Honore de Balzac - The Physiology of Marriage, Complete

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"But, monsieur," I said, interrupting him, "while I perfectly agree
with you on this last point, the question remains, how will you escape
giving an answer to the just demands of your wife?"

"Sir" he replied, "I shall do--I shall answer as the government
answers, that is, those governments which are not so stupid as the
opposition would make out to their constituents. I shall begin by
solemnly interdicting any arrangement, by virtue of which my wife will
be declared entirely free. I fully recognize her right to go wherever
it seems good to her, to write to whom she chooses, and to receive
letters, the contents of which I do not know. My wife shall have all
the rights that belong to an English Parliament; I shall let her talk
as much as she likes, discuss and propose strong and energetic
measures, but without the power to put them into execution, and then
after that--well, we shall see!"

"By St. Joseph!" said I to myself, "Here is a man who understands the
science of marriage as well as I myself do. And then, you will see,
sir," I answered aloud, in order to obtain from him the fullest
revelation of his experience; "you will see, some fine morning, that
you are as big a fool as the next man."

"Sir," he gravely replied, "allow me to finish what I was saying. Here
is what the great politicians call a theory, but in practice they can
make that theory vanish in smoke; and ministers possess in a greater
degree than even the lawyers of Normandy, the art of making fact yield
to fancy. M. de Metternich and M. de Pilat, men of the highest
authority, have been for a long time asking each other whether Europe
is in its right senses, whether it is dreaming, whether it knows
whither it is going, whether it has ever exercised its reason, a thing
impossible on the part of the masses, of nations and of women. M. de
Metternich and M. de Pilat are terrified to see this age carried away
by a passion for constitutions, as the preceding age was by the
passion for philosophy, as that of Luther was for a reform of abuses
in the Roman religion; for it truly seems as if different generations
of men were like those conspirators whose actions are directed to the
same end, as soon as the watchword has been given them. But their
alarm is a mistake, and it is on this point alone that I condemn them,
for they are right in their wish to enjoy power without permitting the
middle class to come on a fixed day from the depth of each of their
six kingdoms, to torment them. How could men of such remarkable talent
fail to divine that the constitutional comedy has in it a moral of
profound meaning, and to see that it is the very best policy to give
the age a bone to exercise its teeth upon! I think exactly as they do
on the subject of sovereignty. A power is a moral being as much
interested as a man is in self-preservation. This sentiment of
self-preservation is under the control of an essential principle which
may be expressed in three words--_to lose nothing_. But in order to
lose nothing, a power must grow or remain indefinite, for a power
which
remains stationary is nullified. If it retrogrades, it is under the
control of something else, and loses its independent existence. I am
quite as well aware, as are those gentlemen, in what a false position
an unlimited power puts itself by making concessions; it allows to
another power whose essence is to expand a place within its own sphere
of activity. One of them will necessarily nullify the other, for every
existing thing aims at the greatest possible development of its own
forces. A power, therefore, never makes concessions which it does not
afterwards seek to retract. This struggle between two powers is the
basis on which stands the balance of government, whose elasticity so
mistakenly alarmed the patriarch of Austrian diplomacy, for comparing
comedy with comedy the least perilous and the most advantageous
administration is found in the seesaw system of the English and of the
French politics. These two countries have said to the people, 'You are
free;' and the people have been satisfied; they enter the government
like the zeros which give value to the unit. But if the people wish to
take an active part in the government, immediately they are treated,
like Sancho Panza, on that occasion when the squire, having become
sovereign over an island on terra firma, made an attempt at dinner to
eat the viands set before him.

