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Petty Troubles of Married Life, Complete
A HOUSEHOLD REVOLUTION
One morning, Adolphe is seized by the triumphant idea of letting Caroline find out for herself what she wants. He gives up to her the control of the house, saying, “Do as you like.” He substitutes the constitutional system for the autocratic system, a responsible ministry for an absolute conjugal monarchy. This proof of confidence – the object of much secret envy – is, to women, a field-marshal’s baton. Women are then, so to speak, mistresses at home.
After this, nothing, not even the memory of the honey-moon, can be compared to Adolphe’s happiness for several days. A woman, under such circumstances, is all sugar. She is too sweet: she would invent the art of petting and cosseting and of coining tender little names, if this matrimonial sugar-plummery had not existed ever since the Terrestrial Paradise. At the end of the month, Adolphe’s condition is like that of children towards the close of New Year’s week. So Caroline is beginning to say, not in words, but in acts, in manner, in mimetic expressions: “It’s difficult to tell what to do to please a man!”
Giving up the helm of the boat to one’s wife, is an exceedingly ordinary idea, and would hardly deserve the qualification of “triumphant,” which we have given it at the commencement of this chapter, if it were not accompanied by that of taking it back again. Adolphe was seduced by a wish, which invariably seizes persons who are the prey of misfortune, to know how far an evil will go! – to try how much damage fire will do when left to itself, the individual possessing, or thinking he possesses, the power to arrest it. This curiosity pursues us from the cradle to the grave. Then, after his plethora of conjugal felicity, Adolphe, who is treating himself to a farce in his own house, goes through the following phases:
FIRST EPOCH. Things go on altogether too well. Caroline buys little account books to keep a list of her expenses in, she buys a nice little piece of furniture to store her money in, she feeds Adolphe superbly, she is happy in his approbation, she discovers that very many articles are needed in the house. It is her ambition to be an incomparable housekeeper. Adolphe, who arrogates to himself the right of censorship, no longer finds the slightest suggestion to make.
When he dresses himself, everything is ready to his hands. Not even in Armide’s garden was more ingenious tenderness displayed than that of Caroline. For her phoenix husband, she renews the wax upon his razor strap, she substitutes new suspenders for old ones. None of his button-holes are ever widowed. His linen is as well cared for as that of the confessor of the devotee, all whose sins are venial. His stockings are free from holes. At table, his tastes, his caprices even, are studied, consulted: he is getting fat! There is ink in his inkstand, and the sponge is always moist. He never has occasion to say, like Louis XIV, “I came near having to wait!” In short, he hears himself continually called a love of a man. He is obliged to reproach Caroline for neglecting herself: she does not pay sufficient attention to her own needs. Of this gentle reproach Caroline takes note.
SECOND EPOCH. The scene changes, at table. Everything is exceedingly dear. Vegetables are beyond one’s means. Wood sells as if it came from Campeche. Fruit? Oh! as to fruit, princes, bankers and great lords alone can eat it. Dessert is a cause of ruin. Adolphe often hears Caroline say to Madame Deschars: “How do you manage?” Conferences are held in your presence upon the proper way to keep cooks under the thumb.
A cook who entered your service without effects, without clothes, and without talent, has come to get her wages in a blue merino gown, set off by an embroidered neckerchief, her ears embellished with a pair of ear-rings enriched with small pearls, her feet clothed in comfortable shoes which give you a glimpse of neat cotton stockings. She has two trunks full of property, and keeps an account at the savings bank.
Upon this Caroline complains of the bad morals of the lower classes: she complains of the education and the knowledge of figures which distinguish domestics. From time to time she utters little axioms like the following: There are some mistakes you must make! – It’s only those who do nothing who do everything well. – She has the anxieties that belong to power. – Ah! men are fortunate in not having a house to keep. – Women bear the burden of the innumerable details.
THIRD EPOCH. Caroline, absorbed in the idea that you should eat merely to live, treats Adolphe to the delights of a cenobitic table.
Adolphe’s stockings are either full of holes or else rough with the lichen of hasty mendings, for the day is not long enough for all that his wife has to do. He wears suspenders blackened by use. His linen is old and gapes like a door-keeper, or like the door itself. At a time when Adolphe is in haste to conclude a matter of business, it takes him an hour to dress: he has to pick out his garments one by one, opening many an article before finding one fit to wear. But Caroline is charmingly dressed. She has pretty bonnets, velvet boots, mantillas. She has made up her mind, she conducts her administration in virtue of this principle: Charity well understood begins at home. When Adolphe complains of the contrast between his poverty-stricken wardrobe and Caroline’s splendor, she says, “Why, you reproached me with buying nothing for myself!”
