Оноре де Бальзак
Analytical Studies
HUMILIATIONS
To the glory of women, let it be said, they care for their husbands even when their husbands care no more for them, not only because there are more ties, socially speaking, between a married woman and a man, than between the man and the wife; but also because woman has more delicacy and honor than man, the chief conjugal question apart, as a matter of course.
Axiom. – In a husband, there is only a man; in a married woman, there is a man, a father, a mother and a woman.
A married woman has sensibility enough for four, or for five even, if you look closely.
Now, it is not improper to observe in this place, that, in a woman's eyes, love is a general absolution: the man who is a good lover may commit crimes, if he will, he is always as pure as snow in the eyes of her who loves him, if he truly loves her. As to a married woman, loved or not, she feels so deeply that the honor and consideration of her husband are the fortune of her children, that she acts like the woman in love, – so active is the sense of community of interest.
This profound sentiment engenders, for certain Carolines, petty troubles which, unfortunately for this book, have their dismal side.
Adolphe is compromised. We will not enumerate all the methods of compromising oneself, for we might become personal. Let us take, as an example, the social error which our epoch excuses, permits, understands and commits the most of any – the case of an honest robbery, of skillfully concealed corruption in office, or of some misrepresentation that becomes excusable when it has succeeded, as, for instance, having an understanding with parties in power, for the sale of property at the highest possible price to a city, or a country.
Thus, in a bankruptcy, Adolphe, in order to protect himself (this means to recover his claims), has become mixed up in certain unlawful doings which may bring a man to the necessity of testifying before the Court of Assizes. In fact, it is not known that the daring creditor will not be considered a party.
Take notice that in all cases of bankruptcy, protecting oneself is regarded as the most sacred of duties, even by the most respectable houses: the thing is to keep the bad side of the protection out of sight, as they do in prudish England.
Adolphe does not know what to do, as his counsel has told him not to appear in the matter: so he has recourse to Caroline. He gives her a lesson, he coaches her, he teaches her the Code, he examines her dress, he equips her as a brig sent on a voyage, and despatches her to the office of some judge, or some syndic. The judge is apparently a man of severe morality, but in reality a libertine: he retains his serious expression on seeing a pretty woman enter, and makes sundry very uncomplimentary remarks about Adolphe.
"I pity you, madame, you belong to a man who may involve you in numerous unpleasant affairs: a few more matters like this, and he will be quite disgraced. Have you any children? Excuse my asking; you are so young, it is perfectly natural." And the judge comes as near to Caroline as possible.
"Yes, sir."
"Ah, great heavens! what a prospect is yours! My first thought was for the woman, but now I pity you doubly, I think of the mother. Ah, how you must have suffered in coming here! Poor, poor woman!"
"Ah, sir, you take an interest in me, do you not?"
"Alas, what can I do?" says the judge, darting a glance sidewise at Caroline. "What you ask of me is a dereliction of duty, and I am a magistrate before I am a man."
"Oh, sir, only be a man – "
"Are you aware of the full bearing of that request, fair creature?" At this point the magistrate tremblingly takes Caroline's hand.
Caroline, who remembers that the honor of her husband and children is at stake, says to herself that this is not the time to play the prude. She abandons her hand, making just resistance enough for the old man (happily he is an old man) to consider it a favor.
"Come, come, my beauty," resumes the judge, "I should be loath to cause so lovely a woman to shed tears; we'll see about it. You shall come to-morrow evening and tell me the whole affair. We must look at the papers, we will examine them together – "
"Sir – "
"It's indispensable."
"But, sir – "
"Don't be alarmed, my dear, a judge is likely to know how to grant what is due to justice and – " he puts on a shrewd look here – "to beauty."
"But, sir – "
"Be quite at your ease," he adds, holding her hand closely in his, "and we'll try to reduce this great crime down to a peccadillo." And he goes to the door with Caroline, who is frightened to death at an appointment thus proposed.
The syndic is a lively young man, and he receives Madame Adolphe with a smile. He smiles at everything, and he smiles as he takes her round the waist with an agility which leaves Caroline no time to resist, especially as she says to herself, "Adolphe particularly recommended me not to vex the syndic."