"Now we ought to parody this admirable scene in the management of our
homes. Thus, my wife has a perfect right to go out, provided she tell
me where she is going, how she is going, what is the business she is
engaged in when she is out and at what hour she will return. Instead
of demanding this information with the brutality of the police, who
will doubtless some day become perfect, I take pains to speak to her
in the most gracious terms. On my lips, in my eyes, in my whole
countenance, an expression plays, which indicates both curiosity and
indifference, seriousness and pleasantry, harshness and tenderness.
These little conjugal scenes are so full of vivacity, of tact and
address that it is a pleasure to take part in them. The very day on
which I took from the head of my wife the wreath of orange blossoms
which she wore, I understood that we were playing at a royal
coronation--the first scene in a comic pantomime!--I have my
gendarmes!--I have my guard royal!--I have my attorney general--that I
do!" he continued enthusiastically. "Do you think that I would allow
madame to go anywhere on foot unaccompanied by a lackey in livery? Is
not that the best style? Not to count the pleasure she takes in saying
to everybody, 'I have my people here.' It has always been a
conservative principle of mine that my times of exercise should
coincide with those of my wife, and for two years I have proved to her
that I take an ever fresh pleasure in giving her my arm. If the
weather is not suitable for walking, I try to teach her how to drive
with success a frisky horse; but I swear to you that I undertake this
in such a manner that she does not learn very quickly!--If either by
chance, or prompted by a deliberate wish, she takes measures to escape
without a passport, that is to say, alone in the carriage, have I not
a driver, a footman, a groom? My wife, therefore, go where she will,
takes with her a complete _Santa Hermandad_, and I am perfectly easy
in mind--But, my dear sir, there is abundance of means by which to
annul the charter of marriage by our manner of fulfilling it! I have
remarked that the manners of high society induce a habit of idleness
which absorbs half of the life of a woman without permitting her to
feel that she is alive. For my part, I have formed the project of
dexterously leading my wife along, up to her fortieth year, without
letting her think of adultery, just as poor Musson used to amuse
himself in leading some simple fellow from the Rue Saint-Denis to
Pierrefitte without letting him think that he had left the shadows of
St. Lew's tower."

"How is it," I said, interrupting him, "that you have hit upon those
admirable methods of deception which I was intending to describe in a
Meditation entitled _The Act of Putting Death into Life!_ Alas! I
thought I was the first man to discover that science. The epigrammatic
title was suggested to me by an account which a young doctor gave me
of an excellent composition of Crabbe, as yet unpublished. In this
work, the English poet has introduced a fantastic being called _Life
in Death_. This personage crosses the oceans of the world in pursuit
of a living skeleton called _Death in Life_--I recollect at the time
very few people, among the guests of a certain elegant translator of
English poetry, understood the mystic meaning of a fable as true as it
was fanciful. Myself alone, perhaps, as I sat buried in silence,
thought of the whole generations which as they were hurried along by
life, passed on their way without living. Before my eyes rose faces of
women by the million, by the myriad, all dead, all disappointed and
shedding tears of despair, as they looked back upon the lost moments
of their ignorant youth. In the distance I saw a playful Meditation
rise to birth, I heard the satanic laughter which ran through it, and
now you doubtless are about to kill it.--But come, tell me in
confidence what means you have discovered by which to assist a woman
to squander the swift moments during which her beauty is at its full
flower and her desires at their full strength.--Perhaps you have some
stratagems, some clever devices, to describe to me--"

The viscount began to laugh at this literary disappointment of mine,
and he said to me, with a self-satisfied air:

"My wife, like all the young people of our happy century, has been
accustomed, for three or four consecutive years, to press her fingers
on the keys of a piano, a long-suffering instrument. She has hammered
out Beethoven, warbled the airs of Rossini and run through the
exercises of Crammer. I had already taken pains to convince her of the
excellence of music; to attain this end, I have applauded her, I have
listened without yawning to the most tiresome sonatas in the world,
and I have at last consented to give her a box at the Bouffons. I have
thus gained three quiet evenings out of the seven which God has
created in the week. I am the mainstay of the music shops. At Paris
there are drawing-rooms which exactly resemble the musical snuff-boxes
of Germany. They are a sort of continuous orchestra to which I
regularly go in search of that surfeit of harmony which my wife calls
a concert. But most part of the time my wife keeps herself buried in
her music-books--"

"But, my dear sir, do you not recognize the danger that lies in
cultivating in a woman a taste for singing, and allowing her to yield
to all the excitements of a sedentary life? It is only less dangerous
to make her feed on mutton and drink cold water."

