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Honore de Balzac - The Physiology of Marriage, Complete

H >> Honore de Balzac >> The Physiology of Marriage, Complete




We have not thought it necessary to mention the exceptional cases
which authorize a husband to resort to twin beds. However, the opinion
of Bonaparte was that when once there had taken place an interchange
of life and breath (such are his words), nothing, not even sickness,
should separate married people. This point is so delicate that it is
not possible here to treat it methodically.

Certain narrow minds will object that there are certain patriarchal
families whose legislation of love is inflexible in the matter of two
beds and an alcove, and that, by this arrangement, they have been
happy from generation to generation. But, the only answer that the
author vouchsafes to this is that he knows a great many respectable
people who pass their lives in watching games of billiards.


2. SEPARATE ROOMS.

There cannot be found in Europe a hundred husbands of each nation
sufficiently versed in the science of marriage, or if you like, of
life, to be able to dwell in an apartment separate from that of their
wives.

The power of putting this system into practice shows the highest
degree of intellectual and masculine force.

The married couple who dwell in separate apartments have become either
divorced, or have attained to the discovery of happiness. They either
abominate or adore each other. We will not undertake to detail here
the admirable precepts which may be deduced from this theory whose end
is to make constancy and fidelity easy and delightful. It may be
sufficient to declare that by this system alone two married people can
realize the dream of many noble souls. This will be understood by all
the faithful.

As for the profane, their curious questionings will be sufficiently
answered by the remark that the object of this institution is to give
happiness to one woman. Which among them will be willing to deprive
general society of any share in the talents with which they think
themselves endowed, to the advantage of one woman? Nevertheless, the
rendering of his mistress happy gives any one the fairest title to
glory which can be earned in this valley of Jehosaphat, since,
according to Genesis, Eve was not satisfied even with a terrestrial
Paradise. She desired to taste the forbidden fruit, the eternal emblem
of adultery.

But there is an insurmountable reason why we should refrain from
developing this brilliant theory. It would cause a digression from the
main theme of our work. In the situation which we have supposed to be
that of a married establishment, a man who is sufficiently unwise to
sleep apart from his wife deserves no pity for the disaster which he
himself invites.

Let us then resume our subject. Every man is not strong enough to
undertake to occupy an apartment separate from that of his wife;
although any man might derive as much good as evil from the
difficulties which exist in using but one bed.

We now proceed to solve the difficulties which superficial minds may
detect in this method, for which our predilection is manifest.

But this paragraph, which is in some sort a silent one, inasmuch as we
leave it to the commentaries which will be made in more than one home,
may serve as a pedestal for the imposing figure of Lycurgus, that
ancient legislator, to whom the Greeks are indebted for their
profoundest thoughts on the subject of marriage. May his system be
understood by future generations! And if modern manners are too much
given to softness to adopt his system in its entirety, they may at
least be imbued with the robust spirit of this admirable code.


3. ONE BED FOR BOTH.

On a night in December, Frederick the Great looked up at the sky,
whose stars were twinkling with that clear and living light which
presages heavy frost, and he exclaimed, "This weather will result in a
great many soldiers to Prussia."

The king expressed here, by a single phrase, the principal
disadvantage which results from the constant living together of
married people. Although it may be permitted to Napoleon and to
Frederick to estimate the value of a woman more or less according to
the number of her children, yet a husband of talent ought, according
to the maxims of the thirteenth Meditation, to consider
child-begetting merely as a means of defence, and it is for him to
know to what extent it may take place.

The observation leads into mysteries from which the physiological Muse
recoils. She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chambers
while they are occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and there
are occasions on which she retires. For, since it is at this passage
in my book that the Muse is inclined to put her white hands before her
eyes so as to see nothing, like the young girl looking through the
interstices of her tapering fingers, she will take advantage of this
attack of modesty, to administer a reprimand to our manners. In
England the nuptial chamber is a sacred place. The married couple
alone have the privilege of entering it, and more than one lady, we
are told, makes her bed herself. Of all the crazes which reign beyond
the sea, why should the only one which we despise be precisely that,
whose grace and mystery ought undoubtedly to meet the approval of all
tender souls on this continent? Refined women condemn the immodesty
with which strangers are introduced into the sanctuary of marriage. As
for us, who have energetically anathematized women who walk abroad at
the time when they expect soon to be confined, our opinion cannot be
doubted. If we wish the celibate to respect marriage, married people
ought to have some regard for the inflammability of bachelors.

