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Honore de Balzac - Analytical Studies

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Analytical Studies





Or this:

"The women who love you, my dear sir, are very unhappy in hating you
so, when you are not with them: take care, for the hatred which exists
during your absence, may possibly encroach upon the hours you spend in
their company."


Or this:

"You traitorous Chodoreille, what were you doing yesterday on the
boulevard with a woman hanging on your arm? If it was your wife,
accept my compliments of condolence upon her absent charms: she has
doubtless deposited them at the pawnbroker's, and the ticket to redeem
them with is lost."


Four notes emanating from the grisette, the lady, the pretentious
woman in middle life, and the actress, among whom Adolphe has chosen
his _belle_ (according to the Fischtaminellian vocabulary).

Or else Caroline, taken veiled by Ferdinand to Ranelagh Garden, sees
with her own eyes Adolphe abandoning himself furiously to the polka,
holding one of the ladies of honor to Queen Pomare in his arms; or
else, again, Adolphe has for the seventh time, made a mistake in the
name, and called his wife Juliette, Charlotte or Lisa: or, a grocer or
restaurateur sends to the house, during Adolphe's absence, certain
damning bills which fall into Caroline's hands.


PAPERS RELATING TO CHAUMONTEL'S AFFAIR.

(Private Tables Served.)

M. Adolphe to Perrault,

To 1 Pate de Foie Gras delivered at Madame
Schontz's, the 6th of January, fr. 22.50
Six bottle of assorted wines, 70.00
To one special breakfast delivered at Congress
Hotel, the 11th of February, at No. 21----
Stipulated price, 100.00
______

Total, Francs, 192.50


Caroline examines the dates and remembers them as appointments made
for business connected with Chaumontel's affair. Adolphe had
designated the sixth of January as the day fixed for a meeting at
which the creditors in Chaumontel's affair were to receive the sums
due them. On the eleventh of February he had an appointment with the
notary, in order to sign a receipt relative to Chaumontel's affair.

Or else--but an attempt to mention all the chances of discovery would
be the undertaking of a madman.

Every woman will remember to herself how the bandage with which her
eyes were bound fell off: how, after many doubts, and agonies of
heart, she made up her mind to have a final quarrel for the simple
purpose of finishing the romance, putting the seal to the book,
stipulating for her independence, or beginning life over again.

Some women are fortunate enough to have anticipated their husbands,
and they then have the quarrel as a sort of justification.

Nervous women give way to a burst of passion and commit acts of
violence.

Women of mild temper assume a decided tone which appalls the most
intrepid husbands. Those who have no vengeance ready shed a great many
tears.

Those who love you forgive you. Ah, they conceive so readily, like the
woman called "Ma berline," that their Adolphe must be loved by the
women of France, that they are rejoiced to possess, legally, a man
about whom everybody goes crazy.

Certain women with lips tight shut like a vise, with a muddy
complexion and thin arms, treat themselves to the malicious pleasure
of promenading their Adolphe through the quagmire of falsehood and
contradiction: they question him (see _Troubles within Troubles_),
like a magistrate examining a criminal, reserving the spiteful
enjoyment of crushing his denials by positive proof at a decisive
moment. Generally, in this supreme scene of conjugal life, the fair
sex is the executioner, while, in the contrary case, man is the
assassin.

This is the way of it: This last quarrel (you shall know why the
author has called it the _last_), is always terminated by a solemn,
sacred promise, made by scrupulous, noble, or simply intelligent women
(that is to say, by all women), and which we give here in its grandest
form.

"Enough, Adolphe! We love each other no more; you have deceived me,
and I shall never forget it. I may forgive it, but I can never forget
it."

Women represent themselves as implacable only to render their
forgiveness charming: they have anticipated God.

"We have now to live in common like two friends," continues Caroline.
"Well, let us live like two comrades, two brothers, I do not wish to
make your life intolerable, and I never again will speak to you of
what has happened--"

Adolphe gives Caroline his hand: she takes it, and shakes it in the
English style. Adolphe thanks Caroline, and catches a glimpse of
bliss: he has converted his wife into a sister, and hopes to be a
bachelor again.

The next day Caroline indulges in a very witty allusion (Adolphe
cannot help laughing at it) to Chaumontel's affair. In society she
makes general remarks which, to Adolphe, are very particular remarks,
about their last quarrel.