"My wife never eats anything but the white meat of poultry, and I
always take care that a ball shall come after a concert and a
reception after an Opera! I have also succeeded in making her lie down
between one and two in the day. Ah! my dear sir, the benefits of this
nap are incalculable! In the first place each necessary pleasure is
accorded as a favor, and I am considered to be constantly carrying out
my wife's wishes. And then I lead her to imagine, without saying a
single word, that she is being constantly amused every day from six
o'clock in the evening, the time of our dinner and of her toilet,
until eleven o'clock in the morning, the time when we get up."

"Ah! sir, how grateful you ought to be for a life which is so
completely filled up!"

"I have scarcely more than three dangerous hours a day to pass; but
she has, of course, sonatas to practice and airs to go over, and there
are always rides in the Bois de Boulogne, carriages to try, visits to
pay, etc. But this is not all. The fairest ornament of a woman is the
most exquisite cleanliness. A woman cannot be too particular in this
respect, and no pains she takes can be laughed at. Now her toilet has
also suggested to me a method of thus consuming the best hours of the
day in bathing."

"How lucky I am in finding a listener like you!" I cried; "truly, sir,
you could waste for her four hours a day, if only you were willing to
teach her an art quite unknown to the most fastidious of our modern
fine ladies. Why don't you enumerate to the viscountess the
astonishing precautions manifest in the Oriental luxury of the Roman
dames? Give her the names of the slaves merely employed for the bath
in Poppea's palace: the _unctores_, the _fricatores_, the
_alipilarili_, the _dropacistae_, the _paratiltriae_, the
_picatrices_, the _tracatrices_, the swan whiteners, and all the rest.
--Talk to her about this multitude of slaves whose names are given by
Mirabeau in his _Erotika Biblion_. If she tries to secure the services
of all these people you will have the fine times of quietness, not to
speak of the personal satisfaction which will redound to you yourself
from the introduction into your house of the system invented by these
illustrious Romans, whose hair, artistically arranged, was deluged
with perfumes, whose smallest vein seemed to have acquired fresh blood
from the myrrh, the lint, the perfume, the douches, the flowers of the
bath, all of which were enjoyed to the strains of voluptuous music."

"Ah! sir," continued the husband, who was warming to his subject, "can
I not find also admirable pretexts in my solicitude for her heath? Her
health, so dear and precious to me, forces me to forbid her going out
in bad weather, and thus I gain a quarter of the year. And I have also
introduced the charming custom of kissing when either of us goes out,
this parting kiss being accompanied with the words, 'My sweet angel, I
am going out.' Finally, I have taken measures for the future to make
my wife as truly a prisoner in the house as the conscript in his
sentry box! For I have inspired her with an incredible enthusiasm for
the sacred duties of maternity."

"You do it by opposing her?" I asked.

"You have guessed it," he answered, laughing. "I have maintained to
her that it is impossible for a woman of the world to discharge her
duties towards society, to manage her household, to devote herself to
fashion, as well as to the wishes of her husband, whom she loves, and,
at the same time, to rear children. She then avers that, after the
example of Cato, who wished to see how the nurse changed the swaddling
bands of the infant Pompey, she would never leave to others the least
of the services required in shaping the susceptible minds and tender
bodies of these little creatures whose education begins in the cradle.
You understand, sir, that my conjugal diplomacy would not be of much
service to me unless, after having put my wife in solitary
confinement, I did not also employ a certain harmless machiavelism,
which consists in begging her to do whatever she likes, and asking her
advice in every circumstance and on every contingency. As this
delusive liberty has entirely deceived a creature so high-minded as
she is, I have taken pains to stop at no sacrifice which would
convince Madame de V----- that she is the freest woman in Paris; and,
in order to attain this end, I take care not to commit those gross
political blunders into which our ministers so often fall."

"I can see you," said I, "when you wish to cheat your wife out of some
right granted her by the charter, I can see you putting on a mild and
deliberate air, hiding your dagger under a bouquet of roses, and as
you plunge it cautiously into her heart, saying to her with a friendly
voice, 'My darling, does it hurt?' and she, like those on whose toes
you tread in a crowd, will probably reply, 'Not in the least.'"

He could not restrain a laugh and said:

"Won't my wife be astonished at the Last Judgment?"

"I scarcely know," I replied, "whether you or she will be most
astonished."

