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Title: The art of taking a wife
Author: Mantegazza, Paolo
Language: English
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THE ART OF TAKING A WIFE
BY PAOLO MANTEGAZZA
_New Edition_
GAY AND BIRD LONDON MDCCCXCVI
_All rights reserved_
TO THE IMPATIENT,
WHO WISH TO MARRY TOO SOON;
TO THE LIBERTINES,
WHO TAKE A WIFE TOO LATE;
TO THE TIMID
WHO, WAVERING BETWEEN YES AND NO,
END BY NOT TAKING ONE AT ALL,
This Book is Dedicated
BY A MAN
WHO HAS ALWAYS BLESSED HIS FIRST MARRIAGE,
AND HOPES TO BLESS THE SECOND;
BELIEVING THIS SEXUAL CONTRACT TO BE
THE LEAST EVIL ONE
OF THE TIES WHICH BIND THE
MAN TO THE WOMAN,
IN SPITE
OF ITS MANY DEFECTS AND DANGERS.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
PROLOGUE: BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS—TO TAKE OR NOT TO TAKE
A WIFE? vii
I. MARRIAGE IN MODERN SOCIETY, 1
II. SEXUAL CHOICE IN MARRIAGE—THE ART OF CHOOSING WELL, 36
III. AGE AND HEALTH, 55
IV. PHYSICAL SYMPATHY—RACE AND NATIONALITY, 95
V. THE HARMONY OF FEELINGS, 125
VI. HARMONY OF THOUGHTS, 154
VII. THE FINANCIAL QUESTION IN MARRIAGE, 171
VIII. THE INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS OF MARRIAGE, 192
IX. HELL, 224
X. PURGATORY, 251
XI. PARADISE, 283
PROLOGUE.
BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.—TO TAKE, OR NOT TO TAKE A WIFE?
For the majority of men, and for at least thirty years of their lives,
love is the strongest necessity, and governs them like a tyrant with
no other curb than the wretched brake of written codes, which they
do not read, and of social conventionalities, which they can easily
silence by employing hypocrisy’s mask; an hypocrisy, let it be well
understood, well dressed, well curled, and well educated.
How can one satisfy this greatest of all human needs?
_By buying love, at so much an hour, so much a month, or so much a
year._
_By gaining it by seduction or violence._
_By taking a wife._
It would seem as if these three ways of loving were totally distinct,
one from the other; in fact, that any one would exclude the others,
and that they would stand in direct opposition to each other. But when
hypocrisy is at the helm of the vessel which bears us over the great
sea of life, it contrives so ably and so cleverly, as to enable us
to enjoy all three methods at one moment, and, while we are sailing
between rocks free of danger or shipwreck, it affords us, as it
were, all the delights of a voyage in a beautiful archipelago, where
islands and islets seem to meet and touch each other; and where land,
mountains, and scenery all form a bright, picturesque, and beautiful
picture.
We row upon the tranquil waters of matrimony, and yet glide so near to
the shores of venal love that we can grasp the flowers and gather the
shells and precious pearls which lie there. We sail with the wind over
the more tempestuous sea of seduction, but all the while we coast the
island of poetic, faithful, and constant love; thus, vice, adultery,
and domestic peace, debauchery and eternal vows, angels and beasts,
find themselves guests at the same table, without false modesty, and
without remorse.
Civilisation has opened three ways of loving to men of the present
day, and one would have thought that since they are free to choose
one, they would have been satisfied with that. Not at all. Civilised
man is by nature insatiable, for the hammer of the _excelsior_ beats
ever at his heart, the thirst for something better wears him away, and
the hunger for _something more_ consumes him; hence he has set himself
to destroy the boundaries and walls which separate the three roads, so
that he can easily take short cuts from one to the other without risk;
and so matrimony, prostitution, and adultery walk hand in hand; and if
in public they appear very cool to each other, that is only a blind,
for in the secrecy of their houses they wink at each other, sup and
sleep together. If all this is indeed so, a Turk would say it is so
because it must be. If all this can indeed be, an epicurean optimist
would say, let us, too, try and sail in this sea, now so calm, and now
so tempestuous, and let us set that sanctified hypocrisy at the helm.
However, I am neither Turk nor cynic, and I still believe in moral
progress, and in the efficacy of books and the spoken word; and even
though I be left alone in the belief that there is no happiness save
in the good, nor cheerfulness save in sincerity, and in being the same
inwardly as outwardly, I would still die in this conviction.
I like a mixture of things at table, but I have no heart for it in
the field of morality. I wish to see the family on one side, and the
brothel on the other; and when two natures living together have become
an intolerable torment to each other, I should wish the law to apply
the instrument of divorce to their chains and to set them free.
The three ways of loving should be separate one from the other, and
should never be united. So far from breaking down the walls that
divide them, I wish to have them so high as to become impregnable
fortresses.
⁂
Only one of these three ways, however, is that which the honest and
happy ought to take. That of seduction and violence, only thieves,
assassins, and villains can enter. The third, unfortunately, the way
of venal love, nearly all enter, though still desiring and invoking
some distant ideal, where this way shall be closed, and no path
left free save that of matrimony, though its dignity must be always
guaranteed by the law of divorce.
But is marriage always possible and always easy?
No; it is often impossible, and always difficult.
And the honest man stops and meditates upon it as upon the gravest,
the most intricate, and most obscure problem of life. The misfortune
is this, that just these timid and thoughtful men are the best, and
the fear is sometimes so great, and the meditation lasts so long,
that old age comes upon them before they have resolved the problem or
made themselves a family nest. Instead of this, the improvident, the
thoughtless, and villains precipitate themselves headforemost along
the road of matrimony; and if for a few moments they struggle in the
tortures of doubt, they quickly silence apprehension and remorse by
saying to themselves:
“If it should turn out badly, if I find nettles and thorns on this
road, I will clear another cross-road with one good stroke of my
spade, and will buy love like so many others, and will, like them,
seek it either in the house of my friend or neighbor. Immorality on
this point is so lax, the indulgence of the public is so merciful,
that I may enjoy this violation of home without falling under
the penalty of the law. Mahomet also, generally so severe on all
transgressions of the written law, when he speaks of the sins of love,
even of the greatest, always adds: ‘_But God is good and merciful._’
And all think with Mahomet, though they have not written the Koran,
that to the sins of love ‘_God is good and merciful._’”
I, however, the warmest advocate of marriage for myself and others,
desire with all my soul that the honest and wise man should marry, to
increase the capital of honesty and wisdom in future generations. And
so I preach and shall preach to my last breath:
Marry! Marriage is still and always will be the most honest, healthy,
and ideal mode of loving.
But I add immediately:
Marry well; combine all the powers of your thought and feeling to
solve this most important problem of your life; add to them all
that is best in yourself; all that you find of the best among your
counsellors who are your friends.
And then follow the advice given us by that embodiment of good sense,
Benjamin Franklin: Take a sheet of paper, and after having folded it
in two, so as to have two distinct columns, write on one side all the
advantages the proposed marriage would bring you, and on the other all
the evils and dangers into which it might lead you. When you have
finished this piece of analysis work, try to measure the opposing
elements, cancelling alternately those that seem to balance each
other, as in algebra + 3 and - 3 is equal to zero, and you will see
what is left upon the page—that is, whether the good predominates, or
whether the evil has the upper hand.
I know well all the mistakes you may make. I know, too, that if you
love you will write in rose-coloured ink in the column of good, and in
that of evil you will use the blackest. But in any case this work of
analysis, this labour of detailed examination will, without your being
aware of it, oblige you to consider many elements which otherwise
you would have passed over, just as if you had had recourse to a
microscope of great power instead of to your eyes.
Matrimony must be studied with the eyes first; with the microscope
after; yes, even with the telescope. The eyes will enable us to see
the principal part of the problem; the microscope will show all the
ins and outs of our love; it will reveal all its cells and all its
fibres; and lastly, the telescope will give us the power of seeing,
prophetically, as it were, what will befall our passion and desire in
the evolution of time.
Then, if, after using eyes, microscope, and telescope, you also read
my book, you will find there the sincere and dispassionate words of a
man who became a physician that he might study mankind better; who
began by studying himself, as being the subject ever at hand; who to
this daily incessant study has devoted _forty-six_ large volumes not
yet printed.
Listen to the voice of a man who has made woman his principal study,
judging her to be the better part of humanity, and has loved her more
than all the creatures upon earth, believing her to be the first and
greatest source of happiness. I know perfectly that, even after having
applied Franklin’s method to the study of the problem of matrimony,
even after having used eyes, microscope, and telescope, and read my
book, you may yet make a mistake; but your conscience will always be
free from any remorse, in knowing that, as far as you were able, you
did all that was possible to secure happiness.
Vessels are sometimes wrecked under the command of able and brave
captains, and under the guidance of a sure compass. But for one of
these you find a hundred wrecks, to which there was no compass, or an
ignorant or drunken captain.
And all those who marry without reflecting deeply and long on the
abstruse problem are drunk and ignorant captains, who launch, without
a compass, upon the most tempestuous sea.
THE
ART OF TAKING A WIFE.
CHAPTER I.
MARRIAGE IN MODERN SOCIETY.
Of all paradoxes man is the cleverest and most untiring. He says he is
a worm of the earth, but believes himself to be a son of God; his own
person he clothes modestly, but revels in discovering the nakedness
of the greatest possible number of his sisters in Christ. The more
he humiliates himself, the prouder he is; the more he vaunts his
generosity, so much the more is he egotistical; an adorer of liberty
in theory, but in practice a daily contriver of tyrannies.
For the present I will confine myself to this last form of his
madness. If one only listens to him, he places liberty above all the
good things of the world. If Adam has lost the earthly paradise,
it is because he did not know how to tolerate the yoke of a divine
prohibition; if man has spattered his planet with blood, it is because
he preferred the hard bread of the free citizen to the golden chains
of despotism; if he has raised monuments to Spartacus, Bahilla,
Garibaldi, and Washington, it is because his first glory is to be
free; but the monuments forgotten, the tyrants killed, he raises new
ones on his own account; perhaps for the pleasure of destroying them
hereafter. If he does not seek some innocent and pleasant occupation,
what can he do after having slept and loved and eaten?
_Numbers_ must take the first place among the early tyrants of our own
making.
When God made the world, he entirely forgot to make numbers, and we
have corrected this fault of creation by making them ourselves. God
had not numbered the stars in heaven, or the drops of water in the
sea, the leaves on the trees or the ants on the ground. Infinity
above, infinity below, the ineffable and immeasurable everywhere.
Instead, we have repaired this great forgetfulness of the Creator, by
placing numbers above everything else, and making them our masters in
the world of living things and dead; we allow them to tyrannize over
us in every act of our humble daily life, as well as in the pages of
history and in dogmas of philosophy. If there have been sanguinary
revolutions in order to obtain the liberty of the press, why as yet
has no one rebelled against the tyranny of numbers?
_Quien sabe?_
Whoever would think of buying eleven or thirteen eggs?
No one, for 10 and 12 are our small tyrants.
Who would make a present of nine or ninety-nine francs to his own son?
No one, for 10 is a great tyrant, and 100 greater than 10.
Who has never felt the yoke of numbers one thousand and one hundred
thousand? who is never in subjection to the tyranny of the million,
both in language and mode of life?
And centuries, too, which are only so many figures, what a number
of theories they have evoked from the depths of history; how many
false names have they not written in the anagraphs of time; how
many revolutions have they not postponed; how many others have they
aroused, merely on account of the tyranny of a number?
For some years we have had before our eyes one of the most deplorably
humiliating examples of our view of this arithmetical incubus, the
decline of the nineteenth century to make room for the twentieth.
Six years are still wanting till this numerical cataclysm. Who knows
how many books will be written on the century dying out, how many
prophecies on the century following it; what torrents of philosophy
and ink to discuss the passing of the number 19 to that of 20?
Yet centuries only exist on paper, and after having made them
ourselves, we adore and freely elect them to be our tyrants; only to
deride the poor savages who, like us, make their own gods of wood and
stone, fall on their knees before them and fear them.
And we fear numbers—only another idol of thought, made for our
use and necessity, and in the similitude of our wretchedness and
intellectual weakness.
For my part I only see around me an infinite continuity of things and
of time, nor do I allow myself to be overawed by the cabal of numbers,
with which we ought to amuse ourselves as with a pack of cards,
esteeming them for what they are worth; a poor example of a thing yet
poorer!
The _dying century_, _fin de siècle_, and all such sensational
phrases, which are intended to express a great deal, because they mean
nothing—these exclamations, the eloquence of the non-eloquent, move me
little, if at all. I look back and see _a yesterday_; I look around
and see _a to-day_; forward and I see _a to-morrow_; the three tenses
of the _to become_, which have no numbers, nor will ever have. For they
succeed each other unceasingly, following the mighty strides of our
journey, not with the figures of a century, but with a _regret_ that
becomes a _hope_, and will be a _faith_; to be succeeded again and
forever by _regret_, _hope_, and _faith_—unceasingly.
I wished to write this in the first pages of my book to let you know
that if I attempt to delineate marriage in modern society I renounce
_the dying century_, the _fin de siècle_, and all such effective
phrases, which would give me, based on numbers, so many resources of
rhetoric and sentimentality. I have hated and always shall hate all
forms of tyranny, including that of numbers. I look around and say,
this is the way men marry _to-day_. They do so because they are sons
of a _yesterday_, which is the father of to-day; then I look forward
and hope that to-morrow will be better than yesterday or to-day, and
I endeavour to promote the good as quickly as possible and with a
minimum of pain, by my pen, my experience, and my studies, _cito tute
et jucunde_, as Celsus has it.
⁂
In our civilized society, marriage is _the least evil_ of all the
different modes of union between man and woman for the preservation of
the race. It is the result of many historic evolutions, many sensual,
moral, religious, and legislative elements, which have come into
conflict with each other in the course of time.
Remote atavism of the ravishment of the female, holy words of inspired
prophets, imperiousness of feudatories, avarice of usurers, transports
of love and heroism of hearts, have all left something of their own
upon the altar of matrimony. But before the sacrament was finished and
the priest sent up the fumes of his incense, animal man came leering
and saying:
“This is my affair. I am the sole and true priest of this rite. I am
the only minister of this religion.” And mixing the divine and human
vows on the altar with his hairy hands—perhaps, too, with his tail—he
formed a chaos of things most opposite, from the highest to the
lowest, from the most sublime to the most ignoble. And this, then, is
marriage.
To curse this love sanctified by vows is useless, to suppress it is
impossible, to substitute something better is absurd (at least for the
present), and nothing remains but to accept it as the least evil of
sexual unions, and to ameliorate it gradually, prudently, and wisely.
_By free choice on both sides, enlightened by reason._
_By the guarantee of divorce._
⁂
Neither the prince nor the proletariate needs this book of mine. The
first marries worse than any citizen in his kingdom, for dynastic
reasons, without love or sympathy. With him it is first the throne,
then the family; first the alliance of his colours, and then if there
is room, the kisses of love. It is true he may console himself with
the vulgar and easily won embraces of a pandering Venus; he may also
take advantage of one of the most ridiculous remnants of the Middle
Ages, the morganatic marriage. In all cases the ministers, deputies,
nay, even journalists provide him with a wife. The art of taking a
wife is for him, therefore, _nonsense_.
The proletariate, more fortunate than the prince, may choose the woman
it loves, and in its choice may take advantage of the counsels of
those who have loved and sinned much. But it does not read books, for
they cost too much; and when by law its individuality is cancelled
from the statistics of the illiterate, it has no time to read, for
the tyranny of bread oppresses it.
Therefore I write for neither prince nor proletariate, but for all
that human multitude who live and move between the extreme poles of
modern society and who constitute the true nerve of the nation.
In what way do all these millions of males and females combine?
In different ways, but amongst them marriage is the only legal
foundation of the family permitted by morality and approved by
religion. All others are contraband, moving on cross-roads either
alone or in company, but all, in one way or the other, defrauding
nature, with an eternal envy for those who have honestly paid custom
dues on entering the city.
Without fear of going far wrong, one may say that in whatever society
there are the greatest number of married people, there one will find
more morality and decorum, and consequently the number of those who
love and nourish their love by seduction, whether it be with the armed
hand on the public road, or clandestinely under the form of domestic
robbery, will be less.
Besides this, our modern society is suffering from _gold fever_; a
disease which is as old as man himself and has taken the form and
course of a real epidemic; this contributes more than any other
element to corrupt the roots of marriage.
Diffused instruction and the many social exigencies have increased
our needs beyond measure; more especially those which are more
costly, that is, those of the intellect and the higher æsthetic
emotions, without in any way enlarging the sources of production.
From birth to death, the balance of home life oppresses us, torments
us; its arithmetic pierces through the skin with the acute points of
its figures, reaches our very viscera and, alas, our hearts also;
poisoning every pleasure, spoiling all the holy and happy poetry of
life. Invited as all are to the genial table of modern civilization
which offers us so many new delights, we are like the poor government
official, who, for appearance’s sake, allows himself to be carried off
to a ball, and between the bars of music and the full glasses, feels
his pocket anxiously, wondering how and when he will be able to pay
the score.
With what difficulty some of the money is drawn from the poor purse of
a middle-class man! How many pangs has it not caused before it sees
the light of day, accompanied by the last caress of the convulsive
fingers! How unequal the comparison between those who live on an
income of one thousand and three thousand francs! And, from the ever
increasing fever of desires, the gnawing of all vanities, and the
vanity of the classes, how these figures increase daily until they
reach to ten, twenty, or thirty thousand francs!
And this is the reason that whilst love alone should prompt to
marriage, it is nearly always the last party in the contract, in which
money judges and directs according to the need of it, with all the
imperiousness of one who knows himself to be unconquerable.
Money, money, always money! It is the first and supreme arbiter of the
greater number of marriages.
To take a wife means to become poor, if the wife does not help to
build the new family nest; it means to walk with open eyes into a
bottomless and dark abyss; it signifies condemning one’s self to the
daily torture of poverty, and to dedicate the children yet unborn to
the same struggle.
Our dignity would demand that the wife’s dowry should not enter into
our choice at all. The true ideal would be the ability to offer to our
companion riches, or, at least, a competency with our heart and hand,
so that we could say:
“See, beloved; all that is mine is thine. However much I give you, I
shall always be your debtor, for you have given me your love.” All
this is noble and grand, and every man who is conscious of the power
of his own moral and physical manhood would wish to say so. But how
many really can?
Exceedingly few; hardly any.
And then the young man who would seek to love in the way of the Lord
is discouraged and renounces marriage, in which he only sees the
door to misery or cowardice. He renounces it frankly and forever. Are
celibates more honest, and how far does their honesty extend?
With the most honest, virtue extends to an unwillingness to betray
the purity of the maiden, or the faithfulness of other men’s wives;
extends or rather descends, to making the service of love a question
of periodical hygiene _regulated_ by the rubric of the calendar and
by that most imperative one of the lunar month. Poor love, poor
translation of the most epic poem of life! It is as though one were to
translate Homer into some Australian dialect!
These bachelor hygienists are however a small minority. Others pretend
to something more and better, and make love in the houses of others,
and live by abject and cowardly seduction, and perhaps usury.
This is the most sordid and cancerous sore in our modern marriage;
this is the gangrene of our society, which spreads an asphyxiating
fetor of domestic treachery, of moral infection, which contaminates
and infests everything. Woe to us if in every family the newly born
could proclaim aloud the name of their father! How many false,
living bills of exchange would be protested, what long faces amongst
biologists who ingeniously study the law of heredity; what a terrible
picture of treachery and dissembling! human and civilized society
would appear all at once like a band of false coiners, and the
woman’s womb nothing but a mint of false money.
But the newly born can only weep—the first salutation to life—and
the wombs of women are silent, and continue their business of false
coinage.
And yet I do not blame the woman more than the man, in this galley of
treachery, this wide-spread and clandestine manufactory of bastards.
If man assails the woman, and plots against her virtue, he avails
himself of the rights of life. If society does not permit him to
take a _wife_, why should he not share the bread of him who has
too much to eat? Do not the workmen of Europe declare daily, that
one of the first rights is that of work? And is not the right of
loving perhaps more sacred; the work of works; that for which nature
sacrifices the individual, and to which it consecrates the best of its
energies? Husbands defend these rights, we attack them. If they are
conquered—_tant pis pour eux_!
And the poor wives, why should they not brighten the ennui of the
nuptial bed with some little love affair? Were they not bound forever
to a man they had never loved, whom they had perhaps seen only once?
Were they not sold by their parents, guardians, and matrons, like
merchandise? Was not their dowry rated at the weight of a coat of
arms? and have not they also the right to love? And all the others
who have had the good fortune to love the man who has given them his
name, and have thrown themselves into his arms, giving him their whole
hearts, happy to be able to transform themselves in him and for him;
who dreamt of making marriage a synonym of love, and who instead found
the husband in a few months in the arms of an old love; have not all
these women the right of vengeance? This is matrimony as it is daily
represented in the many small theaters which we call men’s houses.
In these theaters, however (one must be just and not exaggerate),
there are more farces played than comedies, more comedies than dramas.