Nevertheless Caroline escapes, in the interest of the syndic himself, and again pronounces the "Sir!" which she had said three times to the judge.
"Don't be angry with me, you are irresistible, you are an angel, and your husband is a monster: for what does he mean by sending a siren to a young man whom he knows to be inflammable!"
"Sir, my husband could not come himself; he is in bed, very sick, and you threatened him so terribly that the urgency of the matter – "
"Hasn't he got a lawyer, an attorney?"
Caroline is terrified by this remark which reveals Adolphe's profound rascality.
"He supposed, sir, that you would have pity upon the mother of a family, upon her children – "
"Ta, ta, ta," returns the syndic. "You have come to influence my independence, my conscience, you want me to give the creditors up to you: well, I'll do more, I give you up my heart, my fortune! Your husband wants to save his honor, my honor is at your disposal!"
"Sir," cries Caroline, as she tries to raise the syndic who has thrown himself at her feet. "You alarm me!"
She plays the terrified female and thus reaches the door, getting out of a delicate situation as women know how to do it, that is, without compromising anything or anybody.
"I will come again," she says smiling, "when you behave better."
"You leave me thus! Take care! Your husband may yet find himself seated at the bar of the Court of Assizes: he is accessory to a fraudulent bankruptcy, and we know several things about him that are not by any means honorable. It is not his first departure from rectitude; he has done a good many dirty things, he has been mixed up in disgraceful intrigues, and you are singularly careful of the honor of a man who cares as little for his own honor as he does for yours."
Caroline, alarmed by these words, lets go the door, shuts it and comes back.
"What do you mean, sir?" she exclaims, furious at this outrageous broadside.
"Why, this affair – "
"Chaumontel's affair?"
"No, his speculations in houses that he had built by people that were insolvent."
Caroline remembers the enterprise undertaken by Adolphe to double his income: (See The Jesuitism of Women) she trembles. Her curiosity is in the syndic's favor.
"Sit down here. There, at this distance, I will behave well, but I can look at you."
And he narrates, at length, the conception due to du Tillet the banker, interrupting himself to say: "Oh, what a pretty, cunning, little foot; no one but you could have such a foot as that —Du Tillet, therefore, compromised. What an ear, too! You have been doubtless told that you had a delicious ear —And du Tillet was right, for judgment had already been given– I love small ears, but let me have a model of yours, and I will do anything you like —du Tillet profited by this to throw the whole loss on your idiotic husband: oh, what a charming silk, you are divinely dressed!"
"Where were we, sir?"
"How can I remember while admiring your Raphaelistic head?"
At the twenty-seventh compliment, Caroline considers the syndic a man of wit: she makes him a polite speech, and goes away without learning much more of the enterprise which, not long before had swallowed up three hundred thousand francs.
There are many huge variations of this petty trouble.
EXAMPLE. Adolphe is brave and susceptible: he is walking on the Champs Elysees, where there is a crowd of people; in this crowd are several ill-mannered young men who indulge in jokes of doubtful propriety: Caroline puts up with them and pretends not to hear them, in order to keep her husband out of a duel.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE. A child belonging to the genus Terrible, exclaims in the presence of everybody:
"Mamma, would you let Justine hit me?"
"Certainly not."
"Why do you ask, my little man?" inquires Madame Foullepointe.
"Because she just gave father a big slap, and he's ever so much stronger than me."
Madame Foullepointe laughs, and Adolphe, who intended to pay court to her, is cruelly joked by her, after having had a first last quarrel with Caroline.
THE LAST QUARREL
In every household, husbands and wives must one day hear the striking of a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, a great, noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, if it is not even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband, all is over, she loves him no more. So, conjugal love expires in the last quarrel that a woman gives herself the trouble to raise.
Axiom. – When a woman ceases to quarrel with her husband, the Minotaur has seated himself in a corner arm-chair, tapping his boots with his cane.
Every woman must remember her last quarrel, that supreme petty trouble which often explodes about nothing, but more often still on some occasion of a brutal fact or of a decisive proof. This cruel farewell to faith, to the childishness of love, to virtue even, is in a degree as capricious as life itself. Like life it varies in every house.