The husband and the wife here begin to bandy jests more or less acrimonious. One evening Caroline makes herself very agreeable, in order to insinuate an avowal of a rather large deficit, just as the ministry begins to eulogize the tax-payers, and boast of the wealth of the country, when it is preparing to bring forth a bill for an additional appropriation. There is this further similitude that both are done in the chamber, whether in administration or in housekeeping. From this springs the profound truth that the constitutional system is infinitely dearer than the monarchical system. For a nation as for a household, it is the government of the happy balance, of mediocrity, of chicanery.
Adolphe, enlightened by his past annoyances, waits for an opportunity to explode, and Caroline slumbers in a delusive security.
What starts the quarrel? Do we ever know what electric current precipitates the avalanche or decides a revolution? It may result from anything or nothing. But finally, Adolphe, after a period to be determined in each case by the circumstances of the couple, utters this fatal phrase, in the midst of a discussion: “Ah! when I was a bachelor!”
Her husband’s bachelor life is to a woman what the phrase, “My dear deceased,” is to a widow’s second husband. These two stings produce wounds which are never completely healed.
Then Adolphe goes on like General Bonaparte haranguing the Five Hundred: “We are on a volcano! – The house no longer has a head, the time to come to an understanding has arrived. – You talk of happiness, Caroline, but you have compromised, imperiled it by your exactions, you have violated the civil code: you have mixed yourself up in the discussions of business, and you have invaded the conjugal authority. – We must reform our internal affairs.”
Caroline does not shout, like the Five Hundred, “Down with the dictator!” For people never shout a man down, when they feel that they can put him down.
“When I was a bachelor I had none but new stockings! I had a clean napkin every day on my plate. The restaurateur only fleeced me of a determinate sum. I have given up to you my beloved liberty! What have you done with it?”
“Am I then so very wrong, Adolphe, to have sought to spare you numerous cares?” says Caroline, taking an attitude before her husband. “Take the key of the money-box back, – but do you know what will happen? I am ashamed, but you will compel me to go on to the stage to get the merest necessaries of life. Is this what you want? Degrade your wife, or bring in conflict two contrary, hostile interests – ”
Such, for three quarters of the French people is an exact definition of marriage.
“Be perfectly easy, dear,” resumes Caroline, seating herself in her chair like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, “I will never ask you for anything. I am not a beggar! I know what I’ll do – you don’t know me yet.”
“Well, what will you do?” asks Adolphe; “it seems impossible to joke or have an explanation with you women. What will you do?”
“It doesn’t concern you at all.”
“Excuse me, madame, quite the contrary. Dignity, honor – ”
“Oh, have no fear of that, sir. For your sake more than for my own, I will keep it a dead secret.”
“Come, Caroline, my own Carola, what do you mean to do?”
Caroline darts a viper-like glance at Adolphe, who recoils and proceeds to walk up and down the room.
“There now, tell me, what will you do?” he repeats after much too prolonged a silence.
“I shall go to work, sir!”
At this sublime declaration, Adolphe executes a movement in retreat, detecting a bitter exasperation, and feeling the sharpness of a north wind which had never before blown in the matrimonial chamber.
THE ART OF BEING A VICTIM
On and after the Revolution, our vanquished Caroline adopts an infernal system, the effect of which is to make you regret your victory every hour. She becomes the opposition! Should Adolphe have one more such triumph, he would appear before the Court of Assizes, accused of having smothered his wife between two mattresses, like Shakespeare’s Othello. Caroline puts on the air of a martyr; her submission is positively killing. On every occasion she assassinates Adolphe with a “Just as you like!” uttered in tones whose sweetness is something fearful. No elegiac poet could compete with Caroline, who utters elegy upon elegy: elegy in action, elegy in speech: her smile is elegiac, her silence is elegiac, her gestures are elegiac. Here are a few examples, wherein every household will find some of its impressions recorded:
AFTER BREAKFAST. “Caroline, we go to-night to the Deschars’ grand ball you know.”
“Yes, love.”
AFTER DINNER. “What, not dressed yet, Caroline?” exclaims Adolphe, who has just made his appearance, magnificently equipped.
He finds Caroline arrayed in a gown fit for an elderly lady of strong conversational powers, a black moire with an old-fashioned fan-waist. Flowers, too badly imitated to deserve the name of artificial, give a gloomy aspect to a head of hair which the chambermaid has carelessly arranged. Caroline’s gloves have already seen wear and tear.