Tragedies are rare. For this high form of dramatic art heroes are
required, and they are very scarce in modern society. We have made
our houses, statues, pictures, and gardens smaller, and have been
compelled to reduce our feelings also.
The pistol and dagger, too, figure in the chronicles of matrimony, but
as phenomena. In the home-theater, on the contrary, the punishment of
retaliation, the little basenesses, the stirring of conscience, under
all forms and at all sorts of prices, are in common use. The _ménages
à trois_ (aye, even four) are pretty pictures in kind; and the
hypocrisy of husbands who will not see, because they detest scenes,
figure every day in the running account of modern matrimony.
Live and let live—to apply the noble modern institution of
co-operative societies to the family; and raise aloft the banner of
the association of forces. One for all, and all for one!
⁂
Infidelity and treachery are not the only moths which corrode
marriage. We have all the domestic discords which spring from the
inequality of the needs of intelligence, heart, and habits of thought;
we have the partisans of the wife and those of the husband, who
quarrel amongst themselves, complicating the problem, poisoning the
wounds, opening with every touch the cicatrices which time and love
were so pitifully healing.
If war is an exception in matrimony, peace is still more rare; and
one may safely say that in the greater number of cases it is an armed
peace, an atmosphere which relaxes the strength, dries up the purest
sources of tenderness, and destroys its happiness. In a word, as our
society is constituted in the present day, hell is not common in the
family circle, paradise exceedingly rare, but purgatory is almost
universal.
And yet marriage is still the _least evil_ amongst the unions of
the man and woman; it can and ought to grow continually better and
increase human happiness; which is for me the highest and truest end
of progress.
What is the use of being able to run through space at the velocity of
seventy kilometres an hour, or to go round the world in seventy days;
what the use of being able to talk through the telephone or see the
clouds in the sky of Mars; what the use of so great a fecundity of
books, of such a deluge of journals, if one is unable to increase the
patrimony of human happiness by even a farthing?
At the present day marriage _may_ be happy, just as one _may_ become
rich by playing in the lottery, but whilst one door opens to the
possibility of good, two open to that of evil. He who utters the fatal
_yes_ before the Syndic girded with the three national colors, lets
a grain fall in the scale that holds our happiness and two in the
scale that holds our misfortunes. It is his duty to do the opposite;
it is the duty of society to defend matrimony from the perils which
threaten it, by wise laws not inspired by the arcadian tendency of the
heart, nor by theocratical mysticism, but by a profound knowledge of
man.
⁂
About twenty years ago I broke a lance in favour of divorce in my
“Fisiologia dell’ amore,” and hoped at that time to have seen it by
now included in the laws of my country.
Twenty years ago I wrote:
“Divorce ought to be included among our laws as soon as possible:
happy couples solicit it to secure their dignity, wounded by a
tyrannical tie; the unhappy implore it on their bended knees, those
who by misfortune or fault are condemned to the most supreme of human
tortures: that of a slavery without redemption, of a yoke without
rest, of a scourge without balm, of a grief without hope.”[1] Even
to-day divorce is not made a law among us, but public opinion demands
and will have it. No one in the present day dare defend it with the
broken arms of the Church; but many defend it still in the name of the
children and of the sanctity of the family.
[1] “Fisiologia dell’ amore,” Milano, 1873, p. 338.
There are too many innocent victims of matrimony for their voices not
to be heard; and when the law-giver knows how to surround divorce with
all the most delicate guarantees, he will increase the sanctity of the
family and free the children from the cruelly abject spectacle of
their two parents living under the same roof hating each other, with
homicide in their thoughts, bearing the chains of convicts, without
the courage or the strength to break them.
⁂
Legislators must do this, the rest of the duty lies with those
directors of the mind who are called writers, masters, and educators.
They ought to teach the woman to know what love is, and what matrimony
is, so that she should not give herself, bound hand and foot, to a
contract which she knows by hearsay only, nor enter the dim future
guided by paternal, maternal, or religious authority alone.
The possibilities of misfortune are a hundred times greater for the
woman than for the man, for she is always more ignorant of things
genital than we are, and goes to the altar or municipality ignorant of
all, dragged like a lamb to the slaughter-house.
At the present day, under the customs to which our society conforms,
the only profession of woman is that of wife and mother; and to this
calling she is instructed from infancy, not to be an exemplary wife
or perfect mother, but, if possible, to find a husband, and that an
ideal one, one who is handsome, young, and above all rich. She is
secretly and cleverly instructed in the art of hunting that rare
game, a good husband; not in order to make him or herself happy,
but to increase her income and to rise a step or two in the social
scale. If in comfortable circumstances, she must become rich; if rich,
a millionaire; if civilian, a countess; if countess, marchioness
or princess. This is what she is to aim at; all her education has
been directed to this end. Now, marriage should rise from its lower
position of a business transaction to the higher one of a union of
hearts and thoughts, and neither of the two companions ought to be
able to look at each other with anger and think:
_You bought me._
_I sold myself._
Nothing can cleanse us from this original sin, which contaminates
matrimony. In vain do the comforts of riches, the pride of a high
position, the excitements of domestic sensuality, throw flowers over
the wound to hide it. At the least quibble, the least cloud that
covers the heaven of the double life, one hears the fatal words:
_You bought me,_
_I sold myself,_
arising from the depths of the troubled conscience like a voice evoked
by some evil spirit.
And when neither riches, sensuality, nor vanity have a rag wherewith
to cover the cancerous sore, the naked and dreadful spectre of an
unsuccessful speculation, of unsuccessful business—then bitterness
is added to bitterness, and the domestic warfare which has become
permanent, angry, and poisonous, developes into a chronic despair, the
most heart-rending form of human pain. Even this is not all; as in an
attack of neuralgia the deep-seated and continual pains become sharper
and more intolerable at certain moments, taking on a piercing and
stab-like character, so it is with the deep-seated and dumb despair of
those two unfortunate beings. Every now and then the inexorable cry
sounds, and thus it goes on until the last breath.
Let divorce come then, and quickly, to set all these slaves free; let
there be a wiser and more liberal education, to teach girls what they
do not know or know indifferently; so that they, like ourselves, can
freely say their _yes_ before the altar or the magistrate with perfect
knowledge and understanding.
CHAPTER II.
SEXUAL CHOICE IN MARRIAGE.—THE ART OF CHOOSING WELL.
There are two principal ways by which we may arrive at the fatal
_yes_, that terrible monosyllable which must decide our happiness or
misfortune; that _yes_ which may make for us a paradise on earth, or a
hell of twenty-four hours for every day in the 365.
_Either love first and marriage after, or marriage first and love
after._ Which of these two ways is the better, and the most certain to
lead us to the paradise of two?
Theoretically, the answer cannot be doubted; one ought to love first
and marry after.
In practice, however, it is not always so. Many marriages inspired by
love end badly, while others, planned by reason more than the heart,
turn out well.
And why? If the theory is true, it ought to accord with the practice,
and if it contradicts the practice the theory must be mistaken.
The apparent contradiction can be explained at once if we reflect
that love is every day spoken of as the desire for the possession of
the woman, and this alone is certainly not sufficient to make two
people happy. Give love and lust their real names and every difficulty
immediately disappears, and we then see the happy dogma, _Love first
and marriage after_, shine out in all its splendour. If by legal means
alone a man can possess the woman he loves and if the passion be
violent, the greatest libertine, and even the enemy of matrimony, bow
their heads under the _Furcæ Caudinæ_ of female virtue and the civil
code, and marry. It is a stony road and full of pitfalls, but one
which, nevertheless, may sometimes lead to the happiness of the two.
Gradually there becomes associated with the desire of the senses, that
more valuable sense of the affinity of hearts, and when the desire
is satisfied there remains still the enjoyment of the more delicate
dainties of the understanding and affection. To transform lust into
love is a difficult work, but worthy of woman’s holy virtue, and the
woman can succeed in doing so, even when possession has cooled desire
and age dimmed her beauty; but she must be a sublime being and possess
lasting gifts of sentiment and thought; if her companion be also an
elect soul, who knows how to value this lasting and solid virtue, and
who understands ideality of spirit as well as grace of form, so much
the better.
Sublime beings and elect souls are always exceptional, and if, in the
innumerable crowd of husbands and wives, they have reached the _yes_
by the way of desire of the flesh, they soon find that the game was
not worth the candle, and that the muddy swamp of weariness and animal
familiarity of sex follows upon the first outburst of voluptuousness.
The woman sometimes succeeds in fanning and reviving it with
inexhaustible coquetry, but one gets scorched, and the distaste may
become even more obstinate the more ingenious are the remedies used
to oppose it. A marriage inspired only by the desires of the flesh,
maintained only by the bread of lust, is a very poor and abject thing,
that can very rarely give peace to the mind, and much less happiness.
Even in the most vulgar and sensual natures, there is something that
rebels against the permanent animal, and raises its voice in demand
for a more human form of food. Man, like the swine, wallows in the
mud, but with this difference: he likes to wash himself, and to look
up to the heavens from the trough. It must be added that in marriage
the dignities of father and mother only increase the responsibility of
the two consorts to animate and enlarge the human nut at the expense
of the animal pulp. The spirituality of the family impresses itself
upon the coarsest nature and the most obtuse nerves, by warming the
atmosphere and revealing a streak of blue in the heaven above.
Woe to the man who, in solitary and sad contemplation of his wife,
says to himself: _My companion is only a female!_
Much worse is it, and woe to that woman who, in the night watches,
looking at her husband as he snores, says in a low, fretful voice:
_My husband is only a male!_
⁂
There is hardly a man who would confess to his friends, or even to
himself, that he married a woman to possess her. Even if it were true,
modesty and pride fight against the confession, and with one of those
clever self-deceptions with which we know how to embellish and deceive
our own consciences, we exclaim in a decided and convinced tone, _I
love her!_
If it be so difficult a thing to distinguish between gold and its
alloy, true and false diamonds, eastern and Roman pearls, imagine
whether it is easy to distinguish between the desire of the flesh and
true love. Yet this is just one of those most dangerous and hidden
pitfalls which bring death to happiness in the battle waged in our
minds between the to be or not to be, when we have to decide whether
or no we ought to give the holy name of wife to the woman we desire.
In other books of mine I have ventured to give some advice to those
aspiring to matrimony to enable them to distinguish between true love
and carnal excitement, which only affects one organ.
As I believe, however, that we have here before our eyes one of the
gravest and most vital questions in the art of taking a wife, I may be
allowed to enter more minutely into particulars.
Always doubt a sudden impression, so called a _coup de foudre_, if it
has seized you after long abstinence from woman’s society.
⁂
For love also, and perhaps more for love than for the brain, it is
prudent to remember the fasting Philip.
⁂
If you fear being enamoured of a young girl and are not disposed
toward marriage, go and see all the married and young ladies most
famed for beauty, grace, and elegance, and make your comparisons. If
they be unfavourable to her, doubt directly the seriousness and depth
of your passion.
This has to do only with what we call physical love, but I speak of
it at some length as it is the first door opened when a man and woman
see each other for the first time. But I do not mean that it is the
only one which leads you to the fatal _yes_. It ought only to give you
an entrance into the ante-chamber where you must wait patiently until
heart and mind open the doors of the inner rooms, where you will have
to live all your life.
If there has been no _coup de foudre_, but the sympathy came
gradually, developed and grew until it became a real passion, then
all my counsels of examination and experiment will be perfectly
useless. At each visit you unconsciously, and without thinking of it
at all, correct or confirm the first impression—now trimming, now
increasing the warmth of the original sympathy. How many wooings,
how many marriages have miscarried in our fancy without our knowing
a word of it, or even having spoken an affectionate word to the
person who awakened so sudden and strong an impression in us! A being
suddenly appeared on the horizon, perhaps in an hour in which we felt
the weight of solitude, the tortures of abstinence, and we said to
ourselves directly: What a charming and sweet creature! Why do I not
take her for mine ... and forever?
The apparition passed from our gaze, but we carried it home with us
carved, or rather written, on our minds in fire. We saw her between
the lines of the book we read, in our dreams, everywhere.
A few days later we see her in the street, or in society, and we
vainly endeavor to reconcile the reality with the figure we saw in
our imagination. The discord is complete. The woman is not the same,
and smiling to ourselves over the love which we had dreamt of in the
silence of our minds, we exclaim, “How could I ever have admired this
vulgar, ugly, faded creature and wished to have her for my own!”
It is well, indeed, when the sketch can be corrected so soon;
unfortunately it sometimes occurs after several visits, when we may
have compromised our heart and perhaps our word.
Prudence, then, _adelante Pedro con juicio!_
⁂
Science teaches that no force in the world is lost, no energy
consumed, but that force and energy transform themselves one into the
other without loss at all. Then I ask myself—but all the desires that
men and women breathe out in the streets, in society, in theatres, or
wherever they meet, where do they end? All those glances of the eyes
which carry fire enough in their rays to burn and consume the whole
planetary system; all those heart beatings which make the face burn
and attract two beings, two organisms, two lives to each other; when
(as in most cases) they pass like meteors without fructifying the
earth, where do they go? Those terrible energies, the fruit of the
most intricate and sublime mechanism of our brains and nerves; into
what do they transport themselves when they produce neither words,
tears, lust, crime, matrimony, nor sin?
And yet these desires are many; they meet day and night in the crowded
streets, in the whirl of railway carriages, in the dense crowd, in the
solitary mountain paths; they plough through space, and if we were
able to see them we should see the air lighted up by them as by the
convulsive lightning of a tropical tempest.
But where do they go? Where is so much light consumed? Who warms
himself with all this mighty heat? And where are the ashes of such a
fire?
I know not; perhaps biologists and physicists of the future will tell
us.
⁂
Another elementary, but most important aid toward the wise choice of
a wife, is to see a large number of women before choosing her to whom
you wish to give name, heart, and life.
If you have chosen your companion in the narrow circle of a village
without leaving it, you may be proud to have gained the prettiest girl
among a dozen companions. But woe to you, should you suddenly go to
other villages, or still worse to some large city; you may find the
comparison odious, most odious, and yet irremediable.
This is why men who have seen and travelled a great deal generally
make the best husbands; for making their choice on a larger basis,
there is great probability of their choosing well, and perhaps also
for another reason, women more easily pardon some former gallantry in
their fiancés than a too ingenuous virtue. Don Giovanni has always
seemed more pleasing to them than the chaste Joseph.
A woman who knows that she is preferred and chosen as a companion, by
one who has seen and known a hundred or a thousand other women, is
proud of it, and with reason.
I do not know if all women will share my opinion, but those who know
most of the science of love will most certainly think with me. Were
I a woman, my ideal of a husband would be a man who had travelled in
all the six parts of the world, and had seen and admired all the women
there.
And continuing my Utopia, but bringing it down to the level of earth;
were I a woman and had I doubts about the sincerity of the passion
awakened in my fiancé, I should wish him to make a journey through
all Europe which should last a year, and if on his return he still
found me worthy of him, I would give him my hand with the certainty of
having a loving and faithful husband.
Time is a valuable element to add weight to our choice; it is one
of the best gauges of comparison by which to distinguish true love
from carnal excitement. It is an old axiom, confirmed by universal
experience, that time cools and extinguishes the small attacks of
love, but strengthens and invigorates the more serious ones. The
fatal brevity of our lives, the natural impatience of all those in
love, conspire together to hasten marriage, but as far as I know and
am able, I recommend men and women to acquire the sainted virtue of
patience. I pray women again and again in their love affairs (in which
as people say they are more _men_ than we are), to follow the tactics
of Fabius the temporizer: wait, wait, and still wait. Love is centred
in a most serious moment, one most pregnant with consequences to our
whole lives, and a month or two more will only increase the dignity
of the choice, and be a guarantee for the future. The honeymoon will
shine all the longer above our horizon, the more we wait for it, with
the poetry of desire and the ideality of hope.
CHAPTER III.
AGE AND HEALTH.
If a man were only a generating animal, the problem of age in marriage
would be very simple, and reducible to this formula: That as long as
men or women can relight the flame of life they are _marriageable_.
That means that a man may marry from sixteen to sixty, and in
exceptional cases up to seventy and eighty; and that he may marry a
woman of from fifteen to forty-five.
Man, however, is not solely a generating animal, but a thinking,
reasoning, sentient, cavilling, wrangling being; a political,
commercial, and religious creature; he manufactures brakes to curb
the exhilaration of the gallop downhill, creates sophisms to spoil
truth, and crutches to make athletes rickety; he tells many lies for
amusement; in short he is the most clever and ingenious artificer in
things of which he knows very little, in the whole planetary universe.
Notwithstanding all these precious virtues, man finds the problem of
age most complicated, when he wishes to take one of the daughters of
Eve and say to her: “_Will you give me your hand, so that we may form
a little future for ourselves?_”
All other elements being favourable, the ideal perfection in age as
regards marriage would be as follows:
The man to be from twenty-five to thirty-five.
The woman from eighteen to twenty-five.
The man should always be a few years older than the woman, that is
from five to ten years older, and this for many reasons. Man grows
older more slowly than woman, and keeps his power of reproduction
longer.
Before twenty-five or thirty years of age a man, unless he be a born
libertine, knows comparatively little of the world of woman, and that
only the worst, and in his choice of a wife may make a terrible
mistake.
Then, also, the products of a too early union are weak and inferior;
the statistics of all countries show that there are more deaths among
children of young parents than of older, or if they live, they are
more weakly.
In the most simple problems of marriage, as in the most complex
and metaphysical, it is always better to remember the fundamental
doctrine, that harmony and happiness are founded on the agreement of
two very different instruments, which ought always to accord with
each other. We should pay attention, then, to false notes! If in an
orchestra two instruments do not strike the right notes, or if one
goes too fast and the other too slow, it is a very small matter, and
ends in a grimace upon the brow of the few who understand music.
But in marriage the slight discord is a wound in the heart of two
beings, who had joined hands for a happy life; and there is always a
cicatrix left, which, like the wounds of veterans, acts as a barometer
to the least change of temperature, of moisture, or of an atmosphere
charged with electricity. The restless hand seeks to stop the sharp
irritation, and lacerates the cicatrix, changing it to a chronic sore,
which is always painful, but never healed.
Oh, men! oh, women, study counterpoint, the harmony and melody of
the heart, body, and soul, day and night, if you wish to gather the
blessed and perfumed rose of married happiness, in the garden of life.
⁂
Beyond the ideal perfection of number represented by the beautiful
figure of two flowering and fragrant young lives, you may have all
these possible combinations, which, with a _crescendo_ of perils and
accidents, render the accordance of hearts and bodies always more
difficult:
_Two beings equally mature in age._
_Two old people._
_A mature or old man and a young woman._
_A young man and a middle-aged or old woman._
We see all these combinations pass daily beyond our eyes, paired
according to one or the other of these arithmetical formulæ—formulæ in
which numbers weigh and govern human happiness with so tremendous an
influence.
Let us study them one by one.
⁂
_Man adult—woman adult_:
This is one of the most favorable combinations, the freest from danger
and painful discovery. If it be true that for this combination there
is rarer access to the Olympus of ardent love, it is also true that
shipwreck and cataclysm are rarer also. The navigation is nearly
always on a tranquil lake, in a _safe_ boat, under the guidance of
that best of helmsmen, good sense.
The majority of such cases consists of old attachments interrupted
by unsurmountable obstacles, favoured again by some fortunate
circumstance. The two who had loved and hoped for each other in their
youth, find themselves free and their own masters, and all at once, at
a single glance, have called up from the depths a bright panorama of
fond visions, which for some time seemed to have disappeared in that
abyss which buries and consumes all.
_Do you remember, dear?_
_Yes, indeed I do!_ I seem to see you still at your window on that
Sunday, when, after looking at me so long, you threw me a kiss across
the street, when I believed I was hidden by the convolvulus on my
balcony.
Ah, yes, yes; that kiss was the beginning of a long idyl which I seem
to see rising from the mists of the past as though by enchantment————
And from remembrance to remembrance a living and speaking world
appears before those two once more, but more beautiful and more
rose-coloured in semblance than it was in reality; enlarged by fancy,
the first of artists, gilded by distant reminiscence, which is ever
optimist.
The old couple have some wrinkles on their faces and some threads of
silver in their hair, but they see each other as they were twenty
years ago; and if desires are indolent, and the clasp of the hands
does not set the heart beating; if at night ardent dreams no longer
disturb the peace of the passions, an odour of loving friendship
surrounds them and binds them closer to each other day by day, and
grows hourly more like love and less like friendship. They have so
many remembrances in common. They have twenty years of life to recount
to each other, and relating the sad and joyful events they alternately
recount their recollections as though they had in reality lived
together all the while, so that mine becomes thine and then ours,
and without declaration or trepidation the happy day arrives when,
without any necessity of finishing the phrase or dotting the _i_,
the two right hands find themselves clasped together, the lips join
between a sigh that questions and one that answers:
_Really you wish————?_
_And why not?_
And the _why not_ becomes _because I do_ on the morrow, and the man
and woman become husband and wife; and almost without agitation,
without accident, they reach in safety the port of sure and tranquil
happiness.
