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MEDITATION XXI.

THE ART OF RETURNING HOME.

Finding himself incapable of controlling the boiling transports of his
anxiety, many a husband makes the mistake of coming home and rushing
into the presence of his wife, with the object of triumphing over her
weakness, like those bulls of Spain, which, stung by the red
_banderillo_, disembowel with furious horns horses, matadors,
picadors, toreadors and their attendants.

But oh! to enter with a tender gentle mien, like Mascarillo, who
expects a beating and becomes merry as a lark when he finds his master
in a good humor! Well--that is the mark of a wise man!--

"Yes, my darling, I know that in my absence you could have behaved
badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy,
but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your
considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will earn my eternal
gratitude."

Such are the ideas which ought to be expressed by your face and
bearing, but perhaps all the while you say to yourself:

"Probably he has been here!"

Always to bring home a pleasant face, is a rule which admits of no
exception.

But the art of never leaving your house without returning when the
police have revealed to you a conspiracy--to know how to return at the
right time--this is the lesson which is hard to learn. In this matter
everything depends upon tact and penetration. The actual events of
life always transcend anything that is imaginable.

The manner of coming home is to be regulated in accordance with a
number of circumstances. For example:

Lord Catesby was a man of remarkable strength. It happened one day
that he was returning from a fox hunt, to which he had doubtless
promised to go, with some ulterior view, for he rode towards the fence
of his park at a point where, he said, he saw an extremely fine horse.
As he had a passion for horses, he drew near to examine this one close
at hand, There he caught sight of Lady Catesby, to whose rescue it was
certainly time to go, if he were in the slightest degree jealous for
his own honor. He rushed upon the gentleman he saw there, and seizing
him by the belt he hurled him over the fence on to the road side.

"Remember, sir," he said calmly, "it rests with me to decide whether
it well be necessary to address you hereafter and ask for satisfaction
on this spot."

"Very well, my lord; but would you have the goodness to throw over my
horse also?"

But the phlegmatic nobleman had already taken the arm of his wife as
he gravely said:

"I blame you very much, my dear creature, for not having told me that
I was to love you for two. Hereafter every other day I shall love you
for the gentleman yonder, and all other days for myself."

This adventure is regarded in England as one of the best returns home
that were ever known. It is true it consisted in uniting, with
singular felicity, eloquence of deed to that of word.

But the art of re-entering your home, principles of which are nothing
else but natural deductions from the system of politeness and
dissimulation which have been commended in preceding Meditations, is
after all merely to be studied in preparation for the conjugal
catastrophes which we will now consider.



MEDITATION XXII.

OF CATASTROPHES.

The word _Catastrophe_ is a term of literature which signifies the
final climax of a play.

To bring about a catastrophe in the drama which you are playing is a
method of defence which is as easy to undertake as it is certain to
succeed. In advising to employ it, we would not conceal from you its
perils.

The conjugal catastrophe may be compared to one of those high fevers
which either carry off a predisposed subject or completely restore his
health. Thus, when the catastrophe succeeds, it keeps a woman for
years in the prudent realms of virtue.

Moreover, this method is the last of all those which science has been
able to discover up to this present moment.

The massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Sicilian Vespers, the death of
Lucretia, the two embarkations of Napoleon at Frejus are examples of
political catastrophe. It will not be in your power to act on such a
large scale; nevertheless, within their own area, your dramatic
climaxes in conjugal life will not be less effective than these.

But since the art of creating a situation and of transforming it, by
the introduction of natural incidents, constitutes genius; since the
return to virtue of a woman, whose foot has already left some tracks
upon the sweet and gilded sand which mark the pathway of vice, is the
most difficult to bring about of all denouements, and since genius
neither knows it nor teaches it, the practitioner in conjugal laws
feels compelled to confess at the outset that he is incapable of
reducing to definite principles a science which is as changeable as
circumstances, as delusive as opportunity, and as indefinable as
instinct.