“I am ready, my dear.”
“What, in that dress?”
“I have no other. A new dress would have cost three hundred francs.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“I, ask you for anything, after what has happened!”
“I’ll go alone,” says Adolphe, unwilling to be humiliated in his wife.
“I dare say you are very glad to,” returns Caroline, in a captious tone, “it’s plain enough from the way you are got up.”
Eleven persons are in the parlor, all invited to dinner by Adolphe. Caroline is there, looking as if her husband had invited her too. She is waiting for dinner to be served.
“Sir,” says the parlor servant in a whisper to his master, “the cook doesn’t know what on earth to do!”
“What’s the matter?”
“You said nothing to her, sir: and she has only two side-dishes, the beef, a chicken, a salad and vegetables.”
“Caroline, didn’t you give the necessary orders?”
“How did I know that you had company, and besides I can’t take it upon myself to give orders here! You delivered me from all care on that point, and I thank heaven for it every day of my life.”
Madame de Fischtaminel has called to pay Madame Caroline a visit. She finds her coughing feebly and nearly bent double over her embroidery.
“Ah, so you are working those slippers for your dear Adolphe?”
Adolphe is standing before the fire-place as complacently as may be.
“No, madame, it’s for a tradesman who pays me for them: like the convicts, my labor enables me to treat myself to some little comforts.”
Adolphe reddens; he can’t very well beat his wife, and Madame de Fischtaminel looks at him as much as to say, “What does this mean?”
“You cough a good deal, my darling,” says Madame de Fischtaminel.
“Oh!” returns Caroline, “what is life to me?”
Caroline is seated, conversing with a lady of your acquaintance, whose good opinion you are exceedingly anxious to retain. From the depths of the embrasure where you are talking with some friends, you gather, from the mere motion of her lips, these words: “My husband would have it so!” uttered with the air of a young Roman matron going to the circus to be devoured. You are profoundly wounded in your several vanities, and wish to attend to this conversation while listening to your guests: you thus make replies which bring you back such inquiries as: “Why, what are you thinking of?” For you have lost the thread of the discourse, and you fidget nervously with your feet, thinking to yourself, “What is she telling her about me?”
Adolphe is dining with the Deschars: twelve persons are at table, and Caroline is seated next to a nice young man named Ferdinand, Adolphe’s cousin. Between the first and second course, conjugal happiness is the subject of conversation.
“There is nothing easier than for a woman to be happy,” says Caroline in reply to a woman who complains of her husband.
“Tell us your secret, madame,” says M. de Fischtaminel agreeably.
“A woman has nothing to do but to meddle with nothing to consider herself as the first servant in the house or as a slave that the master takes care of, to have no will of her own, and never to make an observation: thus all goes well.”
This, delivered in a bitter tone and with tears in her voice, alarms Adolphe, who looks fixedly at his wife.
“You forget, madame, the happiness of telling about one’s happiness,” he returns, darting at her a glance worthy of the tyrant in a melodrama.
Quite satisfied with having shown herself assassinated or on the point of being so, Caroline turns her head aside, furtively wipes away a tear, and says:
“Happiness cannot be described!”
This incident, as they say at the Chamber, leads to nothing, but Ferdinand looks upon his cousin as an angel about to be offered up.
Some one alludes to the frightful prevalence of inflammation of the stomach, or to the nameless diseases of which young women die.
“Ah, too happy they!” exclaims Caroline, as if she were foretelling the manner of her death.
Adolphe’s mother-in-law comes to see her daughter. Caroline says, “My husband’s parlor:” “Your master’s chamber.” Everything in the house belongs to “My husband.”
“Why, what’s the matter, children?” asks the mother-in-law; “you seem to be at swords’ points.”
“Oh, dear me,” says Adolphe, “nothing but that Caroline has had the management of the house and didn’t manage it right, that’s all.”
“She got into debt, I suppose?”
“Yes, dearest mamma.”
“Look here, Adolphe,” says the mother-in-law, after having waited to be left alone with her son, “would you prefer to have my daughter magnificently dressed, to have everything go on smoothly, without its costing you anything?”
Imagine, if you can, the expression of Adolphe’s physiognomy, as he hears this declaration of woman’s rights!
Caroline abandons her shabby dress and appears in a splendid one. She is at the Deschars’: every one compliments her upon her taste, upon the richness of her materials, upon her lace, her jewels.