To sleep every night with one's wife may seem, we confess, an act of
the most insolent folly.

Many husbands are inclined to ask how a man, who desires to bring
marriage to perfection, dare prescribe to a husband a rule of conduct
which would be fatal in a lover.

Nevertheless, such is the decision of a doctor of arts and sciences
conjugal.

In the first place, without making a resolution never to sleep by
himself, this is the only course left to a husband, since we have
demonstrated the dangers of the preceding systems. We must now try to
prove that this last method yields more advantage and less
disadvantage than the two preceding methods, that is, so far as
relates to the critical position in which a conjugal establishment
stands.

Our observations on the twin beds ought to have taught husbands that
they should always be strung into the same degree of fervor as that
which prevails in the harmonious organization of their wives. Now it
seems to us that this perfect equality in feelings would naturally be
created under the white Aegis, which spreads over both of them its
protecting sheet; this at the outset is an immense advantage, and
really nothing is easier to verify at any moment than the degree of
love and expansion which a woman reaches when the same pillow receives
the heads of both spouses.

Man [we speak now of the species] walks about with a memorandum always
totalized, which shows distinctly and without error the amount of
passion which he carries within him. This mysterious gynometer is
traced in the hollow of the hand, for the hand is really that one of
our members which bears the impress most plainly of our characters.
Chirology is a fifth work which I bequeath to my successors, for I am
contented here to make known but the elements of this interesting
science.

The hand is the essential organ of touch. Touch is the sense which
very nearly takes the place of all the others, and which alone is
indispensable. Since the hand alone can carry out all that a man
desires, it is to an extent action itself. The sum total of our
vitality passes through it; and men of powerful intellects are usually
remarkable for their shapely hands, perfection in that respect being a
distinguishing trait of their high calling.

Jesus Christ performed all His miracles by the imposition of hands.
The hand is the channel through which life passes. It reveals to the
physician all the mysteries of our organism. It exhales more than any
other part of our bodies the nervous fluid, or that unknown substance,
which for want of another term we style _will_. The eye can discover
the mood of our soul but the hand betrays at the same time the secrets
of the body and those of the soul. We can acquire the faculty of
imposing silence on our eyes, on our lips, on our brows, and on our
forehead; but the hand never dissembles and nothing in our features
can be compared to the richness of its expression. The heat and cold
which it feels in such delicate degrees often escape the notice of
other senses in thoughtless people; but a man knows how to distinguish
them, however little time he may have bestowed in studying the anatomy
of sentiments and the affairs of human life. Thus the hand has a
thousand ways of becoming dry, moist, hot, cold, soft, rough,
unctuous. The hand palpitates, becomes supple, grows hard and again is
softened. In fine it presents a phenomenon which is inexplicable so
that one is tempted to call it the incarnation of thought. It causes
the despair of the sculptor and the painter when they wish to express
the changing labyrinth of its mysterious lineaments. To stretch out
your hand to a man is to save him, it serves as a ratification of the
sentiments we express. The sorcerers of every age have tried to read
our future destines in those lines which have nothing fanciful in
them, but absolutely correspond with the principles of each one's life
and character. When she charges a man with want of tact, which is
merely touch, a woman condemns him without hope. We use the
expressions, the "Hand of Justice," the "Hand of God;" and a _coup de
main_ means a bold undertaking.

To understand and recognize the hidden feelings by the atmospheric
variations of the hand, which a woman almost always yields without
distrust, is a study less unfruitful and surer than that of
physiognomy.