At the end of a fortnight a day never passes without Caroline's
recalling their last quarrel by saying: "It was the day when I found
Chaumontel's bill in your pocket:" or "it happened since our last
quarrel:" or, "it was the day when, for the first time, I had a clear
idea of life," etc. She assassinates Adolphe, she martyrizes him! In
society she gives utterance to terrible things.

"We are happy, my dear [to a lady], when we love each other no longer:
it's then that we learn how to make ourselves beloved," and she looks
at Ferdinand.

In short, the last quarrel never comes to an end, and from this fact
flows the following axiom:


Axiom.--Putting yourself in the wrong with your lawful wife, is
solving the problem of Perpetual Motion.



A SIGNAL FAILURE.

Women, and especially married women, stick ideas into their brain-pan
precisely as they stick pins into a pincushion, and the devil himself,
--do you mind?--could not get them out: they reserve to themselves the
exclusive right of sticking them in, pulling them out, and sticking
them in again.

Caroline is riding home one evening from Madame Foullepointe's in a
violent state of jealousy and ambition.

Madame Foullepointe, the lioness--but this word requires an
explanation. It is a fashionable neologism, and gives expression to
certain rather meagre ideas relative to our present society: you must
use it, if you want to describe a woman who is all the rage. This
lioness rides on horseback every day, and Caroline has taken it into
her head to learn to ride also.

Observe that in this conjugal phase, Adolphe and Caroline are in the
season which we have denominated _A Household Revolution_, and that
they have had two or three _Last Quarrels_.

"Adolphe," she says, "do you want to do me a favor?"

"Of course."

"Won't you refuse?"

"If your request is reasonable, I am willing--"

"Ah, already--that's a true husband's word--if--"

"Come, what is it?"

"I want to learn to ride on horseback."

"Now, is it a possible thing, Caroline?"

Caroline looks out of the window, and tries to wipe away a dry tear.

"Listen," resumes Adolphe; "I cannot let you go alone to the
riding-school; and I cannot go with you while business gives me the
annoyance it does now. What's the matter? I think I have given you
unanswerable reasons."

Adolphe foresees the hiring of a stable, the purchase of a pony, the
introduction of a groom and of a servant's horse into the
establishment--in short, all the nuisance of female lionization.

When a man gives a woman reasons instead of giving her what she wants
--well, few men have ventured to descend into that small abyss called
the heart, to test the power of the tempest that suddenly bursts forth
there.

"Reasons! If you want reasons, here they are!" exclaims Caroline. "I
am your wife: you don't seem to care to please me any more. And as to
the expenses, you greatly overrate them, my dear."

Women have as many inflections of voice to pronounce these words, _My
dear_, as the Italians have to say _Amico_. I have counted twenty-nine
which express only various degrees of hatred.

"Well, you'll see," resumes Caroline, "I shall be sick, and you will
pay the apothecary and the doctor as much as the price of a horse. I
shall be walled up here at home, and that's all you want. I asked the
favor of you, though I was sure of a refusal: I only wanted to know
how you would go to work to give it."

"But, Caroline--"

"Leave me alone at the riding-school!" she continues without
listening. "Is that a reason? Can't I go with Madame de Fischtaminel?
Madame de Fischtaminel is learning to ride on horseback, and I don't
imagine that Monsieur de Fischtaminel goes with her."

"But, Caroline--"

"I am delighted with your solicitude. You think a great deal of me,
really. Monsieur de Fischtaminel has more confidence in his wife, than
you have in yours. He does not go with her, not he! Perhaps it's on
account of this confidence that you don't want me at the school, where
I might see your goings on with the fair Fischtaminel."

Adolphe tries to hide his vexation at this torrent of words, which
begins when they are still half way from home, and has no sea to empty
into. When Caroline is in her room, she goes on in the same way.

"You see that if reasons could restore my health or prevent me from
desiring a kind of exercise pointed out by nature herself, I should
not be in want of reasons, and that I know all the reasons that there
are, and that I went over with the reasons before I spoke to you."

This, ladies, may with the more truth be called the prologue to the
conjugal drama, from the fact that it is vigorously delivered,
embellished with a commentary of gestures, ornamented with glances and
all the other vignettes with which you usually illustrate such
masterpieces.

