Honore de Balzac - The Physiology of Marriage, Complete

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"Sir," he said in a tone of emotion to the young clerk, whose heart
palpitated with terror, "you are in love with my wife, and you are
trying to please her; I scarcely know how to treat you in return for
this, because in your place and at your age I should have done exactly
the same. But Anna is in despair; you have disturbed her happiness,
and her heart is filled with the torments of hell. Moreover, she has
told me all, a quarrel soon followed by a reconciliation forced her to
write the letter which you have received, and she has sent me here in
her place. I will not tell you, sir, that by persisting in your plan
of seduction you will cause the misery of her you love, that you will
forfeit her my esteem, and eventually your own; that your crime will
be stamped on the future by causing perhaps sorrow to my children. I
will not even speak to you of the bitterness you will infuse into my
life;--unfortunately these are commonplaces! But I declare to you,
sir, that the first step you take in this direction will be the signal
for a crime; for I will not trust the risk of a duel in order to stab
you to the heart!"

And the eyes of the lawyer flashed ominously.

"Now, sir," he went on in a gentler voice, "you are young, you have a
generous heart. Make a sacrifice for the future happiness of her you
love; leave her and never see her again. And if you must needs be a
member of my family, I have a young aunt who is yet unsettled in life;
she is charming, clever and rich. Make her acquaintance, and leave a
virtuous woman undisturbed."

This mixture of raillery and intimidation, together with the
unwavering glance and deep voice of the husband, produced a remarkable
impression on the lover. He remained for a moment utterly confused,
like people overcome with passion and deprived of all presence of mind
by a sudden shock. If Anna has since then had any lovers [which is a
pure hypothesis] Adolph certainly is not one of them.

This occurrence may help you to understand that correspondence is a
double-edged weapon which is of as much advantage for the defence of
the husband as for the inconsistency of the wife. You should therefore
encourage correspondence for the same reason that the prefect of
police takes special care that the street lamps of Paris are kept
lighted.

3. OF SPIES.

To come so low as to beg servants to reveal secrets to you, and to
fall lower still by paying for a revelation, is not a crime; it is
perhaps not even a dastardly act, but it is certainly a piece of
folly; for nothing will ever guarantee to you the honesty of a servant
who betrays her mistress, and you can never feel certain whether she
is operating in your interest or in that of your wife. This point
therefore may be looked upon as beyond controversy.

Nature, that good and tender parent, has set round about the mother of
a family the most reliable and the most sagacious of spies, the most
truthful and at the same time the most discreet in the world. They are
silent and yet they speak, they see everything and appear to see
nothing.

One day I met a friend of mine on the boulevard. He invited me to
dinner, and we went to his house. Dinner had been already served, and
the mistress of the house was helping her two daughters to plates of
soup.

"I see here my first symptoms," I said to myself.

We sat down. The first word of the husband, who spoke without
thinking, and for the sake of talking, was the question:

"Has any one been here to-day?"

"Not a soul," replied his wife, without lifting her eyes.

I shall never forget the quickness with which the two daughters looked
up to their mother. The elder girl, aged eight, had something
especially peculiar in her glance. There was at the same time
revelation and mystery, curiosity and silence, astonishment and apathy
in that look. If there was anything that could be compared to the
speed with which the light of candor flashed from their eyes, it was
the prudent reserve with which both of them closed down, like
shutters, the folds of their white eyelids.

Ye sweet and charming creatures, who from the age of nine even to the
age of marriage too often are the torment of a mother even when she is
not a coquette, is it by the privilege of your years or the instinct
of your nature that your young ears catch the faint sound of a man's
voice through walls and doors, that your eyes are awake to everything,
and that your young spirit busies itself in divining all, even the
meaning of a word spoken in the air, even the meaning of your mother's
slightest gesture?

There is something of gratitude, something in fact instinctive, in the
predilection of fathers for their daughters and mothers for their
sons.

But the act of setting spies which are in some way inanimate is mere
dotage, and nothing is easier than to find a better plan than that of
the beadle, who took it into his head to put egg-shells in his bed,
and who obtained no other sympathy from his confederate than the
words, "You are not very successful in breaking them."

The Marshal de Saxe did not give much consolation to his Popeliniere
when they discovered in company that famous revolving chimney,
invented by the Duc de Richelieu.

"That is the finest piece of horn work that I have ever seen!" cried
the victor of Fontenoy.