In this way you will be able, if you acquire this science, to wield
vast power, and to find a clue which will guide you through the
labyrinth of the most impenetrable heart. This will render your living
together free from very many mistakes, and, at the same time, rich in
the acquisition of many a treasure.

Buffon and certain physiologists affirm that our members are more
completely exhausted by desire than by the most keen enjoyments. And
really, does not desire constitute of itself a sort of intuitive
possession? Does it not stand in the same relation to visible action,
as those incidents in our mental life, in which we take part in a
dream, stand to the incidents of our actual life? This energetic
apprehension of things, does it not call into being an internal
emotion more powerful than that of the external action? If our
gestures are only the accomplishment of things already enacted by our
thought, you may easily calculate how desire frequently entertained
must necessarily consume the vital fluids. But the passions which are
no more than the aggregation of desires, do they not furrow with the
wrinkle of their lightning the faces of the ambitious, of gamblers,
for instance, and do they not wear out their bodies with marvelous
swiftness?

These observations, therefore, necessarily contain the germs of a
mysterious system equally favored by Plato and by Epicurus; we will
leave it for you to meditate upon, enveloped as it is in the veil
which enshrouds Egyptian statues.

But the greatest mistake that a man commits is to believe that love
can belong only to those fugitive moments which, according to the
magnificent expression of Bossuet, are like to the nails scattered
over a wall: to the eye they appear numerous; but when they are
collected they make but a handful.

Love consists almost always in conversation. There are few things
inexhaustible in a lover: goodness, gracefulness and delicacy. To feel
everything, to divine everything, to anticipate everything; to
reproach without bringing affliction upon a tender heart; to make a
present without pride; to double the value of a certain action by the
way in which it is done; to flatter rather by actions than by words;
to make oneself understood rather than to produce a vivid impression;
to touch without striking; to make a look and the sound of the voice
produce the effect of a caress; never to produce embarrassment; to
amuse without offending good taste; always to touch the heart; to
speak to the soul--this is all that women ask. They will abandon all
the delights of all the nights of Messalina, if only they may live
with a being who will yield them those caresses of the soul, for which
they are so eager, and which cost nothing to men if only they have a
little consideration.

This outline comprises a great portion of such secrets as belong to
the nuptial couch. There are perhaps some witty people who may take
this long definition of politeness for a description of love, while in
any case it is no more than a recommendation to treat your wife as you
would treat the minister on whose good-will depends your promotion to
the post you covet.

I hear numberless voices crying out that this book is a special
advocate for women and neglects the cause of men;

That the majority of women are unworthy of these delicate attentions
and would abuse them;

That there are women given to licentiousness who would not lend
themselves to very much of what they would call mystification;

That women are nothing but vanity and think of nothing but dress;

That they have notions which are truly unreasonable;

That they are very often annoyed by an attention;

That they are fools, they understand nothing, are worth nothing, etc.

In answer to all these clamors we will write here the following
phrases, which, placed between two spaces, will perhaps have the air
of a thought, to quote an expression of Beaumarchais.


LXIV.
A wife is to her husband just what her husband has made her.


The reasons why the single bed must triumph over the other two methods
of organizing the nuptial couch are as follows: In the single couch we
have a faithful interpreter to translate with profound truthfulness
the sentiments of a woman, to render her a spy over herself, to keep
her at the height of her amorous temperature, never to leave her, to
have the power of hearing her breathe in slumber, and thus to avoid
all the nonsense which is the ruin of so many marriages.

As it is impossible to receive benefits without paying for them, you
are bound to learn how to sleep gracefully, to preserve your dignity
under the silk handkerchief that wraps your head, to be polite, to see
that your slumber is light, not to cough too much, and to imitate
those modern authors who write more prefaces than books.



MEDITATION XVIII.

OF MARITAL REVOLUTIONS.

The time always comes in which nations and women even the most stupid
perceive that their innocence is being abused. The cleverest policy
may for a long time proceed in a course of deceit; but it would be
very happy for men if they could carry on their deceit to an infinite
period; a vast amount of bloodshed would then be avoided, both in
nations and in families.

