Honore de Balzac - The Physiology of Marriage, Complete

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26

It is the same with the deputies and peers who discuss the laws, of
ministers who share the toils of the king, of secretaries who work
with the ministers, of soldiers on campaign, and indeed with the
corporal of the police patrol, as the letter of Lafleur, in the
_Sentimental Journey_, plainly shows.

Next to the men who are obliged to be absent from home at certain
fixed hours, come the men whom vast and serious undertakings leave not
one minute for love-making; their foreheads are always wrinkled with
anxiety, their conversation is generally void of merriment.

At the head of these unfortunates we must place the bankers, who toil
in the acquisition of millions, whose heads are so full of
calculations that the figures burst through their skulls and range
themselves in columns of addition on their foreheads.

These millionaires, forgetting most of the time the sacred laws of
marriage and the attention due to the tender flower which they have
undertaken to cultivate, never think of watering it or of defending it
from the heat and cold. They scarcely recognize the fact that the
happiness of their spouses is in their keeping; if they ever do
remember this, it is at table, when they see seated before them a
woman in rich array, or when a coquette, fearing their brutal repulse,
comes, gracious as Venus, to ask them for cash-- Oh! it is then, that
they recall, sometimes very vividly, the rights specified in the two
hundred and thirteenth article of the civil code, and their wives are
grateful to them; but like the heavy tariff which the law lays upon
foreign merchandise, their wives suffer and pay the tribute, in virtue
of the axiom which says: "There is no pleasure without pain."

The men of science who spend whole months in gnawing at the bone of an
antediluvian monster, in calculating the laws of nature, when there is
an opportunity to peer into her secrets, the Grecians and Latinists
who dine on a thought of Tacitus, sup on a phrase of Thucydides, spend
their life in brushing the dust from library shelves, in keeping guard
over a commonplace book, or a papyrus, are all predestined. So great
is their abstraction or their ecstasy, that nothing that goes on
around them strikes their attention. Their unhappiness is consummated;
in full light of noon they scarcely even perceive it. Oh happy men! a
thousand times happy! Example: Beauzee, returning home after session
at the Academy, surprises his wife with a German. "Did not I tell you,
madame, that it was necessary that I shall go," cried the stranger.
"My dear sir," interrupted the academician, "you ought to say that I
_should_ go!"

Then there come, lyre in hand, certain poets whose whole animal
strength has left the ground floor and mounted to the upper story.
They know better how to mount Pegasus than the beast of old Peter,
they rarely marry, although they are accustomed to lavish the fury of
their passions on some wandering or imaginary Chloris.

But the men whose noses are stained with snuff;

But those who, to their misfortune, have a perpetual cold in their
head;

But the sailors who smoke or chew;

But those men whose dry and bilious temperament makes them always look
as if they had eaten a sour apple;

But the men who in private life have certain cynical habits,
ridiculous fads, and who always, in spite of everything, look
unwashed;

But the husbands who have obtained the degrading name of "hen-pecked";

Finally the old men who marry young girls.

All these people are _par excellence_ among the predestined.

There is a final class of the predestined whose ill-fortune is almost
certain, we mean restless and irritable men, who are inclined to
meddle and tyrannize, who have a great idea of domestic domination,
who openly express their low ideas of women and who know no more about
life than herrings about natural history. When these men marry, their
homes have the appearance of a wasp whose head a schoolboy has cut
off, and who dances here and there on a window pane. For this sort of
predestined the present work is a sealed book. We do not write any
more for those imbeciles, walking effigies, who are like the statues
of a cathedral, than for those old machines of Marly which are too
weak to fling water over the hedges of Versailles without being in
danger of sudden collapse.

I rarely make my observations on the conjugal oddities with which the
drawing-room is usually full, without recalling vividly a sight which
I once enjoyed in early youth:

In 1819 I was living in a thatched cottage situated in the bosom of
the delightful valley l'Isle-Adam. My hermitage neighbored on the park
of Cassan, the sweetest of retreats, the most fascinating in aspect,
the most attractive as a place to ramble in, the most cool and
refreshing in summer, of all places created by luxury and art. This
verdant country-seat owes its origin to a farmer-general of the good
old times, a certain Bergeret, celebrated for his originality; who
among other fantastic dandyisms adopted the habit of going to the
opera, with his hair powdered in gold; he used to light up his park
for his own solitary delectation and on one occasion ordered a
sumptuous entertainment there, in which he alone took part. This
rustic Sardanapalus returned from Italy so passionately charmed with
the scenery of that beautiful country that, by a sudden freak of
enthusiasm, he spent four or five millions in order to represent in
his park the scenes of which he had pictures in his portfolio. The
most charming contrasts of foliage, the rarest trees, long valleys,
and prospects the most picturesque that could be brought from abroad,
Borromean islands floating on clear eddying streams like so many rays,
which concentrate their various lustres on a single point, on an Isola
Bella, from which the enchanted eye takes in each detail at its
leisure, or on an island in the bosom of which is a little house
concealed under the drooping foliage of a century-old ash, an island
fringed with irises, rose-bushes, and flowers which appears like an
emerald richly set. Ah! one might rove a thousand leagues for such a
place! The most sickly, the most soured, the most disgusted of our men
of genius in ill health would die of satiety at the end of fifteen
days, overwhelmed with the luscious sweetness of fresh life in such a
spot.

The man who was quite regardless of the Eden which he thus possessed
had neither wife nor children, but was attached to a large ape which
he kept. A graceful turret of wood, supported by a sculptured column,
served as a dwelling place for this vicious animal, who being kept
chained and rarely petted by his eccentric master, oftener at Paris
than in his country home, had gained a very bad reputation. I
recollect seeing him once in the presence of certain ladies show
almost as much insolence as if he had been a man. His master was
obliged to kill him, so mischievous did he gradually become.

One morning while I was sitting under a beautiful tulip tree in
flower, occupied in doing nothing but inhaling the lovely perfumes
which the tall poplars kept confined within the brilliant enclosure,
enjoying the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters
and the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head
by clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of
my future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before
from Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has
nothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear
anything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If
the distant notes of Roland's Horn had only filled the air with life,
perhaps--but a noisy fiddler like this, who undertakes to bring to you
the expression of human ideas and the phraseology of music! This
Amphion, who was walking up and down the dining-room, finished by
taking a seat on the window-sill, exactly in front of the monkey.
Perhaps he was looking for an audience. Suddenly I saw the animal
quietly descend from his little dungeon, stand upon his hind feet, bow
his head forward like a swimmer and fold his arms over his bosom like
Spartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker,
summoned by a sweet voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir not
unknown to me, laid his violin on the window-sill and made off like a
swallow who rejoins his companion by a rapid level swoop. The great
monkey, whose chain was sufficiently long, approached the window and
gravely took in hand the violin. I don't know whether you have ever
had as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to learn music, but
at the present moment, when I laugh much less than I did in those
careless days, I never think of that monkey without a smile; the
semi-man began by grasping the instrument with his fist and by
sniffing
at it as if he were tasting the flavor of an apple. The snort from his
nostrils probably produced a dull harmonious sound in the sonorous
wood and then the orang-outang shook his head, turned over the violin,
turned it back again, raised it up in the air, lowered it, held it
straight out, shook it, put it to his ear, set it down, and picked it
up again with a rapidity of movement peculiar to these agile
creatures. He seemed to question the dumb wood with faltering sagacity
and in his gestures there was something marvelous as well as
infantile. At last he undertook with grotesque gestures to place the
violin under his chin, while in one hand he held the neck; but like a
spoiled child he soon wearied of a study which required skill not to
be obtained in a moment and he twitched the strings without being able
to draw forth anything but discordant sounds. He seemed annoyed, laid
the violin on the window-sill and snatching up the bow he began to
push it to and fro with violence, like a mason sawing a block of
stone. This effort only succeeded in wearying his fastidious ears, and
he took the bow with both hands and snapped it in two on the innocent
instrument, source of harmony and delight. It seemed as if I saw
before me a schoolboy holding under him a companion lying face
downwards, while he pommeled him with a shower of blows from his fist,
as if to punish him for some delinquency. The violin being now tried
and condemned, the monkey sat down upon the fragments of it and amused
himself with stupid joy in mixing up the yellow strings of the broken
bow.

Never since that day have I been able to look upon the home of the
predestined without comparing the majority of husbands to this
orang-outang trying to play the violin.

Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love
is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is
necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of
them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious
which befits it. How many monkeys--men, I mean--marry without knowing
what a woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wives
as the ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken the heart
which they did not understand, as they might dim and disdain the
amulet whose secret was unknown to them. They are children their whole
life through, who leave life with empty hands after having talked
about love, about pleasure, about licentiousness and virtue as slaves
talk about liberty. Almost all of them married with the most profound
ignorance of women and of love. They commenced by breaking in the door
of a strange house and expected to be welcomed in this drawing-room.
But the rudest artist knows that between him and his instrument, of
wood, or of ivory, there exists a mysterious sort of friendship. He
knows by experience that it takes years to establish this
understanding between an inert matter and himself. He did not
discover, at the first touch, the resources, the caprices, the
deficiencies, the excellencies of his instrument. It did not become a
living soul for him, a source of incomparable melody until he had
studied for a long time; man and instrument did not come to understand
each other like two friends, until both of them had been skillfully
questioned and tested by frequent intercourse.

Can a man ever learn woman and know how to decipher this wondrous
strain of music, by remaining through life like a seminarian in his
cell? Is it possible that a man who makes it his business to think for
others, to judge others, to rule others, to steal money from others,
to feed, to heal, to wound others--that, in fact, any of our
predestined, can spare time to study a woman? They sell their time for
money, how can they give it away for happiness? Money is their god. No
one can serve two masters at the same time. Is not the world,
moreover, full of young women who drag along pale and weak, sickly and
suffering? Some of them are the prey of feverish inflammations more or
less serious, others lie under the cruel tyranny of nervous attacks
more or less violent. All the husbands of these women belong to the
class of the ignorant and the predestined. They have caused their own
misfortune and expended as much pains in producing it as the husband
artist would have bestowed in bringing to flower the late and
delightful blooms of pleasure. The time which an ignorant man passes
to consummate his own ruin is precisely that which a man of knowledge
employs in the education of his happiness.

XXVI.
Do not begin marriage by a violation of law.

In the preceding meditations we have indicated the extent of the evil
with the reckless audacity of those surgeons, who boldly induce the
formation of false tissues under which a shameful wound is concealed.
Public virtue, transferred to the table of our amphitheatre, has lost
even its carcass under the strokes of the scalpel. Lover or husband,
have you smiled, or have you trembled at this evil? Well, it is with
malicious delight that we lay this huge social burden on the
conscience of the predestined. Harlequin, when he tried to find out
whether his horse could be accustomed to go without food, was not more
ridiculous than the men who wish to find happiness in their home and
yet refuse to cultivate it with all the pains which it demands. The
errors of women are so many indictments of egotism, neglect and
worthlessness in husbands.

Yet it is yours, reader, it pertains to you, who have often condemned
in another the crime which you yourself commit, it is yours to hold
the balance. One of the scales is quite loaded, take care what you are
going to put in the other. Reckon up the number of predestined ones
who may be found among the total number of married people, weigh them,
and you will then know where the evil is seated.

Let us try to penetrate more deeply into the causes of this conjugal
sickliness.

The word love, when applied to the reproduction of the species, is the
most hateful blasphemy which modern manners have taught us to utter.
Nature, in raising us above the beasts by the divine gift of thought,
had rendered us very sensitive to bodily sensations, emotional
sentiment, cravings of appetite and passions. This double nature of
ours makes of man both an animal and a lover. This distinction gives
the key to the social problem which we are considering.

Marriage may be considered in three ways, politically, as well as from
a civil and moral point of view: as a law, as a contract and as an
institution. As a law, its object is a reproduction of the species; as
a contract, it relates to the transmission of property; as an
institution, it is a guarantee which all men give and by which all are
bound: they have father and mother, and they will have children.
Marriage, therefore, ought to be the object of universal respect.
Society can only take into consideration those cardinal points, which,
from a social point of view, dominate the conjugal question.

Most men have no other views in marrying, than reproduction, property
or children; but neither reproduction nor property nor children
constitutes happiness. The command, "Increase and multiply," does not
imply love. To ask of a young girl whom we have seen fourteen times in
fifteen days, to give you love in the name of law, the king and
justice, is an absurdity worthy of the majority of the predestined.

Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment; happiness in
marriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair.
Hence it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himself
bound by certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed the
benefit of the social law which consecrates the natural craving, he
must obey also the secret laws of nature by which sentiments unfold
themselves. If he stakes his happiness on being himself loved, he must
himself love sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.

But to feel this passion is always to feel desire. Can a man always
desire his wife?

Yes.

It is as absurd to deny that it is possible for a man always to love
the same woman, as it would be to affirm that some famous musician
needed several violins in order to execute a piece of music or compose
a charming melody.

Love is the poetry of the senses. It has the destiny of all that which
is great in man and of all that which proceeds from his thought.
Either it is sublime, or it is not. When once it exists, it exists
forever and goes on always increasing. This is the love which the
ancients made the child of heaven and earth.