Let us hope that your espionage will not give you so troublesome a
lesson. Such misfortunes are the fruits of the civil war and we do not
live in that age.

4. THE INDEX.

The Pope puts books only on the Index; you will mark with a stigma of
reprobation men and things.

It is forbidden to madame to go into a bath except in her own house.

It is forbidden to madame to receive into her house him whom you
suspect of being her lover, and all those who are the accomplices of
their love.

It is forbidden to madame to take a walk without you.

But the peculiarities which in each household originate from the
diversity of characters, the numberless incidents of passion, and the
habits of the married people give to this black book so many
variations, the lines in it are multiplied or erased with such
rapidity that a friend of the author has called this Index _The
History of Changes in the Marital Church_.

There are only two things which can be controlled or prescribed in
accordance with definite rules; the first is the country, the second
is the promenade.

A husband ought never to take his wife to the country nor permit her
to go there. Have a country home if you like, live there, entertain
there nobody excepting ladies or old men, but never leave your wife
alone there. But to take her, for even half a day, to the house of
another man is to show yourself as stupid as an ostrich.

To keep guard over a wife in the country is a task most difficult of
accomplishment. Do you think that you will be able to be in the
thickets, to climb the trees, to follow the tracks of a lover over the
grass trodden down at night, but straightened by the dew in the
morning and refreshed by the rays of the sun? Can you keep your eye on
every opening in the fence of the park? Oh! the country and the
Spring! These are the two right arms of the celibate.

When a woman reaches the crisis at which we suppose her to be, a
husband ought to remain in town till the declaration of war, or to
resolve on devoting himself to all the delights of a cruel espionage.

With regard to the promenade: Does madame wish to go to parties, to
the theatre, to the Bois de Boulogne, to purchase her dresses, to find
out what is the fashion? Madame shall go, shall see everything in the
respectable company of her lord and master.

If she take advantage of the moment when a business appointment, which
you cannot fail to keep, detains you, in order to obtain your tacit
permission to some meditated expedition; if in order to obtain that
permission she displays all the witcheries of those cajoleries in
which women excel and whose powerful influence you ought already to
have known, well, well, the professor implores you to allow her to win
you over, while at the same time you sell dear the boon she asks; and
above all convince this creature, whose soul is at once as changeable
as water and as firm as steel, that it is impossible for you from the
importance of your work to leave your study.

But as soon as your wife has set foot upon the street, if she goes on
foot, don't give her time to make fifty steps; follow and track her in
such a way that you will not be noticed.

It is possible that there exist certain Werthers whose refined and
delicate souls recoil from this inquisition. But this is not more
blamable than that of a landed proprietor who rises at night and looks
through the windows for the purpose of keeping watch over the peaches
on his _espaliers_. You will probably by this course of action obtain,
before the crime is committed, exact information with regard to the
apartments which so many lovers rent in the city under fictitious
names. If it happens [which God forbid!] that your wife enters a house
suspected by you, try to find out if the place has several exits.

Should your wife take a hack, what have you to fear? Is there not a
prefect of police, to whom all husbands ought to decree a crown of
solid gold, and has he not set up a little shed or bench where there
is a register, an incorruptible guardian of public morality? And does
he not know all the comings and goings of these Parisian gondolas?

One of the vital principles of our police will consist in always
following your wife to the furnishers of your house, if she is
accustomed to visit them. You will carefully find out whether there is
any intimacy between her and her draper, her dressmaker or her
milliner, etc. In this case you will apply the rules of the conjugal
Custom House, and draw your own conclusions.

If in your absence your wife, having gone out against your will, tells
you that she had been to such a place, to such a shop, go there
yourself the next day and try to find out whether she has spoken the
truth.

But passion will dictate to you, even better than the Meditation, the
various resources of conjugal tyranny, and we will here cut short
these tiresome instructions.

5. OF THE BUDGET.

In outlining the portrait of a sane and sound husband (See _Meditation
on the Predestined_), we urgently advise that he should conceal from
his wife the real amount of his income.

In relying upon this as the foundation stone of our financial system
we hope to do something towards discounting the opinion, so very
generally held, that a man ought not to give the handling of his
income to his wife. This principle is one of the many popular errors
and is one of the chief causes of misunderstanding in the domestic
establishment.

But let us, in the first place, deal with the question of heart,
before we proceed to that of money.