I recall two such marriages with emotion, those of Stuart Mill and
Hillebrandt.
To these serene and tranquil unions children are not necessary, but
if they come they brighten and bless the house, bringing with them a
nosegay of flowers and an odour of spring which makes those two happy
mortals young once more.
⁂
_Two old people._
Add some ten years to the arithmetical combination just studied and
you will have a lower temperature, but still less danger to the
happiness of the two beings who, defying ridicule and prejudice, wish
to consecrate an old friendship upon the _altar_ of matrimony.
I do not say altar as a matter of phraseology, nor to do homage to the
religious ceremony of marriage, but because I am deeply convinced
that if there be nothing beyond the union of bodies or association of
capital marriage is a sacrilege. The troth of two should always be
plighted on an altar, whether it be that of Christ or of some ideal,
of Moses or Mahomet, of poetry or religion.
Old people only marry once, either to win legitimacy for an old
contraband love, or to give a legal status to the children. They are
marriages of reparation, corrections of proof-sheets set aside for
many years and forgotten. They merit our approbation and belong to
those good actions of which Christ speaks, which, if done at the last
hour, make death less hard and allow us to die at peace and at rest
with the faith, which illuminates our souls and prepares us to start
in the train that bears us to eternal silence, or to the golden gates
of the Christian paradise.
In the marriage of two old people who love each other, love is no
intoxicating flower, but a friendship slightly gilded by sexual
sympathy, which endures longer than the reproductive function even as
it precedes it.
⁂
_A middle-aged man and a young woman_: If theory, hygiene, logical
concords, and compacts proclaim the truth—which has all the force
of a dogma—that an old man ought not to marry a young woman, daily
practice shows us that all these combinations are possible:
40 ♀ + 20 ♂
50 ♀ + 18 ♂
60 ♀ + 30 ♂
60 ♀ + 15 ♂
70 ♀ + 30 ♂
70 ♀ + 20 ♂
80 ♀ + 40 ♂
80 ♀ + 30 ♂
80 ♀ + 15 or 18 ♂
All formulæ, cold and precise as the numbers that make them up, but
full of a terrible crescendo of precipices and cataclysms! They arouse
before us the phantom of a perfect pandemonium, and show us the
horrors of a hell more dreadful than that of Dante.
How many tears, how much blood, bathe the path which divides those
figures! What deep and hidden hatred, how much revenge premeditated
during the night and put into practice in the clear light of day; how
many deceptions planned with the cruelty of art; what repentance,
crimes, intrigues, bitterness of soul; how many tortures and struggles
are written between those silent and lifeless figures? Yet, still, you
will find the rarest, most complete, and perfect happiness lying close
to this hell, like an oasis in the midst of a desert.
For example, there are marriages of which the formula is 60 + 30, and
even 50 + 18, that are real Edens of delight, where neither the most
lovely and fragrant flowers of spring-time, nor the sweet tendernesses
of voluptuousness, illimitable prospects, painless sighs,
conversation without words, nor all indescribable delights, are
wanting; and where you have also the charm that belongs to difficulty,
and all the fascination which surrounds things sacred.
But why among these mute and dead numbers do we find the extremes of
human misery and blessedness? Why do we see the most noble sacrifices
and meannesses, the most ignoble baseness and the highest ideality,
bound together, with a cruel irony, by a malignant fate; why do we
see angels and demons dancing together as though enchanted by some
fantastic waltz?
For a very simple reason.
Because the happiness of marriage between an old man and a young
woman is nothing but an unstable and difficult balance granted to few.
But to those who are capable of feeling it, it brings the sublime
giddiness of the great heights. Everyone walks, but few take the leap
to death. All climb the hills; exceedingly few have stood on the
top of Mont Blanc. But those who do not break their necks, nor fall
into the crevasses, experience, as they mount the highest and most
difficult summit of the Alps, strong and fascinating emotions which
make them proud and glad. All problems of life, whether great or small
or indifferent, always have this dilemma hidden within them:
_To dare or not to dare._
The Rubicon is either an historical fact, a myth, or a romance.
I leave it to historians to decide; but every practical problem of
happiness has its rubicon, at which the whole world pauses.
Some turn back.
Some leap over it.
The most of them remain still on the bank all their lives, looking at
the other side and scratching their heads. After forty years of age
bachelors or widows stand before the rubicon of marriage and say:
_Shall I go over or not?_
The larger number wait so long to decide that the forty years become
fifty and then sixty. The limbs become weaker and the river grows
wider by the inundations and floods of so many autumns, and thus the
problem is resolved by want of resolution.
Others instead, after a short and earnest meditation, exclaim:
_No, I will not leap it._
And both do well, because although the calculation of probabilities
is rarely applicable to moral problems, yet it proves that the
combination of an old man and a young woman is a very frail one; at
the least shock it is separated, as with fulminant mercury, chloride
of azote, and all the infinite array of explosives; then comes a
detonation, a disaster, more often a putrid and fetid dissolution.
Some do not scratch their heads, but decide resolutely on the great
step and leap.
A difficult and perilous leap in which but few reach the other side
unscathed. The majority of these intrepid individuals fall into the
middle of the stream, which carries them away in its turbid and rough
waters; others plunge directly into the mud up to the body and are
fixed there, without being able to get out, a ridicule to others, a
desperation to themselves.
⁂
In that garden of Gethsemane, where all men drink of the cup of doubt,
in that garden of perplexity which we ought to leave with a _yes_ or
_no_ and turn to the right or left, knowing that one path leads to
happiness, the other to desperation, without knowing, however, which
of the two ways leads whither; in that garden, I say, my little
book ought to serve as a guide to resolve one of the most difficult
problems of marriage.
And I, who have arrogated to myself this right of counsel, will tell
with a loud voice those who do care for my advice, my fundamental and
organic precept on which all the other minor points must rest.
Marriage between an old man and a young woman may lead to happiness,
if inspired on both sides by love.
Less surely will it lead to the same end if the love that leads them
to the altar is all on one side.
It nearly always leads to unhappiness and ruin if the man is induced
by sensuality, or the woman by the desire of riches or by ambition.
And as this third case is the most common, I will explain at once why
those terrible arithmetical combinations are so fruitful in domestic
misery, adultery, and let us say crime, including those which the code
does not regard.
⁂
At this point I see a malicious reader smiling, and hear him say that
I ought to be classed among those madmen and deceivers who think they
have solved the problem of squaring the circle or of perpetual motion.
You tell me a marriage between an old man and a young woman may be
happy, provided there be love on both sides. But this is an impudent
joke. You may assure me with equal seriousness that I can catch a
sparrow if I put salt upon its tail. How, when, and where can a young
woman, fragrant of spring, who seeks with eyes, mouth, nostrils, with
all senses, the pollen which will fructify her and make her a mother;
how can she desire or love a man who is already on the decline of
life and can offer his companion nothing but lasciviousness framed by
rheumatism, catarrh, dyspepsia, and cough?
No, malicious reader, I do not joke; neither have I endeavoured to
solve insoluble problems. I sincerely believe a young woman can love
an old man, but he must still be a man and handsome; for robust,
flourishing, and cheerful old age has a beauty of its own, and if
much is wanting it has the greatest resources and a certain delicate
virtue, too, which a young man does not possess.
Love, too, has so many and such different forms, and is composed of
so many different elements, that it can vibrate and burn even in the
gray-headed.
The last love of Goethe speaks of all these; and the many warm and
enduring passions awakened in young women by men eminent in politics,
arts, letters, and science join in the chorus.
If in these loves the ardour of the senses fails—and it must fail—we
find much veneration, tenderness, and often a sweet compassion, a
sentiment that always predominates in the female breast.
Young men are often bad husbands because they assume too much; they
pretend that love should be laid at their feet, as a tribute due to
their beauty and transcendent vigour. They claim that they have the
right to be loved for themselves, even when they on their side fulfil
none of their duties.
The old man, on the contrary, feels his own weakness and implores
love as a favour, and responds to it with a warm and inexhaustible
gratitude every hour and every minute. He knows that little is due to
him, and contents himself with a smile, a kiss, or a caress, which
he doubles and centriples with his unfailing gratitude. He guards
his love as a treasure, which may be taken from him from one moment
to another; he defends it with all his strength, encloses it in a
tabernacle, and adores it as a god. His companion, therefore, has
always the peaceful surety that she will not be betrayed by other
women.
⁂
That these unions may be blessed by happiness, the husband and
wife, above all things, must be _gentle-people_; that is persons of
honour, who frankly accept the compact sworn to, without reticence or
subterfuge.
Before the old man utters the tremendous _yes_ he ought to present
his account, even increasing the credit and diminishing the debit;
explain himself clearly and dot every _i_. Therefore I entreat you
when you make your _fiancée_ acquainted with your financial position,
be careful that each _i_ has its dot, aye, even two.
⁂
Such marriages as we are studying are far more frequent than we should
at first suppose, and the fortunate cases are also less rare than
the theory would lead us to believe; because women are far greater
idealists in love than we are, and whilst we chiefly seek beauty and
carnal gratification, they seek other things of a superior order,
which they appease with the heart of the artist, and the phantasy of
the poet. The love of a man for an illustrious but ugly woman is a
phenomenon rarer than a white fly. The love of a young woman for a
great, but gray-headed man is tolerably common, and is sufficient to
do honour to the female sex.
But a man of mature age has other things besides to offer a young
woman: riches, a high social position, many ambitions he can satisfy;
and he has a whole world of high, good, and pleasant things to lay at
the foot of the woman, and can say to her: All this for a little love!
I, of course, understand that these are international exchanges,
which are far removed from love, and approach more nearly to commerce;
but the sacred books have often used the words _carnal commerce_
without blushing, and why can there not be a little commerce in
matrimony? Provided the balance does not incline too much to one side,
and there is no deceit—in a word provided the one who weighs be a
gentleman—such marriages may be happy, too.
⁂
When a man marries a woman very much younger than himself, people
smile maliciously and point their fingers as if to ward off the evil
eye, and to show the daring individual that the _Minotaur_ awaits
him. In this case the populace cuts not one, but a hundred gordian
knots with a brutal and bestial sword.
Adultery is a plant that grows in every clime, but more especially
where a woman fails in esteem for her companion, and the clever sower
and cultivator of these plants is always the husband.
I am so convinced of this truth, that if statistics of adultery were
possible, I am certain I should find the greatest number amongst the
unions of young people: for they also make contracts of buying and
selling, of exchange of titles and dollars, in their marriages.
If you, with your white hairs, have the courage to marry a young
woman, study her character most of all. If she be a thorough lady
in education she will be less likely to betray you than if you were
young; for she is proud of herself and would not willingly commit a
sin toward which the world would be so indulgent; for women also like
difficult things, heroic undertakings; because they like to say in
their own hearts or throw in the face of their seducer the sublime
motto: _noblesse oblige_.
⁂
Then in conclusion:
If, with your white hairs, you have the courage to bind your life to
blond or brown tresses fragrant with youthfulness, place yourself
naked before the mirror in your chamber and look at yourself for some
time. Then for a longer time put yourself before that other mirror of
conscience which reflects us so inexorably; and, having balanced the
accounts of your physical _I_ and your moral and intellectual _me_,
see if you are still a possible man, a handsome and strong man; and
if you find yourself a young woman who is more an angel than a woman,
more woman than female, offer her your hand without too many scruples
or false reticences, and who knows but that when you die, you may then
be able to say: “The last years of my life have been my happiest. In
my youth I knew a hundred women, in my old age I have only known one;
and she alone was worth the other hundred. Woman is the benediction
_of life_.”
⁂
_A young man and old woman_:
Amongst the discordances of age between husband and wife, none
astonish us so much, or I ought to say disgust us more, than when an
old woman marries a young man.
There is the kernel of a great truth at the root of this scorn, which
springs from the very heart of nature.
A man may be a man even at eighty years of age; and I cannot resist
smiling when I remember a lady who complained of the exactions of her
companion, a man over seventy. We all remember Fontenelle and the
Duke of Richelieu, in whom virility was only extinguished with life:
in the first case the life lasting for a century, in the second for
more than eighty years.
A woman, on the contrary, after forty-five, or at the most after fifty
years of age, is no longer a woman, and the reproductive faculty is
entirely destroyed. Hence the marriage of a young man and old woman
is more contrary to the laws of nature than that of an old man and
a young woman. The one may be fruitful, the other never. Add to the
æsthetic exigencies of the man the rapid decadence of the woman after
the change of life, and you will understand that the union we are
discussing is one of the most repugnant and repulsive. The motives
which bring such a man and such a woman together are nearly always
the most abject, and amongst those that offend the moral sense the
most. On one side carnal gratification; on the other the thirst for
gold; hence, prostitution on the part of the man, the most filthy
and disgusting in the commerce of love. The man sells his youth, his
virility, in exchange for money; and the woman who no longer has a
right to love, buys it as a merchandise, and is satisfied with the
voluptuousness given her by one whom she ought to be the first to
despise! A market of lasciviousness and vileness, gold gathered from
the mud—a mud, however, which cannot be washed off, and which soils
hand, conscience, everything it touches.
However, for the honour of humanity, such unions are exceedingly
rare: those who buy and sell and are satisfied with a clandestine
concubinage, hide the sin in the deep folds of our modern hypocrisy.
_Maintained, yes; a husband, no!_
A woman, on the contrary, always desires marriage, because she has the
pride of proclaiming to all the world, that, notwithstanding her many
years and innumerable wrinkles, the wreck of her form which assails
her on all sides, she has known how to find a companion at bed and
board, who makes her happy.
Man, on the contrary, hides himself on account of the modesty which
is never wanting, even in the vilest delinquents; and hiding his shame
in the darkness of a clandestine concubinage, hopes to preserve the
esteem of men, and the gold he has gained with that reddened face of
his. I will persist no longer on this theme because I hope that no
young husbands of old women will ever read my book—they would soil it
too much with their filthy hands—and because I have a great hope that
they are all illiterate.
⁂
However, before leaving this lurid argument, I ought to say, for
the love of truth, that ancient and modern history register some
exceedingly rare cases of union between old women and young men, in
which neither the desires of the flesh nor the thirst for gold entered
at all; they treat of intellectual unions in which the concord of
souls, the sympathy of hearts and thoughts, the harmony of taste, the
affinity of humane propositions, most charmingly unite two persons
whom the difference in age would generally divide.
Love is the greatest and most powerful worker of miracles, it is
the thaumaturgus of thaumaturgists, and I in the small circle of my
experiences know a young man, who has never been able to desire or
love a young woman, but adores old women; and if he does not marry
any of his venerable friends, it is from fear of ridicule. It is true
that in this case we treat of an aberration of sexual instinct to
be classed with sodomy and incest; but this _pathological nomad_ is
seated in an otherwise normal and perfect brain.
Intellectual unions on the other hand are physiological facts which
offend no rights of nature, and ought to be respected and studied, as
rare, but most noble phenomena of the human heart.
With regard to the health of those desiring to take a wife, and
the health of our companion, I will recommend to them my _Elementi
d’igiene_, and more especially _Igiene d’amore_, where I have fully
treated this vital side of the great problem.
CHAPTER IV.
PHYSICAL SYMPATHIES.—RACE AND NATIONALITY.
Love is the strongest, the most irresistible, the most fatal of
chemical affinities, and if potassium can extract oxygen from water,
unite with it, light it, and make it burn with a bright flame and
conflagration, consider the case of a man who first sees a woman and
feels that she is precisely the atom with whom it is his irresistible
destiny to unite, in order to kindle the flame of life.
It is no longer a simple electro-negative molecule which seeks,
absorbs, and consumes the opposite electro-positive molecule, but it
is an organism, an entire microcosm, which attracts another microcosm
on its own vortex, so as to live united in the heaven of life, as two
stars above live united in a mysterious and eternal marriage.
There are all the cellules of the epidermis, and all the pores of the
skin, which seek the cellules and pores of the other organism; there
are the inward parts which palpitate, the nerves which vibrate, the
feelings which weep and sob, the thoughts that are crowded with all
the soul’s expression, and seek those inner parts, nerves, affections,
and thoughts, which nature has made kin.
Not unjustly was the moment given that applicable French name, _Coup
de foudre_.
Lightning it is—that gigantic force which draws man and woman together
and makes of them one being. In its minor grades we call the force
sympathy; a little later, when stronger, we call it love.
⁂
I detest pedantic preachers of prudence, who make it consist of
an emasculation of all virility of body and thought; but I also
appreciate the need of repeating to you:
_Distrust the flashes of lightning!_
Perhaps you will say to me: “That is the same as preaching the
doctrine: do not believe in hunger, thirst, or sleep.”
Flashes of lightning are apparently all alike, but they are
substantially different, one from the other. Some are harmless—give a
great light, deafen one with the rumbling of thunder, and there they
end. They are momentary eruptions of the senses, and nothing more.
But there are others that burn, and cleave asunder all that they find
in their way. From these no lightning conductor can save us. Either
one is dead or is struck by lightning, which is the same as saying,
electrified from head to foot by that force, which has emanated from
another body which perhaps needs ours, and which perhaps we need
ourselves.
Reason on it if you will, attempt to destroy the new passion in the
crucible of analysis. You belong to another; that other belongs to
you, if, as often happens, the lightning flash has been reciprocal.
⁂
The galvanization of love also occurs in another way, not, that is
to say, by fulmination, but by small and slow currents which emit no
sparks, but have continuous emanation.
First, a slight sympathy which touches the skin; then a deeper
irritation like a tremor invades the muscles, nerves, and viscera
through the epidermis, and descends until it finds something living;
stopping at the marrow of the bones, since there is nothing left to
electrify.
Theoretically, this second mode of becoming enamoured ought to be
more tenacious and more durable than the first, from the axiom that
intensity is equal to extension; but practically we see a man and
woman reach the same state either by fulmination or by a continuous
current. It is only a question of time, whether we travel by express
or slow trains; we reach the same station in safety at last! Love is
so skilful and powerful a magician that he makes us his prisoners
more than once in two different ways. First he strikes us, then he
electrifies us slowly, and there is no human or divine power which can
cure us of our passion. We are no longer individuals, we are things;
we are the _perinde ac cadaver_ of the Jesuits, a member of which has
conquered us.
⁂
The admirable laws of chemical affinity are well known to us, and we
can follow the kindred and repellent atoms which group themselves
under the exact law of numbers. But those other laws which repel and
attract human hearts and bodies are, on the contrary, scarcely divined
by one who has eyes to read the great book of psychology, where the
letters are so minute, the writing mysterious, and even the numbering
of the pages incorrect.
Sympathy should be first physical, then moral, and lastly
intellectual, following the highroad which leads from the less to the
greater, from that which is external to that which is internal.
Everyone knows—even the boccali of Montelupo[2] know—that opposite
types seek and love each other. The blond attracts the brown, and
_vice versa_; slight, small women please giants and athletes; delicate
natures attract bears, and so on. But there are other occult and
mysterious sympathies, where it is not a case of a combination of
opposites, and where yet the attraction is exceedingly great and
irresistible. How often has it been a wonder to us to see an ugly
woman adored by a very handsome man, and an ugly man ardently sought
after by women, and having witnessed this strange antithesis we begin
at once to speculate what impure explanation, what vile or illicit
trading with money or lasciviousness can account for it, while really
it is a simple fact of elective affinity, the reasons for which escape
us from our ignorance and short-sightedness.
[2] Montelupo, a village on the Arno, is still renowned for its
crockery and terracotta. It is highly probable that in the feudal
times the mugs and drinking cups, which are called “boccali” even
to the present time, were made there; they were exported in large
quantities and became so plentiful throughout Tuscany that when any
news was widespread, it was said to be known even by the Boccali of
Montelupo. Hence the proverb.
Look around you, and in the small circle of your own acquaintance
you will find several such singular and extraordinary facts. For my
part I have under my eyes a young man, the perfection of a man,
aristocratic as regards birth, mind, and income, who, indifferent to
the sympathies awakened in women at his every step, is completely
absorbed in a woman who is hardly feminine, neither handsome nor
young, and to thousands of others indifferent or contemptible.
I see another young man desperately in love with the ruins of a woman,
where not even the compassionate ivy of coquetry covers the decay and
deficiencies, and in whom there is a complete wreck of all delicacy of
outline. He loved her so much that after many years he made her his
wife, without any considerations of money.
It matters very little to your happiness or marriage whether lightning
or inducted current has electrified you, but sympathy ought to exist
between the man and the woman. For charity’s sake, for the love of
God, do not forget this; do not believe in the common proverb, which
has made so many victims: _Marry if all considerations of income and
of age agree. Love will come after._ No! love will not come after,
except by chance, and in exceedingly rare cases. There will come
to you, on the contrary, reciprocal antipathy, adultery, a lie in
the very surname of your children; there will come all those lively
intrigues through which our fine and virtuous modern society moves.
If, in the first choice of love, the man and woman do not approach
each other with a tremor of holy fear; if their hands do not meet each
other intoxicated with the touch; if the first kiss be not a passion,
the first embrace a delirium, renounce forever the sweet and fond
blessedness of the dual life.