Caroline, when she has once planted in Adolphe's heart the
apprehension of a scene of constantly reiterated demands, feels her
hatred for his control largely increase. Madame pouts, and she pouts
so fiercely, that Adolphe is forced to notice it, on pain of very
disagreeable consequences, for all is over, be sure of that, between
two beings married by the mayor, or even at Gretna Green, when one of
them no longer notices the sulkings of the other.


Axiom.--A sulk that has struck in is a deadly poison.


It was to prevent this suicide of love that our ingenious France
invented boudoirs. Women could not well have Virgil's willows in the
economy of our modern dwellings. On the downfall of oratories, these
little cubbies become boudoirs.

This conjugal drama has three acts. The act of the prologue is already
played. Then comes the act of false coquetry: one of those in which
French women have the most success.

Adolphe is walking about the room, divesting himself of his apparel,
and the man thus engaged, divests himself of his strength as well as
of his clothing. To every man of forty, this axiom will appear
profoundly just:


Axiom.--The ideas of a man who has taken his boots and his suspenders
off, are no longer those of a man who is still sporting these two
tyrants of the mind.


Take notice that this is only an axiom in wedded life. In morals, it
is what we call a relative theorem.

Caroline watches, like a jockey on the race course, the moment when
she can distance her adversary. She makes her preparations to be
irresistibly fascinating to Adolphe.

Women possess a power of mimicking pudicity, a knowledge of secrets
which might be those of a frightened dove, a particular register for
singing, like Isabella, in the fourth act of _Robert le Diable: "Grace
pour toi! Grace pour moi!"_ which leave jockeys and horse trainers
whole miles behind. As usual, the _Diable_ succumbs. It is the eternal
history, the grand Christian mystery of the bruised serpent, of the
delivered woman becoming the great social force, as the Fourierists
say. It is especially in this that the difference between the Oriental
slave and the Occidental wife appears.

Upon the conjugal pillow, the second act ends by a number of
onomatopes, all of them favorable to peace. Adolphe, precisely like
children in the presence of a slice of bread and molasses, promises
everything that Caroline wants.


THIRD ACT. As the curtain rises, the stage represents a chamber in a
state of extreme disorder. Adolphe, in his dressing gown, tries to go
out furtively and without waking Caroline, who is sleeping profoundly,
and finally does go out.

Caroline, exceedingly happy, gets up, consults her mirror, and makes
inquiries about breakfast. An hour afterward, when she is ready she
learns that breakfast is served.

"Tell monsieur."

"Madame, he is in the little parlor."

"What a nice man he is," she says, going up to Adolphe, and talking
the babyish, caressing language of the honey-moon.

"What for, pray?"

"Why, to let his little Liline ride the horsey."


OBSERVATION. During the honey-moon, some few married couples,--very
young ones,--make use of languages, which, in ancient days, Aristotle
classified and defined. (See his Pedagogy.) Thus they are perpetually
using such terminations as _lala_, _nana_, _coachy-poachy_, just as
mothers and nurses use them to babies. This is one of the secret
reasons, discussed and recognized in big quartos by the Germans, which
determined the Cabires, the creators of the Greek mythology, to
represent Love as a child. There are other reasons very well known to
women, the principal of which is, that, in their opinion, love in men
is always _small_.


"Where did you get that idea, my sweet? You must have dreamed it!"

"What!"

Caroline stands stark still: she opens wide her eyes which are already
considerably widened by amazement. Being inwardly epileptic, she says
not a word: she merely gazes at Adolphe. Under the satanic fires of
their gaze, Adolphe turns half way round toward the dining-room; but
he asks himself whether it would not be well to let Caroline take one
lesson, and to tip the wink to the riding-master, to disgust her with
equestrianism by the harshness of his style of instruction.

There is nothing so terrible as an actress who reckons upon a success,
and who _fait four_.

In the language of the stage, to _faire four_ is to play to a
wretchedly thin house, or to obtain not the slightest applause. It is
taking great pains for nothing, in short a _signal failure_.

This petty trouble--it is very petty--is reproduced in a thousand ways
in married life, when the honey-moon is over, and when the wife has no
personal fortune.

In spite of the author's repugnance to inserting anecdotes in an
exclusively aphoristic work, the tissue of which will bear nothing but
the most delicate and subtle observations,--from the nature of the
subject at least,--it seems to him necessary to illustrate this page
by an incident narrated by one of our first physicians. This
repetition of the subject involves a rule of conduct very much in use
with the doctors of Paris.

