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Honore de Balzac - Analytical Studies

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Analytical Studies




What sentiment of admiration must rise in the soul of a philosopher on
discovering that there is, perhaps, but one single principle in the
world, as there is but one God; and that our ideas and our affections
are subject to the same laws which cause the sun to rise, the flowers
to bloom, the universe to teem with life!

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


THEOREM.

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


In certain human organisms the feelings are dwarfed, as the thought
may be in certain sterile imaginations. Thus, just as some minds have
the faculty of comprehending the connections existing between
different things without formal deduction; and as they have the
faculty of seizing upon each formula separately, without combining
them, or without the power of insight, comparison and expression; so
in the same way, different souls may have more or less imperfect ideas
of the various sentiments. Talent in love, as in every other art,
consists in the power of forming a conception combined with the power
of carrying it out. The world is full of people who sing airs, but who
omit the _ritornello_, who have quarters of an idea, as they have
quarters of sentiment, but who can no more co-ordinate the movements
of their affections than of their thoughts. In a word, they are
incomplete. Unite a fine intelligence with a dwarfed intelligence and
you precipitate a disaster; for it is necessary that equilibrium be
preserved in everything.

We leave to the philosophers of the boudoir or to the sages of the
back parlor to investigate the thousand ways in which men of different
temperaments, intellects, social positions and fortunes disturb this
equilibrium. Meanwhile we will proceed to examine the last cause for
the setting of the honeymoon and the rising of the Red-moon.

There is in life one principle more potent than life itself. It is a
movement whose celerity springs from an unknown motive power. Man is
no more acquainted with the secret of this revolution than the earth
is aware of that which causes her rotation. A certain something, which
I gladly call the current of life, bears along our choicest thoughts,
makes use of most people's will and carries us on in spite of
ourselves. Thus, a man of common-sense, who never fails to pay his
bills, if he is a merchant, a man who has been able to escape death,
or what perhaps is more trying, sickness, by the observation of a
certain easy but daily regimen, is completely and duly nailed up
between the four planks of his coffin, after having said every
evening: "Dear me! to-morrow I will not forget my pills!" How are we
to explain this magic spell which rules all the affairs of life? Do
men submit to it from a want of energy? Men who have the strongest
wills are subject to it. Is it default of memory? People who possess
this faculty in the highest degree yield to its fascination.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOURTH EPOCH.--The wig is so skillfully put on that you deceive every
one who does not know you.

The wig takes up all your attention, and _amour-propre_ makes you
every morning as busy as the most skillful hairdresser.

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

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

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

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

"Madame," I answered, "when a man falls into a mood of indifference
with regard to his wig, he is,--he is--what your husband probably is
not."

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

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

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

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

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

"Madame, in these days a minister is not hanged, as once upon a time,
for saying yes or no; a Chateaubriand would scarcely torture Francoise
de Foix, and we wear no longer at our side a long sword ready to
avenge an insult. Now in a century when civilization has made such
rapid progress, when we can learn a science in twenty-four lessons,
everything must follow this race after perfection. We can no longer
speak the manly, rude, coarse language of our ancestors. The age in
which are fabricated such fine, such brilliant stuffs, such elegant
furniture, and when are made such rich porcelains, must needs be the
age of periphrase and circumlocution. We must try, therefore, to coin
a new word in place of the comic expression which Moliere used; since
the language of this great man, as a contemporary author has said, is
too free for ladies who find gauze too thick for their garments. But
people of the world know, as well as the learned, how the Greeks had
an innate taste for mysteries. That poetic nation knew well how to
invest with the tints of fable the antique traditions of their
history. At the voice of their rhapsodists together with their poets
and romancers, kings became gods and their adventures of gallantry
were transformed into immortal allegories. According to M. Chompre,
licentiate in law, the classic author of the _Dictionary of
Mythology_, the labyrinth was 'an enclosure planted with trees and
adorned with buildings arranged in such a way that when a young man
once entered, he could no more find his way out.' Here and there
flowery thickets were presented to his view, but in the midst of a
multitude of alleys, which crossed and recrossed his path and bore the
appearance of a uniform passage, among the briars, rocks and thorns,
the patient found himself in combat with an animal called the
Minotaur.