If we may use an expression which neither Diderot, d'Alembert nor
Voltaire, in spite of every effort, have been able to engraft on our
language, a conjugal catastrophe _se subodore_ is scented from afar;
so that our only course will be to sketch out imperfectly certain
conjugal situations of an analogous kind, thus imitating the
philosopher of ancient time who, seeking in vain to explain motion,
walked forward in his attempt to comprehend laws which were
incomprehensible.

A husband, in accordance with the principles comprised in our
Meditation on _Police_, will expressly forbid his wife to receive the
visits of a celibate whom he suspects of being her lover, and whom she
has promised never again to see. Some minor scenes of the domestic
interior we leave for matrimonial imaginations to conjure up; a
husband can delineate them much better than we can; he will betake
himself in thought back to those days when delightful longings invited
sincere confidences and when the workings of his policy put into
motion certain adroitly handled machinery.

Let us suppose, in order to make more interesting the natural scene to
which I refer, that you who read are a husband, whose carefully
organized police has made the discovery that your wife, profiting by
the hours devoted by you to a ministerial banquet, to which she
probably procured you an invitation, received at your house M. A----z.

Here we find all the conditions necessary to bring about the finest
possible of conjugal catastrophes.

You return home just in time to find your arrival has coincided with
that of M. A----z, for we would not advise you to have the interval
between acts too long. But in what mood should you enter? Certainly
not in accordance with the rules of the previous Meditation. In a rage
then? Still less should you do that. You should come in with
good-natured carelessness, like an absent-minded man who has forgotten
his purse, the statement which he has drawn up for the minister, his
pocket-handkerchief or his snuff-box.

In that case you will either catch two lovers together, or your wife,
forewarned by the maid, will have hidden the celibate.

Now let us consider these two unique situations.

But first of all we will observe that husbands ought always to be in a
position to strike terror in their homes and ought long before to make
preparations for the matrimonial second of September.

Thus a husband, from the moment that his wife has caused him to
perceive certain _first symptoms_, should never fail to give, time
after time, his personal opinion on the course of conduct to be
pursued by a husband in a great matrimonial crisis.

"As for me," you should say, "I should have no hesitation in killing
the man I caught at my wife's feet."

With regard to the discussion that you will thus give rise to, you
will be led on to aver that the law ought to have given to the
husband, as it did in ancient Rome, the right of life and death over
his children, so that he could slay those who were spurious.

These ferocious opinions, which really do not bind you to anything,
will impress your wife with salutary terror; you will enumerate them
lightly, even laughingly--and say to her, "Certainly, my dear, I would
kill you right gladly. Would you like to be murdered by me?"

A woman cannot help fearing that this pleasantry may some day become a
very serious matter, for in these crimes of impulse there is a certain
proof of love; and then women who know better than any one else how to
say true things laughingly at times suspect their husbands of this
feminine trick.

When a husband surprises his wife engaged in even innocent
conversation with her lover, his face still calm, should produce the
effect mythologically attributed to the celebrated Gorgon.

In order to produce a favorable catastrophe at this juncture, you must
act in accordance with the character of your wife, either play a
pathetic scene a la Diderot, or resort to irony like Cicero, or rush
to your pistols loaded with a blank charge, or even fire them off, if
you think that a serious row is indispensable.

A skillful husband may often gain a great advantage from a scene of
unexaggerated sentimentality. He enters, he sees the lover and
transfixes him with a glance. As soon as the celibate retires, he
falls at the feet of his wife, he declaims a long speech, in which
among other phrases there occurs this:

"Why, my dear Caroline, I have never been able to love you as I
should!"

He weeps, and she weeps, and this tearful catastrophe leaves nothing
to be desired.

We would explain, apropos of the second method by which the
catastrophe may be brought about, what should be the motives which
lead a husband to vary this scene, in accordance with the greater or
less degree of strength which his wife's character possesses.

Let us pursue this subject.

If by good luck it happens that your wife has put her lover in a place
of concealment, the catastrophe will be very much more successful.