⁂
The physical sympathy between a man and woman is a road which may lead
to paradise, but how often may one lose one’s self on the road before
entering the field of affection and thought.
The only logical people in the world are those savages who, before
giving themselves forever, make a trial on both sides, and separate
or marry, according to the result of the experience. But such moral
and modest people as we are, must content ourselves with guessing; and
woe to us if we make a mistake.
Fortunately, the sympathy which is awakened by a mere study of the
woman’s outward form nearly always agrees with that deeper one which
arises from the agreement of the temperaments, by reason of the
solidity which unites the different offices of an organism.
But it happens only too often that the interior is different from the
exterior, and a man of ice has taken for his own a woman of fire, or
_vice versa_.
In many codes of law incompatibility of temper is a sufficient cause
for divorce, but is not incompatibility of temperament a more prolific
cause for domestic discord? Legislators and theologians have for some
time raised this last veil which hides the shrine of love, but in
their verdict or the clauses of their laws, have they contributed or
not to the happiness of matrimony?
I believe not, for in modern codes the duties and genital rights
of two married people are only confined to the preservation of the
race. Beyond that they say nothing, and they do well. But of that
other unwritten code which guides our individual conduct, do they
say nothing, do they teach us nothing? They do not even give us a
guide-book, or even only time-tables of fifteen centuries, like those
of the railway. After having studied man and woman for nearly half
a century, after having dared to raise every veil, to sound every
cavity, to feel every pulse that beats, every nerve that vibrates, as
physician, anthropologist, and psychologist, this is all I have learnt.
⁂
The ideal of physical harmony between two married people is, that each
one should feel the same hunger, and feel it for the same thing.
But as this occurs tolerably seldom, it is better that the man, who is
always the leader of the orchestra of two, should give the _la_; that
is, raise or lower the tone so that there shall be perfect harmony.
The thing is not so difficult; for if the great masters succeed in
making the hundred instruments of an orchestra keep time and tune,
should it not be easier to tune two instruments only?
Above all, remember that the music has to last many long years, and it
is better to accustom your companion from the very beginning, so to
proceed that she may not tire, but may reach the end unscathed. If you
begin with quavers and semi-quavers, poor you! Your companion of the
orchestra will accustom herself to that _tempo_, which will become a
necessity for her—for you it may be a catastrophe.
Even without supposing an excessive lust in the woman; even if you
have been so fortunate as to have found one with more heart than
feelings; she will believe she is no longer loved, and in the
secret silence of the night-watches will shed tears, measuring your
love by the early change in the broken music. Notwithstanding what
I have written of genital hygiene; notwithstanding that others have
followed me in the same road, throwing down the walls which supported
the ignorance of the things of love; women are still too often most
ignorant, and measure love by the notes of music.[3] Think then on
the future, which comes quickly, and like a hungry dog devours the
miserable present, and from the very first days begin with an _andante
moderato_, and if your means permit, go even to the _allegretto_; but
for charity’s sake do not proceed to quavers and semi-quavers.
[3] Whilst writing this, a courageous book on this subject has
appeared in Germany: “Der Kampf der Geschlechter, eine Studie aus
dem Leben, und für das Leben.” (The Struggle of the Sexes. A Study
from Life and for Life).—Leipzig, 1892. A volume of 173 pp. It is
written by a woman already noted in the literary world in Germany, who
has published several novels under the fictitious name of Franz von
Wemmorsdorf.
⁂
I find I am treading on the field of the hygiene of matrimony,
whilst I ought only to speak of _what precedes it_. Without making
the experiment of the savages, you would like to know to a nicety
the strength of the appetite for love which your future companion
feels? Well, then, begin to study her family and, above all, her
mother, who bequeaths her nervous system to her children, with all
its accompaniments and connections, with sensibility, chastity, or
debauchery. Nothing is more hereditary than the capacity for love, and
I have under my eyes terrible examples of calamities, which occurred
from a study of the _fiancée_ alone, without any thought of her father
and mother.
I myself advised a dear friend of mine to marry a young girl who
appeared to be, and had been up to that time, the goddess of modesty,
the angel of chastity; I wrote my _milla osta_ on the passport of my
friend, and he, who was good enough to believe me a great specialist
in this abstruse matter, embarked trustfully and happily on the
tempestuous sea of matrimony. Alas! after a few months the goddess of
modesty had become a Mepalura!—I had forgotten to inquire after the
temperament of her father and mother.
Having made the hereditary inquiry, and found the young lady with a
_clean bill of health_, you must study her.
On an equality with other conditions, if you desire a tranquil and not
exacting _wife_, seek these elements in her:
Light hair, blue eyes, fairly stout, a calm expression, natural
movements, little or no nervousness, lips rather thin, no protuberance
of the upper lip. Great love of children, a sure sign of a great
development of the sentiment of maternity, which is the most powerful
restraint on exaggerated desires of the flesh.
If, on the contrary, you desire an ardent woman, you will more easily
find her with black eyes and hair, dark skin, tumid and thickish lips,
a thin frame. She will be nervous, very sensitive, of a capricious
character, she will have glances of fire and snakelike movements.
All these physical and moral lineaments are very gross, and only
have value as general observations, such as one reads on passports,
equally suited to a hundred different people. I myself must make a
criticism on these two examples of mine although they are taken from
life, and are the result of many repeated observations. As regards
the blonde and brunette I ought, for example, to make you at once
aware that I mean to speak of those nations in which there is a great
mixture of ethnic types, which gives us in the same city, in the same
village, women with light, chestnut-coloured or black hair. Where all
are light, or all are dark, we still find women of ice and of fire,
without any change in the colour of their skin or hair.
The fullness of body is of greater importance, for it has a more
intimate and varied connection with the general nutrition of the
whole organism. It is very rare to find an exacting woman amongst the
corpulent, unless they are hysterical, and, from the protuberant lip
and bosom, are condemned to sterility. It is equally rare to find a
cold woman amongst thin ones.
The fleshiness of the lip is a good index by which to measure the
sensuality of a woman, and it is so sure a one that I have given it an
ethnic character, having found it in the most different races of Asia
and Africa, where polygamy is usual, and physical love is the first
pleasure and first occupation of man and woman.
⁂
I do not suppose it likely that any of my readers will marry a
negress, Hottentot, or Australian savage, so I need not speak of the
hybridism of races, or the consequences of the possible unions. If,
before I die, I have the supreme joy of writing my monograph on man,
my _microcosm_; then I shall be able to tell you my ideas about it,
confessing to you at once my profession of faith, which is this, that
all those who deplore the effects of the union of races, saying it is
always injurious to the future generations, are mistaken; as well as
those of the opposite school, who always proclaim it to be useful. The
crossing of a superior race with an inferior one lowers the first and
elevates the second, thus giving a product of _medium_ goodness.
The union of two races equally superior, generally gives an inferior
product, but a product different from the two types who have fused
their blood in the crucible of love.
The union of a mediocre and elevated race, produces very different
effects, according to conditions. These, however, are as yet little
known, and must be studied by degrees.
If, however, you will never marry a negress, nor a redskin, and very
probably neither a Chinese nor Japanese, it is easy enough for you
to become enamoured of an English, German, or Spanish woman: and in
the present day, when railways and telegraphs bring nations so near
together, and break down barriers; marriage is preparing the way for
the future _United States of Europe_, which will certainly become the
keystone of a cosmic republic, that of the _Civilized States of the
World_.
The differences of type and sympathy between opposite natures easily
prompt to a warm love between dark and fair nations. More than one
Italian has been obliged to fly from Scandinavia on account of the
excessive sympathy which he awakened in those fair innocent daughters
of the Edda; and if a fair-haired son of Arminius goes into Spain or
South America, it is very seldom that he returns to his mother country
without a wife, or without great spoils won in the mighty victories of
love.
Is this a good? Is it an evil?
For the children it is nearly always a benefit; for married people
it is often an evil. The felicity of husband and wife is sacrificed
to the species, and it is your duty to set these different, but
probable, consequences of union in the balance and weigh them.
The differences which we sum up under the word nationality, are not
as marked as race differences, but they approach them; nationality is
always and in every way the complex sum of infinite physical, moral,
and intellectual elements which make an Englishman so different from a
Spaniard, and an Italian so unlike a Norwegian.
To be of a different country from that of our companion implies not
only the speaking of a different language but the loving different
things, the feeling, thinking, hating, and desiring things unlike. We
are all living fragments of a long history of many centuries, and to
unite and make two beings agree who were born under separate skies,
educated with diversity of taste, with different ideals of religion,
morality, politics, and customs, is possible, but difficult and
uncommon. Look around, and you will find that the most frequent motive
of these _mésalliances_ is nearly always some pecuniary interest, or
else one of rank, unless an all-powerful love has submerged the other
incitements toward a reasonable marriage in its tumultuous and furious
waves. Amongst other marriages those of American girl millionaires,
who come to Europe to exchange their dollars for shields bearing the
arms of our counts, marquises, and princes, are very well known.
The difference of nationality in two married people is just one point
lessening the probability of their happiness, and it is aggravated a
hundred times if a difference in religion is added to the scale.
There is no great love without great faith, and he who loves much
finds the speaking of another language, the following of dissimilar
customs, the praying in a church or mosque, but insignificant
obstacles. But great love, however long it may last, calms down and
becomes a tender and fond habit; and when the sea of passion is calmed
one looks through the water, now grown so clear and transparent,
and sees at the bottom the points of diversity of faith, taste, and
habits, standing up ruggedly, the rocks rising and coming to the
surface, and rendering navigation difficult and full of perils. The
honeymoon is then hidden behind the dense stormy clouds, and the
mariners run into the shallows of indifference, or dash the vessel
against the waves of incompatibility and domestic discord.
The calkers may come with their gold and their coats of arms to patch
up the wreckage, but it will always be patched badly, and the holy
concord of bodies and souls will be lost forever.
CHAPTER V.
THE HARMONY OF FEELINGS.
Fish, birds, and mammals, when they feel themselves fit for love and
wish to win it, develop new organs, new songs, the newest seductions,
and with æsthetic or musical fascination engage in the pleasant
warfare of voluptuousness. They show the female all they have of
the best, all that is most irresistible, and thus obtain the prize
of victory. So do men and women. They adorn themselves, hide their
defects, and make a show of their beauty, but as the battle between
them is fought on a higher plane, each one polishes up rusty virtues,
invents new ones, and sends his vices or moral weaknesses to prison or
into exile.
Painters, carpenters, artists are about the house from morning to
evening, in order to make everything clean and bright, as if in
expectation of an illustrious guest or a great personage.
And they are right, for the guest they expect is no less than love.
The fish, birds, and mammals cease to sing and shed their horns when
the breeding season is over, and become lowly and ordinary, even
as they were before the marriage. And the companion, who has been
enticed by the representation now realized, finds no room for odious
comparisons or regrets, for she and her mate are already separated and
neither thinks of the other.
With man, however, when once the victory is gained, the curtain of the
comedy of love falls. But the marriage remains.
It remains with the defects which return to view, with the vices which
spring afresh from the pollard boughs; and with the little sins,
returning from their exile and creeping home, one after the other.
This is one of the most fruitful sources of the deceptions of
matrimony, and it must be prevented. We ought to discover the real
truth, under all the coquetry of the sex, and to know what metal lies
beneath the varnish and polish. This artificial beautifying of man
and woman who woo is not hypocrisy, but a natural and irresistible
desire of showing our best to the person we love, and hiding from him
our worst. But from this innocent desire we mount a flight of many
steps, until we come to the blackest hypocrisy, which transmutes brass
into gold, glass into diamond, demon into angel.
Exceedingly few see clearly when they have the spectacles of love
before their eyes, and love has, not unjustly, been painted from the
remotest antiquity with his eyes bandaged.
The lover is so blind, or, perhaps one would rather say, is so
afflicted with altruism as to mistake colours, and, under such an
hallucination, to see virtues where there are vices, to find weakness
of character agreeable, a lie a jest, and treachery a game.
The most acute spirit of observation, the most profound knowledge of
the human heart, do not suffice to protect us from these seductions,
which make us see the loved one through a rose-coloured glass.
⁂
Yet discord of character is the gravest peril, and unfortunately the
commonest to marriage, and it may reach such a degree as to oblige
husband and wife to separate. Where the law permits divorce, it
becomes the terrible situation which, in official and legal language,
is called _incompatibility of temper_.
And what does this dreadful word mean? What monster is this, that can
divide what love has joined, that can transform sensual pleasure to
torture, honey to gall, heaven to hell?
When I write my book, _I caratteri umani_, which I have been
meditating and working at for so many years, perhaps I may be able
to get more light upon this obscure point of individual and national
psychology. But at present I am satisfied to treat the problem on wide
lines, and only as far as it contributes to the happiness of marriage.
In the mean time let me state the terrible fact, once and for all,
that among the many discords which are possible between the man and
the woman, none exercises a more weighty influence than that which
arises from want of union in character.
There may be happiness between a rich man and a poor woman; between
a poor man and a rich woman; an elderly woman and a young man; an
old man and a young woman; between two different intellects and
educations; we have rare but well-confirmed examples of harmony
between all these contemporaneous discords. But when characters cry
out against and strike one another, _Lasciate ogni speranza o voi che
entrate_; then desperation will be the habitual state of the dual
existence.
⁂
Incompatibility of character does not mean a difference of taste,
affections, aspirations; for differences are necessary to perfect
harmony, and the man and woman (we have repeated it a hundred times)
love each other better and better the more the man is a man and the
woman a woman—which is as much as to say the more different they are.
In common language incompatibility of character means, for example, to
harness an ox and a horse of Arab breed to the same carriage; to put
a tortoise and a deer to walk together; to tie a goose and a swallow
to the same cord, and condemn them to fly together; and if these
comparisons fall short of the reality, it is because their enormity
does not reach by a very long way the psychical discords of men and
women.
In that monstrous pairing of the deer with the tortoise, the horse
with the ox, the swallow with the goose, only locomotion is treated
of; but for the race that a man and a woman must take through life
it is a matter not only of velocity, but of environment and measure;
of all that can modify senses, sentiments, and thoughts. To find a
comparison which at all suits or pictures truthfully the tortures
of two badly matched individuals who must live together, I can only
take that of a fish and a bird condemned to live together. But this
comparison is not even good, for either the fish or the bird would die
surely and quickly, but of the man or woman neither dies, but live a
death in life, feeling nothing of life but disgust, pain, and wrong.
Convicts also are paired with a chain without any regard to their
sympathies, but they have at least the psychical relationship of
crime, and often vice, which brings them near each other, and also
that other common hope of escape that makes them allies and even
brethren; but in that other galley of a badly assorted marriage there
is not one chain alone, but a hundred and a thousand, all invisible,
with as many nerves connecting two existences condemned to the sad
communion of a common torture which is doubled for each by the
suffering of the other.
There is the chain of the heart, the chains of taste and sympathy,
the chains of antipathy, habits, desires, and regrets; and along the
length of these chains there run currents of spite, hatred, rancour,
malediction, vengeance, and retaliation.
The slightest movement on one side is communicated to the other by the
chains, and makes that other feel his pain, which he returns doubled
by its own force and rendered crueller by the desire of revenge.
So each wrong has an echo, and the echo is doubled and increased a
hundredfold, until the whole life becomes a torment, as if every
nerve had tetanus, and every organ of body and soul was transformed
into a tooth suffering spasms of pain. When a long-forgotten wound
is cicatrised, and a rougher movement than usual re-opens the wound
anew, in that martyred frame there is not a member which does not
suffer nor a single feeling that is not pain.
This is the meaning of incompatibility of character, which has been
adjudged with reason by legislators as a sufficient cause for divorce,
and it is, and ought to be, more so than impotence, bad treatment, or
any other cause of separation.
⁂
This want of harmony in sentiment has only too many and too varied
forms, but at the foundation there is always this skeleton:
_That which I like you dislike; that which makes you happy makes me
suffer._
Woman is an ermine, who allows herself to be killed rather than cross
a field of snow soiled by mud.
Man, on the contrary, is like a chimpanzee, who loves dirt and soils
himself with it. There is no part of his body or soul which does not
love this mud.
How can two such creatures live together?
⁂
He is an optimist even to cynicism, an egoist even to adoration of
himself, and his motto is, _Après moi le déluge_.
She is a pessimist from having placed her ideal so high that no human
hand can reach it. She cannot not live an hour without loving and
dedicating a thought, an act, or a sacrifice to the good of some
fellow-creature.
How could they ever live together?
⁂
He has never felt the want of the supernatural, and believes neither
in God nor in a soul.
She was born a mystic, and the maternal education has made her
religious and superstitious. She has a very strong tendency to
asceticism.
How could two such beings be happy together?
⁂
He is frank, expansive even to imprudence, impetuous even to wrath. He
says out straightly what he thinks, swears and curses, only to forget
within an hour the storm which overwhelmed him.
She is close, shut as with seven seals, timid, diffident, and only
expresses the tenth part of what she feels, and even regrets that
slight expansion. Susceptible as a sensitive plant, she starts if she
meets a grain of sand, a hair, or a feather which touches her. She
finds an offence and want of respect in everything, suspects evil
everywhere, and even in good seeks bad intentions with all the zeal of
an inquisitor.
Will these two live happily together?
⁂
He is a misanthrope from indolence and diffidence; he detests society
and avoids it.
She adores cheerful society, garrulous and merry talk, theatres,
balls, not that she may seek an opportunity for sin in these places,
but simply because she adores what is noisy and deafening.
Join these two together—how can they bless matrimony?
⁂
By instinct and education he is democratic, detests all forms of
despotism from the tailor to the government. He is a socialist, and
would be an anarchist if he had not a sound heart and did not love his
kind passionately.
She is of a decayed noble family, keeps and adores the family coat of
arms; when anyone from politeness calls her marchioness she reddens
with pleasure, and her heart swells with pride. She has a profound and
sincere respect for authority, and bows reverently before priests,
soldiers, millionaires, and princes.
Can these two together bless _life_?
⁂
He is avaricious, but will not confess to it; he makes a secret
of his income to be able to complain constantly of his poverty.
Nothing escapes his domestic financial inquisition. Not a halfpenny
is given in alms at his door, not a match burnt uselessly. Coffee
grounds are never thrown away without first extracting a second and
third edition. The querulous wailings of his laments over excessive
expenditure and taxation fill the air around him with a bad odour of
mildew and closeness.
She is generous, and noble in her hospitalities and charities. She
likes enjoyment herself, and to make the enjoyment of others, and to
hear it responded to by all with “Thank you, thank you!” She cannot
understand how one can torment oneself to-day by thinking of the still
distant day after to-morrow; even the fascination of an _uncertain
to-morrow_ allures her. She believes warmly in Providence and Fortune,
and earnestly defends the thoughtless.
And these are husband and wife!
He is always in a state of febrile excitement or of depression.
He declares to all that the most unhappy man is he who feels no
enthusiasm, and that the most happy man is he who feels everything,
and hopes that he himself is such an one.
She instead is always cold, derides every form of enthusiasm, because
it seems to her a species of madness; detests poetry, all psychical
pleasures, and all passions when they pass 10° Centigrade; derides
heroism, sacrifice, and martyrdom, contenting herself by declaring it
to be the matter of a novel or a stage play.
And these two—can they live happily together?
These few examples, taken from the stage of the real world, will be
sufficient to give you an idea of the many discords of character one
finds in the union of marriage.
Certainly all are not so flagrant or so keenly accentuated, but they
are more complex and complicated, whilst the discord is rarely upon
one note only, but upon many together.
And what can we do to defend ourselves from the peril of
_incompatibility of temper_?
In one way only: by studying and restudying the character of her whom
we wish to make our companion for life. After being convinced that she
will show herself better than she really is we must make every effort
to surprise her in undress, or, better still, in a state of nudity.
Naturally I speak in a figurative sense. I should wish to see her
nude of all artifices of coquetry and hypocrisy. Begin to examine the
moral surroundings in which she lives, and before studying her study
the future father- and mother-in-law. She is only a branch of that
plant upon which you wish to graft your life, and a great part of the
children’s character is that of their parents.
It is exceedingly rare for a loose, libertine mother to have a chaste
daughter, and a lily of innocence is hardly ever born into a family
of impostors. We have spendthrift sons of a miserly father, and _vice
versa_; bigoted children of atheistic parents, and disbelievers
sons of bigots; but as regards moral habits there is very rarely the
heredity of antagonism.
Examine especially the moral surroundings in which the young girl was
born and has grown up; her habits, the books she reads, the amusements
she prefers. Gain information as to the character of her friends, for
in them as in a glass you will often see the soul of the woman you
wish to make yours.
I know an angelic woman with many friends who vie with each other in
loving her, and are jealous one of the other for her affection. These
friends are all unusual women, of refined tastes, delicate feelings,
and generous hearts. They all chaunt her virtues in chorus, and,
without knowing, I judged her from her friends to be an angel, and I
was not mistaken.
After having made your psychological research as regards her parents
and friends do not disdain to descend to a more humble sphere.
Question her maid, cook, coachman, dressmaker, and the labourers on
her estate: all those who for one reason or another serve and obey her.