"Now, madame, if you will allow me the honor of calling to your mind
the fact that the Minotaur was of all known beasts that which
Mythology distinguishes as the most dangerous; that in order to save
themselves from his ravages, the Athenians were bound to deliver to
him, every single year, fifty virgins; you will perhaps escape the
error of good M. Chompre, who saw in the labyrinth nothing but an
English garden; and you will recognize in this ingenious fable a
refined allegory, or we may better say a faithful and fearful image of
the dangers of marriage. The paintings recently discovered at
Herculaneum have served to confirm this opinion. And, as a matter of
fact, learned men have for a long time believed, in accordance with
the writings of certain authors, that the Minotaur was an animal
half-man, half-bull; but the fifth panel of ancient paintings at
Herculaneum represents to us this allegorical monster with a body
entirely human; and, to take away all vestige of doubt, he lies
crushed at the feet of Theseus. Now, my dear madame, why should we not
ask Mythology to come and rescue us from that hypocrisy which is
gaining ground with us and hinders us from laughing as our fathers
laughed? And thus, since in the world a young lady does not very well
know how to spread the veil under which an honest woman hides her
behavior, in a contingency which our grandfathers would have roughly
explained by a single word, you, like a crowd of beautiful but
prevaricating ladies, you content yourselves with saying, 'Ah! yes,
she is very amiable, but,'--but what?--'but she is often very
inconsistent--.' I have for a long time tried to find out the meaning
of this last word, and, above all, the figure of rhetoric by which you
make it express the opposite of that which it signifies; but all my
researches have been in vain. Vert-Vert used the word last, and was
unfortunately addressed to the innocent nuns whose infidelities did
not in any way infringe the honor of the men. When a woman is
_inconsistent_ the husband must be, according to me, _minotaurized_.
If the minotaurized man is a fine fellow, if he enjoys a certain
esteem,--and many husbands really deserve to be pitied,--then in
speaking of him, you say in a pathetic voice, 'M. A--- is a very
estimable man, his wife is exceedingly pretty, but they say he is not
happy in his domestic relations.' Thus, madame, the estimable man who
is unhappy in his domestic relations, the man who has an inconsistent
wife, or the husband who is minotaurized are simply husbands as they
appear in Moliere. Well, then, O goddess of modern taste, do not these
expressions seem to you characterized by a transparency chaste enough
for anybody?"

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

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

As for you, the more numerous and the more real creatures who read my
book, if there are any among you who make common cause with my
conjugal champion, I give you notice that you will not at once become
unhappy in your domestic relations. A man arrives at this conjugal
condition not suddenly, but insensibly and by degrees. Many husbands
have even remained unfortunate in their domestic relations during
their whole life and have never known it. This domestic revolution
develops itself in accordance with fixed rules; for the revolutions of
the honeymoon are as regular as the phases of the moon in heaven, and
are the same in every married house. Have we not proved that moral
nature, like physical nature, has its laws?

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

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

In the situation in which both of you find yourselves, there is no
woman, even the most virtuous, who would not be found worthy of a
_grande passion_, who has not dreamed of it, and who does not believe
that it is easily kindled, for there is always found a certain
_amour-propre_ ready to reinforce that conquered enemy--a jaded wife.

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

And then, before any lover presents himself, a wife discusses with
herself the legality of the act; she enters into a conflict with her
duties, with the law, with religion and with the secret desires of a
nature which knows no check-rein excepting that which she places upon
herself. And then commences for you a condition of affairs totally
new; then you receive the first intimation which nature, that good and
indulgent mother, always gives to the creatures who are exposed to any
danger. Nature has put a bell on the neck of the Minotaur, as on the
tail of that frightful snake which is the terror of travelers. And
then appear in your wife what we will call the first symptoms, and woe
to him who does not know how to contend with them. Those who in
reading our book will remember that they saw those symptoms in their
own domestic life can pass to the conclusion of this work, where they
will find how they may gain consolation.

The situation referred to, in which a married couple bind themselves
for a longer or a shorter time, is the point from which our work
starts, as it is the end at which our observations stop. A man of
intelligence should know how to recognize the mysterious indications,
the obscure signs and the involuntary revelation which a wife
unwittingly exhibits; for the next Meditation will doubtless indicate
the more evident of the manifestations to neophytes in the sublime
science of marriage.



MEDITATION VIII.

OF THE FIRST SYMPTOMS.

When your wife reaches that crisis in which we have left her, you
yourself are wrapped in a pleasant and unsuspicious security. You have
so often seen the sun that you begin to think it is shining over
everybody. You therefore give no longer that attention to the least
action of your wife, which was impelled by your first outburst of
passion.

This indolence prevents many husbands from perceiving the symptoms
which, in their wives, herald the first storm; and this disposition of
mind has resulted in the minotaurization of more husbands than have
either opportunity, carriages, sofas and apartments in town.

The feeling of indifference in the presence of danger is to some
degree justified by the apparent tranquillity which surrounds you. The
conspiracy which is formed against you by our million of hungry
celibates seems to be unanimous in its advance. Although all are
enemies of each other and know each other well, a sort of instinct
forces them into co-operation.