Even if the apartment is not arranged according to the principles
prescribed in the Meditation, you will easily discern the place into
which the celibate has vanished, although he be not, like Lord Byron's
Don Juan, bundled up under the cushion of a divan. If by chance your
apartment is in disorder, you ought to have sufficient discernment to
know that there is only one place in which a man could bestow himself.
Finally, if by some devilish inspiration he has made himself so small
that he has squeezed into some unimaginable lurking-place (for we may
expect anything from a celibate), well, either your wife cannot help
casting a glance towards this mysterious spot, or she will pretend to
look in an exactly opposite direction, and then nothing is easier for
a husband than to set a mouse-trap for his wife.

The hiding-place being discovered, you must walk straight up to the
lover. You must meet him face to face!

And now you must endeavor to produce a fine effect. With your face
turned three-quarters towards him, you must raise your head with an
air of superiority. This attitude will enhance immensely the effect
which you aim at producing.

The most essential thing to do at this moment, is to overwhelm the
celibate by some crushing phrase which you have been manufacturing all
the time; when you have thus floored him, you will coldly show him the
door. You will be very polite, but as relentless as the executioner's
axe, and as impassive as the law. This freezing contempt will already
probably have produced a revolution in the mind of your wife. There
must be no shouts, no gesticulations, no excitement. "Men of high
social rank," says a young English author, "never behave like their
inferiors, who cannot lose a fork without sounding the alarm
throughout the whole neighborhood."

When the celibate has gone, you will find yourself alone with your
wife, and then is the time when you must subjugate her forever.

You should therefore stand before her, putting on an air whose
affected calmness betrays the profoundest emotion; then you must
choose from among the following topics, which we have rhetorically
amplified, and which are most congenial to your feelings: "Madame,"
you must say, "I will speak to you neither of your vows, nor of my
love; for you have too much sense and I have too much pride to make it
possible that I should overwhelm you with those execrations, which all
husbands have a right to utter under these circumstances; for the
least of the mistakes that I should make, if I did so, is that I would
be fully justified. I will not now, even if I could, indulge either in
wrath or resentment. It is not I who have been outraged; for I have
too much heart to be frightened by that public opinion which almost
always treats with ridicule and condemnation a husband whose wife has
misbehaved. When I examine my life, I see nothing there that makes
this treachery deserved by me, as it is deserved by many others. I
still love you. I have never been false, I will not say to my duty,
for I have found nothing onerous in adoring you, but not even to those
welcome obligations which sincere feeling imposes upon us both. You
have had all my confidence and you have also had the administration of
my fortune. I have refused you nothing. And now this is the first time
that I have turned to you a face, I will not say stern, but which is
yet reproachful. But let us drop this subject, for it is of no use for
me to defend myself at a moment when you have proved to me with such
energy that there is something lacking in me, and that I am not
intended by nature to accomplish the difficult task of rendering you
happy. But I would ask you, as a friend speaking to a friend, how
could you have the heart to imperil at the same time the lives of
three human creatures: that of the mother of my children, who will
always be sacred to me; that of the head of the family; and finally of
him--who loves--[she perhaps at these words will throw herself at your
feet; you must not permit her to do so; she is unworthy of kneeling
there]. For you no longer love me, Eliza. Well, my poor child [you
must not call her _my poor child_ excepting when the crime has not
been committed]--why deceive ourselves? Why do you not answer me? If
love is extinguished between a married couple, cannot friendship and
confidence still survive? Are we not two companions united in making
the same journey? Can it be said that during the journey the one must
never hold out his hand to the other to raise up a comrade or to
prevent a comrade's fall? But I have perhaps said too much and I am
wounding your pride--Eliza! Eliza!"

Now what the deuce would you expect a woman to answer? Why a
catastrophe naturally follows, without a single word.

In a hundred women there may be found at least a good half dozen of
feeble creatures who under this violent shock return to their husbands
never perhaps again to leave them, like scorched cats that dread the
fire. But this scene is a veritable alexipharmaca, the doses of which
should be measured out by prudent hands.

For certain women of delicate nerves, whose souls are soft and timid,
it would be sufficient to point out the lurking-place where the lover
lies, and say: "M. A----z is there!" [at this point shrug your
shoulders]. "How can you thus run the risk of causing the death of two
worthy people? I am going out; let him escape and do not let this
happen again."