No one knows us better than those who serve us, for whom we make no
pretence to hypocrisy or ostentation of false virtues, and if a lady’s
maid does not know how to make a psychological analysis of the young
lady she can show us the most intimate secrets of her character.
Noble, generous, and good natures never ill treat their servants; or
they feel all that compassion for them which their position merits,
and apply toward them the daily and domestic virtues of a tender and
affectionate benevolence. Always doubt the character of those who
are changing their servants frequently. They are nearly always ill
disposed, and being unable to vent their evil instincts in higher
circles, begin to torment their slaves at home.
They pour forth on the lady’s maid, dressmaker, or hairdresser all the
disappointed vanity, hidden jealousy, bad temper, and anger of their
petty social struggles.
Then if they feel the need of being despotic they satisfy it by using
their power over those poor victims paid at so much a month, and
condemned to live on the moral excrements of their masters. I know
ladies of the highest financial and hereditary aristocracy who are
not ashamed to beat their maids brutally and cruelly. If you succeed
in learning this do not overlook it, do not pardon it, but fly the
contact of one who will exercise her own evil-mindedness and despotism
upon you, and later on, upon your children.
⁂
I prophesy that when you have finished your examination on heredity
and friendship, and that closer inquiry into your dear one’s home
affairs, you will find the sister soul to your own—she with whom
you will sing the hymn of perfect happiness all your life, the only
perfect happiness, that of a union of two. But this is the rarest good
fortune. In most cases you will find neither absolute discord nor
ideal harmony, but a partial accord, which with labor and good will
you will be able to convert gradually into perfect harmony.
If your love is great and deep, if it pours out from the viscera of
your whole organism, if she loves you well and enough, rest assured
that the rocks will fall to pieces, the mountains be levelled, and the
thorns be removed, for love is the most skilled magician, and knows
even how to convert gall into honey. Woman is cleverer than all the
rest of the world in this thaumaturgic work, and you must really be
the most stupid egotist, the most antipathetic creature in the whole
universe, if your companion cannot succeed in making you agree with
her after a few months. And yet, take care. This harmony ought not
to be that of a victim resigned or a slave subjected; that would be
an artificial agreement which lasts a short time only, and thrives
but ill. It must be a slow and clever adaptation of the sharpness of
the one to the roundness of the other. It must be an intelligent and
tender acclimation to surroundings, tastes, and habits, so that the
rebellious sprig may be bent without pain or breaking, so that the
vine leaves may seem pleased at their connection with the pollard[4]
which supports them, and the bright and ruddy bunches of grapes seem
to smile with joy on foliage and pollard alike. Happiness, too, is
a tree which requires a wise and loving cultivation. We men are the
pollards; the vine is our companion who leans upon us, bound there
by the withes of love and of reciprocal indulgence. Above all things
marry a good woman, one, too, who loves you—not for the title you
bear, not for the gold which fills your chests, but because she
admires and esteems you, and is proud to bear your name.
[4] It is customary in Tuscany to plant pollards in the vineyards
for the purpose of supporting the vines, and these are bound to the
pollards with willow twigs.—TR.
And then you may be sure that the little discords of character will
be surmounted, and in the indulgence with which your companion so
patiently bears with your defects you will find every day and every
hour a proof of that love which will only cease with your last breath.
CHAPTER VI.
HARMONY OF THOUGHTS.
Ought we to marry a silly, an intelligent, or a literary woman?
If this question were to be answered by public vote we should probably
have the following ratio:
For the silly woman, 10 votes.
For the literary woman, 0 vote.
For the intelligent woman (that is, of normal ability), 90 votes.
In this century, in which the voice of the majority takes the place of
right and reason, the problem would be solved by that meeting of which
I have guaranteed the result.
In all cases, however, this verdict ought to be preceded by many and
varied comments if it is to be converted into practical counsels to
those about to take a wife.
The ten who have voted for the silly woman would say that they did
not desire an idiot, but, on the contrary, a woman slightly foolish,
but not too much so. But together with this defect they would wish
to have her handsome, young, and very good-tempered. They seek above
all a companion who helps them to keep healthy and merry. There is
nothing more charming, more sympathetic, more irresistible, than a
little absurdity from a pretty mouth. It makes one laugh; and when our
laugh provokes that of the one who has uttered it, and she shows her
beautiful teeth in rows like pearls, oh! bless the folly and her who
spoke it.
The ninety who have given no vote to the literary woman wish us to
understand that they like an educated woman, but detest pedantry, and
that nothing in the world could make them desire a _bas-bleu_; much
less a _choupette-bleue_, a variety of the first, so named by Balzac.
Having heard these comments, let us now make ours. It is only too
true that in our Italian society the general culture is much below
that which one meets with in France, Germany, England, and the United
States. We have the courage to confess this in our own home if for no
other reason than with the hope that the shame which mounts to our
faces may induce us to remove this national blot from our children.
Men of little culture desire even less in their wives, in order that
at least in their family circle their credit may be unimpugned. From
this arises a general repugnance to teach our girls too many things,
from this comes the antipathy to the higher girls’ schools and to all
that tends to elevate the intellectual level of our companions. Up to
the present time the hasty and ill-digested attempts have not helped
to modify public opinion for the better; the only people who dedicate
themselves to higher learning in one way or another are the ugly,
hysterical, or very poor.
We all open our eyes very widely before a lady doctor or a literary
woman as before some wonderful phenomenon which perhaps may change our
“Ah!” of astonishment to an “Oh!” of admiration; but the woman will
always be a phenomenon to us.
And she is really a phenomenon, an idol to put on altars amidst the
incense of our adoration; she is a woman who thinks as much as a man,
has the learning of a professor, writes books that are read, or paints
pictures and makes statues to which are awarded prizes; an idol to
be admired if beauty be added to this virtue and if grace accompany
it; a half goddess or a goddess if the talent does not go arm in arm
with pride, and if genius is surrounded by a fragrant and flowering
womanliness. But who finds these phenomena, and who, having found
them, marries them? Then if the literary woman is ugly, and impolite,
if her body and voice proclaim the certificate of her baptism, which
makes her more man than woman, oh! then we are all agreed in not
wishing to have her for a wife. It is a new species, a psycho-physico
hermaphrodite, whose books, pictures, and statues we admire, but whom
we have no desire to share a room with.
⁂
In sexual union the harmonies of relation ought to show themselves,
in thought as well as act, in order that there may be happiness.
Therefore it is that man was made by nature more intelligent than
woman. Perfect harmony is only to be found with a man who thinks
vigorously, does what he wishes with energy; who rules and guides the
woman in the paths of life and the glories of conquest. The inversion
of these relations means to be out of tune and in discord; it is an
humiliation on the part of the man, and (let us admit it) on the part
of the woman also, who in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred wishes
to be loved, caressed, and also adored, but who likes to feel herself
ruled.
Woe to those women of intellect superior to the husband, whom they
must pity, correct when in error, and too often pardon for his folly
and absurdities!
Love is a chemical affinity; and its composition is proportionately
stronger the more widely different are the elements in the
combination. The ideal of perfect marriage is the combination of a man
thoroughly a man, _exceedingly so_, and a woman thoroughly a woman,
_exceedingly so_. Whenever a man acquires a feminine tendency of
character and a woman a virile one the chemical affinity diminishes in
intensity, the combination alters at the least touch or first contact
of a third body which comes near and has a greater affinity for one or
the other of the two elements.
A very intelligent woman and a man of less than mediocre intellect
are combinations of bodies which can only have an exceedingly weak
affinity between them. The first has a mode of thought which is
virile, and the second has a feminine one. And only too often the
third element comes to correct the elective affinity, and the literary
woman takes a man of genius, who rules her, for a lover, or a robust
man, who calms her; and the husband of small intellect comforts
himself in making love to an illiterate peasant woman, or a maid
without grammar, with whom he can show his intellectual pre-eminence
and revenge himself on the superiority of his wife.
⁂
I ask pardon (on my knees if necessary, for I know that my sin is
great) for treating of a more and a less in the measure of thought.
This is really an infantile or Australasian psychology; but the _much_
or the _little_ are always the first approximations to the solution of
every problem, and the _how much_ always goes before the _when_ and
the _how_.
I admit, then, that in the harmony of thought between the man and
woman the amount must always be greater on the man’s side. The culture
of the man is always progressing, and with it inevitably that of
the woman also, but this ought always to remain a step below ours,
not because we do not wish to lose the pre-eminence of potency, but
because the labour of the brain is more difficult and perilous in the
woman’s case than in the man’s, and her energy naturally less.
Look around without leaving Italy and tell me how many _normal_ women,
how many healthy and perfect women, there are in our literary circle.
I will not continue on this theme lest I draw upon myself a shower of
poisoned darts. Several are my venerated and admired friends, and I
wish to keep their friendship until my last breath. But if I should
say that many of them are sterile, and many very nervous, ought they
to feel themselves offended? I esteem them too much to believe it!
Man is so accustomed to consider himself superior to the woman in the
world of thought that if he finds an error in the orthography of a
lady’s letter he is as pleased as if he had found a diamond in the
sand of a river. That little error, which was made in the hysterical
haste of a moment of love’s expansion, is really a diamond, because
it confirms and assures us of our intellectual superiority, and shows
us all at once the feminine and seductive grace of the being we love.
An error of orthography or even of grammar in a feminine handwriting
is a wayward little foot, which peeps out from under the skirt of
the dress, and hints to us the glories of the sex, the inexhaustible
delights of voluptuousness. It is a coquettish curve which in spite of
the thick clothing whispers in the ear palpitating with desire: Eve
lies underneath, Eve who is awaiting Adam—and desires him.
⁂
Harmony of thought between the sexes ought to spring from the
agreement of the unlike, and in such a way that no pride should
be offended, and each one be satisfied to make a sum instead of a
subtraction.
A scientific man and a female artist can form a delightful harmony
upon two notes; a naturalist also and a woman who adores music;
a psychologist, an inexorable analyst, and a woman who sees the
comic side of things at once; and thus there are a hundred other
combinations of different intellectual values, which, summed up,
leave each one contented with his own. Besides special fitness,
there is a sexual character which impresses itself upon the thought
of the man and woman. Man discovers, finds, creates; woman divines,
distinguishes, analyses. Man reaps, woman gleans. Man with too great
haste, often with too great pride, grasps too much and lets it fall
from its hands; woman walks behind and gathers up what he has lost.
Man has less tact in judging his surroundings, and often gives a
cuff when he means a caress; woman, on the contrary, like a delicate
galvanometer, feels the slightest electric or magnetic oscillation
in the air which surrounds her, and for this reason she is a most
valuable instrument to a politician, a writer, or an artist who
attempts new roads to beauty, and must conquer the resistance of the
majority. Unhappy the man who before printing a book, exhibiting a
picture, or making a speech in parliament has no loved woman from
whom to draw life and warmth. If a sailor never leaves port without
consulting the barometer, so man never ought to prepare himself for
any undertaking without having first consulted that barometer of all
barometers, the woman who loves him. How many ships have been wrecked
from want of this precaution, neglecting to take it, through pride or
inattention!
You may be the greatest man of genius and your work the fruit of long
and profound meditation; and yet you may rest assured that in the
great polyhedron of truth some plane has escaped your sight which will
be seen by the woman who loves you, because she is a woman, and sees
many little things a man does not see; and because she loves you she
has a magnifying lens before the eyes of her heart which makes all
that may injure or benefit you appear gigantic.
⁂
It is very rare when a woman has conquered our moral and physical
sympathies that we love her less for some discord of thought; but
if we want ideal perfection we must marry bodies, hearts, and
intellects. In this case we must seek in our companion a discreet
culture, an exquisite taste for the beautiful, a delicate spirit of
observation, a divination of human character. If you find all this in
one woman, and if she is beautiful and good, you may deem yourself
the most fortunate man in the world, and may declare to the whole
earth that you have not one but three wives, having married intellect,
heart, and thought.
CHAPTER VII.
THE FINANCIAL QUESTION IN MARRIAGE.
Before breeding time birds build their nests to receive their future
young and to protect them from the weather. Many men, more improvident
than the birds, marry without knowing where and how they can house the
children of their love. Air, earth, and forest afford food to birds
gratuitously; to man only the butcher, the baker, and eating-house
keeper give food, and they have the weakness to ask payment for their
services. Economic improvidence in marriage is the bane of all social
decadence, and it is precisely amongst workmen and the unemployed,
or amongst those who are always struggling and succumbing, that one
finds it most, for they have become thoughtless fatalists, to whom
the day is sufficient. Fatalism has many forms, but it is always a
cowardly emasculation of self, or an even more cruel mutilation, for
it undermines the strength of the will and leads us to renounce all
that is best in us. In individuals it is emasculation or mutilation,
in nations it is suicide; the Ottoman Empire will soon show us whither
_Turkish fatalism_ leads.
I am compassionate, and believe that I pay my debts of charity toward
those who have wrecked their life; but when a starving fellow begs
alms of me, or pleads his _large family_ or _many children_ as an
excuse for his moral and physical demoralisation, anger gets the
better of me and I exclaim: _Why, then, did you have so many?_
And this exclamation is not an insult to misery nor a curse; it is
the voice of reason, which if it could be heard in the homes of the
poor would suffice to solve the social problem. I am a Malthusian
impenitent, and as long as I live I shall always say to those
struggling with poverty:
_Love, but do not beget children._
In vain priests and rugged moralists of _Providence_ combat
Malthusianism, which has now become a social institution, and without
the need of written codes governs the economy of the family in
France, Italy, Germany, and even in chaste and fecund Albion.
In vain my _Elementi d’Igiene_ were put _ad indice_, for from year
to year the Malthusian apostolate has made new disciples, and will
continue to do so.
Neither do I side with those who believe, with too great a faith or
fanaticism, that a restriction in the number of births is sufficient
to resolve the social problem. No, certainly not; it is not enough;
but it clears the ground of the most thorny brambles among which human
felicity gets entangled; and a comparison between the proletariat in
the populous cities of Europe and that of the desert regions of South
America is sufficient to convince us that prolific improvidence is
also the prolific mother of hunger, disease, and death.
If, then, you are not a Malthusian, nor desire to be converted to the
new doctrine, if you have no straw to build your nest, do not take a
wife, but increase the glorious number of the animals of rapine and
cuckoos.
⁂
I know very well that the most hateful and disagreeable problem
of matrimony is the economic, but we cannot avoid nor solve it by
shutting our eyes and disregarding it.
To love and be loved, to feel that our life is doubled and the
horizons of the future enlarged, to drink from the eyes of a woman
who is a perfect fountain of delight, to feel the doors of paradise
opened to us by her lips; and then all at once to be obliged to
speak of _income_ and _dowry_ amidst such intoxicating pleasures;
then to remember between one kiss and another that to harbour all
this paradise we do not possess, I cannot say a house, but not even
the most modest of rooms! It is hard, cruel, abominable, but it is
necessary!
The _quart d’heure de Rabelais_ in the affairs of love, and the
exclamation of the Trappists who at table say to their brethren:
_Remember we must all die_, are the waiters who, entering the guest
chamber, present the _bill_ to the gay and thoughtless merry-makers.
But in matrimony the accounts must be made out before, and drawn up
seriously, calmly, and inexorably.
There is only one man in whose case I could overlook a want of this
prudence, and it is he who feels that he has the strength to fight
for and the energy to gain a position, and to the man who strikes his
forehead and exclaims, _Numen adest_. What does it matter if such a
man has no fortune, nor even a dowry with her whom he loves? He has
faith in himself founded not upon pride, but upon the consciousness of
knowledge and power; and this is more than a patrimony, for neither
phylloxera, bank failures, nor shipwreck can assail it. It will last
as long as life itself, and its results still longer.
But how many such men are there? With the experience of more than half
a century I recommend all others to use such foresight as is near
akin to fear. The whole history of Italian finance, and the whole
chronology of our innumerable ministers of finance, teach us that the
balance of expenditure is always greater than that of the income. Just
fancy when these are added up by that maddest of treasury ministers
whose name is Love!
The following words must have been repeated more than a thousand times
between a kiss and a sigh, _A cottage and your heart_!
But common sense has succeeded in throwing so much cold water on the
phrase as to render it ridiculous, and to relegate it to the museum of
comic virtues. However, notwithstanding the many years I have lived,
I still have the ingenuous good nature to believe this phrase when
it comes warmly and spontaneously from two loving hearts, and when
those two hearts live in two organisms superior in intelligence and
sentiment it may yet be true; the cottage may soon become a house,
perhaps even a palace.
But how many such are there?
The rest no longer say, _A cottage and your heart_; but, _A palace
even without your heart. A hundred thousand francs income, with or
without the heart._
In the first pages of this book we have seen how and why the economic
consideration dominates marriage in civilised society with all the
rigour of a tyrant, how it commands everything, and is the “to be or
not to be” of a family.
⁂
As regards the balance of fortune, the ideal in marriage would be that
both husband and wife should be equally rich, or both have moderate
means. It is not necessary that there should be absolute equality, but
it ought to approach it. In these fortunate cases the equality of the
income increases the dignity of the family to a fellowship, and is
necessarily accompanied by many other harmonies of habits, tastes, and
needs.
An _hyper-ideal_ of perfection would be this, that although the amount
of these incomes may be the same, the separate units should be of a
different nature. Thus if the husband be a rich land owner the wife
should hold house property; and if she has a large share of money
in the funds the other should own lands or houses. In this way even
the most unexpected political or meteoric disturbances would never
strand the family. In many cases a good profession in the hands of
the husband is equivalent to a rich dowry in the wife; but even here
one must remember that life is uncertain, death certain. And, in
truth, where the income proceeds entirely from the work of the father
of the family this very fact is often a cause of ruin to the family
well-being. They have no land, houses, nor money in the funds; a
lucrative employment gives them riches, and parents and children live
upon them without putting a penny aside. Then a railway accident or
some illness unexpectedly kills the father, and from a gay, rich life
they are reduced to the most squalid misery.
_Empleomania_ is a Spanish word, and it sprung up in Spain as if in
its native soil, but if we have not registered it in our classical
dictionaries we have the equivalent in the speech of the common
people. And above all we unfortunately have the thing it represents;
and it is one of the most exact measures of our inertia of intellect
and will. In the middle class, and especially in its lower ranks, the
daily dream of the good mother of a family is to give her daughter
to a _government official_, and it is the dream of a thousand small
men, young, short-sighted fellows of slight phrenic development, to
have some _official situation_, no matter what, so that in the morning
they are not obliged to think how they can pass the day or to make
any itinerary, but just go to the office at fixed hours, and at fixed
hours return home. To do what others desire them to do, without the
trouble of thinking themselves, and to muse on the sweets of the
Sunday rest for six days in advance; for eleven months to feel the
delights of the twelfth, that of the vacation, and to be able to
think that every month of the year has a certain day which bears the
number 27: a blessed day on which, whether it rains or pours, whether
Liberals or Conservatives are in power, whether Crispi or Rudini is
ruling, the paymaster is ready and they receive their salary—ah! these
are serene and tranquil pleasures which make mothers weep for joy,
wives leap for pleasure, and the hearts dance in nine-tenths of those
Italian bipeds who love the peace and security of the morrow ... and
the 27th of the month.
⁂
If there be an inequality in the riches of two married people it is a
hundred times better that it should be in favour of the husband.
A woman is never humiliated when she is poor and marries a rich man,
or when, with moderate means, she marries a millionaire. However much
she may be oppressed by social laws, however often she be placed below
man in position, she brings him so many treasures with her beauty,
youth, grace, and all the prizes of her womanhood that they weigh in
equal value to gold, millions, and coats of arms rich with a hundred
emblazonings.
There is perhaps another less noble, but more human, reason, which
explains the inequality of our judgment on the subject of matrimony
between persons with different amounts of income.
It is precisely because the woman is set a peg below us by law and
custom that she can accept riches from us without any feeling of
shame; besides, it is very difficult, if not often impossible, for
her to gain sufficient by hand or brain work to maintain the family.
Everything, then, conspires to enable her to give her hand to a rich
man without selling or prostituting herself.
When instead of this it is the man who accepts the riches from the
woman, without balancing them by great genius or by a very high social
position, he always renounces that manly dignity which ought to be
his nobility; he stands degraded before his wife, lowered, and at the
least collision with vanity or passion he may be struck full in the
face by an insult which ought to sink into his very heart.
I know several cases in which a very rich woman fell desperately
in love with a handsome, cultivated, but poor young man, and he to
save his own dignity fled from her love. And the lady followed and
conquered him, trusting courageously to the proverb, _Ce que femme
veut, Dieu le veut!_
They were married, and he loved her, working constantly with his pen,
brush, or chisel, having sworn to himself and to her that he would
only live by his work. Noble and touching struggles for personal
dignity, of love and pride, which one but seldom sees, but which
console our sight, daily saddened by so many simonies of luxuries, so
many pretences of heroism, so many individual, social, and political
lies, which darken the air so heavily that it is difficult for the
sun to penetrate the cloud.
Whoever makes a business of marriage will laugh cordially at me, and
at my sentimental fantasies.