“Ah! you have a charming husband!” says Madame Deschars. Adolphe tosses his head proudly, and looks at Caroline.
“My husband, madame! I cost that gentleman nothing, thank heaven! All I have was given me by my mother.”
Adolphe turns suddenly about and goes to talk with Madame de Fischtaminel.
After a year of absolute monarchy, Caroline says very mildly one morning:
“How much have you spent this year, dear?”
“I don’t know.”
“Examine your accounts.”
Adolphe discovers that he has spent a third more than during Caroline’s worst year.
“And I’ve cost you nothing for my dress,” she adds.
Caroline is playing Schubert’s melodies. Adolphe takes great pleasure in hearing these compositions well-executed: he gets up and compliments Caroline. She bursts into tears.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, I’m nervous.”
“I didn’t know you were subject to that.”
“O Adolphe, you won’t see anything! Look, my rings come off my fingers: you don’t love me any more – I’m a burden to you – ”
She weeps, she won’t listen, she weeps afresh at every word Adolphe utters.
“Suppose you take the management of the house back again?”
“Ah!” she exclaims, rising sharply to her feet, like a spring figure in a box, “now that you’ve had enough of your experience! Thank you! Do you suppose it’s money that I want? Singular method, yours, of pouring balm upon a wounded heart. No, go away.”
“Very well, just as you like, Caroline.”
This “just as you like” is the first expression of indifference towards a wife: and Caroline sees before her an abyss towards which she had been walking of her own free will.
THE FRENCH CAMPAIGN
The disasters of 1814 afflict every species of existence. After brilliant days of conquest, after the period during which obstacles change to triumphs, and the slightest check becomes a piece of good fortune, there comes a time when the happiest ideas turn out blunders, when courage leads to destruction, and when your very fortifications are a stumbling-block. Conjugal love, which, according to authors, is a peculiar phase of love, has, more than anything else, its French Campaign, its fatal 1814. The devil especially loves to dangle his tail in the affairs of poor desolate women, and to this Caroline has come.
Caroline is trying to think of some means of bringing her husband back. She spends many solitary hours at home, and during this time her imagination works. She goes and comes, she gets up, and often stands pensively at the window, looking at the street and seeing nothing, her face glued to the panes, and feeling as if in a desert, in the midst of her friends, in the bosom of her luxuriously furnished apartments.
Now, in Paris, unless a person occupy a house of his own, enclosed between a court and a garden, all life is double. At every story, a family sees another family in the opposite house. Everybody plunges his gaze at will into his neighbor’s domains. There is a necessity for mutual observation, a common right of search from which none can escape. At a given time, in the morning, you get up early, the servant opposite is dusting the parlor, she has left the windows open and has put the rugs on the railing; you divine a multitude of things, and vice-versa. Thus, in a given time, you are acquainted with the habits of the pretty, the old, the young, the coquettish, the virtuous woman opposite, or the caprices of the coxcomb, the inventions of the old bachelor, the color of the furniture, and the cat of the two pair front. Everything furnishes a hint, and becomes matter for divination. At the fourth story, a grisette, taken by surprise, finds herself – too late, like the chaste Susanne, – the prey of the delighted lorgnette of an aged clerk, who earns eighteen hundred francs a year, and who becomes criminal gratis. On the other hand, a handsome young gentleman, who, for the present, works without wages, and is only nineteen years old, appears before the sight of a pious old lady, in the simple apparel of a man engaged in shaving. The watch thus kept up is never relaxed, while prudence, on the contrary, has its moments of forgetfulness. Curtains are not always let down in time. A woman, just before dark, approaches the window to thread her needle, and the married man opposite may then admire a head that Raphael might have painted, and one that he considers worthy of himself – a National Guard truly imposing when under arms. Oh, sacred private life, where art thou! Paris is a city ever ready to exhibit itself half naked, a city essentially libertine and devoid of modesty. For a person’s life to be decorous in it, the said person should have a hundred thousand a year. Virtues are dearer than vices in Paris.