But there are women whose hearts, too violently strained in these
terrible catastrophes, fail them and they die; others whose blood
undergoes a change, and they fall a prey to serious maladies; others
actually go out of their minds. These are examples of women who take
poison or die suddenly--and we do not suppose that you wish the death
of the sinner.

Nevertheless, the most beautiful and impressionable of all the queens
of France, the charming and unfortunate Mary Stuart, after having seen
Rizzio murdered almost in her arms, fell in love, nevertheless, with
the Earl of Bothwell; but she was a queen and queens are abnormal in
disposition.

We will suppose, then, that the woman whose portrait adorns our first
Meditation is a little Mary Stuart, and we will hasten to raise the
curtain for the fifth act in this grand drama entitled _Marriage_.

A conjugal catastrophe may burst out anywhere, and a thousand
incidents which we cannot describe may give it birth. Sometimes it is
a handkerchief, as in _Othello_; or a pair of slippers, as in _Don
Juan_; sometimes it is the mistake of your wife, who cries out--"Dear
Alphonse!" instead of "Dear Adolph!" Sometimes a husband, finding out
that his wife is in debt, will go and call on her chief creditor, and
will take her some morning to his house, as if by chance, in order to
bring about a catastrophe. "Monsieur Josse, you are a jeweler and you
sell your jewels with a readiness which is not equaled by the
readiness of your debtors to pay for them. The countess owes you
thirty thousand francs. If you wish to be paid to-morrow [tradesmen
should always be visited at the end of the month] come to her at noon;
her husband will be in the chamber. Do not attend to any sign which
she may make to impose silence upon you--speak out boldly. I will pay
all."

So that the catastrophe in the science of marriage is what figures are
in arithmetic.



All the principles of higher conjugal philosophy, on which are based
the means of defence outlined in this second part of our book, are
derived from the nature of human sentiments, and we have found them in
different places in the great book of the world. Just as persons of
intellect instinctively apply the laws of taste whose principles they
would find difficulty in formulating, so we have seen numberless
people of deep feeling employing with singular felicity the precepts
which we are about to unfold, yet none of them consciously acted on a
definite system. The sentiments which this situation inspired only
revealed to them incomplete fragments of a vast system; just as the
scientific men of the sixteenth century found that their imperfect
microscopes did not enable them to see all the living organisms, whose
existence had yet been proved to them by the logic of their patient
genius.

We hope that the observations already made in this book, and in those
which follow, will be of a nature to destroy the opinion which
frivolous men maintain, namely that marriage is a sinecure. According
to our view, a husband who gives way to ennui is a heretic, and more
than that, he is a man who lives quite out of sympathy with the
marriage state, of whose importance he has no conception. In this
connection, these Meditations perhaps will reveal to very many
ignorant men the mysteries of a world before which they stand with
open eyes, yet without seeing it.

We hope, moreover, that these principles when well applied will
produce many conversions, and that among the pages that separate this
second part from that entitled _Civil War_ many tears will be shed and
many vows of repentance breathed.

Yes, among the four hundred thousand honest women whom we have so
carefully sifted out from all the European nations, we indulge the
belief that there are a certain number, say three hundred thousand,
who will be sufficiently self-willed, charming, adorable, and
bellicose to raise the standard of _Civil War_.

To arms then, to arms!





THIRD PART



RELATING TO CIVIL WAR.

"Lovely as the seraphs of Klopstock,
Terrible as the devils of Milton."
--DIDEROT.



MEDITATION XXIII.

OF MANIFESTOES.

The Preliminary precepts, by which science has been enabled at this
point to put weapons into the hand of a husband, are few in number; it
is not of so much importance to know whether he will be vanquished, as
to examine whether he can offer any resistance in the conflict.

Meanwhile, we will set up here certain beacons to light up the arena
where a husband is soon to find himself, in alliance with religion and
law, engaged single-handed in a contest with his wife, who is
supported by her native craft and the whole usages of society as her
allies.