Let him laugh! I do not pretend to teach him how to make marriage a
paradise on earth. He will continue to seek a golden dowry, and if he
has a great coat of arms and an empty purse he will put the first up
at auction in order to fill the second; and if the game should succeed
he will carry his wife’s money to the gaming table, the turf, or to
the cabinet of the cocotte, and feel himself happy to have gained in
one day that which others cannot obtain with all the hard work of a
laborious and pure life.
Lying on a Turkish divan, smoking a perfumed Havana, he will raise to
himself a monument of admiration and acknowledgment amidst the blue
fumes of his cigar.
And is he happy? Happy, perhaps, but never enviable; for I know no
true and durable happiness which degrades dignity, which hides itself
in the depths of the soul, which can silence itself with the gag of
sophism and the accommodation of conscience, but that, like a steel
spring, it will burst and spring from its bonds the more unexpectedly
the greater the repression. A man who in the inexorable soliloquies
of his own conscience has something on which he dare not think, or
has a room in his house which he can never visit without a shudder or
remorse, is never happy.
And even if the long training in cynicism succeeds in silencing the
cry of repressed dignity, there will come a day of domestic discord,
of duels fought between husband and wife, with the weapon of bitter
smiles, cruel compliments, and insinuations full of perfidy and venom,
a day when the wife, striking her fan on the arm-chair with little
convulsive blows, will cry: _But in short, my good fellow, I keep
you_.... If that man, in such a moment does not redden to the roots
of his hair, if at that moment his saliva is not changed to gall, nor
forms a lump in his throat, if he does not feel his very heart and
source of life poisoned, that man is not a man, but an unclean animal
who has sold his manhood for a handful of gold; he is a most abject
being, a hundred times more despicable than the poor prostitute who
sells her body to gain her daily bread.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS OF MARRIAGE.
But even if you have chosen the best of women for your companion,
whether it be due to your merit or your good fortune, the great
problem of happiness is not yet solved, for there are so many
incidents and accidents which disturb it when least we expect them.
Your wife is never a meteorite fallen from the sky, but a fruit still
attached to the branch, and this branch is taken from a trunk, which
is the family to which she belongs. When you marry her you must
inevitably marry her relations also; you must enter a _clan_ which may
be a garden of roses, but may be also a wasp’s nest—nay, even a nest
of vipers.
Do not allow yourself any illusions, believing that when once you
are legitimate master of your companion you will be able to isolate
yourself in the nest of your domestic felicity, chasing away wasps
and crushing the vipers, if there should be any. I will suppose that
the woman loves you much, and adores you above all creatures in the
world, but the _clan_ from which she has been taken will complain of
you, protest and conspire against you. Her parents have ceded the
government of one of their provinces to you, but still hold the
_protectorate_ and place a _resident_ near, and they reserve the right
of intervention in many, unfortunately in too many, cases.
The idea of a wife, then, would be that she should be an orphan with
only the most distant relations or guardians, who are happy to have
her well married. But here again there are new complications. To be an
orphan at an early age means, since the parents died young, to belong
to an unhealthy stock. The decadence of many English families is due
to this very fact. The younger sons of the nobility, who bear a noble
name, but have an empty purse, seek to equalize blazonry and finance
by marrying orphans, or only daughters, and thus they bring into the
new family the risk of an infirm state of health and sterility.
It is only too true that all the gravest problems of life are so
framed that when you have succeeded with patience and labour in
untying one knot, others form under your fingers.
The wife, however, might be an orphan from other causes, independent
of the health of the parents, and that would be the highest ideal—for
example, a girl who had escaped from a fire, or a railway accident, in
which both parents (alike robust) were killed. I am supposing things
incredible, or at least improbable; I make cruel conjectures, but what
can I do? A scolding, wicked, or jealous mother-in-law is worse than
a fire and railway disaster together.
Those good, courteous, intelligent mothers-in-law need not alarm
themselves—those who become a second mother to their sons-in-law,
who double the delights of the dual life, who bring you the valuable
blessing of experience and disinterested affection, and who act in the
domestic storm as conciliatory judges. Hosanna and everlasting glory
to such beings, sent by Providence to double your happiness.
For I only speak of others who, without being bad, are women, or
rather men, with all the congenital defects of the race of Adam.
The best of mothers-in-law always sees in you an intruder, a rival,
a man who has robbed her of her daughter, and since she is good she
will not worry you; but she will make scenes of jealousy; she will not
plot against you with your wife, but will swallow so much bitterness
day by day in the secret silence of her house as to enlarge her liver,
so that some day or other her moral jaundice will be scattered through
the atmosphere of your home, and you too will feel the bitterness.
I understand and am indulgent. That bitterness is distilled from
the deepest and most delicate regions of the heart. To have loved a
daughter for twenty or thirty years, to have brought her into the
world with pain, to have suckled her with spasms, to have educated
her with a wise love, after having breathed the same air, eaten at the
same table, shared bread and tears; and then for the first comer, just
because he wears trousers and has an impudent moustache, to rob her
of all that treasure with an arrogance as if he claimed and took his
own—that is hard. And as if that were not enough, the daughter, the
angel of her domestic temple, runs after the trousers and moustaches,
and goes away, abandoning her mother’s and her own house, as if she
were leaving a room at an hotel in which she had passed the night.
Let us be just! Who will dare to throw the first stone at that poor
woman, the pitiable mother? Who would dare ill treat her if she
asked as a charity the favour that her daughter’s new home should
be near hers, if she implored you to allow her to visit her often?
Man is egotistic and feels paternity less than woman, but even if
only in a slight degree he ought to understand the hidden hell of a
mother-in-law who has to watch her daughter leave her own nest.
The marriage of a loved daughter is an event expected and desired, but
it is like a birth, a blessing accompanied by tremendous pain. Elect
natures feel the pain, but do not show it, lest they should give pain
to others, and never convert it into hate.
Others, on the contrary, transform every drop of bitterness which they
swallow into a feeling of vengeance, which they ruminate on for some
time and hatch with cruel patience, to launch it against you when
least you expect it.
I may suppose you to be patient and good, to be an optimist in your
philosophy; you will be deaf to the most mellifluous insinuations, you
will say _Thank you_ when your foot is trodden on, and _Thank you_ for
the rhubarb lozenge which will be offered you—in short, you will take
the points from all the darts launched against you; but there will
come a day in which patience, goodness, philosophy, will be scattered
to the wind, and you, with so much repressed wrath, will burst out all
at once, and placing yourself before your wife, will say:
“There must be an end to all this; it must be either I or her!”
The proverbs of all European languages, the satires of the poets,
the wit of dramatists, have always agreed in compassionating the
sons-in-law, and hurling darts against the mothers-in-law. This
experience of many centuries has taught us that a good mother-in-law
is very rare, and that in marriage she is an element most pregnant
with danger, most fruitful in disaster.
From all this we ought to learn two things:
1st. Before taking a wife to study the character of the future
mother-in-law well, and to try and discover whether we shall find in
her an angel or a harpy, an ally or an enemy.
2d. According to the result of our psychological inquiry we ought to
declare most decidedly that we will not live with the family of the
wife, nor take her mother into our house. If the chosen one of our
heart really loves us she will consider this decision of ours quite
just, and will help us to gain the victory if a battle there must be.
In your own case do not pass it over, do not cede a hand’s breadth
of land; keep firm in your intention, being quite convinced that by
so doing you will make your own happiness, that of your wife, and
of the new family. Between mother-in-law and son-in-law there ought
to be affection and respect; a current of benevolent, delicate, and
gentle sentiment ought to pass between them, but at a distance, a most
respectful distance; so that no sparks, shocks, much less lightning
flashes, may appear. Affection, not intimacy; respect, not subjection.
⁂
But the complications do not finish with the problem of the
mother-in-law. There is the other problem which arises when the
candidate for marriage has lost his first wife, or the woman her
first husband, or both of them their first partners, with or without
children on one side or on both sides.
The possible combinations are these:
{ without children.
Widow and widower {
{ { of the man.
{ with children { of the woman.
{ of both.
Widower { without children.
{ with children.
Widow { without children.
{ with children.
These various combinations are so many algebraical formulæ in which
one may find snares, dangers to happiness, and rancour without end.
If you are a widower and you marry a widow, and neither of you have
children, no danger hangs over you. Liberty on both sides, no right
nor pretext for intervention; marriage presents itself almost in the
guise of an union between two young people.
You may indeed incur the danger of your wife making comparisons, and
these not to your advantage. An old proverb says, _Comparisons are
odious_, but I should like to make a correction and add that for him
to whom they are unfavourable they are odious, but flattering to him
who gains by them. Perhaps you may excel your predecessor, and your
companion will be happy to find it so.
In any case, if you have your weak side inquire about the public and
private virtues of the first husband, and put the results into the
balance which must weigh the pros and cons of the marriage.
A widow and a widower may both have children, or one only may have
them. The dangers in these cases are very different.
It is better for the wife to have them, for if the husband really
loves her he will also love her children; and besides, being a man, he
is less at home, and paternity is always an episode in his life and
not the whole life, as maternity is with the woman. Then if the man
has the good fortune not to have children he will often end by loving
his wife’s as much as though they were his own.
In the case of there being children on both sides the balance may
prove of advantage, because it is equal in weight and measure, and the
two married people have cause to reproach themselves and to suffer for
the same things.
The worst case is that of a widower with children to whose number the
new wife adds; he must be an angel, his wife and children angels also,
if no civil war breaks out in his house. Think of it well, think a
hundred times. Do not complicate the marriage, already fraught with
so many dangers, by imprudence and temerity.
In marriages between a widow and a widower the greatest danger arises
from the children, who fear or see their future threatened, and who
in their love for their lost parent believe the new marriage to be an
outrage to the memory of the dear one.
It is in these cases that we see all that a man has of venom and
baseness come up and soil and cover everything with defilement and
poison; all the brutal possibilities of human egotism covered, it may
be, with varnish but still the skeleton underlying every thought and
feeling.
⁂
Only one of the engaged persons may be widow or widower, and it is
greatly to the honour of women that more men marry a second time than
women. Man often finds more happiness in marriage than she does, while
she is more faithful to the memory of the departed, and thinks more of
her children than herself.
How many women I have known who, being left widows quite young,
have sacrificed themselves, together with the need of loving and
being loved, to their children, often to one alone; proud of their
sacrifice, unconquerable against all temptations and against all the
power of the most legitimate passions.
Do children know how to value this heroism hidden in the bosom of so
many families? Do they understand that there is more courage required
in this struggle of months and years than one day’s assault of a
battery in battle?
Very rarely do they know it, for even the best of children do not
return a hundredth part of the love they have received from their
parents, and especially from their mother.
⁂
Is happiness more easily to be found in the union of a widower and a
young woman, or in that of a widow and a celibate?
The answer is difficult, for the problem is too vague, and individual
qualities weigh too heavily in the balance, gradually modifying the
surroundings, the affections now warding off dangers, now increasing
them infinitely.
If other conditions be favourable the widow is generally an excellent
wife for many reasons: She has lost many illusions, but has learned
to know and excuse the egotism of man. Sometimes she will have
been obliged to beg her first husband’s pardon for some accession
of jealousy or caprice; and as a woman always occupies herself in
everything more with other people’s happiness than her own, she wishes
to give her second husband perfect bliss, and often and willingly
succeeds. If she cannot offer her companion the virginal flower (which
after all is more a myth than a real jewel) she can give him all the
treasures of amorous experience, that is often worth more than a
hundred virginities.
On the other hand the widower who marries a young woman has the great
advantage of her not being able to make any odious comparisons, and he
also brings precious gems to the new home which an unmarried man does
not know or possess. He has learned to know all the little weaknesses
and great virtues of woman, he has learned to become less egotistical,
to think of others more than himself, and as separate from himself,
and he generally is an excellent husband.
⁂
In all intricate problems, in all the fatal confusions which present
themselves in the marriage between widows and widowers, between
widows, widowers, and celibates, the anchor of safety which saves
from shipwreck is always the heart. When there is great love, and it
is shared by two, who join hands forever, every difficulty is cleared
away, and concord ends by hoisting its banner over the new house. The
most ferocious hatred is conquered by generosity, by the indulgence of
one who loves much, and after a short battle of the opposing forces
love scatters its flowers and blessing over the new nest. Love is the
strength of strengths, which surpasses all others, and in this case
it is omnipotent, so that when it exists in all its proper energy on
one side only, it absorbs all the minor energies, and on the fields
threatened with hail and lightning the sun shines through the last
drops of the beneficent rain, and the rainbow hangs its multicoloured
bridge in the sky, drawing enemies nearer and making them allies.
⁂
Of all the accidents which we may meet on the threshold of matrimony
one of the most common is the stoppage of the way by someone who
exclaims: “Halt! there is no passage here.”
You are a minor, or your loved one is, or the person who has the right
to speak does not find your choice to his taste, and shuts the door
of the temple you wish to enter in your face, securing it with many
chains. Civil war is declared, and it is to be seen who _can_ and
_ought_ to gain the victory.
This _can_ and _ought_ are not synonymous terms, because the parents
on one side or the other _can_ withhold their consent to your union,
but many times they are in the wrong, and ought not to refuse to
sanction the marriage.
As regards two lovers, if their love is sincere, if in their secret
and confidential dialogues they have sworn the everlasting _yes_
to each other, if they have nearly conjugated half of the verb to
love, they believe that they have every right in the world to become
husband and wife; and when they have tried all fair means to bend
the will of the tyrant or tyrants they run away together, secretly,
hoping that once the deed is done it will sooner or later receive the
consent of those opposing it. Sometimes, however, the wandering sheep
are discovered before the deed is consummated, and are re-conducted
with many reproaches to their respective folds. In more serious cases
spectres of single or double suicide, asphyxiation, poison, or the
revolver may appear.
Should anyone find himself in such case meditating death, and have
time to cast a look on these pages, let him leave the charcoal,
the poison of the druggist, and the revolver of the armourer. Life
is a good and beautiful thing that must be guarded with love,
caressed with tenderness, and if love ought to be the bridegroom of
the marriage, reason and good sense ought always to be present as
witnesses.
If with a stroke of a magic wand one could raise all those who have
committed self-destruction to life again, after having dressed their
wounds, they would take up life gaily, and even another love affair.
Parents always have the duty and the right of speaking, protesting,
and counselling, nay, even of interposing a _veto_, if they see their
children’s future endangered when they have chosen love as arbitrator,
but have forgotten to call good sense and reason as witnesses.
If you _will_ marry an abject creature who will dishonour your name
and the name of the family to which you belong, and of whom after
a few months of warm passion you yourself will be ashamed; if you
_will_ marry a woman suffering from tuberculous disease, or one of
a consumptive family, or where madness is present; if you _will_
increase the sad patrimony of proletaries and the unemployed, having
neither present nor future resources; if in one way or another you
throw yourself with closed eyes head foremost into a bottomless abyss
only to satisfy carnal excitement which you may call passion, but
which is only the desire of the flesh—father and mother have full
right to oppose your ruin with all possible means; and even if they
should not succeed they will have done their duty. If the means they
take succeed you will later on thank them with a warm gratitude.
In all these cases I allow you to combat, to weep, even tear out some
of your hair; but the tears over, the muscles tired, gather up the
hair you have torn out and present it to your fair one, telling her to
keep it until your return as a pledge of your _eternal faith_; for you
ought to leave, and that instantly, even on foot, even asking money of
the tyrannical parents or of some compassionate friend. Travel in far
countries, and who knows if on your return you will not find a neat
little packet tied with rose-coloured ribbon—your letters, your hair,
and perhaps the announcement of the marriage of your old _fiancée_.
If your love, instead, has known how to resist the long absence, if it
has strengthened and grown, who knows if the hard parents will not be
moved to pity and try to make an adjustment, provided, however, that
there be no consumption, madness, or other calamities to dissuade you
from marriage in an absolute and decided way. Better that you should
die than sow death broadcast in future generations.
⁂
There are some cases, however, in which the wrong is not yours, but is
theirs who unreasonably and tyrannically oppose your happiness from
prejudices of rank, avidity of money, or some caprice or other. If you
are a count or marquis and love a girl of good family without a coat
of arms, or if you are very rich and wish to marry an educated girl
of angelic character, but who is not rich—in these and similar cases
seek the help of your mother, who is nearly always more compassionate
than your father, or ask counsel and help from some intimate friend,
from one of the few who knows your heart like a book, and has never
flattered you.
In these domestic contests it is very rare for right and reason to be
on one side only; there is a little on this side and a little on that;
your hands are too unsteady to hold the balance of justice steadily,
and weigh with precision the _pro_ and the _con_. Your mother,
instead, who loves you as no one else can (not even your lover), and
your friend who knows you well, see things from a dispassionate and
calm point of view, and will judge justly whether you are right or
wrong; and if you are neither mad nor a fool you will end by believing
those who love you and desire your good; and, as the case may be,
stand firm and you will win. The ancient Greek appealed against
Philip, the modern miller appeals against Berlin, and both were right
against Philip and against Frederick the Great. Your mother and friend
will appeal to you not to fast entirely from love, but to be a little
less hungry, and who knows but that they will end in being right
against that king of kings Love—stronger than the father of Alexander
the Great, greater than Frederick the Great.
If they really love you, and are persons of good sense, they will say
neither _No!_ nor _Never!_ to you, but will content themselves by
saying, Have a little patience; wait.
Time is the chief and capable corrector of the proof sheets of the
sketches of love, as also the policy of Fabius the temporizer, who
knew how to gain so many wars by skirmishes and battles.
The stone of comparison enables us to distinguish gold from ignoble
metal; time teaches us to separate with certainty true love from the
desire of the flesh, from the fussy exactions of self-love and all
that is plated. And perhaps, besides your mother and friend, you will
listen to the long experience of him who writes, and will hear his
voice, which says to you, cries to you, supplicates you:
_Let time take its course, ever and always._
CHAPTER IX.
HELL.
I am sitting in a restaurant in the town of ————, at the seaside.
It is the height of the bathing season, the carnival of salt and
fresh water, and the whole world is forgetting the labour and
unpleasantnesses of city life for a few weeks.
I am waiting for my breakfast, seated at a table just outside the
house, under an arbour of vines and convolvulus. The sea breeze
reaches me, plays with my tablecloth and sports with my hair, uniting
itself to the perfume of flowers which peep up, red, white, and
violet, happy also in the midst of all the sunshine, greenery, and
freshness.
Nearly all the tables, scattered about under the arbours or in the
shade of the trees, are surrounded by happy people who have just taken
their baths, fresh, with disordered hair, hungry and merry. Even human
life has its good quarters of an hour.
Near me I see a teacher to whom two girls of about ten and twelve
have been intrusted, and who, faithful to her trust, is giving them
a noisy lesson in morality and gallantry, whilst she eats and drinks
as if she were starving. I cannot imagine how she does it, but she
manages not to interrupt her educational discourse, whilst she never
ceases to eat and drink. The pupils do not listen to her, but look
at each other, slyly laughing at the inexhaustible conversation of
their instructress. A little further off there are three young fellows
who, having passed their examinations well, have been rewarded by a
visit to the seaside. They are laughing, noisy, and giddy with youth,
thoughtless, envying no living soul. One of them has just finished his
breakfast, and in order to pay his bill of one franc fifty centimes
he brings out a red banknote of a hundred francs, and offers it to
the waiter with great pride, and in such a way that everyone can see
it. It is the first he has ever had, and already that morning he has
offered it at the coffeehouse to pay fifteen centimes, and at the
baths to pay for his ticket of fifty centimes. No one would change it,
and even the waiter says he has no change; and the young fellow is
happy, for he will be able to display it a fourth, a fifth, and even a
sixth time.
Facing me a whole family of some seven or eight persons are eating
merrily, and the children, in a chromatic scale of bright colours and
different heights, range from two to fifteen years. Each one is giving
utterance to its joy, clambering up and down the chairs, playing with
a little dog to which they give the tid-bits on their plates. The
father is red, stout, and in his shirt sleeves; he looks smilingly at
his blond companion, reading in her smile the reflection of all that
lisping chatter, laughter, and folly which surround them.
All these people, differing in age, condition, and intellect, unite in
the same merriment, which they seem to have drawn from the sea, the
father of planetary life, the dispenser of spirit and energy; and all
the while the golden rays of the sun shine through the vine leaves,
the ivy, and convolvulus, painting with the shade and penumbra of the
leaves the tablecloth, the dresses of the women, and the rosy faces of
the children, throwing patches, half shades, and glistening spots on
the garden sand.
I, too, a solitary observer, enjoyed all the bright sunshine and the
happiness of the people, but forgot that I had only looked to the
right and straight before me; I turned calmly to the left, sure of
finding there another scene of joy and brightness.
On the contrary, the picture was very different.
At a table just as clean and white as the others, played on
capriciously by light and shade, two persons were sitting, a man and a
woman.
He was about thirty, she forty-five. He was handsome, robust, with
manly energy; she lame, fat, and hunch-backed. There ought to have
been a neck, but there was none to be seen, for the heavy head
appeared to have been put on the chest awry; and all the cruel
artifices resorted to for hiding the hump behind seemed made on
purpose to produce another in front. Even her features were ugly, and
the ill-made hands were laden with rings. Large earrings were in her
ears, and a colossal locket surrounded by diamonds, inclosing the
man’s portrait, was hanging in front. Husband and wife, no doubt.