Here, the author ought perhaps to search out all the varieties of quarrels, if he desires to be precise.
Thus, Caroline may have discovered that the judicial robe of the syndic in Chaumontel's affair, hides a robe of infinitely softer stuff, of an agreeable, silky color: that Chaumontel's hair, in short, is fair, and that his eyes are blue.
Or else Caroline, who arose before Adolphe, may have seen his greatcoat thrown wrong side out across a chair; the edge of a little perfumed paper, just peeping out of the side-pocket, may have attracted her by its whiteness, like a ray of the sun entering a dark room through a crack in the window: or else, while taking Adolphe in her arms and feeling his pocket, she may have caused the note to crackle: or else she may have been informed of the state of things by a foreign odor that she has long noticed upon him, and may have read these lines:
"Ungraitfull wun, wot du yu supoz I no About Hipolite. Kum, and yu shal se whether I Love yu."
Or this:
"Yesterday, love, you made me wait for you: what will it be to-morrow?"
Or this:
"The women who love you, my dear sir, are very unhappy in hating you so, when you are not with them: take care, for the hatred which exists during your absence, may possibly encroach upon the hours you spend in their company."
Or this:
"You traitorous Chodoreille, what were you doing yesterday on the boulevard with a woman hanging on your arm? If it was your wife, accept my compliments of condolence upon her absent charms: she has doubtless deposited them at the pawnbroker's, and the ticket to redeem them with is lost."
Four notes emanating from the grisette, the lady, the pretentious woman in middle life, and the actress, among whom Adolphe has chosen his belle (according to the Fischtaminellian vocabulary).
Or else Caroline, taken veiled by Ferdinand to Ranelagh Garden, sees with her own eyes Adolphe abandoning himself furiously to the polka, holding one of the ladies of honor to Queen Pomare in his arms; or else, again, Adolphe has for the seventh time, made a mistake in the name, and called his wife Juliette, Charlotte or Lisa: or, a grocer or restaurateur sends to the house, during Adolphe's absence, certain damning bills which fall into Caroline's hands.
PAPERS RELATING TO CHAUMONTEL'S AFFAIR
(Private Tables Served.)
M. Adolphe to Perrault,
To 1 Pate de Foie Gras delivered at Madame
Schontz's, the 6th of January, fr. 22.50
Six bottle of assorted wines, 70.00
To one special breakfast delivered at Congress
Hotel, the 11th of February, at No. 21 —
Stipulated price, 100.00
______
Total, Francs, 192.50
Caroline examines the dates and remembers them as appointments made for business connected with Chaumontel's affair. Adolphe had designated the sixth of January as the day fixed for a meeting at which the creditors in Chaumontel's affair were to receive the sums due them. On the eleventh of February he had an appointment with the notary, in order to sign a receipt relative to Chaumontel's affair.
Or else – but an attempt to mention all the chances of discovery would be the undertaking of a madman.
Every woman will remember to herself how the bandage with which her eyes were bound fell off: how, after many doubts, and agonies of heart, she made up her mind to have a final quarrel for the simple purpose of finishing the romance, putting the seal to the book, stipulating for her independence, or beginning life over again.
Some women are fortunate enough to have anticipated their husbands, and they then have the quarrel as a sort of justification.
Nervous women give way to a burst of passion and commit acts of violence.
Women of mild temper assume a decided tone which appalls the most intrepid husbands. Those who have no vengeance ready shed a great many tears.
Those who love you forgive you. Ah, they conceive so readily, like the woman called "Ma berline," that their Adolphe must be loved by the women of France, that they are rejoiced to possess, legally, a man about whom everybody goes crazy.
Certain women with lips tight shut like a vise, with a muddy complexion and thin arms, treat themselves to the malicious pleasure of promenading their Adolphe through the quagmire of falsehood and contradiction: they question him (see Troubles within Troubles), like a magistrate examining a criminal, reserving the spiteful enjoyment of crushing his denials by positive proof at a decisive moment. Generally, in this supreme scene of conjugal life, the fair sex is the executioner, while, in the contrary case, man is the assassin.
