescribe; and, in tracing the steps of this conjugal preamble, we havealso pointed out the way in which the catastrophe is to be avoided,for we have pointed out the errors by which it is brought about.

But these first considerations would be incomplete if, afterendeavoring to throw some light upon the inconsistency of our ideas,of our manners and of our laws, with regard to a question whichconcerns the life of almost all living beings, we did not endeavor tomake plain, in a short peroration, the political causes of theinfirmity which pervades all modern society. After having exposed thesecret vices of marriage, would it not be an inquiry worthy ofphilosophers to search out the causes which have rendered it sovicious?

The system of law and of manners which so far directs women andcontrols marriage in France, is the outcome of ancient beliefs andtraditions which are no longer in accordance with the eternalprinciples of reason and of justice, brought to light by the greatRevolution of 1789.

Three great disturbances have agitated France; the conquest of thecountry by the Romans, the establishment of Christianity and theinvasion of the Franks. Each of these events has left a deep impressupon the soil, upon the laws, upon the manners and upon the intellectof the nation.

Greece having one foot on Europe and the other on Asia, was influencedby her voluptuous climate in the choice of her marriage institutions;she received them from the East, where her philosophers, herlegislators and her poets went to study the abstruse antiquities ofEgypt and Chaldea. The absolute seclusion of women which wasnecessitated under the burning sun of Asia prevailed under the laws ofGreece and Ionia. The women remained in confinement within the marblesof the gyneceum. The country was reduced to the condition of a city,to a narrow territory, and the courtesans who were connected with artand religion by so many ties, were sufficient to satisfy the firstpassions of the young men, who were few in number, since theirstrength was elsewhere taken up in the violent exercises of thattraining which was demanded of them by the military system of thoseheroic times.

At the beginning of her royal career Rome, having sent to Greece toseek such principles of legislation as might suit the sky of Italy,stamped upon the forehead of the married woman the brand of completeservitude. The senate understood the importance of virtue in arepublic, hence the severity of manners in the excessive developmentof the marital and paternal power. The dependence of the woman on herhusband is found inscribed on every code. The seclusion prescribed bythe East becomes a duty, a moral obligation, a virtue. On theseprinciples were raised temples to modesty and temples consecrated tothe sanctity of marriage; hence, sprang the institution of censors,the law of dowries, the sumptuary laws, the respect for matrons andall the characteristics of the Roman law. Moreover, three acts offeminine violation either accomplished or attempted, produced threerevolutions! And was it not a grand event, sanctioned by the decreesof the country, that these illustrious women should make theirappearances on the political arena! Those noble Roman women, who wereobliged to be either brides or mothers, passed their life inretirement engaged in educating the masters of the world. Rome had nocourtesans because the youth of the city were engaged in eternal war.If, later on, dissoluteness appeared, it merely resulted from thedespotism of emperors; and still the prejudices founded upon ancientmanners were so influential that Rome never saw a woman on a stage.These facts are not put forth idly in scanning the history of marriagein France.

After the conquest of Gaul, the Romans imposed their laws upon theconquered; but they were incapable of destroying both the profoundrespect which our ancestors entertained for women and the ancientsuperstitions which made women the immediate oracles of God. The Romanlaws ended by prevailing, to the exclusion of all others, in thiscountry once known as the "land of written law," or Gallia togata,and their ideas of marriage penetrated more or less into the "land ofcustoms."

But, during the conflict of laws with manners, the Franks invaded theGauls and gave to the country the dear name of France. These warriorscame from the North and brought the system of gallantry which hadoriginated in their western regions, where the mingling of the sexesdid not require in those icy climates the jealous precautions of theEast. The women of that time elevated the privations of that kind oflife by the exaltation of their sentiments. The drowsy minds of theday made necessary those varied forms of delicate solicitation, thatversatility of address, the fancied repulse of coquetry, which belongto the system whose principles have been unfolded in our First Part,as admirably suited to the temperate clime of France.

To the East, then, belong the passion and the delirium of passion, thelong brown hair, the harem, the amorous divinities, the splendor, thepoetry of love and the monuments of love.— To the West, the libertyof wives, the sovereignty of their blond locks, gallantry, the fairylife of love, the secrecy of passion, the profound ecstasy of thesoul, the sweet feelings of melancholy and the constancy of love.

These two systems, starting from opposite points of the globe, havecome into collision in France; in France, where one part of thecountry, Languedoc, was attracted by Oriental traditions, while theother, Languedoil, was the native land of a creed which attributes towoman a magical power. In the Languedoil, love necessitates mystery,in the Languedoc, to see is to love.

At the height of this struggle came the triumphant entry of
Christianity into France, and there it was preached by women, and
there it consecrated the divinity of a woman who in the forests of
Brittany, of Vendee and of Ardennes took, under the name of
Notre-Dame, the place of more than one idol in the hollow of old
Druidic oaks.