To draw up a little civil list for your wife and for the requirements
of the house and to pay her money as if it were a contribution, in
twelve equal portions month by month, has something in it that is a
little mean and close, and cannot be agreeable to any but sordid and
mistrustful souls. By acting in this way you prepare for yourself
innumerable annoyances.

I could wish that during the first year of your mellifluous union,
scenes more or less delightful, pleasantries uttered in good taste,
pretty purses and caresses might accompany and might decorate the
handing over of this monthly gift; but the time will come when the
self-will of your wife or some unforeseen expenditure will compel her
to ask a loan of the Chamber; I presume that you will always grant her
the bill of indemnity, as our unfaithful deputies never fail to do.
They pay, but they grumble; you must pay and at the same time
compliment her. I hope it will be so.

But in the crisis which we have reached, the provisions of the annual
budget can never prove sufficient. There must be an increase of
fichus, of bonnets, of frocks; there is an expense which cannot be
calculated beforehand demanded by the meetings, by the diplomatic
messengers, by the ways and means of love, even while the receipts
remain the same as usual. Then must commence in your establishment a
course of education the most odious, and the most dreadful which a
woman can undergo. I know but few noble and generous souls who value,
more than millions, purity of heart, frankness of soul, and who would
a thousand times more readily pardon a passion than a lie, whose
instinctive delicacy has divined the existence of this plague of the
soul, the lowest step in human degradation.

Under these circumstances there occur in the domestic establishment
the most delightful scenes of love. It is then that a woman becomes
utterly pliant and like to the most brilliant of all the strings of a
harp, when thrown before the fire; she rolls round you, she clasps
you, she holds you tight; she defers to all your caprices; never was
her conversation so full of tenderness; she lavishes her endearments
upon you, or rather she sells them to you; she at last becomes lower
than a chorus girl, for she prostitutes herself to her husband. In her
sweetest kisses there is money; in all her words there is money. In
playing this part her heart becomes like lead towards you. The most
polished, the most treacherous usurer never weighs so completely with
a single glance the future value in bullion of a son of a family who
may sign a note to him, than your wife appraises one of your desires
as she leaps from branch to branch like an escaping squirrel, in order
to increase the sum of money she may demand by increasing the appetite
which she rouses in you. You must not expect to get scot-free from
such seductions. Nature has given boundless gifts of coquetry to a
woman, the usages of society have increased them tenfold by its
fashions, its dresses, its embroideries and its tippets.

"If I ever marry," one of the most honorable generals of our ancient
army used to say, "I won't put a sou among the wedding presents--"

"What will you put there then, general?" asked a young girl.

"The key of my safe."

The young girl made a curtsey of approbation. She moved her little
head with a quiver like that of the magnetic needle; raised her chin
slightly as if she would have said:

"I would gladly marry the general in spite of his forty-five years."

But with regard to money, what interest can you expect your wife to
take in a machine in which she is looked upon as a mere bookkeeper?

Now look at the other system.

In surrendering to your wife, with an avowal of absolute confidence in
her, two-thirds of your fortune and letting her as mistress control
the conjugal administration, you win from her an esteem which nothing
can destroy, for confidence and high-mindedness find powerful echoes
in the heart of a woman. Madame will be loaded with a responsibility
which will often raise a barrier against extravagances, all the
stronger because it is she herself who has created it in her heart.
You yourself have made a portion of the work, and you may be sure that
from henceforth your wife will never perhaps dishonor herself.

Moreover, by seeking in this way a method of defence, consider what
admirable aids are offered to you by this plan of finances.

You will have in your house an exact estimate of the morality of your
wife, just as the quotations of the Bourse give you a just estimate of
the degree of confidence possessed by the government.

And doubtless, during the first years of your married life, your wife
will take pride in giving you every luxury and satisfaction which your
money can afford.

She will keep a good table, she will renew the furniture, and the
carriages; she will always keep in her drawer a sum of money sacred to
her well-beloved and ready for his needs. But of course, in the actual
circumstances of life, the drawer will be very often empty and
monsieur will spend a great deal too much. The economies ordered by
the Chamber never weigh heavily upon the clerks whose income is twelve
hundred francs; and you will be the clerk at twelve hundred francs in
your own house. You will laugh in your sleeve, because you will have
saved, capitalized, invested one-third of your income during a long
time, like Louis XV, who kept for himself a little separate treasury,
"against a rainy day," he used to say.