Literature revolves round seven situations; music expresses everything
with seven notes; painting employs but seven colors; like these three
arts, love perhaps founds itself on seven principles, but we leave
this investigation for the next century to carry out.

If poetry, music and painting have found infinite forms of expression,
pleasure should be even more diversified. For in the three arts which
aid us in seeking, often with little success, truth by means of
analogy, the man stands alone with his imagination, while love is the
union of two bodies and of two souls. If the three principal methods
upon which we rely for the expression of thought require preliminary
study in those whom nature has made poets, musicians or painters, is
it not obvious that, in order, to be happy, it is necessary to be
initiated into the secrets of pleasure? All men experience the craving
for reproduction, as all feel hunger and thirst; but all are not
called to be lovers and gastronomists. Our present civilization has
proved that taste is a science, and it is only certain privileged
beings who have learned how to eat and drink. Pleasure considered as
an art is still waiting for its physiologists. As for ourselves, we
are contented with pointing out that ignorance of the principles upon
which happiness is founded, is the sole cause of that misfortune which
is the lot of all the predestined.

It is with the greatest timidity that we venture upon the publication
of a few aphorisms which may give birth to this new art, as casts have
created the science of geology; and we offer them for the meditation
of philosophers, of young marrying people and of the predestined.

CATECHISM OF MARRIAGE.

XXVII.
Marriage is a science.

XXVIII.
A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected
at least one woman.

XXIX.
The fate of the home depends on the first night.

XXX.
A woman deprived of her free will can never have the credit of making
a sacrifice.

XXXI.
In love, putting aside all consideration of the soul, the heart of a
woman is like a lyre which does not reveal its secret, excepting to
him who is a skillful player.

XXXII.
Independently of any gesture of repulsion, there exists in the soul of
all women a sentiment which tends, sooner or later, to proscribe all
pleasure devoid of passionate feeling.

XXXIII.
The interest of a husband as much as his honor forbids him to indulge
a pleasure which he has not had the skill to make his wife desire.

XXXIV.
Pleasure being caused by the union of sensation and sentiment, we can
say without fear of contradiction that pleasures are a sort of
material ideas.

XXXV.
As ideas are capable of infinite combination, it ought to be the same
with pleasures.

XXXVI.
In the life of man there are no two moments of pleasure exactly alike,
any more than there are two leaves of identical shape upon the same
tree.

XXXVII.
If there are differences between one moment of pleasure and another, a
man can always be happy with the same woman.

XXXVIII.
To seize adroitly upon the varieties of pleasure, to develop them, to
impart to them a new style, an original expression, constitutes the
genius of a husband.

XXXIX.
Between two beings who do not love each other this genius is
licentiousness; but the caresses over which love presides are always
pure.

XL.
The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most
voluptuous.

XLI.
The most virtuous woman can be forward without knowing it.

XLII.
When two human beings are united by pleasure, all social
conventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef on
which many vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgets
there is a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal
love ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of its
eyes, excepting at the due season.

XLIII.
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but
in striking true.

XLIV.
To call a desire into being, to nourish it, to develop it, to bring it
to full growth, to excite it, to satisfy it, is a complete poem of
itself.

XLV.
The progression of pleasures is from the distich to the quatrain, from
the quatrain to the sonnet, from the sonnet to the ballad, from the
ballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to
the dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool.

XLVI.
Each night ought to have its _menu_.

XLVII.
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours
everything, that is, familiarity.

XLVIII.
If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of
two consecutive nights, he has married too early.

XLIX.
It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it
is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things
from time to time.

L.
A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to
awaken.

LI.
The man who enters his wife's dressing-room is either a philosopher or
an imbecile.

LII.
The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man.

LIII.
The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a
throne.

LIV.
A man must not flatter himself that he knows his wife, and is making
her happy unless he sees her often at his knees.

It is to the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions
of snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men
that Sterne addressed, in _Tristram Shandy_, the letter written by
Walter Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marry
the widow Wadman.

These celebrated instructions which the most original of English
writers has comprised in this letter, suffice with some few exceptions
to complete our observations on the manner in which husbands should
behave to their wives; and we offer it in its original form to the
reflections of the predestined, begging that they will meditate upon
it as one of the most solid masterpieces of human wit.

"MY DEAR BROTHER TOBY,

"What I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of
love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee--tho' not
so well for me--that thou hast occasion for a letter of
instructions upon that head, and that I am able to write it to
thee.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26