She was eating, but could not have known the flavour of the food, for
the mouthful went round and round between her teeth, whilst another
piece on the fork was waiting in vain for its turn to enter the mouth.
That poor deformed being did not cry, that is, no tears fell on her
cheeks, but she blew her nose every now and then, and the eyes were
moist and sad. She placed the fork automatically from time to time
on the plate, with the mouthful still on it, and gazed at the man
lovingly, tenderly, waiting, imploring for a look.
But the look never came. With one hand he hastily conveyed the food to
his mouth, and with the other held a newspaper, which he was reading
with pretended interest, so as not to have the silence interrupted. He
did not shed tears nor blow his nose, but he frowned, and he was also
suffering one of those intense and hidden agonies to which one does
not confess, but which furrow the soul like harrows of steel.
I did not remove my eyes again from that dumb and agonizing scene.
After a long interval she said to him, timidly, hesitatingly, almost
as if committing a crime:
“Will you take anything else?”
He started as if the voice had struck him like a blow in the face; he
turned to her and twisted his mouth like one seized with a sudden and
irresistible disgust.
“No, I want nothing more.”
The _No_ was pronounced angrily and with scorn; it was, and must have
been, a blow to her to whom it was addressed. He looked at her a long
time, a look full of hatred, remorse, and disgust. It seemed as if he
were passing in review all his companion’s ugliness, and as if until
that moment he had never seen it so clearly: those wrinkles, that gray
hair, that hump, the deformed neck, those arms which looked like
hams in sacks, and then those rings and jewels which seemed to jeer
at the white, flabby flesh with their brightness. The deformity, the
grotesque violation of good taste, suddenly struck that handsome and
robust man, for he had sold youth and manhood to an unfortunate woman
who had believed it possible to still love and be loved.
The two had plunged into the waves of the sea a little before; they
had drunk of the sun’s rays too, but neither sea nor sun had been able
to give happiness to these unfortunate creatures who had bartered
carnal pleasures for gold, who had changed sacred love to a vile
prostitution of flesh and banknotes.
She had already passed the meridian of her second youth; he was still
young.
She was undressing. He was already in bed, and followed the
progressive unclothing of that body with an anxious curiosity, that
body once so active, so handsome and fascinating, now all submerged in
the high waters of an invading corpulence.
He wished to hide his head under the counterpane, and did so, but a
morbid curiosity made him put out his head again directly, and he
looked.
She had read in her glass only too well the ruin of her form, and had
always sought to undress alone; but this time she was obliged to do
it before his eyes. She ingeniously hid the regions which had most
suffered wreck, and with a remnant of coquetry kept uncovered her
shoulders, the _ultimum moriens_ in the woman’s body; but diffident
of herself, and fearful of those looks which seemed to pierce her
through, her last garment fell from her hands to her feet, and the
disasters of the wreck suddenly appeared, standing out cruelly,
without pity for her or for him.
She uttered a cry and stooped down to cover herself....
He, egotistical, pitiless, forgot all the delights that this body once
so fragrant of youth and beauty had given him, and exclaimed, throwing
the words in her face:
“At a certain age I think a little more modesty is demanded.”
From that moment, from that evening, the two were enemies, two galley
slaves bound by the same chain.
⁂
She was reclining, rather than seated, on the sofa, with small and
large cushions, which allowed her to change the frame of which she
was the picture. She was smoking a cigarette, and had a French novel
on her knee that could not have interested her very much, for at that
moment she yawned. The yawn was cut short, or rather interrupted, by
the sudden opening of the sitting-room door; no one ever entered the
room in that way but him. This time it was more like him than usual:
always a husband, now an angry one.
He entered with his hat on his head, his stick in his hand, as if he
were just going out or had just come in. The latter was the case. On
returning from his walk a large envelope had been put into his hand in
the anteroom. It contained a dressmaker’s bill, the third or fourth
he had received in a few months. The total was very high, higher than
usual, and he came into the room with the bill in his hand to make a
scene.
“Come, now, come, now, my lady, when shall we finish with these
accounts?”
She made no answer, but continued to smoke, only growing a little red
in the face.
“It seems that my lady believes herself to be a millionaire; this is
the third bill that I have had to pay in little more than four months.
But what game are we playing, my lady?”
And _my lady_, throwing the end of her cigarette on a Japanese tray,
stretched out her voluptuous limbs, and showed, as if by chance, a
fairy-like foot and a leg for a sculptor. More than once already had
the disclosure of such a picture, sacred to love, warded off a heavy
storm. Now, however, neither foot nor leg could disarm her husband,
who had thrown his stick on a chair, but kept on his hat, to increase
the violence of his words and to give authority to his threats. In the
meantime he rumpled and then folded the innocent paper with alternate
convulsive movements.
“I shall not pay this bill; you must pay it yourself. You have jewels
(given by me, of course); put them in pawn. You will then learn not to
play the princess with other people’s money.”
The little foot and leg retired under the dress, ashamed of their
defeat, and at last the lady opened her mouth too:
“I think you can hardly expect me to cut a sorry figure in society.”
“But what society? Society of Egypt! Many ladies who are more truly
ladies than you don’t spend half what you do. I have inquired and know
very well.”
“Yes, your Fifi told you, your Fifi, for whom you pay much larger
bills than you do for your wife.”
Never had his wife uttered the name of the stage dancer until that
moment, and he had believed her to be quite ignorant of his amours.
He reddened up to his hair, frowned, and shook himself as if he had
been stung by a viper, and the conversation became embittered even to
brutality.
“Ah! jealous, and impertinent too! It seems to me that when one has
not brought a halfpenny of dowry there ought to be a little more
modesty and economy.”
“Good, very good, sir! I have brought youth and beauty as a dowry,
and a dowry besides; yes, you insolent man, a good dowry, a large sum
which was lost in the failure of the Bank of Turin. And is that my
fault? And you, what have you brought me? A bald head, false teeth,
and a body eaten through with vice—a fine patrimony, truly.”
“Ah, you had a dowry, had you? I have never seen it; the only treasure
I have seen is the gold with which your teeth are stopped. Sell that
and pay the dressmaker’s bill with it.”
The bill flew in the air and fell at the woman’s feet.
The husband went out of the room, slamming the door so loudly as to
make the little Japanese figures and the other bric-a-brac on the
table tremble. And the wife, lighting a fresh cigarette, set to, with
all the force of her intellect, to invent some revenge worthy of the
insult received.
She was alone in her boudoir, seated before a writing table of ebony
inlaid with ivory. She wrote rapidly and smiled to herself, as one
smiles when one is writing to one beloved, and saying a saucy thing
flavoured with much tenderness.
Nothing was heard in the room but the soft and rhythmical scratching
of the steel pen on the paper. She was so intent on what she was
writing that she had not heard someone raise the _portière_, enter the
room, and stand before her.
That someone was not the person to whom she was writing, for raising
her graceful head for a moment as if to seek an adjective more merrily
saucy to put with the others, she saw her husband, whom she believed
was out, standing before her.
She uttered a startled cry, and unconsciously covered the paper she
was writing on with her right hand.
“Ah, is it you? How you frightened me!”
“Another time I will have myself announced.”
These words were said without anger, and with a serene calmness; but a
diabolic irony played round the mouth.
The smile gradually converted itself to a real laugh, to which the
nodding head seemed to beat time.
“Perhaps you were writing to Count B. Who can write the better, you or
he? His letters are pretty, very pretty! How much passion—no, passion
is not a fit word, it is too flattering; let us say _sensuality,
lasciviousness, debauchery_. Which of these words do you find most
suitable?”
The lady had become white as death. The pen fell from her hand and
made a large blot on the elegant paper.
But the husband, continuing to laugh, had approached her, and having
drawn a chair to the writing table, stroked her hair lovingly.
“You were afraid; but of what? You think, perhaps, that I am come to
make a scene, or perhaps to kill you, and then myself after. No, no;
I only like double suicides on the stage or in novels, provided the
author of the book or the drama has talent. But here, why stain this
beautiful Persian carpet with your blood, why scatter mine over the
elegant paper you were covering with your words of love? It would
really be a pity, a crime, and above all a folly. I am come to make a
compact,” and he laid a long kiss on the little fair curls at her neck.
It seemed to the lady as if that kiss burnt her like a red-hot iron.
She withdrew her head and gazed at her husband with glassy eyes,
petrified with astonishment.
No, he had not really the look of an assassin. He was calm, cheerful,
like a good-tempered fellow who was playing an innocent joke, a very
innocent one.
“Give me a cigarette. The air is heavy with the odour of your
cigarettes! They must be very good ones. Probably Count B. brought
them for you from Constantinople?” He did not wait for her to give it
to him, but took one himself from a bronze bowl and lighted it. “I
told you, then, that I was come to make a compact with you, a compact
of purchase and sale, in which we shall both gain something. Look!”
And here the husband took out of the pocket of his greatcoat a
perfumed packet of letters tied with a golden cord.
“I have a treasure here! the entire and complete collection of all the
letters the count has written you. Not one is missing! The lady’s maid
you dismissed last week made me a present of them, gave them to me for
nothing. There are a hundred and thirty, written in three months! How
much will you give me for this treasure?”
The lady, being suddenly reassured that her husband’s intentions were
not homicidal, looked at him with a gaze full of contempt and cruelty.
She no longer felt fear or remorse. She could have wished at that
moment that the letters might have been not from one lover only, but
from ten, a hundred, and that each one could strike him and spit in
his face. She began to laugh too.
“Bravo! capital! you are a man of spirit. Give me a kiss!”
And the kiss was given, a faithful copy of the one that Judas gave
Christ nearly twenty centuries ago.
“I will give you a thousand francs!”
“Oh! oh! oh!”
And here followed a long and loud laugh.
“A thousand francs! a thousand francs! What are you thinking of? I
want ten thousand francs, not a penny more or less. If not, I will
give them to your father for nothing, only reserving two or three of
the most lascivious to publish in the papers. Do you agree?”
“Give them to him if you will. I shall say that you wrote them, that
they are false. My father esteems me highly.”
“Um! Your father is not a fool, and the writing of the count is not
forged. I want ten thousand francs!”
“I will give you five.”
“No; it is too little. I must pay Nina’s milliner’s bill, and I want
to go to Paris.”
“I will give you six.”
“No, ten. Not a penny more or less.”
“Very well; I will give you ten thousand francs. Give me the letters.
Swear that they are all here!”
“Look at the dates. They are really all here. They are numbered too by
the count, with red ink, perhaps with his blood.”
And here there was a loud laugh.
“When you bring me the ten thousand francs I will give you the
letters, not before.”
⁂
The compact was made, the letters were returned, the sum was paid.
The husband paid Nina’s milliner’s bill, and has gone to Paris.
Indeed, he has already returned and is still living in the house of
his wife, with whom he hopes soon to be able to negotiate a new ransom.
And she?
She has a new lover to whom she never writes and from whom she will
not receive any letters. When he complains of this strange proceeding
she throws her arms round his neck and, kissing him, says:
“Is it not better, dear, to have a kiss the more and a letter the
less?”
And the husband has waited a long time in vain, hoping to discover a
new packet of perfumed letters, tied with a golden cord, all marked in
progressive numbers, written with red ink, perhaps with blood.
CHAPTER X.
PURGATORY.
But few marriages are a hell, and fewer still enjoy the highest
beatitudes of heaven; the most stand halfway between the two—that
is, in purgatory. There they live without redemption, which means
without any hope of mounting to heaven; but neither have they any fear
of being hurled down among the fallen angels. After a more or less
lengthy honeymoon they descend gradually to earth, now walking amongst
nettles and thorns, now amongst the flowering beds of the garden, to
remain there till death.
To describe all the forms and accidents of this conjugal purgatory
would be to exhaust the human universe. It is enough for me to present
some scenes taken from life, so that you can judge of the rest from
these examples.
⁂
It is eight o’clock in the morning; he has been awake for some time;
she is sleeping soundly and sweetly.
He had been quiet and silent for more than an hour, reading the paper,
smoking a cigarette, looking at his wife with the fond hope that she
may wake up of herself, but in vain.
Then he coughed several times, used his handkerchief without needing
it, shook the bed, but in vain.
The waiting had become impatience; impatience had changed to a
troublesome, insupportable agitation.
Then he gave her a sweet, light little kiss on her lips. She woke with
a start and stared at him—he who had expected a smile or an answer on
a par with the question.
“How you frightened me! Why did you wake me so suddenly?”
“I thought my kiss would have pleased you, and hoped to wake you
gradually without giving you a shock.”
“But you know—you know very well that for some time past waking me in
that way has hurt me. It gives me palpitation of the heart, and then
I feel ill all day.”
“I have been awake since six o’clock, and have had the patience to
wait two hours for you to wake; you have slept nine hours.”
“And if I wish to sleep ten what have you to say against it? Do you
not remember that I worked like a dog yesterday, that I had to attend
to the house linen, put the drawing room in order, and then went round
to all the shops to find a good flannel for your vests? You ruin my
health, and will give me disease of the heart by your nasty habit of
waking me up so suddenly.”
“And how ought I to wake you? Teach me.”
“If I could teach you to have a little more consideration, if I could
cure you of your egotism, I would willingly do so; you only think of
yourself.”
The tone of the conversation on her part, at first slightly irritated,
had become angry, rancorous, and full of suppressed bitterness.
He felt it, but still hoped for a reconciliation.
He tried to feel her heart.
“Let me see if you really have palpitation of the heart.”
She turned her back on him angrily.
“Let me alone; after having done me harm you now want to joke. I tell
you you will finish by killing me!”
He turned away too, muttering under his breath and thinking sad
thoughts of that chemical combination called marriage.
⁂
“Listen, dear; I should like to dine an hour earlier to-day.”
“And why?”
“Because I eat nothing at breakfast and have a poet’s hunger.”
“I, on the contrary, have none at all. I eat too much.”
“But besides my appetite, I have another reason for wishing to dine
earlier. Do you know, I have promised my oldest and best friend,
Giovanni, to meet him at the station on his way to Rome?”
“Who knows that it is not a lady instead?”
“Come with me to the station and convince yourself.”
“Heaven defend me! I am not jealous.”
“A little! You are jealous six days in the week and seven times every
day. You are always so and always in the wrong.”
“But I tell you I believe you; I was only joking.”
“Very well, then, we will dine at five instead of six.”
“Impossible! Annina has brought home such a tough fowl that it will
require all the cooking in the world to have it ready by seven.”
“But I can do without the fowl!”
“But there is nothing else! Go another time to meet Giovanni—when he
returns from Rome, for instance.”
“He will not be returning by the same route. I know he has to go back
by Civita Vecchia and Genoa.”
“Well, anyhow, we cannot dine at five!”
“Ah! it is enough that I should ask a thing for you to find a thousand
and one difficulties to prevent you doing what I want. It has been so
ever since we were married, and will be to the end.”
“And you will always be that obstinate and infallible man who wishes
to command in housekeeping where the woman ought to be mistress.”
“Go on, go on! Just because one wants dinner at five instead of at six
you have your usual reproaches for me. I know them by heart already.”
“Yet it does not appear so, for you are incorrigible and will have
what you want at any cost, even if your wife’s or children’s health
has to suffer, or even if the sky fall.”
“Yes, yes, you are right; a tough fowl will kill you. For Heaven’s
sake do not let us have such pettiness.”
“But it is you who are petty, thanks for the compliment; if I am petty
you are egotistical, and ought not to have married.”
“And you ought not to have had a husband, you chatterer, you
intolerable scold!”
“Go on. Haven’t you some more gentle, nice adjectives; they are so
well suited to your delicate mouth?”
“Yes, I have a good many left; you are foolish and have no common
sense; you make a rope out of a thread of silk, and in everything you
find a pretext to make scenes and torment me, and scatter gall on all
you touch. Yes, you must be suffering from the liver. Call in the
doctor, you must have the jaundice.”
“It is you who have the jaundice, and to show you that you are the
most petty of the two I will be silent and go.”
“And I will go too, and will dine neither at five nor six, but at
the hotel. At least I shall not hear your ugly and impertinent voice
there, your chatter without sense, and I shall have an hour’s rest
from the infinite sweetnesses you scatter over the time when we are
obliged to be together.”
He is director of some large works. He is early at his desk, for it
is Saturday and he must balance the accounts of the week and pay the
work people. He is in an exceedingly bad temper, for he has discovered
that the cashier is not honest, that his chief superintendent is
ignorant, and that a good many customers have sent in complaints of
the bad quality of the goods despatched from the factory. He has both
arms on the writing table, his head is between his hands, and he looks
mechanically at a row of figures before him without reading them.
She, on the contrary, is in the best of tempers, for she feels well,
and when she was dressing her hair the glass told her how handsome she
was, very handsome; and then her little boy on waking a little before
had sat up in his cradle and, smiling, had said _Mamma_ for the first
time.
She caught him up in delight in his little white night-dress, just
as he was, and ran to her husband’s office, opened the door without
knocking or waiting to know if anyone was there, and rushed in hastily
and happily.
He had hardly time to raise his eyes before she was at the writing
table, and had placed the child on a bundle of papers, and said in an
agitated voice:
“Give papa a kiss.”
Papa loved the little fellow very much and the mother exceedingly; but
at that moment he hated all and everything, even himself. What would
he have given at that moment not to be unkind; what would he have done
not to have had his wife and child there to make him hurt them!
How many fierce, dumb, and invisible struggles are carried on in a
man’s brain within a few seconds.
He said nothing, but put his mouth quickly to the child’s.
“Yes, yes; bravo; give me a kiss and then go away directly, for I am
busy—I have a devil in every hair and a thousand anxieties in my mind
... yes ... yes, so ... good-by, good-by.”
And he almost pushed away mother and child with his two nervous,
angry, almost threatening hands. The poor mother had not expected such
a reception, and could not reconcile herself to it.
“Do you know that Carlino has just said _Mamma_ for the first time,
really, just now when he woke?”
The father was silent and fretted, angry with himself because he could
not and did not know how to call up a single affectionate word to
his lips or a sole caress to his hands; all was dark before him, and
everything so bitter that absinthe would have seemed honey to him.
And to be obliged to be so hard with that touching picture before him!
Oh, why had that woman come at such a moment? Why had he not locked
himself in his office?
The mother could not give in. She drew her lips to his scowling
forehead, but he did not draw down those lips to his; he simply
touched her cheek coldly. That kiss was an insult; he was ice; he was
brutal.
She felt a lump in her throat, which broke into a sob.
“Yes, yes, let us go away. We will not come again to trouble you.”
He got up hurriedly and went to the window, but did not open it. He
put his hands through his hair and exclaimed aloud:
“Bless the women! they never understand anything; they come into the
office, interrupt one’s work, and oblige one to be harsh to those one
loves best. And yet they pretend to be our equals.”
He continued his panegyric on women alone, for mother and child had
disappeared, both crying, the mother mortally offended by the double
blow—the one to the wife’s heart, the other to the mother’s. The child
screamed, frightened at the cruel scene which he appeared to feel, if
he did not understand.
Sobs and cries lasted some time, and were heard through the wall in
the office, making a savage harmony with the bursts of impatience of
the angry director of the factory.
⁂
“Do you know, dear, the Marquis of Bellavista came into our box at the
theatre yesterday evening?”
“What did he want? I did not know he was in Florence.”
“Neither did I.”
“Um!”
“I thought he was still in Naples; but he told me he was staying a day
or two in Florence on his way to the races at Milan, and seeing me in
the box, he came up to shake hands with me.”
“I hope you were rude to him, so that he will not be tempted to come
and see you a second time.”
“Rude, no! but cold. You can ask your mother, who was present at the
time.”
“I can’t believe that you had not seen him before during the day, when
you were out, or perhaps here at home. You tell me now that you have
seen him at the theatre because a hundred others might tell me, and
you wished to forestall them.”
“But this is a gratuitous insult, unjust, cruel! I do not think I have
ever given you reason to doubt my loyalty.”
“I have not the slightest suspicion of any other man who may pay you
attention, but with the marquis it is quite a different thing. Before
you married me he was deeply in love with you, and you with him; and
the affair went a good way, for you were engaged to each other. It
was only your father who broke off the engagement at the last moment
because he heard the worst accounts of the character of his future
son-in-law and of his disreputable conduct. First love always leaves
deep impressions.”
“No, my love, had I really loved the marquis I should not have married
anyone else, nor should I have believed the accusations they cast at
him. I should have waited until I was mistress of myself, and not have
given my hand to another.”
“And how long was the marquis in the box?”
“About an hour.”
“Very good, only an hour! Too short a time for a love appointment, and
too long for a complimentary visit.”
“But I could not send him away.”
“When a woman desires it she can always make a man understand that his
visit is inopportune, inconvenient, and that he must shorten it if
possible.”
“You teach me how I can do so.”
“And then you chatted over your old love, and the cruel rupture of
your separation.”
“We only spoke of music and theatres.”