This is the way of it: This last quarrel (you shall know why the author has called it the last), is always terminated by a solemn, sacred promise, made by scrupulous, noble, or simply intelligent women (that is to say, by all women), and which we give here in its grandest form.
"Enough, Adolphe! We love each other no more; you have deceived me, and I shall never forget it. I may forgive it, but I can never forget it."
Women represent themselves as implacable only to render their forgiveness charming: they have anticipated God.
"We have now to live in common like two friends," continues Caroline. "Well, let us live like two comrades, two brothers, I do not wish to make your life intolerable, and I never again will speak to you of what has happened – "
Adolphe gives Caroline his hand: she takes it, and shakes it in the English style. Adolphe thanks Caroline, and catches a glimpse of bliss: he has converted his wife into a sister, and hopes to be a bachelor again.
The next day Caroline indulges in a very witty allusion (Adolphe cannot help laughing at it) to Chaumontel's affair. In society she makes general remarks which, to Adolphe, are very particular remarks, about their last quarrel.
At the end of a fortnight a day never passes without Caroline's recalling their last quarrel by saying: "It was the day when I found Chaumontel's bill in your pocket: " or "it happened since our last quarrel: " or, "it was the day when, for the first time, I had a clear idea of life," etc. She assassinates Adolphe, she martyrizes him! In society she gives utterance to terrible things.
"We are happy, my dear [to a lady], when we love each other no longer: it's then that we learn how to make ourselves beloved," and she looks at Ferdinand.
In short, the last quarrel never comes to an end, and from this fact flows the following axiom:
Axiom. – Putting yourself in the wrong with your lawful wife, is solving the problem of Perpetual Motion.
A SIGNAL FAILURE
Women, and especially married women, stick ideas into their brain-pan precisely as they stick pins into a pincushion, and the devil himself, – do you mind? – could not get them out: they reserve to themselves the exclusive right of sticking them in, pulling them out, and sticking them in again.
Caroline is riding home one evening from Madame Foullepointe's in a violent state of jealousy and ambition.
Madame Foullepointe, the lioness – but this word requires an explanation. It is a fashionable neologism, and gives expression to certain rather meagre ideas relative to our present society: you must use it, if you want to describe a woman who is all the rage. This lioness rides on horseback every day, and Caroline has taken it into her head to learn to ride also.
Observe that in this conjugal phase, Adolphe and Caroline are in the season which we have denominated A Household Revolution, and that they have had two or three Last Quarrels.
"Adolphe," she says, "do you want to do me a favor?"
"Of course."
"Won't you refuse?"
"If your request is reasonable, I am willing – "
"Ah, already – that's a true husband's word – if – "
"Come, what is it?"
"I want to learn to ride on horseback."
"Now, is it a possible thing, Caroline?"
Caroline looks out of the window, and tries to wipe away a dry tear.
"Listen," resumes Adolphe; "I cannot let you go alone to the riding-school; and I cannot go with you while business gives me the annoyance it does now. What's the matter? I think I have given you unanswerable reasons."
Adolphe foresees the hiring of a stable, the purchase of a pony, the introduction of a groom and of a servant's horse into the establishment – in short, all the nuisance of female lionization.
When a man gives a woman reasons instead of giving her what she wants – well, few men have ventured to descend into that small abyss called the heart, to test the power of the tempest that suddenly bursts forth there.
"Reasons! If you want reasons, here they are!" exclaims Caroline. "I am your wife: you don't seem to care to please me any more. And as to the expenses, you greatly overrate them, my dear."
Women have as many inflections of voice to pronounce these words, My dear, as the Italians have to say Amico. I have counted twenty-nine which express only various degrees of hatred.
"Well, you'll see," resumes Caroline, "I shall be sick, and you will pay the apothecary and the doctor as much as the price of a horse. I shall be walled up here at home, and that's all you want. I asked the favor of you, though I was sure of a refusal: I only wanted to know how you would go to work to give it."
"But, Caroline – "
"Leave me alone at the riding-school!" she continues without listening. "Is that a reason? Can't I go with Madame de Fischtaminel? Madame de Fischtaminel is learning to ride on horseback, and I don't imagine that Monsieur de Fischtaminel goes with her."