Thus, if your wife speaks of economy, her discourse will be equal to
the varying quotations of the money-market. You will be able to divine
the whole progress of the lover by these financial fluctuations, and
you will have avoided all difficulties. _E sempre bene._

If your wife fails to appreciate the excessive confidence, and
dissipates in one day a large proportion of your fortune, in the first
place it is not probable that this prodigality will amount to
one-third of the revenue which you have been saving for ten years;
moreover you will learn, from the Meditation on _Catastrophes_, that
in the very crisis produced by the follies of your wife, you will have
brilliant opportunities of slaying the Minotaur.

But the secret of the treasure which has been amassed by your
thoughtfulness need never be known till after your death; and if you
have found it necessary to draw upon it, in order to assist your wife,
you must always let it be thought that you have won at play, or made a
loan from a friend.

These are the true principles which should govern the conjugal budget.

The police of marriage has its martyrology. We will cite but one
instance which will make plain how necessary it is for husbands who
resort to severe measures to keep watch over themselves as well as
over their wives.

An old miser who lived at T-----, a pleasure resort if there ever was
one, had married a young and pretty woman, and he was so wrapped up in
her and so jealous that love triumphed over avarice; he actually gave
up trade in order to guard his wife more closely, but his only real
change was that his covetousness took another form. I acknowledge that
I owe the greater portion of the observations contained in this essay,
which still is doubtless incomplete, to the person who made a study of
this remarkable marital phenomenon, to portray which, one single
detail will be amply sufficient. When he used to go to the country,
this husband never went to bed without secretly raking over the
pathways of his park, and he had a special rake for the sand of his
terraces. He had made a close study of the footprints made by the
different members of his household; and early in the morning he used
to go and identify the tracks that had been made there.

"All this is old forest land," he used to say to the person I have
referred to, as he showed him over the park; "for nothing can be seen
through the brushwood."

His wife fell in love with one of the most charming young men of the
town. This passion had continued for nine years bright and fresh in
the hearts of the two lovers, whose sole avowal had been a look
exchanged in a crowded ball-room; and while they danced together their
trembling hands revealed through the scented gloves the depth of their
love. From that day they had both of them taken great delight on those
trifles which happy lovers never disdain. One day the young man led
his only confidant, with a mysterious air, into a chamber where he
kept under glass globes upon his table, with more care than he would
have bestowed upon the finest jewels in the world, the flowers that,
in the excitement of the dance, had fallen from the hair of his
mistress, and the finery which had been caught in the trees which she
had brushed through in the park. He also preserved there the narrow
footprint left upon the clay soil by the lady's step.

"I could hear," said this confidant to me afterwards, "the violent and
repressed palpitations of his heart sounding in the silence which we
preserved before the treasures of this museum of love. I raised my
eyes to the ceiling, as if to breathe to heaven the sentiment which I
dared not utter. 'Poor humanity!' I thought. 'Madame de ----- told me
that one evening at a ball you had been found nearly fainting in her
card-room?' I remarked to him.

"'I can well believe it,' said he casting down his flashing glance, 'I
had kissed her arm!--But,' he added as he pressed my hand and shot at
me a glance that pierced my heart, 'her husband at that time had the
gout which threatened to attack his stomach.'"

Some time afterwards, the old man recovered and seemed to take a new
lease of life; but in the midst of his convalescence he took to his
bed one morning and died suddenly. There were such evident symptoms of
poisoning in the condition of the dead man that the officers of
justice were appealed to, and the two lovers were arrested. Then was
enacted at the court of assizes the most heartrending scene that ever
stirred the emotions of the jury. At the preliminary examination, each
of the two lovers without hesitation confessed to the crime, and with
one thought each of them was solely bent on saving, the one her lover,
the other his mistress. There were two found guilty, where justice was
looking for but a single culprit. The trial was entirely taken up with
the flat contradictions which each of them, carried away by the fury
of devoted love, gave to the admissions of the other. There they were
united for the first time, but on the criminals' bench with a gendarme
seated between them. They were found guilty by the unanimous verdict
of a weeping jury. No one among those who had the barbarous courage to
witness their conveyance to the scaffold can mention them to-day
without a shudder. Religion had won for them a repentance for their
crime, but could not induce them to abjure their love. The scaffold
was their nuptial bed, and there they slept together in the long night
of death.

MEDITATION XXI.

THE ART OF RETURNING HOME.

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

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

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

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

"Probably he has been here!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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