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

The tact with which celibates discover the moment when the breeze
begins to rise in a new home can only be compared to the indifference
of those husbands for whom the Red-moon rises. There is, even in
intrigue, a moment of ripeness which must be waited for. The great man
is he who anticipates the outcome of certain circumstances. Men of
fifty-two, whom we have represented as being so dangerous, know very
well, for example, that any man who offers himself as lover to a woman
and is haughtily rejected, will be received with open arms three
months afterwards. But it may be truly said that in general married
people in betraying their indifference towards each other show the
same naivete with which they first betrayed their love. At the time
when you are traversing with madame the ravishing fields of the
seventh heaven--where according to their temperament, newly married
people remain encamped for a longer or shorter time, as the preceding
Meditation has proved--you go little or not at all into society. Happy
as you are in your home, if you do go abroad, it will be for the
purpose of making up a choice party and visiting the theatre, the
country, etc. From the moment you the newly wedded make your
appearance in the world again, you and your bride together, or
separately, and are seen to be attentive to each other at balls, at
parties, at all the empty amusements created to escape the void of an
unsatisfied heart, the celibates discern that your wife comes there in
search of distraction; her home, her husband are therefore wearisome
to her.

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

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

Never has she seemed more anxious to please you. She will seek, as
much as possible, to allay the secret wounds which she thinks about
inflicting upon your married bliss, she will do so by those little
attentions which induce you to believe in the eternity of her love;
hence the proverb, "Happy as a fool." But in accordance with the
character of women, they either despise their own husbands from the
very fact that they find no difficulty in deceiving them; or they hate
them when they find themselves circumvented by them; or they fall into
a condition of indifference towards them, which is a thousand times
worse than hatred. In this emergency, the first thing which may be
diagnosed in a woman is a decided oddness of behavior. A woman loves
to be saved from herself, to escape her conscience, but without the
eagerness shown in this connection by wives who are thoroughly
unhappy. She dresses herself with especial care, in order, she will
tell you, to flatter your _amour-propre_ by drawing all eyes upon her
in the midst of parties and public entertainments.

When she returns to the bosom of her stupid home you will see that, at
times, she is gloomy and thoughtful, then suddenly laughing and gay as
if beside herself; or assuming the serious expression of a German when
he advances to the fight. Such varying moods always indicate the
terrible doubt and hesitation to which we have already referred. There
are women who read romances in order to feast upon the images of love
cleverly depicted and always varied, of love crowned yet triumphant;
or in order to familiarize themselves in thought with the perils of an
intrigue.

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

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

She views with indifference, appreciated by you alone, all the details
of married happiness. This sort of happiness, perhaps, has never been
very agreeable to her and moreover it is always with her. She knows it
well, she has analyzed it; and what slight but terrible evidence comes
from these circumstances to prove to an intelligent husband that this
frail creature argues and reasons, instead of being carried away on
the tempest of passion.


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


And now will burst forth from her those pleasantries at which you will
be the first to laugh and those reflections which will startle you by
their profundity; now you will see sudden changes of mood and the
caprices of a mind which hesitates. At times she will exhibit extreme
tenderness, as if she repented of her thoughts and her projects;
sometimes she will be sullen and at cross-purposes with you; in a
word, she will fulfill the _varium et mutabile femina_ which we
hitherto have had the folly to attribute to the feminine temperament.
Diderot, in his desire to explain the mutations almost atmospheric in
the behavior of women, has even gone so far as to make them the
offspring of what he calls _la bete feroce_; but we never see these
whims in a woman who is happy.

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

In the midst of this solemn premeditation, which tends, as Madame de
Stael says, to bring more poetry into life, some women, in whom
virtuous mothers either from considerations of worldly advantage of
duty or sentiment, or through sheer hypocrisy, have inculcated
steadfast principles, take the overwhelming fancies by which they are
assailed for suggestions of the devil; and you will see them therefore
trotting regularly to mass, to midday offices, even to vespers. This
false devotion exhibits itself, first of all in the shape of pretty
books of devotion in a costly binding, by the aid of which these dear
sinners attempt in vain to fulfill the duties imposed by religion, and
long neglected for the pleasures of marriage.

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

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

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

At the time when both of you are immersed in the illusive delights of
the honeymoon, your wife, as one devoted to you, would constantly
carry out your will. She was happy in the power of showing the ready
will, which both of you mistook for love, and she would have liked for
you to have asked her to walk on the edge of the roof, and
immediately, nimble as a squirrel, she would have run over the tiles.
In a word, she found an ineffable delight in sacrificing to you that
_ego_ which made her a being distinct from yours. She had identified
herself with your nature and was obedient to that vow of the heart,
_Una caro_.

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

This system is founded upon what we may call the dignity of the
married woman. The first effect of this system is to mingle with your
pleasures a certain reserve and a certain lukewarmness, of which you
are the sole judge.

According to the greater or lesser violence of your sensual passion,
you have perhaps discerned some of those twenty-two pleasures which in
other times created in Greece twenty-two kinds of courtesans, devoted
especially to these delicate branches of the same art. Ignorant and
simple, curious and full of hope, your young wife may have taken some
degrees in this science as rare as it is unknown, and which we
especially commend to the attention of the future author of
_Physiology of Pleasure_.

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

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