"But, Caroline – "
"I am delighted with your solicitude. You think a great deal of me, really. Monsieur de Fischtaminel has more confidence in his wife, than you have in yours. He does not go with her, not he! Perhaps it's on account of this confidence that you don't want me at the school, where I might see your goings on with the fair Fischtaminel."
Adolphe tries to hide his vexation at this torrent of words, which begins when they are still half way from home, and has no sea to empty into. When Caroline is in her room, she goes on in the same way.
"You see that if reasons could restore my health or prevent me from desiring a kind of exercise pointed out by nature herself, I should not be in want of reasons, and that I know all the reasons that there are, and that I went over with the reasons before I spoke to you."
This, ladies, may with the more truth be called the prologue to the conjugal drama, from the fact that it is vigorously delivered, embellished with a commentary of gestures, ornamented with glances and all the other vignettes with which you usually illustrate such masterpieces.
Caroline, when she has once planted in Adolphe's heart the apprehension of a scene of constantly reiterated demands, feels her hatred for his control largely increase. Madame pouts, and she pouts so fiercely, that Adolphe is forced to notice it, on pain of very disagreeable consequences, for all is over, be sure of that, between two beings married by the mayor, or even at Gretna Green, when one of them no longer notices the sulkings of the other.
Axiom. – A sulk that has struck in is a deadly poison.
It was to prevent this suicide of love that our ingenious France invented boudoirs. Women could not well have Virgil's willows in the economy of our modern dwellings. On the downfall of oratories, these little cubbies become boudoirs.
This conjugal drama has three acts. The act of the prologue is already played. Then comes the act of false coquetry: one of those in which French women have the most success.
Adolphe is walking about the room, divesting himself of his apparel, and the man thus engaged, divests himself of his strength as well as of his clothing. To every man of forty, this axiom will appear profoundly just:
Axiom. – The ideas of a man who has taken his boots and his suspenders off, are no longer those of a man who is still sporting these two tyrants of the mind.
Take notice that this is only an axiom in wedded life. In morals, it is what we call a relative theorem.
Caroline watches, like a jockey on the race course, the moment when she can distance her adversary. She makes her preparations to be irresistibly fascinating to Adolphe.
Women possess a power of mimicking pudicity, a knowledge of secrets which might be those of a frightened dove, a particular register for singing, like Isabella, in the fourth act of Robert le Diable: "Grace pour toi! Grace pour moi!" which leave jockeys and horse trainers whole miles behind. As usual, the Diable succumbs. It is the eternal history, the grand Christian mystery of the bruised serpent, of the delivered woman becoming the great social force, as the Fourierists say. It is especially in this that the difference between the Oriental slave and the Occidental wife appears.
Upon the conjugal pillow, the second act ends by a number of onomatopes, all of them favorable to peace. Adolphe, precisely like children in the presence of a slice of bread and molasses, promises everything that Caroline wants.
THIRD ACT. As the curtain rises, the stage represents a chamber in a state of extreme disorder. Adolphe, in his dressing gown, tries to go out furtively and without waking Caroline, who is sleeping profoundly, and finally does go out.
Caroline, exceedingly happy, gets up, consults her mirror, and makes inquiries about breakfast. An hour afterward, when she is ready she learns that breakfast is served.
"Tell monsieur."
"Madame, he is in the little parlor."
"What a nice man he is," she says, going up to Adolphe, and talking the babyish, caressing language of the honey-moon.
"What for, pray?"
"Why, to let his little Liline ride the horsey."
OBSERVATION. During the honey-moon, some few married couples, – very young ones, – make use of languages, which, in ancient days, Aristotle classified and defined. (See his Pedagogy.) Thus they are perpetually using such terminations as lala, nana, coachy-poachy, just as mothers and nurses use them to babies. This is one of the secret reasons, discussed and recognized in big quartos by the Germans, which determined the Cabires, the creators of the Greek mythology, to represent Love as a child. There are other reasons very well known to women, the principal of which is, that, in their opinion, love in men is always small.
"Where did you get that idea, my sweet? You must have dreamed it!"
"What!"