The jealous man frowned, but his face resumed its calmness as I added:

"I am truly grateful, sir, to the chance which has given me the
pleasure of your acquaintance. Without the assistance of your remarks
I should have been less successful than you have been in developing
certain ideas which we possess in common. I beg of you that you will
give me leave to publish this conversation. Statements which you and I
find pregnant with high political conceptions, others perhaps will
think characterized by more or less cutting irony, and I shall pass
for a clever fellow in the eyes of both parties."

While I thus tried to express my thanks to the viscount (the first
husband after my heart that I had met with), he took me once more
through his apartments, where everything seemed to be beyond
criticism.

I was about to take leave of him, when opening the door of a little
boudoir he showed me a room with an air which seemed to say, "Is there
any way by which the least irregularity should occur without my seeing
it?"

I replied to this silent interrogation by an inclination of the head,
such as guests make to their Amphytrion when they taste some
exceptionally choice dish.

"My whole system," he said to me in a whisper, "was suggested to me by
three words which my father heard Napoleon pronounce at a crowded
council of state, when divorce was the subject of conversation.
'Adultery,' he exclaimed, 'is merely a matter of opportunity!' See,
then, I have changed these accessories of crime, so that they become
spies," added the councillor, pointing out to me a divan covered with
tea-colored cashmere, the cushions of which were slightly pressed.
"Notice that impression,--I learn from it that my wife has had a
headache, and has been reclining there."

We stepped toward the divan, and saw the word FOOL lightly traced upon
the fatal cushion, by four

Things that I know not, plucked by lover's hand
From Cypris' orchard, where the fairy band
Are dancing, once by nobles thought to be
Worthy an order of new chivalry,
A brotherhood, wherein, with script of gold,
More mortal men than gods should be enrolled.

"Nobody in my house has black hair!" said the husband, growing pale.

I hurried away, for I was seized with an irresistible fit of laughter,
which I could not easily overcome.

"That man has met his judgment day!" I said to myself; "all the
barriers by which he has surrounded her have only been instrumental in
adding to the intensity of her pleasures!"

This idea saddened me. The adventure destroyed from summit to
foundation three of my most important Meditations, and the catholic
infallibility of my book was assailed in its most essential point. I
would gladly have paid to establish the fidelity of the Viscountess
V----- a sum as great as very many people would have offered to secure
her surrender. But alas! my money will now be kept by me.

Three days afterwards I met the councillor in the foyer of the
Italiens. As soon as he saw me he rushed up. Impelled by a sort of
modesty I tried to avoid him, but grasping my arm: "Ah! I have just
passed three cruel days," he whispered in my ear. "Fortunately my wife
is as innocent as perhaps a new-born babe--"

"You have already told me that the viscountess was extremely
ingenious," I said, with unfeeling gaiety.

"Oh!" he said, "I gladly take a joke this evening; for this morning I
had irrefragable proofs of my wife's fidelity. I had risen very early
to finish a piece of work for which I had been rushed, and in looking
absently in my garden, I suddenly saw the _valet de chambre_ of a
general, whose house is next to mine, climbing over the wall. My
wife's maid, poking her head from the vestibule, was stroking my dog
and covering the retreat of the gallant. I took my opera glass and
examined the intruder--his hair was jet black!--Ah! never have I seen
a Christian face that gave me more delight! And you may well believe
that during the day all my perplexities vanished. So, my dear sir," he
continued, "if you marry, let your dog loose and put broken bottles
over the top of your walls."

"And did the viscountess perceive your distress during these three
days?

"Do you take me for a child?" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I
have never been so merry in all my life as I have been since we met."

"You are a great man unrecognized," I cried, "and you are not--"

He did not permit me to conclude; for he had disappeared on seeing one
of his friends who approached as if to greet the viscountess.

Now what can we add that would not be a tedious paraphrase of the
lessons suggested by this conversation? All is included in it, either
as seed or fruit. Nevertheless, you see, O husband! that your
happiness hangs on a hair.

MEDITATION XVII.

THE THEORY OF THE BED.