Nevertheless, we hope that the means of defence put forth in the
preceding Meditations will be sufficient to deliver a certain number
of husbands from the clutches of the Minotaur! You must agree with the
doctor that many a love blindly entered upon perishes under the
treatment of hygiene or dies away, thanks to marital policy. Yes [what
a consoling mistake!] many a lover will be driven away by personal
efforts, many a husband will learn how to conceal under an
impenetrable veil the machinery of his machiavelism, and many a man
will have better success than the old philosopher who cried: _Nolo
coronari!_

But we are here compelled to acknowledge a mournful truth. Despotism
has its moments of secure tranquillity. Her reign seems like the hour
which precedes the tempest, and whose silence enables the traveler,
stretched upon the faded grass, to hear at a mile's distance, the song
of the cicada. Some fine morning an honest woman, who will be imitated
by a great portion of our own women, discerns with an eagle eye the
clever manoeuvres which have rendered her the victim of an infernal
policy. She is at first quite furious at having for so long a time
preserved her virtue. At what age, in what day, does this terrible
revolution occur? This question of chronology depends entirely upon
the genius of each husband; for it is not the vocation of all to put
in practice with the same talent the precepts of our conjugal gospel.

"A man must have very little love," the mystified wife will exclaim,
"to enter upon such calculations as these! What! From the first day I
have been to him perpetually an object of suspicion! It is monstrous,
even a woman would be incapable of such artful and cruel treachery!"

This is the question. Each husband will be able to understand the
variations of this complaint which will be made in accordance with the
character of the young Fury, of whom he has made a companion.

A woman by no means loses her head under these circumstances; she
holds her tongue and dissembles. Her vengeance will be concealed. Only
you will have some symptoms of hesitation to contend with on the
arrival of the crisis, which we presume you to have reached on the
expiration of the honeymoon; but you will also have to contend against
a resolution. She has determined to revenge herself. From that day, so
far as regards you, her mask, like her heart, has turned to bronze.
Formerly you were an object of indifference to her; you are becoming
by degrees absolutely insupportable. The Civil War commences only at
the moment in which, like the drop of water which makes the full glass
overflow, some incident, whose more or less importance we find
difficulty in determining, has rendered you odious. The lapse of time
which intervenes between this last hour, the limit of your good
understanding, and the day when your wife becomes cognizant of your
artifices, is nevertheless quite sufficient to permit you to institute
a series of defensive operations, which we will now explain.

Up to this time you have protected your honor solely by the exertion
of a power entirely occult. Hereafter the wheels of your conjugal
machinery must be set going in sight of every one. In this case, if
you would prevent a crime you must strike a blow. You have begun by
negotiating, you must end by mounting your horse, sabre in hand, like
a Parisian gendarme. You must make your horse prance, you must
brandish your sabre, you must shout strenuously, and you must endeavor
to calm the revolt without wounding anybody.

Just as the author has found a means of passing from occult methods to
methods that are patent, so it is necessary for the husband to justify
the sudden change in his tactics; for in marriage, as in literature,
art consists entirely in the gracefulness of the transitions. This is
of the highest importance for you. What a frightful position you will
occupy if your wife has reason to complain of your conduct at the
moment, which is, perhaps, the most critical of your whole married
life!

You must therefore find some means or other to justify the secret
tyranny of your initial policy; some means which still prepare the
mind of your wife for the severe measures which you are about to take;
some means which so far from forfeiting her esteem will conciliate
her; some means which will gain her pardon, which will restore some
little of that charm of yours, by which you won her love before your
marriage.

"But what policy is it that demands this course of action? Is there
such a policy?"

Certainly there is.

But what address, what tact, what histrionic art must a husband
possess in order to display the mimic wealth of that treasure which we
are about to reveal to him! In order to counterfeit the passion whose
fire is to make you a new man in the presence of your wife, you will
require all the cunning of Talma.

This passion is JEALOUSY.