If the religion of Christ, which is above all things a code ofmorality and politics, gave a soul to all living beings, proclaimedthat equality of all in the sight of God, and by such principles asthese fortified the chivalric sentiments of the North, this advantagewas counterbalanced by the fact, that the sovereign pontiff resided atRome, of which seat he considered himself the lawful heir, through theuniversality of the Latin tongue, which became that of Europe duringthe Middle Ages, and through the keen interest taken by monks, writersand lawyers in establishing the ascendency of certain codes,discovered by a soldier in the sack of Amalfi.

These two principles of the servitude and the sovereignty of womenretain possession of the ground, each of them defended by fresharguments.

The Salic law, which was a legal error, was a triumph for theprinciple of political and civil servitude for women, but it did notdiminish the power which French manners accorded them, for theenthusiasm of chivalry which prevailed in Europe supplanted the partyof manners against the party of law.

And in this way was created that strange phenomenon which since thattime has characterized both our national despotism and ourlegislation; for ever since those epochs which seemed to presage theRevolution, when the spirit of philosophy rose and reflected upon thehistory of the past, France has been the prey of many convulsions.Feudalism, the Crusades, the Reformation, the struggle between themonarchy and the aristocracy. Despotism and Priestcraft have soclosely held the country within their clutches, that woman stillremains the subject of strange counter-opinions, each springing fromone of the three great movements to which we have referred. Was itpossible that the woman question should be discussed and woman'spolitical education and marriage should be ventilated when feudalismthreatened the throne, when reform menaced both king and barons, andthe people, between the hierarchy and the empire, were forgotten?According to a saying of Madame Necker, women, amid these greatmovements, were like the cotton wool put into a case of porcelain.They were counted for nothing, but without them everything would havebeen broken.

A married woman, then, in France presents the spectacle of a queen outat service, of a slave, at once free and a prisoner; a collisionbetween these two principles which frequently occurred, produced oddsituations by the thousand. And then, woman was physically littleunderstood, and what was actually sickness in her, was considered aprodigy, witchcraft or monstrous turpitude. In those days thesecreatures, treated by the law as reckless children, and put underguardianship, were by the manners of the time deified and adored. Likethe freedmen of emperors, they disposed of crowns, they decidedbattles, they awarded fortunes, they inspired crimes and revolutions,wonderful acts of virtue, by the mere flash of their glances, and yetthey possessed nothing and were not even possessors of themselves.They were equally fortunate and unfortunate. Armed with their weaknessand strong in instinct, they launched out far beyond the sphere whichthe law allotted them, showing themselves omnipotent for evil, butimpotent for good; without merit in the virtues that were imposed uponthem, without excuse in their vices; accused of ignorance and yetdenied an education; neither altogether mothers nor altogether wives.Having all the time to conceal their passions, while they fosteredthem, they submitted to the coquetry of the Franks, while they wereobliged like Roman women, to stay within the ramparts of their castlesand bring up those who were to be warriors. While no system wasdefinitely decided upon by legislation as to the position of women,their minds were left to follow their inclinations, and there arefound among them as many who resemble Marion Delorme as those whor*semble Cornelia; there are vices among them, but there are as manyvirtues. These were creatures as incomplete as the laws which governedthem; they were considered by some as a being midway between man andthe lower animals, as a malignant beast which the laws could not tooclosely fetter, and which nature had destined, with so many otherthings, to serve the pleasure of men; while others held woman to be anangel in exile, a source of happiness and love, the only creature whor*sponded to the highest feelings of man, while her miseries were tobe recompensed by the idolatry of every heart. How could theconsistency, which was wanting in a political system, be expected inthe general manners of the nation?

And so woman became what circ*mstances and men made her, instead ofbeing what the climate and native institutions should have made her;sold, married against her taste, in accordance with the Patriapotestas of the Romans, at the same time that she fell under themarital despotism which desired her seclusion, she found herselftempted to take the only reprisals which were within her power. Thenshe became a dissolute creature, as soon as men ceased to be intentlyoccupied in intestine war, for the same reason that she was a virtuouswoman in the midst of civil disturbances. Every educated man can fillin this outline, for we seek from movements like these the lessons andnot the poetic suggestion which they yield.

The Revolution was too entirely occupied in breaking down and buildingup, had too many enemies, or followed perhaps too closely on thedeplorable times witnessed under the regency and under Louis XV, topay any attention to the position which women should occupy in thesocial order.

The remarkable men who raised the immortal monument which our codespresent were almost all old-fashioned students of law deeply imbuedwith a spirit of Roman jurisprudence; and moreover they were not thefounders of any political institutions. Sons of the Revolution, theybelieved, in accordance with that movement, that the law of divorcewisely restricted and the bond of dutiful submission were sufficientameliorations of the previous marriage law. When that former order ofthings was remembered, the change made by the new legislation seemedimmense.

At the present day the question as to which of these two principlesshall triumph rests entirely in the hands of our wise legislators. Thepast has teaching which should bear fruit in the future. Have we lostall sense of the eloquence of fact?