It was about seven o'clock in the evening. They were seated upon the
academic armchairs, which made a semi-circle round a huge hearth, on
which a coal fire was burning fitfully--symbol of the burning subject
of their important deliberations. It was easy to guess, on seeing the
grave but earnest faces of all the members of this assembly, that they
were called upon to pronounce sentence upon the life, the fortunes and
the happiness of people like themselves. They had no commission
excepting that of their conscience, and they gathered there as the
assessors of an ancient and mysterious tribunal; but they represented
interests much more important than those of kings or of peoples; they
spoke in the name of the passions and on behalf of the happiness of
the numberless generations which should succeed them.

The grandson of the celebrated Boulle was seated before a round table
on which were placed the criminal exhibits which had been collected
with remarkable intelligence. I, the insignificant secretary of the
meeting, occupied a place at this desk, where it was my office to take
down a report of the meeting.

"Gentlemen," said an old man, "the first question upon which we have
to deliberate is found clearly stated in the following passage of a
letter. The letter was written to the Princess of Wales, Caroline of
Anspach, by the widow of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV,
mother of the Regent: 'The Queen of Spain has a method of making her
husband say exactly what she wishes. The king is a religious man; he
believes that he will be damned if he touched any woman but his wife,
and still this excellent prince is of a very amorous temperament. Thus
the queen obtains her every wish. She has placed castors on her
husband's bed. If he refuses her anything, she pushes the bed away. If
he grants her request, the beds stand side by side, and she admits him
into hers. And so the king is highly delighted, since he likes -----'
I will not go any further, gentlemen, for the virtuous frankness of
the German princess might in this assembly be charged with
immorality."

Should wise husbands adopt these beds on castors? This is the problem
which we have to solve.

The unanimity of the vote left no doubt about the opinion of the
assembly. I was ordered to inscribe in the records, that if two
married people slept on two separate beds in the same room the beds
ought not to be set on castors.

"With this proviso," put in one of the members, "that the present
decision should have no bearing on any subsequent ruling upon the best
arrangement of the beds of married people."

The president passed to me a choicely bound volume, in which was
contained the original edition, published in 1788, of the letters of
Charlotte Elizabeth de Baviere, widow of the Duke of Orleans, the only
brother of Louis XIV, and, while I was transcribing the passage
already quoted, he said:

"But, gentlemen, you must all have received at your houses the
notification in which the second question is stated."

"I rise to make an observation," exclaimed the youngest of the jealous
husbands there assembled.

The president took his seat with a gesture of assent.

"Gentlemen," said the young husband, "are we quite prepared to
deliberate upon so grave a question as that which is presented by the
universally bad arrangement of the beds? Is there not here a much
wider question than that of mere cabinet-making to decide? For my own
part I see in it a question which concerns that of universal human
intellect. The mysteries of conception, gentlemen, are still enveloped
in a darkness which modern science has but partially dissipated. We do
not know how far external circumstances influence the microscopic
beings whose discovery is due to the unwearied patience of Hill,
Baker, Joblot, Eichorn, Gleichen, Spallanzani, and especially of
Muller, and last of all of M. Bory de Saint Vincent. The imperfections
of the bed opens up a musical question of the highest importance, and
for my part I declare I shall write to Italy to obtain clear
information as to the manner in which beds are generally arranged. We
do not know whether there are in the Italian bed numerous curtain
rods, screws and castors, or whether the construction of beds is in
this country more faulty than everywhere else, or whether the dryness
of timber in Italy, due to the influence of the sun, does not _ab ovo_
produce the harmony, the sense of which is to so large an extent
innate in Italians. For these reasons I move that we adjourn."

"What!" cried a gentleman from the West, impatiently rising to his
feet, "are we here to dilate upon the advancement of music? What we
have to consider first of all is manners, and the moral question is
paramount in this discussion."

"Nevertheless," remarked one of the most influential members of the
council, "the suggestion of the former speaker is not in my opinion to
be passed by. In the last century, gentlemen, Sterne, one of the
writers most philosophically delightful and most delightfully
philosophic, complained of the carelessness with which human beings
were procreated; 'Shame!' he cried 'that he who copies the divine
physiognomy of man receives crowns and applause, but he who achieves
the masterpiece, the prototype of mimic art, feels that like virtue he
must be his own reward.'

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