A certain husband was in our Adolphe's situation. His Caroline, having
once made a signal failure, was determined to conquer, for Caroline
often does conquer! (See _The Physiology of Marriage_, Meditation
XXVI, Paragraph _Nerves_.) She had been lying about on the sofas for
two months, getting up at noon, taking no part in the amusements of
the city. She would not go to the theatre,--oh, the disgusting
atmosphere!--the lights, above all, the lights! Then the bustle,
coming out, going in, the music,--it might be fatal, it's so terribly
exciting!

She would not go on excursions to the country, oh, certainly it was
her desire to do so!--but she would like (desiderata) a carriage of
her own, horses of her own--her husband would not give her an
equipage. And as to going in hacks, in hired conveyances, the bare
thought gave her a rising at the stomach!

She would not have any cooking--the smell of the meats produced a
sudden nausea. She drank innumerable drugs that her maid never saw her
take.

In short, she expended large amounts of time and money in attitudes,
privations, effects, pearl-white to give her the pallor of a corpse,
machinery, and the like, precisely as when the manager of a theatre
spreads rumors about a piece gotten up in a style of Oriental
magnificence, without regard to expense!

This couple had got so far as to believe that even a journey to the
springs, to Ems, to Hombourg, to Carlsbad, would hardly cure the
invalid: but madame would not budge, unless she could go in her own
carriage. Always that carriage!

Adolphe held out, and would not yield.

Caroline, who was a woman of great sagacity, admitted that her husband
was right.

"Adolphe is right," she said to her friends, "it is I who am
unreasonable: he can not, he ought not, have a carriage yet: men know
better than we do the situation of their business."

At times Adolphe was perfectly furious! Women have ways about them
that demand the justice of Tophet itself. Finally, during the third
month, he met one of his school friends, a lieutenant in the corps of
physicians, modest as all young doctors are: he had had his epaulettes
one day only, and could give the order to fire!

"For a young woman, a young doctor," said our Adolphe to himself.

And he proposed to the future Bianchon to visit his wife and tell him
the truth about her condition.

"My dear, it is time that you should have a physician," said Adolphe
that evening to his wife, "and here is the best for a pretty woman."

The novice makes a conscientious examination, questions madame, feels
her pulse discreetly, inquires into the slightest symptoms, and, at
the end, while conversing, allows a smile, an expression, which, if
not ironical, are extremely incredulous, to play involuntarily upon
his lips, and his lips are quite in sympathy with his eyes. He
prescribes some insignificant remedy, and insists upon its importance,
promising to call again to observe its effect. In the ante-chamber,
thinking himself alone with his school-mate, he indulges in an
inexpressible shrug of the shoulders.

"There's nothing the matter with your wife, my boy," he says: "she is
trifling with both you and me."

"Well, I thought so."

"But if she continues the joke, she will make herself sick in earnest:
I am too sincerely your friend to enter into such a speculation, for I
am determined that there shall be an honest man beneath the physician,
in me--"

"My wife wants a carriage."

As in the _Solo on the Hearse_, this Caroline listened at the door.

Even at the present day, the young doctor is obliged to clear his path
of the calumnies which this charming woman is continually throwing
into it: and for the sake of a quiet life, he has been obliged to
confess his little error--a young man's error--and to mention his
enemy by name, in order to close her lips.



THE CHESTNUTS IN THE FIRE.

No one can tell how many shades and gradations there are in
misfortune, for everything depends upon the character of the
individual, upon the force of the imagination, upon the strength of
the nerves. If it is impossible to catch these so variable shades, we
may at least point out the most striking colors, and the principal
attendant incidents. The author has therefore reserved this petty
trouble for the last, for it is the only one that is at once comic and
disastrous.

The author flatters himself that he has mentioned the principal
examples. Thus, women who have arrived safely at the haven, the happy
age of forty, the period when they are delivered from scandal,
calumny, suspicion, when their liberty begins: these women will
certainly do him the justice to state that all the critical situations
of a family are pointed out or represented in this book.

Caroline has her Chaumontel's affair. She has learned how to induce
Adolphe to go out unexpectedly, and has an understanding with Madame
de Fischtaminel.

In every household, within a given time, ladies like Madame de
Fischtaminel become Caroline's main resource.