LXXXII.
Anything may be expected and anything may be supposed of a woman who
is in love.


LXXXIII.
The actions of a woman who intends to deceive her husband are almost
always the result of study, but never dictated by reason.


LXXXIV.
The greater number of women advance like the fleas, by erratic leaps
and bounds, They owe their escape to the height or depth of their
first ideas, and any interruption of their plans rather favors their
execution. But they operate only within a narrow area which it is easy
for the husband to make still narrower; and if he keeps cool he will
end by extinguishing this piece of living saltpetre.


LXXXV.
A husband should never allow himself to address a single disparaging
remark to his wife, in presence of a third party.


LXXXVI.
The moment a wife decides to break her marriage vow she reckons her
husband as everything or nothing. All defensive operations must start
from this proposition.


LXXXVII.
The life of a woman is either of the head, of the heart, or of
passion. When a woman reaches the age to form an estimate of life, her
husband ought to find out whether the primary cause of her intended
infidelity proceeds from vanity, from sentiment or from temperament.
Temperament may be remedied like disease; sentiment is something in
which the husband may find great opportunities of success; but vanity
is incurable. A woman whose life is of the head may be a terrible
scourge. She combines the faults of a passionate woman with those of
the tender-hearted woman, without having their palliations. She is
destitute alike of pity, love, virtue or sex.


LXXXVIII.
A woman whose life is of the head will strive to inspire her husband
with indifference; the woman whose life is of the heart, with hatred;
the passionate woman, with disgust.


LXXXIX.
A husband never loses anything by appearing to believe in the fidelity
of his wife, by preserving an air of patience and by keeping silence.
Silence especially troubles a woman amazingly.


XC.
To show himself aware of the passion of his wife is the mark of a
fool; but to affect ignorance of all proves that a man has sense, and
this is in fact the only attitude to take. We are taught, moreover,
that everybody in France is sensible.


XCI.
The rock most to be avoided is ridicule.--"At least, let us be
affectionate in public," ought to be the maxim of a married
establishment. For both the married couple to lose honor, esteem,
consideration, respect and all that is worth living for in society, is
to become a nonentity.


These axioms relate to the contest alone. As for the catastrophe,
others will be needed for that.



We have called this crisis _Civil War_ for two reasons; never was a
war more really intestine and at the same time so polite as this war.
But in what point and in what manner does this fatal war break out?
You do not believe that your wife will call out regiments and sound
the trumpet, do you? She will, perhaps, have a commanding officer, but
that is all. And this feeble army corps will be sufficient to destroy
the peace of your establishment.

"You forbid me to see the people that I like!" is an exordium which
has served for a manifesto in most homes. This phrase, with all the
ideas that are concomitant, is oftenest employed by vain and
artificial women.

The most usual manifesto is that which is proclaimed in the conjugal
bed, the principal theatre of war. This subject will be treated in
detail in the Meditation entitled: _Of Various Weapons_, in the
paragraph, _Of Modesty in its Connection with Marriage_.

Certain women of a lymphatic temperament will pretend to have the
spleen and will even feign death, if they can only gain thereby the
benefit of a secret divorce.

But most of them owe their independence to the execution of a plan,
whose effect upon the majority of husbands is unfailing and whose
perfidies we will now reveal.

One of the greatest of human errors springs from the belief that our
honor and our reputation are founded upon our actions, or result from
the approbation which the general conscience bestows upon on conduct.
A man who lives in the world is born to be a slave to public opinion.
Now a private man in France has less opportunity of influencing the
world than his wife, although he has ample occasion for ridiculing it.
Women possess to a marvelous degree the art of giving color by
specious arguments to the recriminations in which they indulge. They
never set up any defence, excepting when they are in the wrong, and in
this proceeding they are pre-eminent, knowing how to oppose arguments
by precedents, proofs by assertions, and thus they very often obtain
victory in minor matters of detail. They see and know with admirable
penetration, when one of them presents to another a weapon which she
herself is forbidden to whet. It is thus that they sometimes lose a
husband without intending it. They apply the match and long afterwards
are terror-stricken at the conflagration.

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