Caroline, whose gaze sometimes steals between the protecting muslins which hide her domestic life from the five stories opposite, at last discovers a young couple plunged in the delights of the honey-moon, and newly established in the first story directly in view of her window. She spends her time in the most exciting observations. The blinds are closed early, and opened late. One day, Caroline, who has arisen at eight o’clock notices, by accident, of course, the maid preparing a bath or a morning dress, a delicious deshabille. Caroline sighs. She lies in ambush like a hunter at the cover; she surprises the young woman, her face actually illuminated with happiness. Finally, by dint of watching the charming couple, she sees the gentleman and lady open the window, and lean gently one against the other, as, supported by the railing, they breathe the evening air. Caroline gives herself a nervous headache, by endeavoring to interpret the phantasmagorias, some of them having an explanation and others not, made by the shadows of these two young people on the curtains, one night when they have forgotten to close the shutters. The young woman is often seated, melancholy and pensive, waiting for her absent husband; she hears the tread of a horse, or the rumble of a cab at the street corner; she starts from the sofa, and from her movements, it is easy for Caroline to see that she exclaims: “‘Tis he!”
“How they love each other!” says Caroline to herself.
By dint of nervous headache, Caroline conceives an exceedingly ingenious plan: this plan consists in using the conjugal bliss of the opposite neighbors as a tonic to stimulate Adolphe. The idea is not without depravity, but then Caroline’s intention sanctifies the means!
“Adolphe,” she says, “we have a neighbor opposite, the loveliest woman, a brunette – ”
“Oh, yes,” returns Adolphe, “I know her. She is a friend of Madame de Fischtaminel’s: Madame Foullepointe, the wife of a broker, a charming man and a good fellow, very fond of his wife: he’s crazy about her. His office and rooms are here, in the court, while those on the street are madame’s. I know of no happier household. Foullepointe talks about his happiness everywhere, even at the Exchange; he’s really quite tiresome.”
“Well, then, be good enough to present Monsieur and Madame Foullepointe to me. I should be delighted to learn how she manages to make her husband love her so much: have they been married long?”
“Five years, just like us.”
“O Adolphe, dear, I am dying to know her: make us intimately acquainted. Am I as pretty as she?”
“Well, if I were to meet you at an opera ball, and if you weren’t my wife, I declare, I shouldn’t know which – ”
“You are real sweet to-day. Don’t forget to invite them to dinner Saturday.”
“I’ll do it to-night. Foullepointe and I often meet on ‘Change.”
“Now,” says Caroline, “this young woman will doubtless tell me what her method of action is.”
Caroline resumes her post of observation. At about three she looks through the flowers which form as it were a bower at the window, and exclaims, “Two perfect doves!”
For the Saturday in question, Caroline invites Monsieur and Madame Deschars, the worthy Monsieur Fischtaminel, in short, the most virtuous couples of her society. She has brought out all her resources: she has ordered the most sumptuous dinner, she has taken the silver out of the chest: she means to do all honor to the model of wives.
“My dear, you will see to-night,” she says to Madame Deschars, at the moment when all the women are looking at each other in silence, “the most admirable young couple in the world, our opposite neighbors: a young man of fair complexion, so graceful and with such manners! His head is like Lord Byron’s, and he’s a real Don Juan, only faithful: he’s discovered the secret of making love eternal: I shall perhaps obtain a second crop of it from her example. Adolphe, when he sees them, will blush at his conduct, and – ”
The servant announces: “Monsieur and Madame Foullepointe.”
Madame Foullepointe, a pretty brunette, a genuine Parisian, slight and erect in form, the brilliant light of her eye quenched by her long lashes, charmingly dressed, sits down upon the sofa. Caroline bows to a fat gentleman with thin gray hair, who follows this Paris Andalusian, and who exhibits a face and paunch fit for Silenus, a butter-colored pate, a deceitful, libertine smile upon his big, heavy lips, – in short, a philosopher! Caroline looks upon this individual with astonishment.
“Monsieur Foullepointe, my dear,” says Adolphe, presenting the worthy quinquagenarian.
“I am delighted, madame,” says Caroline, good-naturedly, “that you have brought your father-in-law [profound sensation], but we shall soon see your husband, I trust – ”
“Madame – !”
Everybody listens and looks. Adolphe becomes the object of every one’s attention; he is literally dumb with amazement: if he could, he would whisk Caroline off through a trap, as at the theatre.
“This is Monsieur Foullepointe, my husband,” says Madame Foullepointe.
Caroline turns scarlet as she sees her ridiculous blunder, and Adolphe scathes her with a look of thirty-six candlepower.
“You said he was young and fair,” whispers Madame Deschars. Madame Foullepointe, – knowing lady that she is, – boldly stares at the ceiling.
A month after, Madame Foullepointe and Caroline become intimate. Adolphe, who is taken up with Madame de Fischtaminel, pays no attention to this dangerous friendship, a friendship which will bear its fruits, for – pray learn this —
Axiom. – Women have corrupted more women than men have ever loved.