Caroline pets Madame de Fischtaminel with all the tenderness that the
African army is now bestowing upon Abd-el-Kader: she is as solicitous
in her behalf as a physician is anxious to avoid curing a rich
hypochondriac. Between the two, Caroline and Madame de Fischtaminel
invent occupations for dear Adolphe, when neither of them desire the
presence of that demigod among their penates. Madame de Fischtaminel
and Caroline, who have become, through the efforts of Madame
Foullepointe, the best friends in the world, have even gone so far as
to learn and employ that feminine free-masonry, the rites of which
cannot be made familiar by any possible initiation.

If Caroline writes the following little note to Madame de
Fischtaminel:


"Dearest Angel:

"You will probably see Adolphe to-morrow, but do not keep him too
long, for I want to go to ride with him at five: but if you are
desirous of taking him to ride yourself, do so and I will take him up.
You ought to teach me your secret for entertaining used-up people as
you do."


Madame de Fischtaminel says to herself: "Gracious! So I shall have
that fellow on my hands to-morrow from twelve o'clock to five."


Axiom.--Men do not always know a woman's positive request when they
see it; but another woman never mistakes it: she does the contrary.


Those sweet little beings called women, and especially Parisian women,
are the prettiest jewels that social industry has invented. Those who
do not adore them, those who do not feel a constant jubilation at
seeing them laying their plots while braiding their hair, creating
special idioms for themselves and constructing with their slender
fingers machines strong enough to destroy the most powerful fortunes,
must be wanting in a positive sense.

On one occasion Caroline takes the most minute precautions. She writes
the day before to Madame Foullepointe to go to St. Maur with Adolphe,
to look at a piece of property for sale there. Adolphe would go to
breakfast with her. She aids Adolphe in dressing. She twits him with
the care he bestows upon his toilet, and asks absurd questions about
Madame Foullepointe.

"She's real nice, and I think she is quite tired of Charles: you'll
inscribe her yet upon your catalogue, you old Don Juan: but you won't
have any further need of Chaumontel's affair; I'm no longer jealous,
you've got a passport. Do you like that better than being adored?
Monster, observe how considerate I am."

So soon as her husband has gone, Caroline, who had not omitted, the
previous evening, to write to Ferdinand to come to breakfast with her,
equips herself in a costume which, in that charming eighteenth century
so calumniated by republicans, humanitarians and idiots, women of
quality called their fighting-dress.

Caroline has taken care of everything. Love is the first house servant
in the world, so the table is set with positively diabolic coquetry.
There is the white damask cloth, the little blue service, the silver
gilt urn, the chiseled milk pitcher, and flowers all round!

If it is winter, she has got some grapes, and has rummaged the cellar
for the very best old wine. The rolls are from the most famous
baker's. The succulent dishes, the _pate de foie gras_, the whole of
this elegant entertainment, would have made the author of the
Glutton's Almanac neigh with impatience: it would make a note-shaver
smile, and tell a professor of the old University what the matter in
hand is.

Everything is prepared. Caroline has been ready since the night
before: she contemplates her work. Justine sighs and arranges the
furniture. Caroline picks off the yellow leaves of the plants in the
windows. A woman, in these cases, disguises what we may call the
prancings of the heart, by those meaningless occupations in which the
fingers have all the grip of pincers, when the pink nails burn, and
when this unspoken exclamation rasps the throat: "He hasn't come yet!"

What a blow is this announcement by Justine: "Madame, here's a
letter!"

A letter in place of Ferdinand! How does she ever open it? What ages
of life slip by as she unfolds it! Women know this by experience! As
to men, when they are in such maddening passes, they murder their
shirt-frills.

"Justine, Monsieur Ferdinand is ill!" exclaims Caroline. "Send for a
carriage."

As Justine goes down stairs, Adolphe comes up.

"My poor mistress!" observes Justine. "I guess she won't want the
carriage now."

"Oh my! Where have you come from?" cries Caroline, on seeing Adolphe
standing in ecstasy before her voluptuous breakfast.

Adolphe, whose wife long since gave up treating _him_ to such charming
banquets, does not answer. But he guesses what it all means, as he
sees the cloth inscribed with the delightful ideas which Madame de
Fischtaminel or the syndic of Chaumontel's affair have often inscribed
for him upon tables quite as elegant.

"Whom are you expecting?" he asks in his turn.

"Who could it be, except Ferdinand?" replies Caroline.

"And is he keeping you waiting?"

"He is sick, poor fellow."

A quizzical idea enters Adolphe's head, and he replies, winking with
one eye only: "I have just seen him."

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