"My husband is jealous. He has been so from the beginning of our
marriage. He has concealed this feeling from me by his usual refined
delicacy. Does he love me still? I am going to do as I like with him!"

Such are the discoveries which a woman is bound to make, one after
another, in accordance with the charming scenes of the comedy which
you are enacting for your amusement; and a man of the world must be an
actual fool, if he fails in making a woman believe that which flatters
her.

With what perfection of hypocrisy must you arrange, step by step, your
hypocritical behavior so as to rouse the curiosity of your wife, to
engage her in a new study, and to lead her astray among the labyrinths
of your thought!

Ye sublime actors! Do ye divine the diplomatic reticence, the gestures
of artifice, the veiled words, the looks of doubtful meaning which
some evening may induce your wife to attempt the capture of your
secret thoughts?

Ah! to laugh in your sleeve while you are exhibiting the fierceness of
a tiger; neither to lie nor to tell the truth; to comprehend the
capricious mood of a woman, and yet to make her believe that she
controls you, while you intend to bind her with a collar of iron! O
comedy that has no audience, which yet is played by one heart before
another heart and where both of you applaud because both of you think
that you have obtained success!

She it is who will tell you that you are jealous, who will point out
to you that she knows you better than you know yourself, who will
prove to you the uselessness of your artifices and who perhaps will
defy you. She triumphs in the excited consciousness of the superiority
which she thinks she possesses over you; you of course are ennobled in
her eyes; for she finds your conduct quite natural. The only thing she
feels is that your want of confidence was useless; if she wished to
betray, who could hinder her?

Then, some evening, you will burst into a passion, and, as some trifle
affords you a pretext, you will make a scene, in the course of which
your anger will make you divulge the secret of your distress. And here
comes in the promulgation of our new code.

Have no fear that a woman is going to trouble herself about this. She
needs your jealousy, she rather likes your severity. This comes from
the fact that in the first place she finds there a justification for
her own conduct; and then she finds immense satisfaction in playing
before other people the part of a victim. What delightful expressions
of sympathy will she receive! Afterwards she will use this as a weapon
against you, in the expectation thereby of leading you into a pitfall.

She sees in your conduct the source of a thousand more pleasures in
her future treachery, and her imagination smiles at all the barricades
with which you surround her, for will she not have the delight of
surmounting them all?

Women understand better than we do the art of analyzing the two human
feelings, which alternately form their weapons of attack, or the
weapons of which they are victims. They have the instinct of love,
because it is their whole life, and of jealousy, because it is almost
the only means by which they can control us. Within them jealousy is a
genuine sentiment and springs from the instinct of self-preservation;
it is vital to their life or death. But with men this feeling is
absolutely absurd when it does not subserve some further end.

To entertain feelings of jealousy towards the woman you love, is to
start from a position founded on vicious reasoning. We are loved, or
we are not loved; if a man entertains jealousy under either of these
circumstances, it is a feeling absolutely unprofitable to him;
jealousy may be explained as fear, fear in love. But to doubt one's
wife is to doubt one's self.

To be jealous is to exhibit, at once, the height of egotism, the error
of _amour-propre_, the vexation of morbid vanity. Women rather
encourage this ridiculous feeling, because by means of it they can
obtain cashmere shawls, silver toilet sets, diamonds, which for them
mark the high thermometer mark of their power. Moreover, unless you
appear blinded by jealousy, your wife will not keep on her guard; for
there is no pitfall which she does not distrust, excepting that which
she makes for herself.

Thus the wife becomes the easy dupe of a husband who is clever enough
to give to the inevitable revolution, which comes sooner or later, the
advantageous results we have indicated.

You must import into your establishment that remarkable phenomenon
whose existence is demonstrated in the asymptotes of geometry. Your
wife will always try to minotaurize you without being successful. Like
those knots which are never so tight as when one tries to loosen them,
she will struggle to the advantage of your power over her, while she
believes that she is struggling for her independence.

The highest degree of good play on the part of a prince lies in
persuading his people that he goes to war for them, while all the time
he is causing them to be killed for his throne.

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