Caroline stands stark still: she opens wide her eyes which are already considerably widened by amazement. Being inwardly epileptic, she says not a word: she merely gazes at Adolphe. Under the satanic fires of their gaze, Adolphe turns half way round toward the dining-room; but he asks himself whether it would not be well to let Caroline take one lesson, and to tip the wink to the riding-master, to disgust her with equestrianism by the harshness of his style of instruction.
There is nothing so terrible as an actress who reckons upon a success, and who fait four.
In the language of the stage, to faire four is to play to a wretchedly thin house, or to obtain not the slightest applause. It is taking great pains for nothing, in short a signal failure.
This petty trouble – it is very petty – is reproduced in a thousand ways in married life, when the honey-moon is over, and when the wife has no personal fortune.
In spite of the author's repugnance to inserting anecdotes in an exclusively aphoristic work, the tissue of which will bear nothing but the most delicate and subtle observations, – from the nature of the subject at least, – it seems to him necessary to illustrate this page by an incident narrated by one of our first physicians. This repetition of the subject involves a rule of conduct very much in use with the doctors of Paris.
A certain husband was in our Adolphe's situation. His Caroline, having once made a signal failure, was determined to conquer, for Caroline often does conquer! (See The Physiology of Marriage, Meditation XXVI, Paragraph Nerves.) She had been lying about on the sofas for two months, getting up at noon, taking no part in the amusements of the city. She would not go to the theatre, – oh, the disgusting atmosphere! – the lights, above all, the lights! Then the bustle, coming out, going in, the music, – it might be fatal, it's so terribly exciting!
She would not go on excursions to the country, oh, certainly it was her desire to do so! – but she would like (desiderata) a carriage of her own, horses of her own – her husband would not give her an equipage. And as to going in hacks, in hired conveyances, the bare thought gave her a rising at the stomach!
She would not have any cooking – the smell of the meats produced a sudden nausea. She drank innumerable drugs that her maid never saw her take.
In short, she expended large amounts of time and money in attitudes, privations, effects, pearl-white to give her the pallor of a corpse, machinery, and the like, precisely as when the manager of a theatre spreads rumors about a piece gotten up in a style of Oriental magnificence, without regard to expense!
This couple had got so far as to believe that even a journey to the springs, to Ems, to Hombourg, to Carlsbad, would hardly cure the invalid: but madame would not budge, unless she could go in her own carriage. Always that carriage!
Adolphe held out, and would not yield.
Caroline, who was a woman of great sagacity, admitted that her husband was right.
"Adolphe is right," she said to her friends, "it is I who am unreasonable: he can not, he ought not, have a carriage yet: men know better than we do the situation of their business."
At times Adolphe was perfectly furious! Women have ways about them that demand the justice of Tophet itself. Finally, during the third month, he met one of his school friends, a lieutenant in the corps of physicians, modest as all young doctors are: he had had his epaulettes one day only, and could give the order to fire!
"For a young woman, a young doctor," said our Adolphe to himself.
And he proposed to the future Bianchon to visit his wife and tell him the truth about her condition.
"My dear, it is time that you should have a physician," said Adolphe that evening to his wife, "and here is the best for a pretty woman."
The novice makes a conscientious examination, questions madame, feels her pulse discreetly, inquires into the slightest symptoms, and, at the end, while conversing, allows a smile, an expression, which, if not ironical, are extremely incredulous, to play involuntarily upon his lips, and his lips are quite in sympathy with his eyes. He prescribes some insignificant remedy, and insists upon its importance, promising to call again to observe its effect. In the ante-chamber, thinking himself alone with his school-mate, he indulges in an inexpressible shrug of the shoulders.
"There's nothing the matter with your wife, my boy," he says: "she is trifling with both you and me."
"Well, I thought so."
"But if she continues the joke, she will make herself sick in earnest: I am too sincerely your friend to enter into such a speculation, for I am determined that there shall be an honest man beneath the physician, in me – "
"My wife wants a carriage."
As in the Solo on the Hearse, this Caroline listened at the door.
Even at the present day, the young doctor is obliged to clear his path of the calumnies which this charming woman is continually throwing into it: and for the sake of a quiet life, he has been obliged to confess his little error – a young man's error – and to mention his enemy by name, in order to close her lips.