The principles of the East resulted in the existence of eunuchs andseraglios; the spurious social standing of France has brought in theplague of courtesans and the more deadly plague of our marriagesystem; and thus, to use the language of a contemporary, the Eastsacrifices to paternity men and the principle of justice; France,women and modesty. Neither the East nor France has attained the goalwhich their institutions point to; for that is happiness. The man isnot more loved by the women of a harem than the husband is sure ofbeing in France, as the father of his children; and marrying is notworth what it costs. It is time to offer no more sacrifice to thisinstitution, and to amass a larger sum of happiness in the socialstate by making our manners and our institution conformable to ourclimate.

Constitutional government, a happy mixture of two extreme politicalsystems, despotism and democracy, suggests by the necessity ofblending also the two principles of marriage, which so far clashtogether in France. The liberty which we boldly claim for young peopleis the only remedy for the host of evils whose source we have pointedout, by exposing the inconsistencies resulting from the bondage inwhich girls are kept. Let us give back to youth the indulgence ofthose passions, those coquetries, love and its terrors, love and itsdelights, and that fascinating company which followed the coming ofthe Franks. At this vernal season of life no fault is irreparable, andHymen will come forth from the bosom of experiences, armed withconfidence, stripped of hatred, and love in marriage will bejustified, because it will have had the privilege of comparison.

In this change of manners the disgraceful plague of publicprostitution will perish of itself. It is especially at the time whenthe man possesses the frankness and timidity of adolescence, that inhis pursuit of happiness he is competent to meet and struggle withgreat and genuine passions of the heart. The soul is happy in makinggreat efforts of whatever kind; provided that it can act, that it canstir and move, it makes little difference, even though it exercise itspower against itself. In this observation, the truth of whicheverybody can see, there may be found one secret of successfullegislation, of tranquillity and happiness. And then, the pursuit oflearning has now become so highly developed that the most tempestuousof our coming Mirabeaus can consume his energy either in theindulgence of a passion or the study of a science. How many youngpeople have been saved from debauchery by self-chosen labors or thepersistent obstacles put in the way of a first love, a love that waspure! And what young girl does not desire to prolong the delightfulchildhood of sentiment, is not proud to have her nature known, and hasnot felt the secret tremblings of timidity, the modesty of her secretcommunings with herself, and wished to oppose them to the youngdesires of a lover inexperienced as herself! The gallantry of theFranks and the pleasures which attend it should then be the portion ofyouth, and then would naturally result a union of soul, of mind, ofcharacter, of habits, of temperament and of fortune, such as wouldproduce the happy equilibrium necessary for the felicity of themarried couple. This system would rest upon foundations wider andfreer, if girls were subjected to a carefully calculated system ofdisinheritance; or if, in order to force men to choose only those whopromised happiness by their virtues, their character or their talents,they married as in the United States without dowry.

In that case, the system adopted by the Romans could advantageously beapplied to the married women who when they were girls used theirliberty. Being exclusively engaged in the early education of theirchildren, which is the most important of all maternal obligations,occupied in creating and maintaining the happiness of the household,so admirably described in the fourth book of Julie, they would be intheir houses like the women of ancient Rome, living images ofProvidence, which reigns over all, and yet is nowhere visible. In thiscase, the laws covering the infidelity of the wife should be extremelysevere. They should make the penalty disgrace, rather than inflictpainful or coercive sentences. France has witnessed the spectacle ofwomen riding asses for the pretended crime of magic, and many aninnocent woman has died of shame. In this may be found the secret offuture marriage legislation. The young girls of Miletus deliveredthemselves from marriage by voluntary death; the senate condemned thesuicides to be dragged naked on a hurdle, and the other virginscondemned themselves for life.

Women and marriage will never be respected until we have that radicalchange in manners which we are now begging for. This profound thoughtis the ruling principle in the two finest productions of an immortalgenius. Emile and La Nouvelle Heloise are nothing more than twoeloquent pleas for the system. The voice there raised will resoundthrough the ages, because it points to the real motives of truelegislation, and the manners which will prevail in the future. Byplacing children at the breast of their mothers, Jean-Jacques renderedan immense service to the cause of virtue; but his age was too deeplygangrened with abuses to understand the lofty lessons unfolded inthose two poems; it is right to add also that the philosopher was inthese works overmastered by the poet, and in leaving in the heart ofJulie after her marriage some vestiges of her first love, he was ledastray by the attractiveness of a poetic situation, more touchingindeed, but less useful than the truth which he wished to display.

Nevertheless, if marriage in France is an unlimited contract to whichmen agree with a silent understanding that they may thus give morerelish to passion, more curiosity, more mystery to love, morefascination to women; if a woman is rather an ornament to thedrawing-room, a fashion-plate, a portmanteau, than a being whosefunctions in the order politic are an essential part of the country'sprosperity and the nation's glory, a creature whose endeavors in lifevie in utility with those of men—I admit that all the above theory,all these long considerations sink into nothingness at the prospect ofsuch an important destiny!——

But after having squeezed a pound of actualities in order to obtainone drop of philosophy, having paid sufficient homage to that passionfor the historic, which is so dominant in our time, let us turn ourglance upon the manners of the present period. Let us take the cap andbells and the coxcomb of which Rabelais once made a sceptre, and letus pursue the course of this inquiry without giving to one joke moreseriousness than comports with it, and without giving to seriousthings the jesting tone which ill befits them.