“We may believe that. But I am going out to see if I can discover
whether the marquis is still in Florence, and how long he intends to
stay. And in the meantime, if he is barefaced enough to call here, I
beg you will not receive him. This I demand and desire.”
“No command is necessary; I know my duty.”
“Not always. A visit of an hour in the box of a woman to whom the man
was once engaged is an offence to her husband.”
She, who was completely innocent, felt herself really offended by
all the suspicions of her husband, and began to beat her foot on the
carpet and to torture a volume of Coppée lying on the table with a
paper knife.
From anger and from opposition to the unmerited offence she had a firm
idea that the Marquis of Bellavista would never have been so jealous,
so foolishly jealous. Libertines know the hearts of women a little
better.
The husband went out of the house without a farewell word to his wife.
He became a spy on the marquis, and followed his steps from café
to café, at the club, amongst friends, dividing his projects, and
tormenting himself in a hundred and one ways, one more absurd than the
other.
“Will you allow me, dear, to make an observation?”
The question is asked by a man still in bed, and is addressed to his
wife, who is near him under the same sheet, and is still sleepy.
“About what?”
“About the French song you sang yesterday at the countess’s.”
“And what have you to say about it?”
“That you pronounced the _u_ very badly, just as if it were _ou_.”
“And have you nothing else to criticise?”
“No. Now do not be angry; if your husband does not tell you of these
things————”
“Bravo, capital, and a thousand thanks; above all, let me congratulate
you on the time you have selected for correcting my errors in French
pronunciation. Instead of wishing me good-morning with a kiss, a
caress, or a loving word the French professor gives me a lesson in
language. Do you give it to me gratuitously, or what do you charge for
it?”
“There you are, up on your high horse in a moment, and for such a
trifle. You are a Tuscan and the _u_ is hard and difficult for those
lips of yours, which distil milk and honey; but another time be
careful. People will say you do not know French.”
“But what French! I ask you if in the excitement of the music, or the
torrent of notes, there is anyone who would notice if one said _u_ or
_ou_. And I do not speak of a vowel only. Who listens to the words?
They can only be distinguished with difficulty.”
“There are those who notice. First of all, the French, who do not like
to hear their language mutilated; then the envious, the spiteful. Now
only see, each time you had to repeat the word _dur_, which you always
pronounced _dour_, the Marchioness Vittoria smiled, and looked at her
sister, who laughed and then pursed her lips to imitate you. Neither
one nor the other was aware that I saw all their pantomime in the
mirror.”
“How can you tell what they were laughing at? I know that I was very
much applauded, and that my voice and method of singing were praised.”
“You certainly sing well, but remember that in good society applause
is bestowed upon all, especially upon handsome women.”
“Yes, but only to those who know how to pronounce the _u_.”
“Shall I tell you all, since you are determined to take offence at the
slightest observation which I make?”
“Yes, tell me.”
“Well, the Duke of St. Etienne whilst they so loudly applauded you
bent forward to his cousin and said: ‘_Oui, elle chanté très-bien,
mais elle a le timbre de la voix un peu dour_.’ And the amiable little
cousin covered her face to hide her Homeric laugh.”
“_Dur_ or _dour_, I must get up an hour earlier, or else you will
drive me mad. My day will be a happy one, and I shall have you to
thank for it. A thousand thanks, you master of French!”
To know the reason of this sudden burst of anger, why from being
slightly keen the conversation became suddenly bitter, and the notes
from sharp became acute, you must understand that the cousin of the
duke was, from position, youth, and beauty, the official rival of the
lady who pronounced _u_ as _ou_.
⁂
They are both seated at the table with their four children, their ages
ranging from five to twelve years. She, the mother, is helping them
all. He is watching the distribution of a delicious custard. From time
to time he frowns, and shakes his head in sign of disapprobation.
And this pantomime continued so long that at last she became aware of
it, and in her turn looked at him crossly and put down the spoon.
“What is the matter? Some new criticism?”
“Yes, but it’s no new subject of complaint. For some time past I have
noticed the thing every day at breakfast, dinner, and supper, and if
I have not given utterance to my dislike, it has been to avoid any
unpleasantness; but to-day it seems as if I were losing patience.”
“Lose it; I will pick it up.”
“You might have a little more consideration, especially when you
usurp the prerogative of a god and distribute good and evil with such
authority.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you always serve the boys first and the girls after,
whilst in all ages and countries ladies are served first.”
She began to laugh heartily.
“But I see no ladies here, only children, who have no sex in my eyes,
for I love them all equally. To-day, and for several days past, I have
helped Cecchino and Pietro first because they are near me. When Maria
was in Cecchino’s place I helped her first. What! ought we to teach
children, in their earliest age of innocence, etiquette and the laws
of society? This seems to me the height of absurdity.”
“As to the absurdity of the idea, that is not the question. It is a
matter of justice. You always prefer the boys.”
“And you the girls, so we are quits.”
“But look round and read your condemnation in the plates of the
children. You not only help the boys first, but you give them more.”
“Of course; they are older!”
“No, no, independently of age you are partial.”
“But when none are the same age?”
“What difference does one or two years make? The difference is in your
injustice, your deplorable partiality.”
“Do me the favour of helping them yourself. It will be one labour the
less for me and for you a pleasant occupation, a splendid opportunity
to administer justice in the family. From this time forth I will help
them no more.”
“Neither will I.”
⁂
For the honour of the two married people who discoursed so learnedly
on distributive justice, it must be remarked that they spoke in
German, a language the children did not know. So that for this time at
least they had no opportunity of learning that heaven is very far from
most families, and that human justice is generally very unjust.
The reader will be grateful to me for not wearying him longer with
other sketches taken from real life revealing the matrimonial
purgatory. Hell is awful, but it has its dramatic emotions and these
offer some compensation for all there is of monstrous, sanguinary,
or horrible. Purgatory instead is very small, mean, and deplorably
vulgar. There are no ocean storms, but bogs which submerge us inch by
inch; no tiger bites, but mosquito stings; no lion’s claws, but the
puncture of the flea; no delirium or crime, but secret sobs and silent
tears; the continual itching of a scab which heals, forms a crust,
and is again broken; an exudation of malignant humours which leak out
drop by drop from the marrow of the bones through the tissues, to the
skin, and there they remain viscid, fetid, and contagious. This is a
true but not very enticing picture of the purgatory of marriage, a
hundred times worse than the purgatory of the Catholic Church, which
after a longer or shorter time leads to heaven. This other only leads
through a long, sorrowful life, to death at the last.
CHAPTER XI.
PARADISE.
They had been seated near each other for some time on the same
sofa, not in the voluptuous atmosphere of desire, but in a calm and
ingenuous admiration of each other.
They had no desires, for all were satisfied, but they were not
indifferent nor were they weary, for the light of love shown eternally
in their heaven; twilights of laughing morn or melancholy sundowns,
but never night. True faithful love knows no darkness. When the
planetary sun sinks in the west there are lighted for true lovers the
many-coloured lamps of an electric beacon, which, like an iridescent
rainbow, joins sundown to dawn.
On her knees, as if in a sweet doze, a volume of Musset was lying half
open, and her right hand was more than pressed, it was grasped, in his
left. She had read several pages of the great poet aloud, as only she
knew how to read, pointing those immortal verses with the passionate
accent of one who reading loves, and loving reads. At that inspired
reading he had been always silent, but low and frequent sighs told her
that through those hands closed in such close embrace there crept a
tremor of high and perfect happiness. The current of her touch said to
him softly:
“Listen, dear, how beautiful it is!”
And his answered hers with a tremor:
“Thank you, dearest!”
Then all at once, without her having said, “I am tired!” or his having
said, “That is enough!” the book had fallen on her knees and they
gazed into each other’s eyes.
In fact, these two happy beings were nothing but eyes, open, wide
open, to drink in all the light that emanated from their souls: eyes
moistened with tears which did not fall on their cheeks, but were
absorbed as by an invisible sponge which conveyed them to the heart.
Had anyone been present he would have heard a double _tic-tac_ in
unison, the harmony of two notes, one high and one low, the divine
music of two souls who converse without words.
Her eyes were sweet, tender, and very mild; they appeared as if they
were dissolving in the dew of paradise. His eyes lightened, were
ardent and fiery, drinking in the paradisean ambrosia of her pupils.
Tremour of the frame, contraction of clasped hands, and lightning from
their eyes accorded harmoniously with the _tic-tac_ of two hearts
bound together; the whole an ecstasy of two existences, which are at
one in the pores of the skin, the nerves of the soul, the muscles of
the will.
Was it voluptuousness?
No, it was bliss.
Was it lasciviousness?
No, something less than all those; only two lives fused into one.
After a sigh from both a spark darted from those eyes; and from those
lips there came at the same moment, as if a signal had been given,
these words:
“Oh, how handsome you are!”
“Oh, how lovely you are!”
⁂
They had been married for three years, and not the slightest cloud had
obscured the heaven of their happiness. When, during the first months,
she had drawn a deep sigh and said to him,
“Oh, my Carlo, how happy we are!”
He, as if seized with a mysterious fear, had answered her:
“No, Teresa, do not say so! It seems as if it must bring misfortune.
When God sees a man happy he judges him as standing in contravention
of human and divine laws, and whispers to him that terrible dictum
which one sees promulgated everywhere in England against those who
violate regulations: _You will be prosecuted_. Just imagine if instead
of one happy person he should find two! The penalty must be doubled.”
She blushed and smiled. She did not believe at all in that form of
superstition, but willingly obeyed, and for some time did not say:
“Carlo, how happy we are!”
This did not prevent their being so. One day, however, she repeated
the happy exclamation, for which she felt the real necessity in order
to relieve the fulness of her heart.
Carlo closed her mouth with his hand, but this time she resisted, and
almost for fun repeated the same words ten times:
“You will see that no harm will come to us.”
And, in fact, the most complete bliss continued to shine in the blue
heavens of those two happy ones. They were two and they were one; but
sometimes, sighing, they had said:
“Why are we not three?”
It was he really who had said so; and she then blushed and hung her
head, sighing:
“You are right, Carlo; our happiness is too great for two alone;
divided among three it would be better.”
“But the third, Teresa, ought to be tiny, tiny—so, look,” and he
opened the palm of his hand to show the length that this third partner
in their happiness ought to be.
This discourse, however, did not please Teresa, and after a forced
smile she kissed Carlo and gave him a pat on the cheek, and said in a
shame-faced way, and with an unsteady voice:
“You know it is not my fault.”
“I know it is not the fault of either of us, we love each other so
much. But do not worry any more about it; we can be happy even if we
are only two.”
And from that day they had never referred again to the third being,
who was to be a span long, and was to share their felicity.
But both of them thought of it constantly. It was not a cloud which
covered the sun, but a light mist which dimmed it.
One day when he was in his study busy writing she ran in as if she had
something very urgent to say to him; then instead, when halfway in the
room, she stood still.
“What is it, Teresa?”
“I have good and delightful news for you.”
“Really?”
She smiled and blushed, and with little timid, hesitating steps, as if
she had some fault to confess, she came close to the writing table,
embraced Carlo, and hid her head on his shoulder. She still kept
silence and her face was hidden.
In vain he endeavoured to move her away that he might see her face. He
thought he guessed, but still feared he might be deceiving himself.
“Is it true, then, really true, my dear, dear Teresa?”
With a sudden courage she took one of his hands and placed it on her
heart.
“Listen, Carlo, there are three of us.”
He rose suddenly, agitated, embraced her, and kissed her a hundred
times on the eyes, cheeks, hair, mouth, everywhere, interrupting his
kisses with sighs of joy.
“Thanks, thanks, my adored one.”
They continued to be happy, and to call themselves so, without fear
that God would know it, consider them in contravention, and murmur in
their ears:
_You will be prosecuted._
⁂
They had not seen each other for eight days! He had been obliged to
leave her alone on account of urgent business.
Eight days—that is eight centuries! He had written eight times, she
ten, for on one day which seemed longer than the others she had
written three times, in the three different languages she knew.
In the last, written in English in the evening, she finished with
these words: “Why do I not know seven languages? Then I should have
written seven times to you to-day, because the same thing said in
different languages seems different, and renews my joy in thinking
of you. I should like to say I love you in all the languages in the
world....”
At last he telegraphed his arrival, and she had been an hour at the
station, walking up and down by the deserted rails.
She looked at her watch, then at the station clock; it seemed to her
as if it must have stopped, so much like centuries did those minutes
appear.
With her most pleasant smile she went to one of the officials:
“Is the train from Genoa late?”
“Yes, about ten minutes.”
How cruel those four words were! How she condemned in her heart
Italian railways, engine drivers, directors, and shareholders, who by
their negligence had inflicted another ten minutes upon her anxious
waiting. She drew near the kiosk of newspapers and books, but without
looking at anything; she bought flowers, but did not smell them; she
kept her eyes turned toward Genoa, strained her ears, bit her lips,
but the train came not.
In a moment a thousand fears flashed through her mind—the remembrance
of the last collision, the many killed and injured————
She did not dare to go to the same official. She went to another,
timid and full of fears. This time she did not succeed in smiling.
“Is the train from Genoa still late?”
“Yes, ten minutes; it will be here in five minutes now.”
Shortly after a whistle was heard, then a low and heavy vibration of
the rails, a great column of smoke appeared, then the heavy wheels
rolled under the roof of the station.
She ran from one carriage to another, impatient and anxious; he was
not there.
Travellers alighted in crowds. He was not there.
Her heart beat fast, she did not know what to do. She turned her back
to the train and walked toward the station master without knowing
what she ought to say, or even could say to him.
But she had no need of him, for she felt herself clasped closely by
two loving arms.
It was he, it was Carlo!
The eight days of agony, the seventy minutes of anxiety, all were
forgotten, all submerged in a sea of infinite sweetness.
They said nothing until they were in the carriage, and whilst they
drove to their happy home she, kissing him a hundred times, exclaimed:
“Do you know, I love you more than you love me?”
“But why?”
“Because I have written ten times to you, and you only eight times to
me.”
“Well, next time I will write twenty times to you.”
“No, no. I do not want even one letter. Another time, if you will let
me, I will come with you. I will not be away from you; I cannot bear
it.”
⁂
They were seated at table at the usual hour, calm and happy, with no
one but themselves.
They never sat facing each other, but side by side, because even
during meal times they felt the necessity of caressing and kissing
each other.
Toward the middle of dinner she said, all at once, as if the words had
been held back, and were now forced from her by some internal and
invisible spring:
“Do you know that Lieutenant B. came again at five this evening to pay
me a visit?”
“Well?”
“It is the third time in one week.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, he always comes at the hours when he knows you are at the
office.”
“Perhaps he is not free at any other hour.”
“Listen, Paolo, you take it too indifferently. I think, however, that
in this case you ought to think more of it.”
“But what does the lieutenant say to you?”
“As you may believe, he has never failed in respect toward me—but when
there are no other visitors he looks at me too persistently, and says
the most innocently polite things, but in too warm a tone.”
“Lieutenant B. is my friend, and a perfect gentleman. He has but just
come to Modena, and knows nobody. It is only natural that he should
pay visits to the wife of his old friend and fellow-student.”
“In short, you are satisfied that he should come here three times a
week to see me, stay more than an hour, look at me and tell me I am
beautiful.”
“I do not believe he has gone beyond that—anyhow I will beg him to
come in the evening, when I also am at home.”
“No, that would be to show some mistrust, which, so far, he has not
deserved. I will tell my maid to say, once or twice, that I am out,
and then he will change the hour of his visits.”
“Do what you think best, dear one, and I will do whatever you desire
to calm your fears about this gallant lieutenant. But do you really
wish to be more of a royalist than the king, and to disquiet yourself
when I am not disquieted?”
“But, Paolo, I am sorry that you are not more concerned. It is not
only on account of the lieutenant that I speak, but of all those who
at the theatre, at home, and in society think me beautiful, say so,
and pay me too much court. In short, my own Paolo, shall I tell you? I
should like to see you a little more jealous of me.”
At this point Paolo put down his knife and fork, fell back in his
chair, and began to laugh so heartily, so full of merriment, and so
loudly that it made her laugh as well.
“A hundred wives complain of the jealousy of their husbands, and I
have one who deplores my want of it.”
“No, Paolo, do not laugh. This indifference of yours makes me think
you do not love me, and that it does not matter to you at all if
others pay me too much attention, and that wounds me.”
“Dear one, dearest of my treasures, to please you I will become
jealous too.”
“A little—not too much.”
“A little—how much, for example? So? two fingers, three fingers, half
a metre?”
“No, do not make fun of me. You know how much I love you; you know you
are my very life, that without you I should die. Everything I say to
you proceeds from the immense love I bear you. I, you see, am jealous
of you.”
“But not I of you, for I esteem you too much, and should fear to
offend you by any doubts. A woman can always protect herself without
the aid of an ally; and when she has a husband whom she loves and
esteems he supports her in the course of attacks, menaces, and
gallantry. And together they defend their own honour and felicity.”
“Yes, dear, you have every reason in the world ... but to make me
happy, be a little jealous.”
“Yes, dear, you shall teach me the way to become so.”
And then those two happy creatures interrupted their dinner to throw
themselves into each other’s arms, and make peace after this trivial
battle.
He had loosened her handkerchief and had covered her neck with a whole
string of kisses.
“See, Nina, I am jealous of this handkerchief which kisses your
shoulders all through the day, and so I take its place. Do you not
see, Nina, that I begin to obey you? I am taking the first lesson in
jealousy.”
⁂
They were both leaning on the sill of a window which looked toward the
sea. It was late, and the stars sparkled in a sky which was not yet
dark, but no longer blue.
No sound was heard save the murmur of the breeze among the palm leaves
and the distant flow of the waves as they kissed the shore.
They did not speak; but the arm of one entwined in that of the other
spoke with the hand the words for which the lips were silent.
A perfume of jasmine, pungent and voluptuous, rose from the garden
and intoxicated those two. They were happy.
She interrupted the long silence:
“Dearest, even when you look at the sky and the sea do you not believe
in God, in another life?”
He did not answer, but, sighing, pressed her hand still more firmly.
“After all, if you will let me say so, this negation of yours of all
that reason cannot understand is nothing but pride pure and simple.”
He was still silent and answered with another pressure of the hand,
longer, more tender, and more passionate.
“The ants come into life and die without knowing man or understanding
him. Still man exists; and why cannot we be so many ants to another
being more man, more god, more angel than we are?”
And still no answer. His hands only answered with increasing
tenderness.
“But speak, my treasure; say something to me.”
Here his obstinately closed lips opened:
“But _Dr. Faust_ has already answered them in divine words to the
_Margaret_ of Goethe.”
“They may be divine words, if you will; but they do not please me at
all. _Faust_ answers one interrogation with another. He answers like
the ancient sybil.”
“And in what other way can a man answer the problem, To be, or not to
be? A dogmatic answer might be an offence to reason, and I hate to
confess I believe in something I do not understand.”
“Pride, pride, always pride; your modern science is entirely leavened
with it.”
“And your faith with superstition.”
“No, my love, I do not wish to force my faith upon you; but believe
something, make a faith for yourself, but do not tell me we shall not
live even after death.”
“Yes, my treasure, I also have my faith. Give me a kiss.”
They kissed each other so long and so warmly that their kiss was the
loudest sound heard in the deep surrounding stillness.
“See, I believe in your love. I believe in the joy you give me. If you
will, I also believe that our souls at this moment have come to our
lips from the very depths of our being and have melted in an ecstasy
of love.”
“Well, and must these poor souls die with the bodies which inclose
them?”
“Ah, who knows?”
“Then you doubt your own doubts?”
“Listen, love; I am going to make a confession; but say nothing of it
to any living soul, for men would laugh at me. For them supreme wisdom
consists in never changing an opinion or turning again to any faith,
although nature changes its course every day, and progress itself is
but a negation of what has happened yesterday. Before knowing you I
believed in nothing, but now the idea that we could not meet again in
heaven is unsupportable, and I hope————”
“My treasure, if you hope you are halfway on the road which leads to
faith.”
“And with you and for you who knows but I may gain it some day. To-day
leave me halfway on the road.”
⁂
She put her arms round his neck and kissed him anew, and with more
length than before.
The kiss, however, this time made no sound, and nothing was heard in
the deep surrounding stillness, but the breeze amongst the palm leaves
and the ebb and flow of the waves on the shore.
_Printed from American Plates_
BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_London & Edinburgh_
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│ Transcriber's Note: │
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│ The original spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been │
│ retained, with the exception of apparent typographical errors │
│ which have been corrected without note. │
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│ Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. │
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│ Italicized words are surrounded by underline characters, _like │
│ this_. │
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│ Other corrections: │
│ • Pages 44, 45 and 97: fonder changed to foudre. (coup de │
│ foudre.) │
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│ • Page 69: The ♂ and ♀ symbols should be reversed. │
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│ • Page 111 footnote 3: Geschlechter changed to Geschlechter. │
│ ("Der Kampf der Geschlechter.) │
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│ • Page 156: chaupette-bleue changed to choupette-bleue (much │
│ less a choupette-bleue.) │
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